Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Why I as a Christian support Jude Moore’s run for the Senate in Alabama


I would like to address my reasons as a Christan for supporting Jude Moore’s run for the Senate. Here is the link for Kurt Bardella reasons for dumping the Republican Party. I am not a Republican, rather I registered independent who vote for the Republicans because of their policies. That is the key for me, policies, i.e., taxes, regulations, trade, energy, global warming, etc..

“The GOP would rather elect a sexual predator who preys on teenagers than a prosecutor who happens to be a Democrat. That’s it, I’m switching parties.”

As a Christain, I pray every day that I am forgiven my trespasses (sins) as I forgive those who trespass against me, and I am reminded of David’s Psalm 51 where he says, “…For I know my transgressions, And my sin is ever before me. Against You, You only, I have sinned And done what is evil in Your sight, So that You are justified when You speak And blameless when You judge. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.…” If it is true that David sinned only against God the same is true for the rest of us, including Jude Morre.

Whenever Christians condemn sinful actions the secular are quick to through up  Matthew 7:1-3, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.  And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”, but they have no limit on condemning what they do not like, like Christians bakers. Here this meme sums it up:


So I ask all of these who so soundly condemn Jude Moore to let him who is without sin cast the first stone.
To vote for a Democrat is to vote against Trump’s agenda which, as you well know, I fully support. To vote for a Democrat is to vote for the eternal perpetuation of the welfare state. To vote for a Democrat is to vote against rebuilding our military being rebuilt (half our airplanes still cain’t fly). To vote for a Democrat is to vote for higher taxes for now on, on those who create the wealth. To vote for a Democrat is to vote for Common Core. To vote for a Democrat is to vote ________________ (you fill in the blank, for you know full well what the Progressive are for and against).

And not the last reason but the last two I will enumerate are abortion, to vote for a Democrat is to vote for the belief that abortion is a Constitutional right. And, do not forget the type of judges that the Democrats would appoint to the bench, and the type they would block if they could.

So yes, I forgive and support Jude Moore in spit of his pass picadillo and bigger transgressions that he may or may not have committed many years ago for it is now that I am concerned with. I would also remind you that all of those calling for Moore’s head today are the same ones who lauded Ted Kennedy as a lion of their party in spite of his having left Mary Jo Kopechne to drown, he left the scene and did not report the accident to authorities for ten hours. Ah, but that is nothing as compared to touching a 14 year old 30 years ago.

Thursday, December 7, 2017

Asteroid 16 Psyche $10,000 quadrillion at today’s prices?


I read that the US space agency has now fast-forwarded its plans to send a rocket to the asteroid – bringing it forward to 2022. Psyche is made up entirely of nickel and iron, which are the exact same materials at the Earth’s core. This – as well as its sheer size – had led experts to believe the asteroid is actually the remains of a planet.

But the value of just the iron alone if the asteroid was transported back to Earth, would be $10,000 quadrillion. This would be enough to cause the world’s economy – worth $73.7 trillion – to collapse altogether. Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the lead scientist on the NASA mission and the director of Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, said.

This Lindy Elkins-Tanton does not have a clue how the economy works, and the law of supply and demand. Its worth $73.7 trillion is true only under today’s supply and demand. If it was to be brought here the price of iron and nickel would drop to the price of transporting it. Anyone who has bought gravel for their driveway knows that the delivery costs more than the aggregate does.

The demand for seawater is limited to the use we can put it to but is free for the taking, desalination cost is the collection of the water and the process of converting it to fresh water. If nickel and iron were to become as common as seawater the drop in price would only hurt the nickel and iron miners, who, I hazard, would quickly go into the nickel and iron transport business.

Lindy goes on to say “Could you kind of sit on it and hide it and control the global resource — kind of like diamonds are controlled corporately — and protect your market?”

It is true that the DeBeers only release a small quantity of the diamonds that they mine to keep the prices high. If they were to put them all on the market the price would fall like a rock, but the only part of the economy that would be affected would be those who sold them for and made them into jewelry. The rest of the economy would buzz right along.

However, I will believe it when I see it.

A friend, Jimmy Barbour, told me, “She works in science so it is quite possible she has never heard of a supply curve or how a supply curve would shift.” Maybe, but if she is going to spout off about economics maybe she should brush up on it. 

Monday, November 6, 2017

The Cuban Missile Crisis at 55 As Remembered by a Marine in the Blockade


The other day I ran across this article that reprinted by the “History News Network“, and having lived through the Cuban Blockade as a member of the 6th Marines aboard the USS Boxer I had to respond, which in return brought a response from Mariano Torrespico, to which I to rebut.
“James G. Blight and Janet M. Lang are the authors of six previous books on the Cuban missile crisis. Their new book, “Dark Beyond Darkness: The Cuban Missile Crisis as History, Warning and Catalyst” will be published in December 2017. They teach at the University of Waterloo.”
Picture this image in your mind’s eye: a thumb and forefinger brought so near to each other that they almost, but don’t quite, touch. As the thumb and forefinger nearly touch, a voice says, “We came that close to nuclear war in the Cuban missile crisis.” 
In January 1992, top-level decision-makers of the Cuban missile crisis—former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and former US defense secretary Robert McNamara—used this image to convey how close the world had been to nuclear annihilation on October 26-27, 1962. As they spoke, the pupils in their eyes dilated, their voices cracked, heavy with barely managed emotion. That was their remembered reality of that moment: a world on the brink of Armageddon. Both would go to their graves haunted by what they learned from each other in the 1992 conference on the crisis that we organized in Havana, almost 30 years after the most dangerous moment in recorded history. 
Are we being hyperbolic? Were they? We don’t think so. In the case of the Cuban missile crisis, what could in many other contexts be brushed aside as hyperbole is often just unvarnished fact. Consider what McNamara and Castro learned in the course of those epochal exchanges at the 1992 Havana conference.
McNamara had already believed in October 1962 that the crisis was dangerous. In military affairs, McNamara was President John F. Kennedy’s designated principal worrier. He worried about a panicky Russian second lieutenant who might launch a nuke at the United States without authorization. He worried about a Russian move against West Berlin. In these instances, a nuclear response would be required, and after that, probable escalation to all-out nuclear war. Subsequent research by us and by others has shown that he was right to worry about all these possibilities. 
But what he learned in January 1992, 30 years later, was far more horrifying to him. He learned that the Russians on the island were ready and willing to nuke any invading US force with tactical nuclear weapons—something McNamara had never dreamed was possible. He also learned later that the Russians were ready and willing, with Cuban logistical assistance, to strike the US base at Guantánamo Bay with tactical nukes that, by October 27, had been moved into battle positions in eastern Cuba—another eventuality that had never appeared on his scope. If either of these scenarios had materialized, a nuclear US counterattack would have followed immediately, killing millions of Cubans and thousands of Russians on the island. Cuba would have been destroyed. And that would have been only the beginning—of the end of the world, as we know it. Again: fact, not hyperbole. Essentially, McNamara learned that he was monumentally wrong about the basic assumptions on which any US attack on Cuba would have been based. …
My first response:
I was a with the 6th Marine Regiment, a B.A.R. Man, aboard the USS Boxer, a landing platform 
helicopter (LHP), sailing around Cat Island during the Cuban Blockade. The W44 was a tactical nuke of the time which could fit in a 155mm howitzer, and had the explosive power of 72 tons of TNT, 32 2,000 pound bombs. Yes, they could have taken out Gitmo, but then the Phantom Jets in Homestead would have taken out the artillery as the 2nd Marine Division would have invaded both by sea and the air. The helicopter would have carried the 6th Marine far inland, and we would have fought our way back to the main forces coming from the sea. This maneuver was called an envelopment, and we practiced it the whole time I was in the 2nd Division. We would not have had to use nuclear weapons to take Cuba and loved doing it.
To which Mariano Torrespico had this to say:
Fortunately, you people did not have to re-take Cuba, a land that was not and is not yours; fortunately, you people did not have to re-enslave the “non-white nation” of the Cubans, because they fight back (like the Viet Cong); fortunately, Men were in charge, and they decided not to End the World over hillbilly racism. Fortunately, the Russians spared your life and those of us alive at that time, because their leaders were combat veterans, and not frat-boy fakes.
Which of course racked up my ire invoking this response:
Si vis pacem, para bellum, to each of your points in order given: 
“Fortunately, you people did not have to re-take Cuba” 
America has never taken Cuba to have to re-take it. Cuba was taken by the Spanish. The Spanish-American War in 1898, which lasted only a few months, and when it was over Spain signed a peace treaty giving the United States control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippine Islands, and Guam. Cuba, however, became an independent country rather than a U.S. territory. Earlier in the 1800s there was the Filibuster Movement which was attempts to take over Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Mexico from 1830 to 1860. Famous filibusters were larger than life characters such as Narciso Lopez, a Venezuelan-born soldier who, aided by sympathetic Southern money, liberated Venezuela from Spanish rule. He then attempted three times to free Cuba.
“…you people did not have to re-enslave the ‘non-white nation’ of the Cubans, because they fight back (like the Viet Cong)” 
The Cuba’s people are of a mixed race, not a “non-white nation”, the Spanish took the island and the first three centuries after the conquest, the island remained a neglected stopping point for the Spanish fleet, which visited the New World and returned to Spain with the mineral wealth of continental America. It was the growth of the U.S. as an independent nation, and the collapse of Haiti as a sugar-producing colony, Spanish protective policies, and the ingenuity of Cuba’s Creole business class all converged to produce a sugar revolution on the island. In a scant few years, Cuba was transformed from a sleepy, unimportant island into the major sugar producer in the world. Slaves arrived in increasing numbers; large estates squeezed out smaller ones; sugar supplanted tobacco, agriculture, and cattle as the main occupation; prosperity replaced poverty; and Spain’s attention replaced neglect. These factors, especially the latter two, delayed a move toward independence in the early nineteenth century. While most of Latin America was breaking with Spain, Cuba remained loyal.
For the other half of that sentence, “they fight back (like the Viet Cong)”: 
America did not lose the Vietnam War on the ground in Vietnam, it was lost on the streets of America and the Halls of Congress. It was the Russian sponsored Peace Movement and the Liberal Press that led to our leaving the South Vietnamese to the purge that the Communists exacted upon them, not the fighting powers of the Viet Cong. They, the Vietcong, were pretty much destroyed after the 1968 Tet Offensive. Militarily, Tet was an utter failure. Upwards of 30,000 VC were killed or captured and their units destroyed. The NVA lost approx. another 20,000 men, however, they could replenish much, much faster then the VC. After Tet, the NVA became the primary enemy in South Vietnam and Laos. They controlled the Ho Chi Min trail and took politcal and military control for the rest of the war. The remaining VC became more delighted to support and intelligence operations than anything else. Some have pointed out that this destruction was done on purpose, as they knew they did not stand a chance against the Americas, to remove them as a political force after the war was over.
“…fortunately, Men were in charge, and they decided not to End the World over hillbilly racism.
Fortunately, the Russians spared your life and those of us alive at that time, because their leaders were combat veterans, and not frat-boy fakes.”
We were not “frat-boy fakes” we were highly trained Marines, the Marines are the point of the spear; the Army  and other seraves are its shaft. The spear does not decide where it is thrown, but once released will do the destruction it is trained to do. However, both the Korean War, the Cubin Blockade, the Vietnam War did have this in common, and it was not to re-enslave “non-white nation”, the policy was an extension of the “Containment Policy” which was designed to stop the spread of Communism in the world. It was called the Cold War, and had nothing to do with enslaving people, quite the opposite in fact, to keep people free from the enslavement of Communism. 
In Vietnam we failed to stop the Communist which lead to the rise of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, which took control of the country in 1975. During its reign, which ended in 1979, Pol Pot oversaw the deaths of an estimated one to two million people from starvation, overwork or execution. The mass graves he commanded his people to dig were often referred to as “the killing fields.” Pol Pot was arrested in 1997 and died under house arrest on April 15, 1998.
You go ahead and live in your dream world where everything is seen thought the eyes of racism, “…the Russians spared your life and those of us alive at that time, because their leaders were combat veterans, and not frat-boy fakes.” While we were posed to hit the beaches in Cuba a deal was made to take our missiles out of Turkey in return for Russia taking theirs out of Cuba, had the deal not been reached we would have taken the missiles out, for we would not have allowed them to stay had they refused. And we would have taken them without the use of Nucks.
“…the president [Kennedy] recognized that, for Chairman Khrushchev to withdraw the missiles from Cuba, it would be undoubtedly helpful to him if he could say at the same time to his colleagues on the Presidium, “And we have been assured that the missiles will be coming out of Turkey.” And so, after the ExComm meeting [on the evening of 27 October 1962], as I’m sure almost all of you know, a small group met in President Kennedy’s office, and he instructed Robert Kennedy—at the suggestion of Secretary of State [Dean] Rusk—to deliver the letter to Ambassador Dobrynin for referral to Chairman Khrushchev, but to add orally what was not in the letter: that the missiles would come out of Turkey.”

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

The Three-Fifths Compromise And Roland Martin


Tuesday on MSNBC “Velshi & Ruhle,” discussing White House chief of staff John Kelly’s comments on Fox News about Confederate monuments, host of “News One Now” Roland Martin said “too many people in this country who are white” didn’t know history and wanted to “somehow glorify these Confederate leaders.” Martin said, “I’m not going to allow four stars stuck on stupid to simply go on. Here’s a man who’s utterly clueless. For him to say, ‘Well, we could have compromised’—really? We did compromise. It was a thing called United States Constitution, and you know what that said? If you’re a black, you’re three-fifths of a human.” He continued, ”I need John Kelly to actually go back and read a history book that my 12-year-old nieces are reading right now, because clearly, he fell asleep in history.” Source.

In this spiel, Roland Martin demonstrated his own lack of understanding of history. The three-fifths compromise did not make a slave three-fifths of a human; it diluted the South’s power in the House of Representatives by not allowing slaves to count as a whole person when determining how many representatives each state could send to Congress. Had they been counted as whole persons, which is what the South wanted, the South would have many more representatives. The Northen states did not want the slaves to count as persons when determining how many representatives each state could send to Congress. The three-fifths of a person was the compromise made between the Southern and Northen states to get the Constitution ratified by both the Northern and Southern states.

So, Roland Martin, go back and study a little more history, and what the meaning and conditions that brought these events into existence. And, consider that no black slave came to North America that was not sold into slavery by other blacks

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Artificial Intelligence is not Intelligence, Its Capability


Just read, “That’s according to SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. The Japanese billionaire spoke from the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. In about 30 years, artificial intelligence will have an IQ of 10,000, Son says. By comparison, the average human IQ is 100 and genius is (sic) 200, according to Son. Mensa, “the High IQ society,” starts accepting members with an IQ score of 130.”

The reason the average human IQ is 100 is that the IQ test is designed to give an average score of 100. IQ tests are tests in which you cannot study for, this means that the test measures the general intellect of a person at any age. To do this, researchers in the early 1900s developed a concept known as “Mental age” vs “chronological age.” The rationale is as follows, if a child is six years old, but can only perform tasks as well as a three-year-old, that child is said to have a “mental age” of three years. One then takes the “mental age” and divides that by the child’s “chronological age” to determine a “mental quotient.” The six-year-old child performing at a three-year-old’s rate would be said to have a mental quotient of .5 (three divided by six), This number is now multiplied by 100 to get rid of the decimal, so we end up with an IQ of 50.

That a machine can perform better on an IQ test it does not measure its intelligence, what it measures is its capability. The machine will have a higher capability to perform certain tasks and the number of tasks that the machine (robot) is able to do will increase. Though I doubt that it will ever be able to train a horse without being taught how.

Thursday, October 19, 2017

“Be careful … at some point, I fight back.”


Martin Bailes wrote in medium.com:
“Be careful … at some point I fight back.”

You all do know McCains story right? Prisoner of War in 1967 with fractured arms & legs then beaten & tortured …
put in solitary … refused preferential early release & came home with permanent life-long disabilities, It was of course to McCain Trump was referring in his vacuous bitter put-down “He’s not a war hero … I like people who weren’t captured.” And it is to this man, this now dying man, that bone-spur draft dodging New York building playboy now threatens to “fight back” McCain’s politics may trouble me but he’s a man worthy of decent treatment more than a little respect … & I can only echo the words of another veteran on the TV talking of (sic) Trump “this man has the empathy of a cockroach.”
*********************************************************


“McCain’s politics may trouble me, but he’s a man worthy of decent treatment & more than a little respect …”

Did you ever wonder why the Veterans did not get pissed off at Trump for saying that about McCain? I am a U. S. Marine, active duty 1960–63 and an active member of the Marine Corps League for 30 years, and I do not hold a single Marine who holds any respect for old Songbird McCain. He broke his arms & legs because he did not tuck them in when he ejected from his jet, and he was never beaten. He says that he refused preferential early release, let me ask you, what powers did he have to refuse his captures anything?

I have spoken with POW who was at the Hanoi Hilton with him, they all called him Songbird he told them all he knew without being tortured.
The Republican US presidential candidate John McCain was not tortured during his captivity in North Vietnam, the chief prison guard of the jail in which he was held has claimed.
In an interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Nguyen Tien Tran acknowledged that conditions in the prison were “tough, though not inhuman”. But, he added: “We never tortured McCain. On the contrary, we saved his life, curing him with extremely valuable medicines that at times were not available to our own wounded.” Source:
Here is the profile of John McCain noting he is the only American in history who could defect to a Communist country and there be declared an Air Ace for their side as he has personally destroyed five of our fighter aircraft. We also note that he received too much room service at the Hanoi Hilton.

USS Forrestal fire: Factcheck.org / Godlikeproductions.com
The 1967 USS Forrestal fire was a devastating event with series of chain-reaction explosions on 29 July 1967 killing 134 sailors and injuring 161 persons on the USS Forrestal (CVA-59), after an electrical anomaly discharged a “Zuni” rocket on the flight deck. Forrestal was in combat operations in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War at the time. Damage exceeded $72 million (equivalent to $502 million today) including damage to aircraft.

The claim has been made:

”Surviving crewmen and those who investigated the Forrestal fire case reported that John McCain deliberately ‘wet-started’ his A-4E Skyhawk as a prank on the F-4 Phantom behind his A-4. “Wet-starts,” may be done deliberately, by pumping kerosene fuel into the engine without ignition, then lighting it to shoot a large flame from the tail of the aircraft. It was concluded by investigators that John McCain deliberately “wet-fired” his A-4E. In McCain’s case, the ‘wet-start’ launched a Zuni rocket from the F-4 behind them.”

During the course of his flying career in the U.S. Navy, John McCain was involved in five major mishaps or crashes with his aircraft. The most dramatic incidents occurred in 1967. He barely escaped with his life after the missile exploded aboard an aircraft carrier, the USS Forrestal, in July of that year, but killing 134 of his fellow crew members. In October, McCain was shot down over Vietnam by a surface-to-air missile.

The official Navy report into the Corpus Christi accident on March 12, 1960, concludes that the AD-6 Skyraider trainer crashed because McCain failed to “maintain an airspeed above stall speed.” It attributed the accident to “the preoccupation of the pilot with a power setting too low to maintain level flight.” The single-engine prop plane sank in Corpus Christi Bay. McCain was rescued by a helicopter after swimming to the surface. The accident report excluded a series of other factors, including engine failure and disorientation of the pilot due to vertigo. But, it concluded pilot error was “the sole contributing factor” to the accident.
A copy of the report was obtained by The Washington Post from the Democratic National Committee, which conducted research at the Naval Historical Center in Washington. McCain had another accident with a T-2 trainer jet in November 1965, while flying between New York City and Norfolk, Va. The Naval Aviation Safety Center was unable to determine the precise cause of the accident or the degree of pilot error.

McCain wrote later that his engine “flamed out” and he had to eject. In his autobiography, McCain recalls another mishap around December 1961 when “I knocked down some power lines while flying too low over southern Spain. My daredevil clowning cut off electricity to a great many Spanish homes and created a small international incident.”

He landed his Skyraider back on the USS Intrepid after the incident, which does not appear to have triggered a safety investigation, but then John McCain’s father and grandfather were both high ranking Admirals in the US Navy.
Some of those who were on the Forrestal and other persons familiar with the ordnance told me that because the rocket did not hit McCain’s craft, only actions by the pilot could have caused any bomb to fall from McCain’s Skyhawk. These sources — who spoke under the condition that they not be publicly identified — agree with each other that, if any bomb fell from the McCain airplane, it was because of actions that he took either in error or panic upon seeing the fire on the deck or in his hasty exit from the plane. Two switches in the cockpit of a Skyhawk need to be thrown to drop such a bomb, according to the sources.

Whatever the circumstances of the fire’s origins, McCain did not stay on deck to help fight the blaze as the men around him did. With the firefighting crew virtually wiped out, men untrained in fighting fires had to pick up the fire hoses, rescue the wounded or frantically throw bombs and even planes over the ship’s side to prevent further tragedy. McCain left them behind and went down to the hangar-bay level, where he briefly helped crew members heave some bombs overboard. After that, he went to the pilot’s ready room and watched the fire on a television monitor hooked to a camera trained on the deck. From Investigating John McCain’s Tragedy at Sea.

Senator John McCain The Traitor — Audio Proof




McCain worked hard to normalize US/Vietnam relation without an accounting of all POWs, KIA, and MIA:
John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn’t return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero people would logically imagine to be a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.
Almost as striking is the manner in which the mainstream press has shied from reporting the POW story and McCain’s role in it, even as McCain has made his military service and POW history the focus of his presidential campaign. Reporters who had covered the Vietnam War have also turned their heads and walked in other directions. McCain doesn’t talk about the missing men, and the press never asks him about them.
You can knock Trump all you want for being a draft dodger, but he did not burn his draft card and run off to Canada like so many, he took the same risk of being called up as everyone who got a college deferment. Did it piss you off that Bill Clinton dodged the draft?
Why do you think Trump won the Veteran and active military vote by far?

Sunday, October 15, 2017

ISIS is Going to Hell




The Islamic State group once drew recruits from near and far with promises of paradise but now bodies of jihadists lie in mass graves or at the mercy of wild dogs as its “caliphate” collapses.

Flies buzz around human remains poking through the dusty earth in the Iraqi town of Dhuluiyah, 90 kilometres (55 miles) north of Baghdad, at a hastily-dug pit containing the bodies of dozens of IS fighters killed in 2015.

“They should have ended up in the stomachs of stray dogs,” local police officer Mohammed al-Juburi told AFP.
“We buried them here not out of love but because we wanted to avoid diseases.”

At one stage, IS ruthlessly wielded power over a vast swathe of territory straddling Iraq and Syria, but a military onslaught on multiple fronts has seen its fiefdom shrink to a last few pockets.

Since the launch in 2014 of air strikes in Iraq and Syria against the group, a US-led coalition says around 80,000 jihadists have been killed.

The overall number of dead is higher if you include those targeted by Russian and Syrian strikes.
Buried with bulldozers

In agricultural Dhuluiyah on the banks of the Tigris river, residents faced a common dilemma over what to do with the corpses of IS fighters after local Sunni militiamen beat back the jihadists in fierce clashes.

“We could have thrown them into the water, but we love the river too much to pollute it,” said the local policeman, who lost his own brother in the violence.
“The people here as well as their animals drink from the Tigris.”

Local finally decided to dig a mass grave for the fighters — but they said they refused to honor them with Islamic rites.
Back about 3 years ago I wrote this essay:
|Back then I said “who the hell know what Obama will do, but now we have Trump, and we know what he will do, “Bomb the Hell out of them”.

These two pictures invoked outcry from every Progressive and Liberal leaning mind in America and were used as propaganda to kill American’s support for the Vietnam War.


Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnamese chief of the national police, fires his pistol into the head of suspected Viet Cong official Nguyen Van Lem on a Saigon street early in the Tet Offensive, February 1, 1968. Photographer Eddie Adams reported that after the shooting, Loan approached him and said, “They killed many of my people, and yours too,” then walked away. (AP Photo/Eddie Adams) 1969 Pulitzer Prize winner for Spot News Photography.


Bang, followed by soldiers of the South Vietnamese army’s 25th Division, June 8, 1972. A South Vietnamese plane seeking Viet Cong hiding places accidentally dropped its flaming napalm on civilians and government troops instead. Nine-year-old Kim Phuc (center) had ripped off her burning clothes while fleeing. The other children (from left) are her brothers Phan Thanh Tam, who lost an eye, and Phan Thanh Phouc, and her cousins Ho Van Bon and Ho Thi Ting.

No, You’re wrong about Second Amendment rights I’m not


Mr. Gene Yoon wrote in medium.com that “You’re wrong about Second Amendment rights” in it, among other things he said, “The problem is that the disparity of destructive power between the weaponry of the government and the weaponry that people can own has become too great. Even if all citizens were armed with fully automatic assault rifles, this arsenal would pale in comparison to the firepower available to state and local police forces, never mind the world-ending power of the national armed forces. Private gun ownership might be a problem in many ways, but it is not at all a problem for the government’s power over the people.” Of course, he does not see the Second Amendment in the same light as I do so I asked “Does not the American’s fight in Vietnam and the Russian’s in Afghanistan point to the fallaciousness of this argument?

He goes on to say “So ‘a little rebellion’ based on guns is a laughably ineffective tool in today’s society. Government power is no longer truly threatened by private gun ownership, and hasn’t been for about a century.”

It was not the guns that the Vet Cong carried into battle that defeated my beloved Corps, it was the press you alluded to in your opening analogy that led us to abandon the South Vietnamese and giving Cambodia to Pol Pot, do you think that the Federal government could wage a war against its citizens, like Lincoln did in his total war, and escape the power of the pin? There are oath keepers that would not fire upon fellow citizens, not drop bombs upon them.
Also you neglect all of the weapons stored in National Guard building and compounds all over America, Texas’ National Guard alone would count as the wold fifth largest army I have read, how had would it be for a few armed citizens to take over a National Guard depot and use those arms in an armed rebellion? There are many of us Veterans spread out all across the land that knows how to use those weapons and are able to teach others.

I pray that it never comes to it, but the inability of the government to take our arms gives us the power to fight back should the government actions become so egregious that a rebellion was called for. If you think that we would be content to fight a tank with a rifle when we can steal a M72 LAW and MANPATS you are living in a world that never trained to fight with what you have to get more. I assure you Americans can make Improvise Explosive Devices as well as the Afghans.

Open your eyes to see just how important the 2nd Amendment is for the threat of an armed rebellion to keep our government in the bounds of the Constitution. When you light a fuse, it is not the fuse that explodes, but what it sets off.

No, There Is No Precedent for Donald Trump


In response to Sean Wilentz a professor of history at Princeton who wrote this opinion about our President:

“No, There Is No Precedent for Donald Trump”

In it he says, “Coming to terms with this requires, in part, finally admitting to ourselves that, although the constitutional trappings were respected, the events of 2016 resembled a foreign-abetted coup d’état more than they did an American presidential election.” and I respond:

I am a Trump supporter, the Russian did not influence my vote as I was a supporter from the day he came down the escalators. I believe that Trump would do all the things he said he would do, and he is. He dumped the Paris Accord like he said he would. He dropped us out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership like he said he would. He is renegotiating NAFTA like he said he would. He is ending the war on Christianity like he said he would. He is ending Obama Care like he said he would. He is making NATO members pick up the cost of there membership like he said he would. He is taking the EPA out of the ditch in my backyard like he said he would. He let the Keystone Pipeline be built like he said he would. He ended the war on coal like he said he would. He opened federal lands to fracking like he said he would. He is appointing they type of judges he said he would. He is cutting back federal regulation like he said he would. He is going to reform our immigration system like he said he would. He has changed the vetting procedures for immigrating and refuge-seekers like he said he would.

These are just to mention a few of him doing what he said he would do. You are right “Trump represents a sharp break in our national political history” he is actually doing all the things he said that he would do when he ran for office. The wall will be built, and as much at the Progressive hate him he will win another term. And if you think that the Democrats will be picking up seats in the midterm election, you are wrong, Trump supporter will be out RINO hunting in the primary, and put people in who will support the Trump agenda, which is our agenda.

Who am I, I am nobody, I am the forgotten man, the man that Trump speaks for like no other politician in the 75 years I have been on this earth. And if you think that Trump is just willing the hearts and minds of old codgers like me you are wrong. I may be old, but I am not a fuddy-duddy, nor am I uneducated like so many Progressives like to paint Trump supporters. I hold two undergraduates degrees and an MBA. I have been reading history for many a long years, and it appears to me that you have let your biases direct your opinion about Trump. When you say, “Never before has an American Administration lied as continuously and as brazenly as Trump and his minions have, not simply as self-protection but as calculated insults to reason, gaslighting not just the nation but the entire world.” you are painting me as a minion because of my steadfast support of Trump.

Gaslighting, interesting misuse of the meaning of the expression which came from the movie “Gaslight” an American 1944 mystery-thriller film, adapted from Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play Gas Light, about a woman whose husband slowly manipulates her into believing that she is going insane.

Wikipedia says, “Gaslighting is a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, hoping to make them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegitimize the target’s belief.” If there is any Gaslighting going on here it is coming from the likes of you and your fellow travelers who completely supported Obama’s drastic moves to fundamentally change America into European style Socialist style of government, which Trump is completely, or as complete as he can, dismantle.

Monday, September 4, 2017

DREAMers protest to keep Obama’s DACA program alive


I would like to address these two signs that the DREAMers are using in their protest to keep Obama’s DACA program alive:


The sign to the left is using a false equivalence fallacy, not sure if she know what a fallacy is or not, we do. Of course her dreams are not illegal, but if she is undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children, a group often described as Dreamers, she is an illegal alien. They did nothing wrong, goes the argument, and should not be punished for the crimes of their parents. To which I rebut: If I, living in a multimillion dollar home, bought that home with money I obtained by fraud, and get cough should my children be allowed to keep the home as they had did nothing wrong?

Now to the sign on the right that has a copy of  the 1794 Pownell Wall Map of North America and the West Indies, and says, “We did not cross the border, the border crossed us”. True enough if you or you are a direct descendants of people living there then. Which is highly unlikely. Let me tell you a little about this story of this map. From Antique Maps of the Americas:


As you can see, the Spanish did a lot of border changing themselves, taking all of the Indian’s land for their own. From his skin tone I would hazard to guess that he had descended more from the Conquistadors then the Indian side that had to give up their lands to the Spanish.

DESCRIPTION


An extraordinary monumentally proportioned 1794 map of North American by Governor Pownell. Issued shortly after the end of the American Revolutionary War, this map details the newly formed United States, the British dominions in Canada, the French territory of Louisiana, the West Indies, and Spanish holdings in Mexico, Florida, and Central America. As one might expect from a map of this size the detail throughout is extraordinary. All text is in English.
We begin our examination of this map in the newly formed post colonial United States. The United States at this time extended from the Pacific to the Mississippi River and from Georgia to the Great Lakes and Maine. The early state boundaries roughly conform to their original colonial charters. Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina are drawn with indefinite western borders, suggesting claims to further unexplored land beyond the Appellation Mountains. By this time most of the boundary issues in the New England states had been resolved, though there remained some vagaries regarding the Massachusetts Connecticut border and, though Vermont is noted textually, its boundaries are not drawn in. At this time there were also some unresolved issues regarding the national borders between Maine and Nova Scotia. In Pennsylvania, the western border displays some surveying confusions that would not be resolved until the early 1800s and the creation of Ohio.

It is beyond the old colonial centers where this map really gets interesting. Pownall offers copious notations on the lands and territories between the Appellation range and this Mississippi River. In some cases he offers commentary on the various indigenous tribes including the Creeks, Chickasaws, Chocktaws, Senekas, Eriez, Delawares, Shawnee, Iroquois, Algonquians, Ottawas and others. The cartographer was clearly concerned with the development of these western regions and offers copious commentary on fit sites for factories, the alliances and temperaments of tribes, and the navigability of various river systems, particularly the Mississippi and Ohio.

The Great Lakes are mapped with considerable accuracy though several apocryphal islands do appear in Lake Superior. The most notable of these are Phelipeaux and Pontchartrain. Phelipeaux Island first appeared in French maps of this region in the 1740s. Later it was mentioned as a boundary marker in the 1783 Treaty of Paris which ended the American Revolutionary War. The nonexistence of these islands was not conclusively proven until about 1820. 
To the west of the Mississippi we pass into the largely unknown lands of the Great Plains. In what is roughly modern day Missouri, between Memphis and St. Louis, there is an interesting note suggesting that this region is ‘Full of Mines,’ with a secondary note suggesting that these mines gave rise to the ‘Mississippi Scheme’ of 1719. This refers to the Mississippi Company (Compagnie du Mississippi) or, as it was more commonly known the Indies Company (Compagnie d’Occident). This organization was part of a French investment plan comparable to the South Seas Company which was developing contemporaneously in England. The Mississippi Company’s charter was to trade the riches of the Louisiana Territory. The main proponent of the Mississippi Company, John Law, greatly exaggerated the wealth of Louisiana by describing a rich mining region easily accessible along the Mississippi from New Orleans. This resulted in a stock buying rush which disproportionately overvalued Mississippi Company stock, resulting in one of the world’s first ‘Bubble Economies.’ 
Further North, along the northern border between the United States and British America (Canada), Rain Lake, the Lake of the Woods, and Lake Winnepeg are noted. This region was a hotbed of exploration throughout the 18th century. French and English concerns in the New World were desperate for access to the Pacific and the rich Asian markets. These markets had long been dominated by the Spanish who had easy access to the Pacific via Mexico and South America. The French and English set their hopes on a Northwest Passage. By the late 18th century the search for a route through the high Arctic had long been abandoned. Instead, explorers and theoretical cartographers believed that a water route might be found among the elaborate network of lakes and rivers that meandered through central Canada. Our map shows evidence of some of this exploration, particularly the travels of the Quebec born Pierre de La Verendrye and his sons around Lake Alimipigon, the Lake of the Woods (Lake Minitti) and Lake Winnipeg (Lake Ouinipigon). 
As we progress even further west, passing out of Louisiana into the Spanish holdings we begin to see significant mapping – both conjectural and factual. The Spanish had long been passively active in the exploration of New Mexico. Though no concerted effort had been put forth to map the region, various missionaries and territorial governors had, over roughly 200 years of occupation added considerable data, both fact and fiction to the cartographic picture. Numerous American Indian groups are noted including the Pimas, the Apaches ,the Navajo and others. Along the Rio del Norte or upper Rio Grande there are a quantity mission stations including the regional capital of Santa Fe. 
Just to the west of these missions we begin to enter more mythical territory and both Cibola and Teguayo are noted. Cibola and Teguayo are both associated with the legendary Seven Cities of Gold. It was believed that in 1150 when Merida, Spain, was conquered by Moors ,the city’s seven bishops fled to unknown lands taking with them much of the city’s riches. Each Bishop supposedly founded a great city in a far away place. With the discovery of the New World and the fabulous riches plundered by Cortez and Pizarro, the Seven Cities became associated with New World legends. Coronado, hearing tales of the paradise-like mythical Aztec homeland of Azatlan somewhere to the north of Mexico , determined to hunt for these cities in what is today the American southwest. In time indigenous legends of rich and prosperous lands became attached to the seven cities. Two of these appear on our map – Cibola and Teguayo. 
The gulf of Mexico, the West Indies, and the Caribbean are charted with considerable and typical accuracy. Notes numerous offshore shoals, reefs, and other dangers – especially around the Bahamas. Also describes several important shipping routes, particularly the former routes of Spanish galleons from Veracruz to Havana, the route from Cartagena to Havana, and the route from Cartagena to Europe.
There are also two particularly interesting insets. The first, in the upper left quadrant, depicts the Canadian arctic, particularly the Hudson and Baffin Bays. Notes all of the most recent discoveries in this region and offers interesting notes such as ‘If there is Northwest Passage it appears to be through one of these inlets.’ In the northwestern quadrant of this inset, the supposed discoveries of Admiral de Fonte are included, despite a notation that they are ‘Imaginary.’
The second inset of interest in located in the lower left quadrant. This smaller maps depicts the northern parts of the Gulf of California and the Colorado River Delta based upon the explorations of the Jesuit Father Eusebius Francis Kino. The actual cartography of this region has been vague since the mid 17th century when it was postulated that California must be an Island. It was not until Kino’s historic expedition, recorded here, that Baja California was conclusively proven to be a peninsula. 
A magnificent title cartouche appears in the upper right quadrant. The cartouche, which angles around Bermuda, depicts two stylized American Indians surrounded by the presumed flora and fauna of the new world. These include a small monkey, a parrot, and a jaguar. Above the cartouche is a textual quotation from Article III of the Treaty of Paris, affirming the rights of the United States to access the rich cod fields of Newfoundland’s Grand Banks.
This map is heavily based on a map originally drawn c. 1855 by Bowen and Gibson. It went through numerous revisions and reissues over the subsequent 50 years reflecting new discoveries and the changing political climate. Prepared by Governor Pownall and published by Laurie & Whittle in Kitchin’s 1894 General Atlas.

The argument for keeping the DREAMers is even stronger for ending abortions


Watching CNN a little bit ago interviewing a supporter of Obama DACA program who was making the argument as to why the 2 million or so DREAMers should be allowed stay in America. The case goes like this:

How the DREAM Act helps the economy:

Passing the federal DREAM Act would add a total of $329 billion to the American economy by 2030. This infographic explains how the act provides such a boost to the nation, by granting legal immigration status to 2.1 million young people and incentivizing higher education. The $148 billion in higher earnings that result from DREAMers being able to work legally and achieve greater education leads to increased spending on goods and services such as houses, cars, and computers. This spending ripples through the economy, supporting another $181 billion in induced economic impact, the creation of 1.4 million new jobs, and more than $10 billion in increased revenue.

Now I ask you, how many babies do we abort every year in America? Overall, more than 50 million babies have been slaughtered since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. What has been the economic impact of that?


If 2 million DREAMers would add that much to the economy how much more would the 50 million babies killed have added?

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Charlottesville, Virginia Hell


“President Trump condemned the ‘egregious,” racially-charged clashes in Charlottesville, Va. on Saturday, but avoided putting more blame on any particular group, saying hatred by “many sides’ was to blame.” Trump got it right saying “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides,”

But, Lord Good God Almighty he did not put the blame completely on the White Nationalist, Altright, et al., But laid equal amount of blame on Antifa, BLM, et al… See, here is the thing, the White Nationalist had a permit to hold their rally, and the fact that Charlottesville would allow such a hated group to assemble and speak enraged Antifa, BLM, et al., causing them to descend in mass upon Charlottesville. Instead of the police protecting the permit holders they stood aside and let the Antifa have at the White Nationalist, then canceled their permit calling it an unlawful assembly, but let the Antifa, BLM, et al. group march through town unhindered. This, in turn, enraged James Alex Fields Jr. so much that he rammed his car into the marchers killing a woman.

I am not excusing James Alex Fields Jr.’s actions; I am pointing out that it did not happen in a vacuum, but you will not hear the officials of Charlottesville accepting any blame for what went down, nor will you hear any blame being cast upon Antifa, BLM, et al., no! Oh hell no! It is all the White Nationalist’s fault for having the audacity to actually make use of their First Amendment rights!

Friday, July 7, 2017

But is anyone afraid of President Donald Trump


Susan Milligan a Senior Writer at us newssays, “Trump puts the bully into bully pulpit – but experts say his approach has problems.”

Here is a little history lesson for her which she could have easily known. The meaning of words and phrases change over time. When President Theodore Roosevelt, who referred to his office as a “bully pulpit”, by which he meant a terrific platform from which to advocate an agenda, the word bully meant good. It referred more to the “outstanding” bully-for-you sense of “bully” than for any aggressiveness on Roosevelt’s part, and this describes Trumps use of the “bully pulpit” as well. One might say Trump has mastered a “bully tweet” to make his agenda know and propagated; that is, a damn good way to get the word out.

She goes on to say, “He talks tough, and tweets tougher. He makes demands on Congress and state governments, needles foreign nations and launches broad attacks on the press. But is anyone afraid of President Donald Trump?”

Which leads me to ask, if they are not afraid of him why are they so hell-bent on impeaching him? He has upturned their apple cart, cutting the government work force starting with the White House staff, EPA, State Department, but to name a few. Slashing regulations off the books at a rate unknown in my lifetime.

Then she quotes,”‘That’s going to be a problem with Congress [and] the G-20,” the group of world leaders Trump is meeting with in Germany this week. “Already our allies are feeling pretty uncomfortable about his positions and approaches,’ Peterson says.”

Well hell yes, they are uncomfortable about his positions and approaches with the Trans-Pacific Partnership gone, and his dumping their beloved Paras Accord. They are just going to have to deal with it; he was not elected to be president of the world.

Then there is this lie, “The president’s voter fraud commission demanded that states turn over personal information on voters, including party ID and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. States are rebelling, and not just the blue-tinted ones: so far, 44 states have refused to hand over all or some of the requested information.”

According to her, any state that will not provide sensitive, non-public voter data like social security numbers has refused the commission’s request. However, the panel only requested public voter information, and most states have not refused to provide this data. But even as some states will decline to provide non-public voter data, most acknowledge that voter rolls are available to the public for non-commercial purposes. As a result, even some states that oppose the request won’t refuse to give the commission public voter data.

“The decision by states not to provide sensitive information is not a refusal to comply as CNN claims because the commission never sought non-public information. “We’re not asking for it if it’s not publicly available,” Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who serves as the vice chair of the commission, told The Kansas City Star. CNN grossly inflates the number of states that have refused.”

So she lies by selecting which truths she will tell, and how she strings her words together. Progressives will see her words as gospel, and not bother to check into the fact the claims to present, but she is preaching to the choir as, I hazard, very few non Democrats read her propaganda.

Further she goes on, “Trump’s orientation is to bully – ‘I’m going to run somebody against you. I’m going to hurt you.’ That’s not where you lead from,” says Texas A&M University political science professor George C. Edwards III, author of “On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit” (Yale University Press). But bullying does not translate into an effective bully pulpit once someone is in the Oval Office, Edwards says. “Presidents rarely move public opinion in their direction. That’s fundamental,” Edwards says. “You cannot govern based on the premise of expanding your coalition, but not everything presidents do lack public support. Turns out many things this president does lack public support.”

Milligan misstates Trump’s often claimed philosophy of “If I am hit, I hit back” into ‘I’m going to run somebody against you. I’m going to hurt you.’ This is a good example of twisting someone’s words into something they did not say, mean, or do. Why is it bulling to tel the never Trumper Republican that he will campaign against them in the primaries?

Then she goes back to this trope, “Not only did Trump lose the popular vote, Peterson notes, but he lost it by a bigger margin than anyone who has nonetheless won the presidency by securing the Electoral College majority. While his party hung onto majorities in the House and Senate, the GOP lost seats in both chambers in the 2016 elections. And his approval ratings are dismal, hitting the upper-middle 30s.”

They just cant get over loosing the election, undoubted she wants to scrap the Electoral College, but that would lead to a different type of campaigning, where only a few states with the biggest cities would be relevant to winning the office.
I would also point out that the ones doing the polls on Trump’s approval ratings are the same ones that had Hillary winning by a landslide.