Category: Politics

Posted on

Read this today and feel like it’s a Red Pill Blue Pill situation

Salem Witch Trial

Funny, when I typed the title, I just now got the metaphor.

Hey, when I’m watching SciFi I’m watching the story, not looking for deep political meaning. Hell, I don’t even remember which pill Neo took to escape the Matrix.

I’d sign up for the Mars Colony mission if I could avoid all the political bullshit.

Mars One

Unfortunately, when you think about it, the Mars Colony mission is fraught with political issues and since the mission is one way and everyone is expected to die on Mars…

Well… just imagine having a political disagreement and having to worry about being “Spaced” on the way there, or getting tossed out on the Martian surface without a suit.

Hillary Clinton

Anyhooo…

The Conservatives are saying that Trey Gowdy’s committee “won” because they got Hillary Clinton to sorta admit that there was some illegality in her dealings as Secretary of State.

Salon, on the other hand likens the hearings to McCarthyism or the Salem Witch Trials. The Author goes so far as to say that Hillary Trounced the evil Republicans.

To some extent I agree that the Hearings have gone well beyond Benghazi.

Benghazi

To Sum up what I think we know.

  1. The unrest in Benghazi was not the result of a YouTube Video
  2. The “Embassy” was not secure
  3. The Ambassador requested additional security and his request was either denied or ignored.
  4. The British and several other embassy missions had already left Benghazi due to local unrest and Libyan inability to protect diplomatic personnel and those missions.
  5. Hillary Clinton has repeatedly lied about the events in Benghazi, as has the White House, and State Department.
  6. The Ambassador and security people were killed during a coordinated attack – NOT A PROTEST, on a US embassy.

What we don’t know is; What Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and the State Department were/are covering up.

Not directly related to Benghazi, we know that Hillary has also broken laws and ignored White House guidance, regarding her email server.  We also know that Hillary has lied about this and other things too.

Romulan Commander

It’s human nature to keep picking at a lie. I think in the case of a lawyer, that nature is magnified by a factor of at least 100.  Trey Gowdy is a lawyer, and former prosecutor. As long as Hillary keeps lying, his nature won’t let it go.

It’s not about destroying Hillary it’s about Hillary looking him in the face, smiling and lying.

She knows she’s going to get away with whatever the hell she’s done. As a prosecutor, Gowdy’s nature is to run the bullshit to ground, expose the crime in all it’s hideous detail and demand justice.

You can’t blame a leopard for having spots, or for not being able to change them.

I personally think that Hillary Clinton is guilty as sin for any number of things. I think she should be in prison and I believe that Hillary Clinton is not fit to be President. Were she anyone else, her career, campaign, and life in the public eye would already be over.

Scandals follow her like dark clouds. She has repeatedly behaved as though she was above the law. The implosion of her career and campaign should it happen, will not be due to the Republicans, or Trey Gowdy, it will be by Hillary Clinton’s own doing.

Mikandynothem 2015 Oct 24

My beliefs however, are irrelevant, the facts are not. It is the facts that Gowdy’s committee is trying to get at, it is the right of the American people to have those facts.

As the writer in Salon points out. The side benefit for the evil Republicans, is that Hillary gets knocked out of the running for the Presidency.

I think that would be best for the Country but I’m only one voice. I don’t believe these hearings are about destroying Hillary.

I do believe there is more than enough smoke surrounding these hearings to justify investigation into every single lousy transaction, donation, and donor to The Clintons and their foundation.

As I read through the contradictory reports on Hillary’s Benghazi appearance, I found myself asking, “isn’t it the best interests of both the Democrat and Republican parties to put this to bed? Instead of the Democrat leaders rallying around Hillary shouldn’t they instead be rallying around the truth? ”

ElijaCummings

Every time I see or hear Elijah Cummings I want to grab him, shake him, and ask if the truth is important to him then why does he obfuscate and waste time in every hearing?

Why not, instead become a champion for expeditiously getting to the bottom of all the allegations?

Why isn’t HE asking Hillary Clinton questions like, “WHY does it take an FBI investigation to get the information that this Committee requested two years ago? WHY, Mrs. Clinton have you been hiding material and wasting the tax payer’s money by confounding and drawing this hearing out? WHY Mrs. Clinton are we STILL here having to tease the facts out of you, your staff, and even the State Department?”

Both parties should be asking those kinds of questions, not playing partisan politics.

It shouldn’t matter which color pill you’re taking, truth and reality should trump either of them.

Posted on

Whew, a week got by me.

HillaryOrange

Well, there isn’t much I wanted to comment on.

Hillary? NO! I mean where to start? Her lies? The media’s refusal to really cover the email scandal. Her campaign poll numbers tanking? The fact that so many people being polled say flat out they don’t trust her? The FBI investigation? At least she’s already got the orange pant suit.

Trump? OH HELL NO! He’s probably right about a lot of things, even if he’s not,  he’s serving a useful purpose. What purpose you ask? He’s saying the emperor has no clothes, Trump is proving that the American People are tired of Politically Correct speech. I defend that statement by pointing to Trumps poll numbers among the people he’s supposedly offended. BUT, and I can’t stress this enough, he’s not presidential material. Hell I’m more presidential than he is and I’m a broke redneck.

Glenn Beck’s flame out? I dimly know he’s a media person. In the past few days there’ve been some really strange things attributed to him, including one piece he penned on his blog which read a bit like the ravings of a lunatic. After reading that single piece, I’m glad that I’m unfamiliar with his body of work.

Sex? Maybe I’d be commenting if I’d been having it… Don’t ask!

Job Search? Wow! There’s a lot I could say, BUT it’s all bad news.  

Trump

I figure that we can all get our fill of BAD news just by flipping on the boob tube and tuning to the evening news on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, FOX or reading any of a number of so called print media whether online or in actual hardcopy.

There’s no need to be redundant.

Speaking of print media, we need to do something about the overall degradation of writing skill. There’s no excuse for a journalist to use incorrect syntax, or publish an article with poor spelling.

I was scanning Google News the other day and saw that in addition to the usual offenders in this area, The Christian Science Monitor had a major typo in a headline.

I got curious about the content of the article, and was sad to discover that the article was as poorly written as the headline. I was shocked at this discovery, because The Monitor used to be one of the best at writing cogent articles with .001% typos.

Perhaps journalism is finally dead.

JobSearch

As I thought about it. I wondered if the next evolution will be completely emoji based communications.

We can order pizza with a single emoji, will our future communications look like this?

��������������⌛️

Which roughly translates as “While hurrying to guitar practice, I was arrested by the police, lost at my trial and am doing time.”

I’m seriously screwed if we go that way. The extent of my emoji knowledge is the variety of smiley faces.

I hope you all have a �� day.

Posted on

Can’t take it anymore…

IBM PC XT

I’ve been pointedly ignoring all the bullshit about Trump, the billion or so goofball Republican candidates, Megan Kelly (Who the hell is she?) And Hillary freakin Clinton.

I can’t remain silent anymore.

Hillary Clinton should be in Leavenworth, in a deep dark hole of a cell, shackled and awaiting trial. The FBI should have picked her happy ass up wherever the hell she was on the campaign trail the moment it was discovered that she had sent classified material over her private little server.

Hillarys Email Server

I’m not talking about material that has since been classified, or material that has been declassified, because there is no distinction. The business of the State department of the United States of America, should by default be considered Confidential if not Classified from the get-go. That’s why the United States has a whole bunch of Operational Security specialists, and requires employees and contractors to be re-certified in Operational Security every six months to a year, (Depending on the materials employees are handling,) just to keep it straight. And the rule of thumb is ASSUME a document is Classified and you’ll never go wrong. 

Classified

Which means this private email server should never have been allowed to exist. Innumerable agencies within the government who are charged with maintaining the security of the United States had to know about this server, its location, and its security status. They were told to “ignore it” because… why?

If I’d done what Hillary did… I’d be lucky to be sitting in Leavenworth. I think it’s more likely I’d have been sent someplace really nasty, provided the government didn’t put me on trial for treason then shoot me.

Leavenworth Penitentiary

I don’t think treason can be proven but the government tends to “over charge” in this kind of litigation because they want to make sure you don’t get off on a technicality.

One only has to look at the case of Aaron Swartz as example.  

Aaron Swartz

Swartz was simply making academic articles available via a P2P network from JSTOR and the issue had been settled between JSTOR and Swartz when the Federal Government stepped in.  Once involved, the Feds slapped Swartz with 13 criminal charges carrying a potential 35 years in prison and 1 million in fines. The case was pending when Swartz killed himself. By the way, most if not all, of the information Swartz distributed, was free, and still is today. I think the majority of Swartz’s crime was that he used the P2P distribution system to bypass JSTOR’s requirement for you to be a registered subscriber. I’m not clear on if he was costing JSTOR money.

So here we have a guy who’s maybe costing someone a little cash.

Hillary Clinton

Then we have Hillary who, for her own convenience hired a company that appears to have been unvetted by the US government, whose employees were apparently not subject to background security checks, to set up a server outside the control of the US government, handling Classified material and emails from one of the highest levels of the US government.

As the onion got peeled Hillary denied that classified emails were on the server. (Turns out there were classified emails on the server.) Hillary then said SHE decided what was important to turn over to the government, and deleted the rest of the information. Uhh that’s not how this works ma’am.  Now we’re finding out that the security of the server is in question. (Was there encryption? Who had physical access to the machine?)

Hillary Clinton

Hummm. IS IT JUST ME?

I thought rules and the law were supposed to apply equally to everyone. Yet here we have a clear example of someone who is not only above the law and social constructs, but they are still running a campaign to become President!

For God’s sake people, we’ve burned other politicians down for far less.

It’s well past time to force Hillary out of the Presidential Race.

This is not the kind of elitism we need in our government. We don’t need another liar in the White House. We don’t need yet another person in office who doesn’t understand and obey the rules.

I admit, I look forward to Hillary’s arrest for Contempt of Congress. That will be a day to be watching CSPAN.

 

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I don’t think that means what you think that means…

NewImage

I’ve been reading the various articles about the “ Social Justice” push to have confederate monuments “removed from public view.”

My views on Social Justice have changed over the years. In the words of Inego Montoya from The Princess Bride; 

Inego

“I don’t think that means what you think that means…”

When I was first on the Social Justice bandwagon I had a simplistic view. I thought it was about justice for everyone and that we all were supposed to have equal access in all things. Additionally, we were supposed to respect each other’s rights and beliefs. Someone’s beliefs were to be protected just as surely as their right to speak because the two were inexorably intertwined.

egalitarian

It was incumbent on the observer to listen OR NOT, however, we were all supposed to defend each other’s right to speak, be heard, or believe whatever we wanted to believe, no matter how wrong headed or outlandish what was being said might have been.

Naively I believed that the end goal of Social Justice was a completely egalitarian society were all of us rose or fell in accordance with the level of our abilities and work.

bellcurve

Very lazy or stupid people fell, very clever or lucky people rose, and those of us in the middle ground could look forward to having nice lives, families, and retirements. In my world view the wealthy weren’t evil, they were incentive. Inherent in my view was that even the wealthy could and sometimes did fall, just as clever people (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs) rose.

My belief was that no-one in this great nation should have a child go hungry, and everyone should be contributing. I thought that even the lower bounds of society could and should contribute and be compensated for their contributions. I’d happily feed the homeless guy who’s picking up trash on a city street. (In fact I still do that today. Someone in need who has pride enough to be concerned about where we all live will get a meal, or two, and / or a ride from me.)

Medieval Torture Devices

This was a simple concept, and for me, very easy to incorporate into my world view.

Then it started to get mean. My fellow Justice warriors weren’t all that interested in balance. They seemed only interested in retribution.  After all, what you may consider “Just” the people on the receiving end of your “Just Cause” may view as a loss of their rights and freedoms. Many of the Social Justice warriors, then and now, were more than willing to impose their will on others without mercy, because after all, Social Justice was “RIGHT”.

I began to have serious problems with Social Justice when I saw that the same “Sins” the Social Justice crowd railed against, being perpetuated by the SJ crowd. The only difference was that the “SJ Warriors” had picked new targets, and that made it all okay.

Today, in the name of Social Justice we’ll shame people, we’ll fire them, we’ll destroy their careers at the drop of a hat, and even if the reasons for “Punishing” someone turn out to be unfounded, our society never looks back and never even tries to repair the damage.

NewImage

Some Social Justice pundits seem to have the opinion, “They (The target du jour) deserved what they got. If not this time, then for all the times they got away with it.”

Remember the La Cross team in North Carolina? How about the Fraternity that was closed due to false gang rape allegations?

NAACP

Which leads to the current madness of removing confederate monuments. There are two contenders for the “Most insane / inane” award.  The leader in this category is the push in Memphis to dig up Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s grave. A close second is Al Sharpton and the NAACP demanding that Stone Mountain monument in Georgia be sandblasted from the side of the mountain. I ask myself how the hell is any of this behavior different from ISIS blowing up Palmyra, or The Taliban blowing up the reclining Buddha’s? The short answer is there’s not one whit of difference.

eyeball

The Bible says something like;  “If thine eye offends thee, Pluck it out.”

That passage says nothing about gouging something YOU find offensive, out of the side of a mountain. It says nothing about gouging everyone else’s eyes out, and in truth isn’t saying pluck out your own eye either.  It’s saying take responsibility for yourself and don’t look at something if it offends you.

Bible

True social justice would be making these monuments about teaching. Teaching that these monuments are built to honor people deserving of respect because they stood up for what they believed in. Then explain why they were wrong, and the horrible losses on both sides of a conflict that should have been avoided. Let these monuments serve their intended function, to remind us that deep divisions within our nation lead to very sad, dark places.

I’d take up the social justice banner again if the movement was about doing things better but these days, Social Justice is about cracking an offensive egg with the 20LB sledgehammer of punishment.

Go ahead, argue with me! I’ve got DIRT on all of you; what I don’t have I’ll make up!

That’s how we do things these days isn’t it?

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A friend asked me to write a description of my perfect presidential candidate

Canidates

This friend was calling me out about occasional “Bashing” of President Obama and candidate Hillary.

Given the insanity of this election cycle, I think I’ve done a pretty good job of not commenting on the candidates. God knows there’s a LOT to comment on,  I’ve been doing my best to ignore it all.

Deepthought

However, I was thinking about my friend’s question. At first I wasn’t going to go through the exercise but suddenly I found myself like the computer “DeepThought” from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. “My circuits are irrevocably committed to computing the answer to the great question”

Soooo I came up with this.

I think you misunderstand me. I don’t give a flying fuck the gender, color, sexuality, or religion of the president. I have ONE requirement!

The President MUST SERVE the wider interests of the American People. ALL THE PEOPLE, not focus on cause célèbre of a few. 

GORT

This is not simply an Obama problem, multiple presidents have focused on smaller issues because they were castrated  by partisan politics when it came to fixing bigger issues.

You asked what my perfect candidate would be? Picture GORT from “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (the 1951, Michael Rennie, Patricia Neil version) Or I’d take a Vulcan. I want someone who is completely non-partisan, who has read Gandi, Marx, Nietzsche, Seneca,  Homer, Aristotle, and Hitler, (But not just them, I use them as illustrative of breadth.) 

Sarak

I want someone with a broad historical / philosophical foundation who might have a shot at understanding what the founding fathers were trying to create and the ills that drove them to try this experiment. I’d like someone who could recognize bad ideas from a historical basis. I want someone that is driven to make things better for everyone, not just a select few. BUT I also want someone that is a capable warrior preferably who’s been in battle and knows first hand that war shouldn’t be the first tool but who understands that sometimes it’s the only path.

I want someone strong, fearless, and kind. Someone that is untainted by politics, lobbyists, wealth, or scandal. He or she should ideally be atheist but still respect the quaint ideas of all religions, pandering to none. This person shouldn’t be afraid to speak the truth however popular or unpopular that truth might be. (Of course that means that the American people wouldn’t elect this person in a million years.) I want a realist and someone who can explain simply and concisely why they’re choosing a particular course of action.

Nietzsche

That is my fantasy elected official. I’ll vote for the candidate that most closely meets those specifications. Which is why at this point I say neither of the two parties have presented anyone worthy of my vote.

My friend suggested that I use this as a blog post, and here it is.