eBattleground, Part 2

I still stand by what I said in my original "eBattleground" post, but I think there may be another aspect that should be pointed out.

Some of the nuttier elements at the daily kos, as well as other web sites such as moveon.org, do hold a tremendous amount of sway with the liberal left. All of the major democratic Presidential hopefulls will attend and speak at the yearly kos convention this year, and you can expect them to toe the line with the far left lunatic crowd for fear of being attacked by them.

Already many democratic and liberal politicians fall right in line and do pretty much whatever is demanded of them by this far left crowd, because they don't want to be attacked in the media, and have their political careers harmed in the process. These people will dictate to our supposed leaders where they will stand on the issues, and what news programs they are allowed to appear on, and if any one of them has the guts to stand up to these people, they will be viciously attacked in blogs and far left columns across the country. Unfortunately, enough people buy into what these blogs and such are selling that the politicians feel that they have no choice but to kowtow to these people.

We all tend to worry about politicians getting funds from special interest groups and therefore being beholden to them once the get in office (see all the campaign finance reform stuff of late) but what do you expect from someone, once they take office, who was too afraid to stand up to a given group of people when they are running for office? If they didn't have any backbone during the campaign, they won't have any after it, you can count on that.

If there were a republican who was too afraid to take a position contrary to Rush Limbaugh, or Ann Coulter, or whomever, not only would they get pounded by the media, they would be abandoned by the party faithful as the spineless coward they were. I for one wouldn't vote for someone like that.

Anyway, I thought this part of the deal needed to be clarified, and I hope it makes everyone think about it.

eBattleground

There is a battle raging now between Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and the daily kos web site.

At issue is the fact that some of the people who post on the daily kos have posted some very vulgar, outrageous, and objectionable material, and Mr. O'Reilly thinks that it should be taken down by the people who run the site. There is no doubt that some of this stuff is offensive, but what we need to keep in mind is that we are talking about an open forum web page, and not a news service. Sure, some of the people who post on there are far left loons, and some are just radical nut jobs, but a lot of the people are regular, everyday Americans who happen to lean a little to the left, or even quite a bit to the left.

I went to the daily kos and checked it out for myself. What I found is that, sure, there is some crazy stuff on there. There is a lot of twisting of facts, and certainly some flat out lying. But more than that, there is a lot of basic, everyday, run of the mill, normal Americans, who happen to be democrats, voicing their positions, and the reasons for them. I applaud this, even though I disagree with a lot of them, remember, I like debate and discussion.

Furthermore, remember what I said about this being "open forum?" Well, that's what it is, just like it sounds, people can pretty much say anything there that they want to. This is a decision of the people running the site, that they won't censor and edit what people want to say in their blogs (actually I think they do a little bit, just to keep lid on some of the most extreme stuff) because they want people to feel free to express their ideas. It just so happens that the daily kos is geared toward a democratic/leftist/liberal crowd, and therefore, that is the kind of thing you find there.

This is where I think that Bill O'Reilly is doing a dis-service to his audience. If I were someone who didn't understand the Internet and it's workings as I do (and I'm certainly not the most knowledgeable, but I still understand it pretty well), from watching his program I would come away with the impression that the daily kos has an editorial staff that is writing all of these things, and that it is the official line of some group of far left extremists bent on taking over the whole of the Internet.

I do have a great deal of respect for Mr. O'Reilly, and watch his show nearly every day. I think he's a smart man, and most of his reporting is very well done, and appreciated by me and a great deal of other Americans, and he's not even a conservative, but more of a centrist. That being said, however, every now and then he gets ahold of something like a bull dog on a bone, and just won't let it go, and won't let anyone tell him where he is going wrong, and the no spin zone becomes more like the spin cycle on my washing machine. This is one of those cases.

I'm not saying that we should all start reading the daily kos on a daily basis, as I said, it caters to a left leaning crowd, and is not a place for me, but they have every right to be there, and if they want to give voice to some of the crazies, that is their right also, they make no secret of the fact that they lean to the left, they are not trying to trick anyone into going to their site, and only some of them are far left loons. I think Bill should just back off a little, and try to be more honest when it comes to reporting this kind of story.

Gilding The Lilly

President Bush made a speech just yesterday defending his position of continuing operations in Iraq. Naturally, as soon as it was over there were Democratic Senators making a statement in response to the Presidents' remarks. I do not fault them for this at all, in fact I would have been surprised if they hadn't. The two Senators that I saw talking were John Kerry and Harry Reid.

It is not my intention at this point to get into who was right and who was wrong in this, or breaking down and analyzing what any of them said, for now, I'm far more interested in the delivery.

It is no secret to anyone who has ever paid any attention at all to pretty much any speech or statement ever given by President Bush that he is not a good public speaker. In fact, I would go so far as to say that he is a fairly poor communicator of ideas, at least in a public forum (since I've obviously never had a private conversation with the man, I can't comment on that aspect), and his speech, as usual, was kind of difficult to follow. Nothing new there.

What I am more interested in is the delivery of the response from the Democrats. John Kerrys' initial statement was flowing and eloquent, and even somewhat convincing. He sounded utterly believable, and really seemed to know what he was talking about. Takes a lot for me to say that since I don't care much for Senator Kerry. The response would have been quite powerful if they had left it there and walked away. Of course, they didn't do that. When Senator Kerry finished it was time for Senator Reid to speak, but he didn't have anything new to say really, mostly he just repeated what Kerry had just said, and did it badly. Reid sounded at least as bad and hard to listen to as Bush. Then, after he finally finished rambling on, he handed it back to Kerry, who really had nothing new to add, and so restated some of his original remarks, but not nearly so well this time. When I was in school I was taught that this is called "gilding the Lilly", that is, going on and on, well past the point where you get it right, and ultimately ruining the whole thing.

The Senators could have done so much better if they had known when it was time to shut up and walk away, but alas, expecting that from a politician is much like expecting there to be enough cashiers at Wal-Mart, as desirable as it is, it's never going to happen.

Debate

One thing that I talk about a lot is how good it is to debate things, and I firmly believe this. There is no question that people do not all agree on everything, if they did it would be a far more peaceful world, which would be really great, but it's just not that way. The fact is that many people have a lot of different ideas about just about everything. While there are clear cut right and wrong answers to some issues, others are not so. And just because there is a clear right or wrong, don't expect that you won't find people who will take the other side.

I'm not looking to get into any specific issues today, I'm sure you'll see I do that pretty much every post, but today, I want to talk about healthy debate. When we honestly disagree with someone about something, we need to feel free to stand up and say so. And if it is a friend that we find ourselves in disagreement with, we need to know that we are still going to be friends at the end of the discussion (or argument if it comes to that). We really need to bat around idea's. The sharing of idea's, and the debate of concepts and opinions is critical to the operation of a free society, and to maintaining freedom.

There is nothing wrong with disagreement. It doesn't bother me if anyone reading this blog feels that I am wrong, even if they disagree with me most of the time, what I strive to do is to encourage people to think, and to engage them in discussion or debate. I sometimes seek out what is being said on certain issues by those who usually come out on the other side, just because I think that considering differing opinions, and keeping an open mind, is good on it's own, but, if I end up not being convinced by those arguments, it only strengthens my original position, and gives me a better position to argue from in the future.

It's good to have strong opinions and to take strong positions, but you should always know why. You should not be offended if someone wishes to engage you in intelligent debate, it is a good thing. Unfortunately a lot of people do get offended when someone disagrees with them. And a lot of people do not disagree properly, choosing to attack you as a person, rather than try to present arguments as to why their position is the correct one. I do try to steer clear of those people, as being called names won't do much to further intelligent debate.

On another note, go ahead a vote in my polls. It is completely anonymous, I can't tell who has voted what, unless you choose to leave a comment on one of my blog posts, which anyone is certainly welcome to do.

Ethanol

I didn't get a very big response to my last poll question about Ethanol, but I'm going to talk about it a little bit anyway. Depending on who you talk to Ethanol is either the ultimate answer to every energy problem we face as a nation, and possibly, World, or it is a complete hoax.

Probably it is somewhere closer to the middle, though, a little more on the hoax side than the other. While Ethanol can be burned as fuel in certain vehicles, it is not really all it's cracked up to be. It is just a little bit cheaper than gas, and is supposed to burn cleaner, but you also don't get as many miles to the gallon from Ethanol as from Gasoline, so it won't save you any money, and as I've said before, if you want something like this to be embraced, it needs to be both better than what we have now, and cheaper, or at least, more cost effective.

There is, of course, another reason why it can't be the answer to all of our energy problems, it comes from corn, and corn has to be grown. And we are talking about a LOT of corn if we were going to make any serious headway in using Ethanol to replace current oil usage, and completely switching over? Not even remotely possible, there is no way to produce enough for that.

Now, nothing is being harmed by using some of this Ethanol as a fuel additive to lessen the amount of Gasoline that is being used in cars, but it won't make much of a dent, so isn't there a better option? Sure there is. One place that we could make a really big difference in the use of Petroleum is in mass energy production, or electricity for your home. And the way to do it is as old as time itself. I speak, of course, of Solar Energy. I have heard many times that Solar energy isn't viable on a grand scale because it would take so many square miles of solar panels to replace a single power plant. This is silly of course, why would you put all the solar panels in one place? You wouldn't of course, you would put them on each individual house or building, thus, generating a lot of electricity from surface area that already sits out in the sun all day, but at this point, to no avail. If Al Gore were really serious about saving the environment, he would take all the proceeds from his book and his movie, and any other benefits he comes up with (if they actually make money, unlike "Live Earth") and start buying regular folks, like you and me, solar panels, that way he could actually do something that would have a positive impact, and not be nearly so annoying to the rest of us.

While I realize that Solar Energy might not answer the problems of using gasoline in cars, it would still go a very long way in lessening the amount of oil used in power production and industry. Besides, if your house was solar powered, and therefore you didn't have to pay for your electricity, plugging in an electric car might not seem like such a bad idea.

Too Much To Ask?

There has been a lot of debate in the Congress lately about passing a bill forcing a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. Now, I understand that there are a lot of people who are ready to be done with Iraq. They are disgusted with the whole thing, and are ready to just throw in the towel and walk away. Frankly, part of this I can understand, we have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into Iraq, and it's hard to see where we have anything to show for it.

Where I am wanting to call out, "hey, wait just a minute," is with regards to the timing of the Congressional debates over forced withdrawal. When the plan for the surge was enacted there was an agreement that there would be a full report to Congress in September. Right now it's only July. Is it really too much to ask that Congress wait two more months to get that report before making plans to override the president and pull the troops out? At least if they wait for the full report, they will have all the facts that they need to make an informed decision as to how they should vote.

Now it's time for me to do something that I haven't done all that much so far, and that is to take some conservatives to task for something that they have been spouting off about on this subject. I have heard it said, and read it in articles, that the Congress doesn't have the right to force the President to withdraw troops from Iraq. This is about as partisan as an argument can get, if roles were reversed, and the Republicans controlled the Congress, and a Democrat were in the White House, going into the fourth year of a war that the Republicans didn't agree with, you can be assured they would have no problem with Congress forcing a pull out. There is more to it than that however. The fact of the matter is that Congress has every right to pass such legislation if they so choose. Congress (Both Houses) is made up of elected Representatives of the people, and part of their duty is to oversee the Executive Branch, just as the President has the power of the Veto if he doesn't like a piece of legislation that Congress sends to him, and the Judicial Branch has the power to declare a law unconstitutional, even if both other branches have passed it through, this system is called checks and balances, and the point is to keep any one person or group of persons from gaining too much power and taking it away from the people, where it rightfully resides. This is not a Dictatorship, the President is not in charge of the country as some would have you believe, this is a Representative Republic, in which the people have a voice, through their elected leaders, and they absolutely do have the right to force the President to withdraw troops. Whether or not they should do so is another matter entirely, and open to debate, I just think that debate should wait until after they have the full report from the Military Commanders in the field, so that it can be as informed as possible.

Dog Fighting

Did you see where an NFL Football player (I can't remember his name) has been indicted for dog fighting? Isn't that something? How does someone even get involved in this kind of thing?

For my part, I had known in the past that things like this were done, but it's such a sub-culture, so far off the beaten path, that I hadn't even thought about it in years, and wasn't even sure that it still existed, though, sadly, I guess I'm not surprised.

In case anyone doesn't know what this is all about, and I assume that pretty much anyone does, I'm talking about breeding or steeling dogs, usually Bull Dogs, to fight to the death in front of an audience, usually with some pretty heavy betting going on. And if the losing dog happens to survive the fight, they are very often killed while the crowd looks on, sometimes by drowning, or being hanged, sometimes simply shot, and I'm sure there are other ways that don't bear contemplation.

I imagine that someone involved in all of this barbarism would claim that it is a sport, but I, for one, would not buy into that. To me this is a disgusting, reprehensible, outrageous, brutal, grotesque, barbaric, and inhumane (the list goes on and on) activity, and I would hope that anyone convicted of participation would be punished to the fullest extent of the law. While putting these people in the ring and making them fight to the death might be fitting of the crime, I guess it might be going a little too far.

Let me be crystal clear on this subject, I'm not a member of any animal rights organization, nor am I a vegetarian, nor do I place the rights or feelings of animals above the well being of humans, but that is not what this is about. I would find it hard to imagine any person who is not a total sadist would come to the defence of these people, or this practice. I wish the law enforcement community great success in locating and busting these dog fighting rings, and hope that they really throw the book at these people.

I also just learned that the NFL plans to let this man keep playing football, and that Nike will keep selling the shoes that are named after him, at least while the legalities are all sorted out. I can understand contractual obligations and such, but if it were up to me, I'd have benched him and pulled the merchandise anyway. I'm sure they were worried about being sued if they acted too quickly, however, and you'll likely hear this a lot from me, doing the right thing should always be more important than doing the safe thing.

Now, I did not write this today because I thought any of my friends or family would be involved in this kind of thing, I was simply outraged when I realized that it was something that is still going on, and apparently, gaining popularity in some circles, and wanted to get it off my chest and give all of you the opportunity to be as outraged by this as I am.

In Truth

I wanted to address here today something that I've heard quite a few times recently. Mostly this nonsense comes from the far left, but it gets repeated, and we end up with regular people buying into it. Of course I'm talking about President Bush being compared to Hitler. I guess the premise is that since Bush has made decisions, even quite a few that I don't agree with, that have resulted in people being killed, he is a modern day Hitler. This is of course an outrageous assertion. Hitler was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 11 million people. This estimate of course doesn't include the deaths of the German soldiers who were killed during the course of World War II, this is the number of people that he ordered to be murdered so that he could establish his rule and his master race, or because he deemed them to be somehow sub-human, and below his ideal of a master race. Absolutely nothing about that bears any resemblance to President Bush's choices to invade Iraq, or any other actions that he has taken in the War against Global Terrorists. I have no problem if someone feels that we should not have invaded Iraq, I respect the opinions of people who believe that we have failed to do the right thing with regards to capturing and imprisoning terror suspects around the world, though I don't agree with this second one, and there are plenty of other area's where a person can very legitimately disagree with the President and his administration, and we should encourage open and honest debate on all of these issues. However, President Bush has done nothing to lend any credence to this notion that he is anything like Hitler.

On the other hand, and please, don't take this the wrong way, there are a great many Democrats today who are pushing very hard to institute a socialist agenda in our country. Pushing hard for socialized medicine and programs that force the redistribution of wealth. These are clear cut socialist ideals, which if of course the same thing as Communism, so should be compare them to Stalin or Chairman Mao? They both believed strongly in a Socialist agenda, and would do anything to further it. Of course Stalin killed an estimated 60 Million people, while chairman Mao is estimated to have killed 50 Million people, as a conservative estimate. My guess would be that most people would call that kind of comparison crazy, and they would have a point. But the fact is that it is no crazier than comparing Bush to Hitler. Think about it, just because a person feels really strongly about something, it doesn't mean that they should go and compare them to some monster from history, we should all just engage in open and honest debate, because that's how problems get solved, not by mud slinging.

C-Span

So today, I was watching C-Span, the original one that shows proceedings in the US House of Representatives. The thing that struck me the most is how much they talk for how little gets said. This is not in any way a partisan observation, as, regardless of what party the Representative belongs to, they all seem to have a remarkable ability to talk on and on, without actually getting anything said. You really should tune in sometime and see how long you can watch them go on without actually doing anything. It's really kind of amazing. It also is good to get a glimpse of how the House does business. Of course we also get to see how so many of them really don't take their own stand on anything, but just go along with party lines, time and time again. I realize that this is the heart of politics, but really, it shouldn't be. What we really have elected these people for is to do the business of the country, and do things for us, the people that elected them, not to uphold everything that their party does, and fight for ideology only. They all talk a good game, saying things about how the people in their districts are working so hard and having trouble making ends meet, and how it is getting worse with taxes going up, and then they vote to spend money on all sorts of things, mostly things that are all about bringing money back to their home districts so that they have something to point to to get them re-elected. The thing that kills me is how they will always use the very same arguments regardless of whether they are trying to support or oppose a spending increase. Somehow the fact that taxes are too high, and we have trouble making ends meet can be used to support the increase of spending, I'm still scratching my head about this one. One of them today even made a snotty comment about how nobody likes to pay their taxes, but he failed to mention the fact that Members of Congress make considerably more per year than the average American citizen. They seem to think that we are somehow under the impression that they have a clue as to the problems that normal people face in every day life. Sadly far too many of the people that have been elected to Congress are grossly out of touch with the daily life of the American people. Unfortunately it's very difficult to get anyone who does really get it, and would try to do the right thing, to even run for office. For the most part, that kind of person is off doing something useful with their life.

One thing we need to do is to try to get people on board with electing real, down to Earth people, who could actually work for us and try to get stuff done.

Terror, Part 2

I saw on the news today that Hamas has come out with a new character for the kids. The old one, the one that looked astonishingly like Mickey Mouse, was killed (fictionally, on the show) by an Israeli, you know, to plant seeds of hatred, so now there is a killer bee to carry on encouraging the kids to become suicide bombers. Can there be any question as to how dedicated these people are to killing us, and how much they want their sick world view to come about?

President Bush held a press conference today in which he talked about peace in the Middle East. He talked about a bunch of benchmarks to be reached on the "road map to Middle East Peace." Of course, all of them were impossible. It doesn't really matter what they were, because all that really happened is that he talked for several minutes, and all he said was that there will be Peace in the middle east when people stop killing each other... yeah, pretty much anyone could have told you that, and most everyone could tell you that they won't do it. The strange part for most of us, that we have trouble figuring out, is why they all keep killing each other. We understand that they want to kill us, but why are they killing other people who are working toward the same goal? Pretty crazy, huh? I wish I had the answer. Of course, it's better that they kill each other, than that they unite to kill us, so I guess, even though I don't know the answer, I won't complain about it.

Given some of the speeches and statements that the President has made recently, I guess it's a good thing that he has no credibility left, so that now he has none to lose. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Bush basher, but he hasn't done much to inspire confidence recently, but that is a conversation for a different day and time. For now, I just want to say that President Bush does, for the most part, seem to take Terrorism seriously, but at the same time, seems to be out of touch with reality with regards to what is going on in the middle east, and still hasn't done anything to quell the tide of illegals coming over our southern border, which could include all kinds of terrorists, we have no way to know.

I still just don't want people to forget just how serious the threat of terrorism is, after all, these people are willing to train their kids to become suicide bombers, what more really needs to be said?

Terror

Last week a terror plot was thwarted in London. In the past few months two terror plots were uncovered here in the US. Today, UK Anti-Terrorism forces have shut down eleven supermarkets throughout England and Scotland due to a security alert. The leader of the Taliban has told the US that there will be attacks that will dwarf the failed attacks in London. Terrorists around the world are promising attacks to overshadow even 9/11. Iran and Syria are training and supplying terrorists and insurgents that are actively killing our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards calls the War on Terror a bumper sticker slogan. Al Gore and other far lefters tell us that Global Warming is a bigger threat to us than terrorism. The New York Times and other liberal newspapers and web sites refer to our struggle against terrorism as "The So-called War on Terror," while so-called terrorism experts say we have nothing to worry about.

President Bush scoffs at the idea that terrorist organizations could be as strong today as they were before 9/11. Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff has a "gut feeling" that we could be in increased danger of being attacked.

I should be given a high level government job, I've had the very same gut feeling for years now, and I thank God that it has not yet come to pass. There are some things that some of these people seem to miss. For one thing, they don't seem to understand how much these people hate us. They want us all dead. They want the entire world to be a Muslim state, ruled by radical Imams, with no real freedom of any kind. They are offended by our Freedom. They are offended by our forms of government. They are offended by our very existence. They want us all dead. They HATE us. Some also don't seem to understand how many of them there are, or how easy it seems to be for them to recruit more terrorists. They don't seem to understand that this is not a fringe element of the Muslim Faith, this is the mainstream. The so-called moderate Muslims are the exceptions to this rule, and they are just as hated as we are.

Billions of people in this world don't know Jesus. They know that they are missing something. We as humans are born knowing that there is something greater than ourselves. Some ignore it, some refuse to believe it. Some search for God and find Him. Others go searching for "something" and find one of the false religions that offer themselves as an alternative to the truth of God. Islam is one of these false religions that has spread around the world like a plague. The difference between "us" and "them" is that those of us who do belong to Jesus want to see all people come to know Christ, including Muslims, even the terrorist kind, while they just want us to die.

Don't be fooled, the threat of terrorism is very real. The vigilance of our police and intelligence agencies, and much more so, the Grace of Almighty God, have kept us safe from further attacks after 9/11, so far, but the terrorists are not deterred. The hate they feel for us is not diminished. They have not stopped recruiting, they have not stopped plotting to kill us, they have not stopped trying to get cells established in the US (not all that hard with such a wide open southern border). They will kill us if they can. Pray for the Grace of God to stay with us. Stay vigilant, and don't give up on what you believe, if you do, they have already won.

Polls

I found last night that there is a new option on blogger that allows me to put polls in the sidebar of my blog, so please, vote in my poll. I don't know how long I'll leave one up for before I change it, but please, go ahead and vote. (Right now it's set for 7 days, but I could change that at any time too.) This is something new, so I don't know for sure how I'll use the results, I might incorporate them into a blog post, but I may just use it for a tool when I'm thinking about stuff. I think this is a cool way to get one click feedback, so I can see what people are thinking, without them having to leave a comment.

Tree Hugging

There are reasons why I wouldn't say that I am an environmentalist, but none of them have anything to do with not wanting a clean environment. I would say that I am a reasonably green person. I think that people should take all reasonable steps to keep our world clean. God gave us charge over the Earth, and part of that is a responsibility for us to care for the planet in a reasonable way. Where I have trouble with most environmentalists is that they are nuts. They want to take conservation and such to an outrageous extreme. You will hear some saying that Humans are a parasite that has infected the planet, some going so far as to say that the only thing that could save the planet would be getting rid of most of the people. Like I said, these people are nuts. While I agree that we should be careful not to be wasteful, I would not go so far as to say that you can't cut down a tree to make a table, or cabinets, or paper, just that we shouldn't be wasteful with our resources. I would have to say that another problem is the hypocrisy of so many of the most prominent loudmouths in the movement. People like Al Gore who preach to us about conserving electricity and fuel, and then flies around the world in a private jet, and uses huge amounts of electricity in his home and office, and paper as well I'm sure. And this whole idea of being carbon neutral is just bogus. If you are using it, you are using it, and that is all there is to it. Honestly, people have to go about the business of their daily lives, and it takes gas and electricity to do that, and people will do the best they can save as much money as they can on those things, but they will do what is most economical. So, if they want us all to embrace some newer technology and such, they just need to make it cheaper than what we have now, because most people just can't afford to pay more. I think you would find a lot more green people, if the mainstream of the green people weren't flippin' crazy!

Ice Road Truckers

There is a series currently airing on the History Channel on Sundays at 10PM, that is well worth the watching. As you can tell from the banner, it is called Ice Road Truckers, and it follows big rig drivers as they drive the winter road to deliver critical equipment and supplies to the diamond mines in extreme northern Canada. The Ice Road could not have a more appropriate name, as much of it is made up only of that, you see, the trucks are traveling on frozen lakes. The areas of solid ground in between the lakes, aren't all that much better, featuring slick inclines and tricky curves. The Ice Road is only open for two months out of every year, and driving it is a very risky proposition. While every safeguard that can be taken is, truckers, road maintenance, and rescue workers still die as ice gives way under tons of truck and equipment, not to mention more traditional accidents as road conditions on the solid patches are about the worst you could imagine on a hard top road (when one is available at all). So why would anyone do this? Money. A serious trucker can make $50,000 or more running loads up the Ice Road in the two months a year that it is open. What I have written here is nothing more than a very basic overview of what this series is about, to really get a feel for it, you have to watch it, trust me, there is nothing else like it. I guess you could call it a reality show that actually deals in reality, albeit a reality most of us couldn't even imagine.

Not Reasonable

So, we have been looking to save some money on our monthly TV bill, but they really don't make it easy. Of course, they don't mean to. In order to lower our package and save money, we have to get rid of channels that we actually watch, while keeping tons of channels that we never watch at all. With the government running around sticking it's nose in where it doesn't belong, why don't they do something about this? I'm sure they will say that they can't do anything because there is no monopoly, but when there is also no real competition, there might as well be. All we need is for cable and satellite providers to be reasonable, all they need to do is sell packages that say, for this amount of money you get this number of channels, and then let us pick which ones we want. That way everyone gets the channels that they want, that they will actually watch, and not all the stuff that they don't care about. Take us for example, if we go below the 200 channel package we have to give up stuff we really don't want to give up, but if we could pick and choose our own, we could probably get by quite nicely on 50 or so. If someone wants to help the American people, how about they get into this one.

See The Light

I want to encourage people to think for themselves. It can be so easy to just go along with whatever we see on the news, or what is said by some politician that we happen to admire, but I think we need to remember that it can be hard to find anyone telling the whole story, or the complete truth in this day an age. So what you have to do is to listen closely to what they are saying, look to other sources for more information, and try to read between the lines. Most of the time you will see that the truth lies just beyond the cloudy messages you are being sent through the media, trying to shine through, and if you look for it hard enough, generally you will find it. One of the biggest problems that I have with the media is that they do not simply report the news, that is, the facts, but instead insist on telling you what to think about it also, and you can count on it being with an ideological slant 99% of the time. Normally this is where I bash the liberal press, but there are plenty of conservative pundits who are more than willing to twist the facts to make themselves look right, it's just that the liberal media has a much bigger audience. But, regardless of what side the person takes that you watching or reading, just remember to look carefully at what they are saying decide for yourself what the truth is.

Missing The Point

I read an article yesterday about Senator John McCain spending Independence Day in Iraq with the troops. The article said that McCain's Presidential campaign was suffering due to his support of the President with regards to Iraq. What the author showed with that statement was a complete lack of understanding of the conservative base of the Republican Party (and the party as a whole) and the ongoing liberal bias of the media (hence not understanding Republicans). First, it was put in there as a dig at Bush, which the media will do any time it gets a chance, but there is a much broader point. McCain is not having problems with his campaign because of Iraq. If it were a democrat then yes, supporting the war in Iraq would be a death knell for the campaign, but while most Republicans do want out of Iraq, we want to win there even more. We want to bring our troops home, we just want them to be able to do a victory lap around Baghdad on their way out. So while supporting the Iraq operation might cost him a few points, it would hardly put him under. So what is McCain's problem? Well, first of all, he has failed miserably to resonate with the Republican base, so he was not in all that great of a position to begin with, but it was the immigration bill that sunk any hopes he might have had for pulling out a victory. He co-authored, and sponsored, and was a driving force behind that reprehensible bill that was thankfully shot down. And that is why he has suffered in the numbers, and it is why he is wasting his time trying to drum up support at this stage of the game. So, for all the clueless liberals in the media who are supposed to be analyzing why Republicans have walked away from John McCain... it's the immigration, stupid!
Now, on the subject of immigration, why do we keep hearing that since the ill conceived attempt at immigration reform was killed, nothing will be done until after the next Presidential election, still a year and a half away? It's because of this load of crap notion that in order to secure our borders, we must also give amnesty (regardless of what label they want to slap on it) to all the illegal immigrants that are here already. Any clear headed person knows that this is not true. We need to demand of our elected officials that they secure the border now, and admit that it is a separate issue from dealing with illegals already here. And you would think that they would realize that if the border were truly secured, it would be a lot easier to get conservatives to let some sort of limited amnesty slip through. Not that we would like it mind you, but we wouldn't be so inclined to fight if we knew that, at least, the borders were secured, and we weren't going to be going through all of this again in 10 or 20 years. So wake up Washington DC, it's time that all the bums up there started doing the job they were sent there to do, instead of pushing their own ideology.

Independence Day

Wanted to take a moment and say, Happy Independence Day to everyone. This brings up one of my pet peeves, which is the phrase "happy Fourth of July." I keep saying that one of these years on Christmas I'm going to tell everyone, "Happy 25th of December." But that is all beside the point. The point for today is just to remember our Nation, our Founding Fathers, and most importantly, what it all stands for. Here is a small section of the Declaration of Independence that exemplifies what our Nation is founded upon: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security..." And over the centuries there have been a great many men and women who have given their lives to preserve these principles, our Nation, our Government, and our very way of life. From Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure..." This is a very fitting question today, with terrorists and foreign despots trying to destroy us from without, and socialists and open borders people doing their level best to destroy us from within, how long can our Nation endure? I for one Thank God, and feel very blessed to live in the USA and feel strongly that this is the greatest form of human government that the world has ever known, and hope and pray that the good people fight the good fight to make sure that it endures as long as possible.

Family

Sometimes we get really busy in our lives, and forget to take the time to spend time with family and friends. We tend to feel like these people will always be there, no matter what, until they are gone. I was reminded of this recently as a friend of mine lost his grandmother. It got me thinking about things in my own life. Early in 2005 I lost my only remaining grandparent, my maternal grandmother. When I was young, she was always so strong, and not someone to back down from much of anything. She was a small woman physically, but to all of her grandchildren, she was always larger than life. I remember once, as a small child, when grandma was watching me and my brother, she was having trouble with a calf down at the barn. My brother, Dan, and I were watching from the upper level of the barn through a door or window down at the end. I guess the problem was that the calf was trying to nurse from a cow who was not it's mother (or a mother at all that year if I recall correctly) which could be problematic. Grandma was wrestling this calf from the cow it was going after and back to it's mother, and just as she'd get it there, it would turn and go back to the other cow, so she'd go back, grab it, and haul it back again. This went on for quite some time, and for anyone who doesn't know, calves can be difficult to move when they aren't willing, and grandma was over 60, and probably never weighed much over 100 pounds her whole life (except, I'm sure when she was pregnant with one of her 6 kids). After awhile she yelled at the cow, "Stay with your mother or I'm going to go get Paul!" (Paul was a man who lived up the road a little.) I looked at Dan and said, "The calf doesn't know who Paul is!" But lest you think I'm a genius or something, I added, "She needs to show it a picture of him!" I can't remember specifically, but from knowing grandma I'll tell you, she won.
Early in 2006 I lost my dad. He was in poor health most of my life, but even knowing this, I always felt that he was always going to be around, so while it wasn't really a surprise when he passed, it was still a shock. I miss talking to him, and still come across things that I wish I could discuss with him.
Thank God I still have my Mom, and hopefully will for a very long time. I guess this is the point that I was making, cherish the people that we have left. I wish I could spend more time with her, but that is hard since we live 1,000 miles apart. But even in this situation, you can maintain a good relationship, as long as you keep in touch, and think about the other person, and remember the things you want to tell them (well at least some of them, Mom and I both need to start keeping a list, but we do try). Of course, here I've been talking about parents and grandparents, and as we all know, family extends way beyond those, so don't forget all the rest either, because they won't be around forever either.