U.S. SUPREME COURT RULING REAFFIRMS OUR RIGHTS TO BEAR ARMS

It wasn’t a landslide ruling by any means, (5-4), but it was historical in that this is the first time the Supremes have come right out and said that we do have the 2^nd Amendment Right to Bear Arms. Frankly speaking, the Amendment is included as part of the individual citizen’s Bill of Rights. It is difficult for me to understand why the vote should not have been 9-0.

Those who oppose the right to bear arms in this country do so under the pretext that guns kill innocent people. They are quick to add that most violent crimes in the country involve a handgun, thereby leaving one to believe that the absence of guns would prevent violent crime. We all know that these arguments are fallacious, and I’m not going to belabor that point here.

In the pursuit of convincing the rest of America that guns should be outlawed, there have been many misstatements, many of which leave the impression that those who own guns are somehow responsible for gun crime or, at the very least, negligent care and guardianship of their weapons in such a manner that the rest of the country has had its safety threatened. I think nearly all handgun owners in this country…probably 98% of them…would agree with me when I say that I have had a loaded gun, cocked, ready to shoot and within quick reach within my house for must of my life, (over 50 years), and I have never fired it anywhere except on the range. No child has ever been in danger because I had a gun in my house. Although I have come very close to having to use my gun in self defense more than once in my life, I’ve never had to brandish it or show it and I had the sense not to.

Yet, there is no doubt in my mind that the main reason my house has not been burglarized is because every single criminal who might think about it knows that the odds of my having a loaded gun available are very high.

In California, the move has been on to circumvent my right to bear arms by making it nearly impossible to buy ammunition. To me, this is the same, insanely demented logic that prevents me from buying allergy and cold medication without paying an arm and a leg for it over the pharmacy counter as opposed to selecting it off the shelf. Those medications contain ingredients which can be extracted and used by druggies. I, the innocent civilian, have to pay the penalty for it. Two to three percent of the people in this country are the bad guys, and our legislatures and Congress want the other 97% to 98% to give up some of their rights because of it.

I don’t know where this kind of screwed up thinking comes from. Golf balls kill people. Close the golf courses and make it illegal to own golf clubs. Cars kill people. Make it illegal to own one and solve the world’s energy crisis at the same time. Bicycles, knives, forks, hammers, and the list goes on. Where do you draw the line? WHERE DO YOU DRAW THE LINE BETWEEN INSANITY AND REASON? The plain truth often stings and hurts people who do not want to hear it. So, let’s make it illegal to write, or to possess writings?

We are NOT to blame! Get over it. Go soak your head in a bucket of absurdity.

SOMEONE STOLE MY AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE

As a child, growing up meant having the freedom to learn, to explore, and to find out what life was all about. The good thing about being an American was that we were safe and secure no matter where we were. People left their doors and windows open to let in the fresh air; they parked their cars in the driveway, usually with the windows down and the keys in the ignition. We either walked to school, or walked a good distance to the bus stop, and we did it without fear.

The virtues and ways of life as depicted on radio and television shows were somewhat realistic. You didn’t need to worry about what the kids were watching or listening to because it was against the law for broadcasters to cuss, swear, tell dirty jokes, or incite violence. Jack Parr got fired from broadcasting because he told the famous “water closet” joke. Movies were as squeaky clean as could be; you didn’t need a rating system.

Gas was 19 cents a gallon and they pumped it for you, checked your tires and washed your windows. Weekends meant short family trips to picnics and barbeques. Evenings were for watching television and arguing over who had to get up and turn the channel, cuddling up with good books by the fireplace or playing chess, canasta or Parcheesi.

There was no stress. “Being on medication” meant that the doc had told you to start taking Anacin to keep your arthritic pains at bay. Depression was solved with a swift kick in the ass, and hyperactive children were controlled with a belt or a hairbrush. As barbaric as life was in those days, we all matured with sound values and good judgment.

These days, of course, we are constantly in fear. We lock our windows and doors day or night and add the protection of burglar alarms. We roll up the windows and lock our cars even when we are in them and driving. We don’t even think about letting out children walk to school and most school districts bring their buses almost to your front door. Police are in the schools because kids don’t take guns to school so they can go rabbit hunting on the way home; they take guns to school to shoot teachers and other students with.

Swearing and cussing and groin grinding are accepted with a yawn, both on television and in the movies. Even racial slurs seem to go virtually unpunished, ala Howard K. Stern. You can even get away with murder, (O.J. Simpson). Children are not safe while playing in their own yards.

Gas is pushing $5.00 a gallon and not only do you have to pump it yourself, you have to wash your own windows, check your own tires, and give a pleasant smile to the clerk when you empty your wallet. Weekends are at the mall, barbeques are 30-minute events in the back yard, and evenings are for every one to spend alone in their own room watching their own tube or surfing the Internet. If you know what chess is, you’re a geek. Of course, no one has ever heard of canasta or Parcheesi, but there IS solitaire on computer!

Stress, anxiety, depression, sleeping disorders, hyperactivity…. A whole gamut of illnesses is treated with a plethora of drugs and medications. If we weven so much as dare to look at our children cross-eyed, we go to jail. Our prisons are overflowing and we’re afraid to fly an American flag on our porch on the 4^th of July because we don’t want to be labeled as a “patriotic fanatic.”

The good days are gone forever. Our children will never see them, nor will their children.

Someone stole my American way of life. Who is to blame?

COULD WE BE ABOUT TO STEP INTO THE FRYING PAN? Why We Need To Take The Time To Learn About The Candidates

The list of complaints that we all share about the way our country is, and has been, run is endless. The inadequacies our of national leaders in this age of massive illegal immigration, terrorism, economic downtown, outrageous energy prices, government corruption, and moral degradation…is inexcusable.

But, we are the electorate. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

Today, we stand in the final weeks of preparing for our national election. We have two candidates for President who have more critical blemishes than any two candidates in national Presidential history. Yet, I would propose that we Americans have taken less time to investigate the backgrounds and credentials of these two than we take in deciding on what we’re going to cut from our lives so that we can afford gas.

Both Obama and McCain have skeletons in their closets that you can research easily on the Internet and those skeletons should give everyone pause to think. What about the skeletons that haven’t surfaced? In my opinion, neither of these candidates should ascend to the Presidency, but one of them almost certainly will. So, we have the duty to really, really, really check them out.

One could shrug his shoulders, I suppose, and suggest that Congress can keep the President in check. The plain truth is that Congress, as it exists today, is corrupt, immoral and ineffective. So, I advocate that we are going to have to turn most of them out of office in order to create a new atmosphere of REAL change in Washington that will ensure that whoever is President will not run amuck.

Never before in our history does so much depend on what we Americans do in the next five months. We have a lot of tools at our disposal to get at the facts and reach informed decisions.

Let’s do it.

WHY THOSE WHO GOVERN US MUST BE REPLACED: Calloused & Abrasive Insensitivity To The Needs Of The People

FEMA in its continuing saga of inactions, mistakes, and total ineptness now adds one more blunder to its legacy. It started in the hours preceding Katrina when everyone involved underestimated what was about to happen, grew as countless hours passed in the hurricane’s wake while FEMA seemingly did nothing, and it was compounded when, after the disaster finally ticked off enough Americans that government was forced to act, FEMA herded victims into temporary housing…trailers filled with formaldehyde. Three years down the road and FEMA, under fire for the formaldehyde, is now telling remaining residents to get out. Many are otherwise homeless and destitute, but FEMA says that’s not their problem and no assistance is in the offing. Oh, and by the way, FEMA perpetrated one more calloused and malignant deed: it offered its vacant, formaldehyde-filled trailers to America’s Indian Tribes…”for free, just come and get them. Many are brand new and never occupied.”

There are approximately 600,000 to 750,000 homeless people in the United States. For the most part, the people are not productive members of society; they need health and mental care, clothing, basic job skills, food, and other forms of assistance. Yet, our government virtually ignores the issue and leaves it up to religious and charitable organizations to address this blemish on our society. Yet, in the same breath, our government does not hesitate to castigate other countries that face the same problems; we even send them money and aid to help them, while leaving our own to suffer the myriad of physical risks associated with “living on the streets.”

Almost 3,000,000 Native Americans live in the United States. From the 16th through the 19th centuries, the population of Native Americans was ravaged by European colonization. The government offered as much as $200 for an Indian scalp. Many hundreds were literally rounded up and shot. Epidemic diseases such as small pox were brought from abroad and wiped out thousands. Trapping for furs destroyed Native American hunting grounds. Countless Indians ended up being enslaved while the rest were herded onto desolate reservations and left to fend for themselves. Military defeat, cultural pressure, confinement on reservations, forced cultural assimilation, outlawing of native languages and culture, termination policies of the 1950s and 1960s have had deleterious effects on Native Americans' mental and physical health. Contemporary health problems suffered disproportionately include alcoholism, drug addiction, heart disease, diabetes, and suicide. The government insists that Indians give up their languages and, in the same breath, says that Spanish is our “second language,” requiring school books and government forms to be printed in both English and Spanish, but not Navajo or Paiute. Our government goes on to spend more per individual on health care for prisoners serving time in jail than it does for Native Americans who live in substandard conditions.

If you are from another country and you want to come to American and become a citizen of this country, you must be 18, you must have lived here legally for at least five years, you must speak and understand English, you must be of good moral character and you must know the basic history of the United States. Or, you can pretend to be a Mexican, cross the border illegally, and we must learn to speak Spanish while we give you free medical care, food, shelter and money and, if we deny you as an illegal alien any of those things, we are going to go to jail and that is all you need to know about U.S. history.

In traveling through Wyoming, one sees excess natural gas being burned off near oil fields. In rural California and other parts of America, it cost $300 to fill a propane tank in 2006 and $585 to fill it in 2008. The reason for the increase is “supply and demand.” The Federal government allows that the prices of automotive fuels is probably going up due to “supply and demand.” It then blames the price increase on the Chinese and the oil cartel. All of the time that the prices at the pump are increasing, the four major oil companies left in the country are recording hoards and hoards of billions of dollars in increasing profits. Congress and the President continue to shrug their shoulders and tell us that there is nothing they can do about it. A few of them have the audacity to suggest that the country could do without the 18 cent per gallon fuel tax that is used to support highway and bridge construction and repair, never bothering to recognize that a national transportation study confirms that our nation’s bridges are in a sad state of disrepair already; many are downright unsafe.

These are but a few of the many hundred of examples of a government that has lost touch with reality. And, this dementia seems to permeate Congress, the Presidency, the Supreme Court to some extent, and all of the layers of government beneath them all.

But, I would suggest to you that forming a new government under a new constitution is not even remotely the answer. The solution is replacement of those who fill the jobs in government, from the halls of Congress through the ranks of the Cabinet and all of the way through top management posts at every level of our government. And this can only be accomplished when we Americans will gather the courage to turn off our computers and television sets long enough to spend an hour or two a week to become more proactive in understanding and managing our government.

We need to pinpoint the demented, those who rule without reason or sensitivity, those who are not patriotic Americans, those who have created our educational disasters, and those who believe that we owe something to other nations before we owe anything to our own people. Then, we need to get rid of them. They are the ones who have brought us to this point in our history where we who are American have no right to complain or to voice our opinions unless we do it in Spanish and unless we live in “Mexifornia.” They are the ones who turn the backs on the needs of our people while extending the hands of “brotherly love” to the citizens of other countries who would just as soon see us drop off the face of the earth. Those are the ones who would give and give aid and comfort to terrorists and sit in their camps and commit acts of sedition while there is yet so much to be done here, at home.

Yet, they are in office, or they hold positions of authority in our government because we have allowed them to. WE ARE TO BLAME. But, there is still time to turn back and away from this ugly path we are on, and we can start in November by removing incumbents and replacing them with new blood, new vision, and new hope.

The path to a better future and to better government runs right through our living rooms. We can no longer sweep it under the carpet and pretend that it does not exist.