Thursday, April 30, 2015

NFL Slave Auction

                                                                 

When slave traders held their slave auctions potential buyers would come up to the slaves, and pinch and prod them and check their teeth...to assess their potential for staying healthy enough to pick cotton, or pull a plow, or to do any other grunge work the slaveholder deemed necessary.

Two hundred years later, long after slavery was abolished, I can't help but compare the NFL draft to those ancient slave auctions.  Oh sure, if you're a first rounder, you're going to receive a nice signing bonus...and they'll give you a team hat and a team jersey.  But don't be fooled; these drafts are simply the modern version of a slave auction, the modern meat market only different because perhaps a quarter of the meat is Caucasian.  

There's no probing and pinching on draft night...that's all pristine and proper.  The draft candidates who elect to show up sit at dinner tables, a cocktail in hand, I-Phone at the ready for that most seductive phone call from a team's GM telling them they've been selected.    The prodding and probing came weeks ago when the draft combine took place.  They run the potential recruits through a number of physical tests, to determine their speed and stamina and strength.  They even administer a kind of intelligence test called the Wonderlik that is meant to determine if the recruit has an IQ over 60 and is actually smart enough to find his way to the stadium.  

And that's all the modern day slaveholders really care about; whether the slave has enough natural talent, limited intelligence, and strength to last five good years in the NFL.    They don't care that 75% of these fellas will be too mangled to play after five years of battle.  They don't care that that same 75% will be financially bankrupt, having plowed through their millions in bonus money and salary, with nothing left to support their brief, very brief high living lifestyle.  If they did these slave holding grownups would put half of their bonuses and salary into a trust fund, to be doled out to support them in their post-football years.

Nor do the slave traders care very much about the slave's character.  Tonight they will be drafting thieves and rapists and gang bangers in the first round...and keeping their fingers crossed that the dude can stay out of jail for football season.

I don't regularly watch the NFL draft ceremony (televised tonight on ESPN).  I did watch a bit of it last year. The ESPN analysts will regurgitate a million words about so and so's chances to make the team...and how many opponents he can mangle, or how many touchdowns he'll score.  Everyone will have already done their probing and prodding and there's nothing left to do but speculate on the quality of this year's "meat market".  

I find it all very sad.


Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Baltimore; "Detroit Redux"

                                                                 

We've all watched Black politicians drag Detroit into a 3rd world city, morally and financially bankrupt, rife with crime, a long line of mayors imprisoned for graft and corruption.  Black leaders couldn't keep the water running, or the garbage picked up, or even provide basic personal protection of its citizens.

Hard on the heels of Detroit's demise, Baltimore, Maryland is simply "Detroit; Part II."  Just as Detroit was a thriving metropolis in 1960, Baltimore, in 1960, was a prosperous city; a safe, low crime, desirable place for folks to live.  In 1960 Baltimore had a population of a million hard working people; 20 percent Black, 80 percent White.    "White Flight" has left Baltimore with half their former population,  overwhelmingly Black.

As with Detroit, Baltimore got rid of the honkey politicians and the Black majority elected city leaders from their own ranks.  And Black leaders rewarded their citizenry with graft and corruption....and the citizenry just got more impoverished.

While Baltimore once enjoyed a robust economy of steel processing, shipping, auto manufacturing and transportation, according to the Baltimore Industrial Association 90 percent of jobs today are low pay service jobs....and too few of them.

Baltimore averages a murder a day and property crime is at an all time high.  Like Detroit, the police force can't protect its citizens...and Baltimore's mayor probably wouldn't let them even if they could.

Baltimore's public school system was $84 million dollars in debt, despite having the highest "per pupil" cost of any school in the nation at $16,000 spent per student.  Nearly half of all students who begin high school never graduate and half of those who DO graduate cannot read or write at the 12th grade level.

So, as we watch Baltimore burn this week.....with the blessing of its own mayor, Blacks scream for more tax dollars...to build more schools that can't teach...to build recreation centers that they can burn down...and for more Black leaders who will give them what they want...to include the freedom to loot burn and destroy.

Detroit Redux.

Note:  A special blog tomorrow on the NFL's "slave auction", better known as the NFL draft.


Monday, April 27, 2015

Blacks Need Better Martyrs

                                                                 

Well, they buried Freddie Gray on Sunday.  And Blacks pledged to riot and burn some more on Sunday night to commemorate Gray's death.  

And last week we read that thousands of college students plan to converge on Ferguson, Missouri, to spend their spring break marching and looting and creating chaos.

We've already had a spring filled with national riots and property destruction over the death of a 400 pound Black behemoth who, already with outstanding arrest warrants for him out, decided he'd sell some sidewalk smokes...and resist arrest when he was caught.

And Blacks still fester over Trayvon Martin, a teenage martyr seemingly beyond his years toward a  life of thuggery, having already been busted for home burglary and well on his way to the thug lifestyle.

I'm sorry.  I just can gin up any sympathy for these people.  Freddie Gray, the latest ghetto hero, had already had scrapes with the law and was carrying an illegal switch blade knife on him when he decided to flee from the police.  Gray's death seems to be a classic illustration of how very stupid it is to think you're going to triumph over a police force that is, at least at the very minimum, made suspicious by your actions.

I don't expect urban Blacks to ever "get it", but if you're looking for sympathy from me, you need to come up with some better martyrs.

I can tell you right now that if Martin Luther King had marched from Atlanta to San Francisco he would still be looking for Black Civil Rights had it not been for his peaceful protests.  His grand and consistent calls for nonviolence won the hearts of the American people and elicited their indignation against those who would judge a man by the color if his skin.

Freddie and Trayvon and Michael Brown and a lawless giant fighting with the cops on the sidewalks of New York?  Not so much sympathy for them.  And even less sympathy for the Sharptons and Jacksons and Holders who would exploit Black thuggery to win political points.  Nor for the ignorant, illiterate and "Pied Piper" college rats who flock to a cause they neither understand nor comprehend the essential truths of.

So let the kids march in Ferguson....it keeps them out of Lauderdale and that makes the locals happy.  And let the Black thugs in Baltimore and Detroit, and Atlanta and Oakland and New York and Ferguson riot....we'll foot the bill for billions in block grants to rebuild their ghetto for them....just don't ask me for sympathy.



Sunday, April 26, 2015

"Barely 'Pass'ing"

                                                               

My wife and I had an appointment at the Air Force Pass &ID office Monday morning. As a retired officer my card never expires but dependent ID cards are good for four years or so. Well, my wife begins whining about re-newing her card about three months before its expiration date. If I put it off at all the wife will begins speculating that I'm gonna drop her or something...but the real reason is she always thinks she's gonna get "lotto lucky" and get a better picture this time around. 
So we had our appointment on base Monday morning for 8:45. Getting an ID card used to be first come first serve...you walked in, took a number like at the barber shop, and when they call your number you get served. But, so many of the troops are deployed to the Middle East, the Pass and ID department are working with a skeleton crew pretty much. So we show up early and we are greeted by a sign at the log in station "Our computers are temporarily down. This is a daily occurrence and they can be down from 5 minutes to 5 hours...please bear with us." So we checked in with a human being, then took a seat. While waiting I entertained my wife by remarking that our internet comes from a cheap cable and goes down once a year. And here's the mighty U.S. government that can't keep their systems up. As usual she pretty well ignored my snark. 
Gadzooks! The system came up within 15 minutes or so and a young male Staff Sergeant called us to Station One. The office has three work stations, equipped with state of the art 1990 equipment! They have a cheap camera mounted on a little table facing the client in the opposite chair, a computer, a little electronic fingerprint device and a little machine that laminates the newly printed card. The card itself is a marvel of fraud protection...there are five holograms on the front and all kinds of gobbledygook code on the back. (The cards are read by a cop at the gate using an electronic scanner). Well the nice fellow took my wife's old ID card and entered some code stuff and ten minutes later her record finally appeared on the screen (If you haven't filched a candy bar in the commissary, or gotten too many speeding tickets on base...or shown no inclination to join ISIS, they'll renew your card.) 
Well, the fellow tried to take the wife's picture and the little $60 dollar camera didn't work. So he slid his chair back and ask the sweet female Staff Sergeant at Station II if she would take the pic and finish the card process. Well, my wife is thrilled when she gets a chance to make a "jokie" so she blurts "oh, my I broke the camera...tee hee and earned a smile from all around. 
We then moved to Station II and the lady Staff Sergeant tried to take my wife' pic and hers wouldn't work either. Again, my wife's joke (less laughter this time) So the girl said "Oh boy..do I love crawling under my desk when I'm wearing my blues", then crawled under there and jiggled some connections and finally got the camera up and working. Well my wife finally got her card and then the girl said "Captain Friend, let's get you a new ID card while you're here". And I said "but mine doesn't expire". Then she told me that the new one was safer (even more gobbledygook code on the back and also the new one doesn't list my social security number..that it's coded and I'm protected more. I reluctantly surrendered my ID card. I say reluctant because about five years ago I was going through the gate and the guard advised me to get a new ID card (he just couldn't stand the idea that my pic was taken at 42 or so and I was handsome as hell only on that old ID card! 
Well, I gave it up this time and she took it, entered some code, pulled up my military record, then asked me to stick each index finger on that little electronic fingerprint device. Well, that damn thing didn't work either..just kept going with little red flashes and wouldn't record my divine finger swirls. She then reaches over a places her pretty hand over my finger and I have to admit I got a bit excited by this (luckily my wife had already deserted me and gone out into the hallway to eye the new pic on her new card. Finally the fingerprint doo-hicky recognized me and that part was over. The pretty girl (sorry this is not politically correct but she WAS a dish!) then asked me to smile for the camera. Flick! Pic done. 
So she puts my card through the laminating machine and hands it to me and I take one look at it and nearly fell out of the chair. The camera was so bad my image on this new ID card is ghostly...and I'm not exaggerating when I say I'll look better in my coffin than this picture looks. Well, I'm too much of man to ask a pretty young girl for a card do-over so I surreptitiously slip my card in my wallet, vowing to never show it anywhere they are not offering at least a ten percent military discount...it is that bad! 
So, I walk out in the hallway and my wife still has her ID card cupped in her hands and begins to carp about her poor picture. I then showed her mine and that shut her up about hers! I don't know if any of you have bothered to read this far...but if you have, my condolences.
P.S. If anyone wants to see the ID pic send $10 dollars in a pre-paid envelope or deposit it to my pay pal account and I'll send you a copy...you can use it at your front door at Halloween when the candy has run out.

Friday, April 24, 2015

"Killed By An 'Ism'"

                                                               

These past eight days we've had the sad duty to commemorate two of the past century's fits of human genocide.  On April 16th we were asked to remember the Jewish holocaust.  And so tragically less known was the Armenian massacre that marks the hundredth anniversary of man's savagery to man.  April 24th, 2015...commemorating a day when one of the world's great cultures was nearly wiped from the face of the earth.

Two million Armenians...killed over an innocuous little suffix; "ism".  An "ism"...totally harmless..until a hateful man, and a hateful philosophy stands in front of it and makes it an ugly thing indeed.  The Armenians who survived have been offered all manner of explanations as to why their fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, uncles and aunts and grandparents and great grandparents were raped, tortured, murdered.  But when you add up all the excuses, and boil them down, the slaughter was born from two father's ; hate and greed.

The Ottoman Turks, when asked to account for the slaughter, denied it even happened.  Those belligerent enough to admit it offered this:  "It is totally unrealistic to believe that a society can exist where Islam and Christianity must dwell together in peace."  That line was issued by one of the Ottoman Turk's grand "pooh bahs".  And, sadly, he speaks a truth!  Whether in India, or Indonesia, or Syria, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Iran, or the Gaza Strip or Egypt,  the Islamist must war against the infidels lest the walls come tumbling down on a religion fraught with so much paranoia and so much need for hate to feed their god.  It has been true since The Crusades and it is still true today.  Its cancerous hate now sickens southern Thailand, and the Philippines, and Africa...and it is an ugly, growing thing now blossoming in London, and Paris and Scandinavia and pockets of America.  And when they can't fight with infidels they will fight each other; Shia against Sunni....even mouth the credo "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

But let us not forget the fathers of the Armenian massacre.  Hate sprang forth to commit mass genocide against 2 million Armenians and Greed came along to confiscate their property...and worse, robbing them of their homeland, of their identity, of their pride.... for a two thousand year old culture that embraced Christianity, that wrote books and music that made the angels sing, who valued family like few societies ever have.

As with all "ism"s, the priests and the artists and the intellectuals were the first to be persecuted; they held the greatest weapons in defense of extremism...ideas.  So they were beheaded,  their heads set on shelves or atop a post so that, somehow, the haters could squeeze out the last drop of hate, before going home and replenishing their poisoned hearts for the next day's slaughter.  And, not possessing the Nazi technology of acid and ovens, those they could not kill fast enough were force marched out to the Syrian desert ...to die of thirst and starvation and disease.

From:  Hagop Martin Deranian 

Varter was born in 1885 in the lively village of Hussenig which, with its population of five thousand, was located in a valley a few miles below the flourishing and more urban city of Kharpert. 

It began with the ominous knock on the door in the middle of the night. The Turkish gendarmes said that they wished to make some immediate purchases in the Nazarian store. Mugrditch was not given time to dress but left his tranquil home dressed only in pajamas. 

Varter never saw her husband again. No one agreed on the precise fate of Mugrditch Nazarian. Some say he was taken out of town a few miles and shot. Others relate that he was among those who were imprisoned in Mezireh and exposed to inhuman tortures so unbearable that he and the other prisoners poured the kerosene from the jail lamps onto themselves and ended their lives as human pyres. 

A few days later, on June 11, the horror began for Varter, all the more frightening since she was nearly full term with another child. Ordered to prepare for “deportation”, she gathered her infirm in-laws, her maid Tamam, and her children, Eghisapet, Takouhi, Nazareth, Yeghsa, Arakel and Avedis. 

She obtained a donkey with a saddle bag with two pockets. In each pocket she placed one of her smallest children. The next day, the gendarmes pushed the donkey with its two children down a mountainside and to their deaths. 

“I saw Varter at noon”, a fellow companion tearfully recalled of that day, “and when I saw her again in the evening, I could not recognize her, She was almost naked”. “Elmas”, Varter said to her friend in utter anguish and pain, “let us find a well and throw ourselves into it”. At that moment of despair, some Arab woman took pity on her and drew some water from the well and quickly gave it to her before the gendarmes saw. They had been traveling in these terrible conditions for a month and a half since leaving Mezireh. 

One morning soon thereafter, Varter awoke with her children and saw that the caravan had moved on. Seizing the opportunity to hide, she descended into a dry well with her children. There she remained safely for two days without food. A passing Arab, some say a Pasha, came to the well and shouted into it, “If there is anyone down there, let him speak, as I am about to throw stones in the well”. “No, don't throw any stones”, Varter shouted, “I am here with my children”. “Very well” the Arab replied, “I will help you out”. Varter was relieved. “Help my children out one at a time”, she pleaded. “Then I will come”. “No!” the Arab emphatically responded. “You come first so that we may pull the children out together”. Hesitatingly and very slowly, Varter lifted herself out. Seeing her comeliness, the Arab seized her and forcibly adducted her. He was totally deaf to her appeals for her children left in the well. Their echoing voices cried after her, “Mother, Mother!” Those infant cries haunted and tormented her the remaining days and dark nights of her life. The dry hole became Varter’s wailing well. 

M.Teranyan, Husseinik. Memories and Emotions about Native Hearth and People, Boston, 1981, pp.180-189 (arm) 
- See more at: http://www.genocide-museum.am/eng/personal_histories.php#sthash.0xP9a6iW.dpuf


STORY OF SEROPE ASDADURIAN 

"Our family consisted of fifteen members, of whom four are now living, the others having died by the hands of the Kurds and Turks.  

"Before the year 1893 the brother of the celebrated robber chief, Mousa Bey, had abducted the daughter of the head man of our village. After a while the girl was rescued from his hands and married to a young man of Vartenis. In the spring of 1893 she visited her father's house, after which her father wished to send her, under safe escort, to her husband at Vartenis. He besought my father to carry her, and he accepted the charae. On the way fifteen Kurds attacked the party and attempted to carry off the woman, but eny father and his companions resisted, and delivered the woman safely to her husband, two of the Kurds being killed in the affray. My father fled to Russia, but soon returned, and for a month or so remained so concealed that no one saw him. After a while, however, it became known that he had returned, and suddenly one day the Mudir (Turkish petty governor) of the neighboring village surrounded our house with a band of zabtiehs (gendarmes) to seize my father. He knew that to be taken was probably to be killed with tortures, and determined to sell his life as dearly as possible. So when the zabtiehs burst open the door and cacne in my father killed one of them and rushed out with his rifle. But in his haste he struck his head violently against the frame of the door and fell, nearly dead. One of the zabiehs fired and killed him. They then killed my mother, my two sisters, my uncle and four cousins. They carried away our cattle and sheep, robbed the house and burned it." 

So the crimson storm of carnage rolled on, until not less than thirty villages had been laid waste, so completely destroyed that even the names had been erased from the official records. As to the number of killed it is almost impossible to give accurate estimate. It must have been not less than five or six thousand, many put it much higher. Some soldiers said that a hundred fell to each one of them to dispose of, while others wept because the Kurds did more execution than they. Some, however, claimed to have been unwilling actors in the scene and suffered great mental torments. The wife of one noticed that he failed te pray, as had been his invariable custom. She spoke of it to him and he answered, "God will not hear me. If there is a God he will take vengeance for these awful deeds. Is there any use to pray? "It is also told of other soldiers that on reaching their homes they inquired of Armenian acquaintances, "Who is this Jesus of Nazareth? The Sassun women were constantly calling out to Him." 

At last the carnage stopped. The commander-in-chief of the fourth army corps at Erzingan reached the field in time to save a few prisoners alive and to prevent the extermination of four more villages that were on the list to be distroyed. He then sent a telegram to Constantinople that reballion had been overcome and that order had been restored in the province. For this he received a medal and the thanks of the Sultan. 

Bliss, Rev. Edwin Munsell. Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities. Edgewood Publishing Company, 1896. Reprinted by Meshag Publishing (Fresno, CA)in 1982 
- See more at: http://www.genocide-museum.am/eng/personal_histories.php#sthash.0xP9a6iW.dpuf


These are only two stories. There are two million of them, but sadly, most aren't around to tell them. Decades ago the world was shocked by the Armenian Genocide. The World Courts and the United Nations once held the Turks accountable. In recent years the United Nations is trying hard to forget. When Pope Francis recently referred to the Armenian tragedy as "genocide" the United Nations responded with a more benign term "human atrocity"....perhaps making that old Ottoman Turkish poison easier to swallow.

Well, if the United Nations is right...if we can cloak mass murder in somewhat gentler terms, and if we can forget that 1915 ever happened, perhaps the poison is indeed easier swallowed. But, be warned: we are already seeing the same level of barbarism arising in the Middle East today. Forget those two million Armenians at your own peril...for you and your family and your community, and your nation may be next!

Finally, for those who deny, and for those who choose to forget the Armenian Massacre ever happened, you might want to recall Adolph Hitler's words when convincing his Nazi councils that the West would do nothing about the Jewish Holocaust:

"Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?".....(and 7 million Jews did not live to heed that warning.)

Lest we forget....

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Kodachrome Truths

                                                                 
                   
She was born in 1895 to second generation German parents in Hoboken, New Jersey.  From childhood she saw things just a bit different than others did...her child eyes taking in more than what other people saw...something far deeper, more consequential.

When she was seven years old she developed polio and, though recovering somewhat, she was left with a pronounced limp which affected her both mentally and physically.  She would say, some fifty years later "I've never gotten over it..my deformity..and I'm aware of the power and force of it."

Her awful gait would transform her into a harsher version of her previous self. She became assertive and more likely to judge more harshly people who did not live up to her own moral standards.  Her bitterness increased when, at age 12, her father abandoned the family.  

When ready to strike out and find her world she migrated to New York City and began studying photography.  Upon completion of her education she began working in portrait studios, mostly just doing the drudge work, never free to pursue her love of film.  

When she and a friend had saved enough they decided to set out on a round the world trip.  They crossed the continent and planned to make San Francisco the jumping off point for their foray across the Pacific.  Her fates changed when she and her girlfriend were robbed of every cent they had saved.

So, she went to work in a portrait studio in downtown San Francisco.  As she worked throughout the day she would pause and look out the window on this city by the bay.  The one thing that stood out to her was the great contrast in how the rich lived and how the poor lived and was aghast at the wide breech between the two worlds.  It was in the early days of the Great Depression and the bread lines and the soup lines were well peopled.  One day she stood and watched a crowd of hungry people, in line at the Bright Angel soup kitchen, push one old man out of the line.  She ran out and took a picture of the stooped old man, worry and hunger marking his face like the lines on a road map.

Soon she was traveling all over the city, capturing the misery of the homeless and hungry with her camera.  One of her best was chosen to be displayed at an art exhibition in the city.  And a fellow who taught over at Berkley happened to attend the event.  He took one look at that picture and fell in love with it...and vicariously in love with whomever had taken it.  

While on a trek to Washington D.C. he took a copy of that photo and showed it to a friend who worked for the Farm Services Administration.   The FSA fellow liked the pic too and proposed that the photographer go to work for the FSA, traveling about and capturing the misery of the Okie migrants who moved snail like through the fields of the Central Valley, trying to eke out enough to feed their family for the day.

So the college professor went back and tracked her down.  He told her about what the FSA wanted her to do.  For the first time in her life she felt like she could do something to make a difference.  She took the job and its daily $3 dollar per diem.  But, before the college professor would let her go he upped and married her, took a leave of absence and accompanied her through the tar paper shacks and sun-baked fields of the Okies.  

She wanted honesty in her pictures, no "posing" permitted.  So her husband would walk up and start up a conversation to divert their attention, and then she'd work her magic with the lens.  And while no one would know her name, the world would know of the misery being played out in the great central valley.  One of her photos broke the collective hearts of America and was the first to raise awareness of the dust bowl migrants' plight.  

When America threw over a hundred thousand Japanese Americans into camps she turned her lens to them, to again show the world the injustice that man is capable of.  

When Congress voted to end funding for the FSA project she set off on a trip to the deep south where she captured the misery of hard scrapping, dirt poor Blacks who had no money and even less self pride or dignity.  Twenty years later leaders in the civil rights movement would see those pictures and ask to use them in their campaign to win civil rights for Black people.  

After the war she was so hopeful over the birth of the United Nations.  So she ventured East and captured the birth of an organization that she hoped would bring peace to the world and peace and prosperity for those who had never known it.

Her health began failing her during the last twenty years of her life.  The side effects of her once dormant childhood polio would restrict her work.  During her last years, though she was personally satisfied with her life's work she held no preconceptions of fame....and she didn't think she needed any.

Then, in the summer of '65 someone began to look at her body of work.  And all were amazed.  They contacted her and ask if they might do an exhibition of her Depression Era photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in January, 1966.  She said yes, and even helped to organize the work to be exhibited.  

She would not live to see the exhibition.  But thousands did...and thousands cried and stared in wonder at what this woman had captured on film.  One of her pictures is known today as "the" iconic image of The Great Depression.  It was of a dirt poor migrant woman, supporting two children on her shoulders, as well as the weight of the world.  She seems to be wondering what she'll feed these two waifs, if at all...and how her life played out on the long ago day. 

 And they have Dorothea Lange to thank for it.





Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Escapes From The Liberal Plantation

                                                         
WANTED!  BLACKS WHO HAVE ESCAPED FROM THE LIBERAL PLANTATION
(Reward of Government Green Check and Generous Government Benefits)


Attention Liberal Americans!  Over the last several years we have seen an increase in Blacks who have escaped from the liberal plantation.   This is unacceptable.  As you move through your ghetto, dodging bullets and avoiding stepping on drug needles, be on the lookout for any Black who appears to be walking on their own hind legs.  Be especially wary of Blacks who appear to be wearing any type of work gear.   Listen to your neighbors; if they are preaching sedition from the Democratic party please call your nearest community organizer and report them!

These uppity conservative Blacks are daring to elevate themselves up the economic ladder and throw off the chains of their plantation masters!  Report them!  We'll come around to their house and offer them a block grant, or a boost in their welfare check....anything to bring them back into the fold!

We recognize that we're not going to win all of these rebellious Blacks into the fold.  Some of them have achieved professional prestige, respect from their peers and are experiencing economic success....some of them are now independently wealthy!  Well, they are traitors from the liberal plantation and must be dealt with!

Put the word out that these Black traitors must be demonized!  Call them "Uncle Toms!"  Make up the most vile lies to tell about them!  We cannot tolerate rewarding these people who had the audacity to imagine that they could value an education, support themselves and make their own decisions!  As you know WE, the Democratic party make the decisions for you!  

Black people, you have always supported us.  You have given us your vote in unheard of numbers!  And, in turn, we've kept the green checks flowing and have never asked you to fend for yourselves.  We've never said you need to study harder in school.  We've never condemned you for your massive crime rates...we know you are a victim of circumstances!

Black people, that will change if we begin to see more Blacks fleeing the plantation!  Don't let that happen!  Smear the names of those who have fled, and demonize them so that the next Black that thinks about escaping will thing twice about it!

And while you're rooting out the traitors, be sure and listen to Hillary Clinton!  And vote for her!  She wants to be your "champion"...just as Barack Obama was your champion.  After all, does it matter if Black unemployment rates are 30% if we are sending you a monthly check and issuing Section 8 vouchers!  

So, party hard Black people!  But don't party so hard you don't see the traitors among you!  The plantation will exist only as long as you're willing to live on it!


Tuesday, April 21, 2015

American Cowardice

                                                                   

What happened to American courage? With the exception of that courageous 1% who serve in our military, America seems to be peopled by cowards! Did anyone note the "occupier" crowd out in force last week..marching to demand $15 bucks an hour to flip burgers? Take a look! A good majority of them were Mexicans who had the audacity to march with signs in Spanish! And you can bet a large majority of them were either illegal or in Obama's "protection" plan. And, not only do they want us to ignore our immigration laws, but they want us to support their illegal families in the the lifestyle they've become accustomed to....even if it means you pay $10 bucks for a Big Mac! I continually ask why the hell these people didn't stay in Mexico and clean up their own hell hole?

Another question; how is your teenager going to learn a work ethic for later in his adult life when the millions of illegals have taken the only job he's qualified to fill while still in school?

I mean, really, what the hell? Not long ago we would have heaved these illegal assholes into a truck and drove them straight to the border...and we would have torn up those signs written in Spanish and said "we are an English speaking country...god damn it speak English or get the hell out!" And our "greatest generation" would never have tolerated 100,000 illegal Mexicans marching down the streets of Los Angeles demanding to be made citizens! 

Yet we read it on the news, then flip over to "The Big Bang Theory" cause we just don't want to be bothered! Hey! If you value your country, if you enjoy her privileges, you better be ready to stand up and fight for it! Whether these illegal Mexicans are right or wrong, you've got to give them credit! They have more balls than the average American! Geesh!

Monday, April 20, 2015

Hillary Clinton; "Ghostly Chameleon"

                                                               

Last week Hillary Clinton kicked off the first week of her 20 month campaign to win the White House.  She first aired a two minute, eighteen second commercial.  For two minutes and six seconds the commercial featured apple cheeked, clean cut, hard working Americans as they went about their day.  The last 12 seconds was Hillary saying she wanted to be America's "champion".  The commercial was quite clever; 2:06 of every day Americans and then, "oh god, it's Hillary".  

Then she jumped into her specially equipped mini-van she dubbed "Scooby", an innocuous and heartwarming little nomenclature that just screams "I'm just an every day Jane..and one of you..then headed off to Iowa.  Somewhere in Nebraska Hillary got hungry and donned big dark glasses and walked into the first fast food joint she's seen since she and Bill were shilling folks in Little Rock.  She ordered a green salad and a Chipotle Chicken bowl and left.  (Hillary didn't know the security camera picked up her appearance and the franchise owner sharply noted that she left nothing in the tip jar for those struggling fast food workers.)

After finally arriving in Iowa she showed up at a machine shop (and never once said the fellow that owns it didn't build that business), then sat down at a table with three former Obama campaign workers to discuss the woes of the working man and woman.  In that brief 20 minute talk Hillary was able to chirp in that she was the "people's champion" and would make things better...without ever saying how.

As the average Jane and Joe onlookers stood behind a fence, Hillary emerged from the back of the machine factory and jumped into a limo led by an additional limo in front and one in back.  We could not see through the darkly tinted windows whether Hillary waved at the masses...or not.

There was something ghostly about Hillary here in her first week.  There seemed to be no solidity to her.  Even under scripted conditions, in meeting with scripted actors playing the role of "citizen" Hillary just did not seem real.  She always seemed too ready to insert into the conversation that she was the "people's champion"...even when they were talking about the weather!

When Hillary returned to New York, to brow beat a few more rich guys to donate to her campaign, there was something "chameleon" about Hillary.  Gone was her 2008 position against same sex marriage, gone was her stance against granting citizenship to illegal Mexicans....she even took the time to love up Elizabeth Warren a little in an effort to court the far left liberal contingent in the party.

And, not once during the whole week did Hillary answer questions about Benghazi.  Nor would she respond to queries about she and Bill's foundation that has raked in hundreds of millions of dollars from foreign dictators (and, in return shifted positions she previously opposed as Secretary of State).  She did resign last week from the foundation (Chelsea and Bill will have to pimp for dollars alone for 20 months)  but she didn't explain how she could rightly complain about Wall Street rich guys when she and Bill are filthy rich themselves...all from making half hour speeches paid for by our tax dollars at public universities.

And by completely overhauling her positions from 2008, Hillary is showing "the real Hillary", that she will say and do anything to acquire the ultimate seat of power, the one in the Oval Office.

And, God help us all, their are more than enough Blacks, liberals and women who'll vote their vagina to win her what she seeks.  Cue up "Hail To The Chief" for Hillary...the coronation for the greatest ghostly chameleon in history has begun.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

"Cruising The Attic"

                                                                     
                                                Even at 9 months those ears were a hallmark.

I turn 67 years old today.  If I could give one piece of advice to you young whippersnappers it would be; don't fear old age.  Old age is a marvelous thing.  You are retired from the working world.  You've raised your children and they are off on their own life path.  You've accrued a little wisdom and you've made enough mistakes not to repeat most of them.

Friday, April 17, 2015

When Government Goes Into Business

                                                                 

                                         "When Government Goes Into Business"

Phoenix has been ruled by liberal Democrats for many years. The ethnically diverse culture of downtown Phoenix is an island smack dab in the center of a largely conservative state. 

So, back in 2008 Phoenix decided to go into business and buy themselves a Sheraton Hotel. They invested more than half a billion dollars in the place. Then they staffed it with their favorite unions and kept workers happy with juicy pay and benefits packages and bumped their salaries up each year. Not surprisingly, the Phoenix owned Sheraton is bleeding money...so much so that the city is nearly bankrupt and can't finance municipal needs. 

They've hiked parking rates (which drove downtown shoppers to the suburbs), they implemented a tax on food, and you need a bankroll to pay for the various city fees they assess to even talk to a municipal bureaucrat. 

Now, to provide a little perspective, the Sheraton Corporation operates more than 400 resort hotels worldwide...and they do so at a nice profit. But, surprise, surprise! Phoenix bureaucrats can't! After investing half a billion to buy the hotel, and tens of millions more trying to keep the doors open, the city still owes nearly $400 million dollars, having lost $38 million dollars during their brief eight year ownership. 

So, those wise Phoenix bureaucrats are now contemplating selling the place, at a loss. Moral of the story: don't let your government masters go into business...it will cost you dearly. Find a ponzi scheme somewhere...believe me, you'll be better off!

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Homeless and Hungry

                                                                 

If Jesus was alive today, and if he wanted to feed those multitudes with barley bread and fishes, he'd have to pay the city of Sacramento $1,250 dollars for a permit to do so.  I've just been reading a report on the hungry and homeless from the National Coalition For The Homeless and I was surprised to learn how difficult states and municipalities are making it for anyone who wishes to feed the hungry.

So far 21 states have implemented legislation that makes it illegal to feed the homeless, or make the permit costs so prohibitive that a charity organization can't afford the permit.  Hundreds of American municipalities completely outlaw any type of organizational feeding unless a charity actually owns a building for the purpose.  Cities have begun to post signs in public places and public parks citing the legal code and impressive fines for daring to feed homeless people in those places.  One city converted a "Don't Feed The Pigeons" sign, crossed out "Pigeons" and substituted "homeless" to alert people of the new laws.

I'm a bit torn by this issue.  While I acknowledge that there are plenty of "gamers" within the homeless community, and while I'm aware that large concentrations of homeless folks I also know there are many folks truly in need and truly hungry.  It seems to me that the two sides ought to be able to find some common ground on this.  There are more than enough open spaces in every city where food charities could do their thing.

It seems to me that, every time government gets involved in "helping people" they always screw it up.  Makes me almost suspect that our government masters don't like private charities getting involved with the most vulnerable of our society lest they rob government of their iron control over the masses...and the subsequent lust to "vote buy" those who need help.

You might be surprised to know that Socialist California has ten major cities that have implemented tough new laws against feeding the homeless.  And you might be further surprised to learn the most stingiest laws have been implemented right there in liberal Silicon Valley who, through their political donations, control the Democrats running the show in the state capitol.  They want liberal laws passed, and working citizens to pay for them....just not in their back yard.  In fact you might find it shocking that California leads the nation in statutes against feeding the homeless; more than three hundred percent bigger than any other state.  How, after all, can you control the masses if you don't have total control over their food and shelter!

Perhaps most bizarre has been the ACLU's role in making it more difficult to feed the homeless.  In a dozen cities across the nation the ACLU has brought suit against supermarkets, restaurants and wholesale food distribution companies for providing free food, some of which they found to be beyond the "sell by" date.  As a result of these suits dozens of businesses have opted to stop providing these food giveaways.

Understandably, the current war on feeding the homeless has put a great strain on community food banks.  Folks were stripping the shelves as they came in daily to get groceries.  This problem was compounded in California by illegals, claiming no income and working for cash, and living off the good will of folks donating to the food banks.

A couple of years ago, here in Phoenix, a church intended to set up a daily soup kitchen for the poor.  The church was located in a district where the demographics were made up of heavily Democratic voters.  The same Democrats who are all too willing to vote your tax money for any number of social welfare programs adamantly refused to allow the church in their neighborhood to feed the poor....they didn't mind voting your taxes to feed the poor but they'd be damned if they wanted those poor wandering around THEIR neighborhood.

Sad.  Damned Sad.









Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Generational Meltdown

                                                               

When we of an earlier generation witness some of the horror stories prevalent in the headlines we sit stunned and amazed at how such horror could occur.  Just this week we read of a Black mom who toted her quadriplegic son out to the woods and left him there to die, even as she went off on a jolly jaunt with her current boyfriend.  I wish such intra-family violence were but rare instances, but they are not.  Every day we read of a son who beat his mom to death with a hammer because she took away his IPod.  Another boy beat his mom to death with a cast iron skillet because she dared take away his iPhone privileges.  We also read this week of a lady who brought her newborn infant to a hospital in  a tote bag...she was simply tired of playing mother to still another of her fatherless children.

It might be hard to understand but I'd like to offer a theory on this plague of child neglect and child rebellion.  

Monday, April 13, 2015

Letter From A Birmingham Jail

                                                             

On April 12th, 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King was arrested in Birmingham, Alabama for leading a peaceful protest of businesses barring Blacks, for the right to walk into a polling place and cast a vote...for the right not to be called "nigger" because of the color of your skin.

As peaceful protestors marched down the streets of Birmingham, law enforcement officers deployed electric cattle prods to bring them to their knees, then they violently arrested Dr. King and threw him into a Birmingham jail.

When Dr. King asked for some writing paper his jail keepers refused him; thoughts and ideas are dangerous things and they were having none of it.  So one of King's supporters snuck a newspaper into the jail.  Having nothing else to write on, King penned his now famous "Letter From A Birmingham Jail" in the margins of that newspaper.

In his letter King responded to his critics who demanded to know why King and his followers weren't patient enough to wait for the courts to grant Black equality.  In his heartfelt letter King argued that justice is not always promised by the courts...that Blacks had been waiting for a hundred years for the courts to mandate equality.

In perhaps the most touching parts of his letter King describes what it is like to be barred from a lunch counter, or a hotel room when you're weary, or the demeaning of the Black soul when called "nigger" or when Whites feel it is perfectly alright to assume your first name is "Boy."

Throughout Martin Luther King's "Letter From A Birmingham Jail" King insists that his marches and protests must always be non-violent....that hate and bitterness shall never win the day...that only love can heal our differences.

When King has finished his letter a friend sneaked the jig-saw writings from that old newspaper and offered it up for publication.  The New York Times and The Washington Post and every newspaper in the country refused to publish it.  But the letter began to circulate and gathers a following for the heart felt thoughts of a man who asks that Blacks be treated as kindly as anyone else.

Finally, The Atlantic Magazine printed the letter that summer, under the title "The Black Man Is Your Brother".  People of fairness were touched by King's sincerity and for his insistence that racial equality be achieved only through peace and love.  King, in this one simple heartfelt essay has convinced America that something is very wrong about prejudice.  Soon NBC's John Chancellor is traveling with the Christian Leadership Conference and reporting on the ugliness of those who demand Blacks be put in their place.

Soon after that the court of public opinion began to trump judicial court ponderings and Americans are finally awakened to the practice of racial injustice.

Sadly, nearly five years to the day that the Letter From A Birmingham Jail was published, Dr. King was assassinated on a hotel balcony in Memphis by a white man who just couldn't relinquish the privilege of calling a grown man "Boy", or denying him a place to eat, or drink, or a place to lay his weary head down at night.

In one passage King expresses what was at the heart of their protests:

"I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. There will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. There will be the old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest." There will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence."



Sunday, April 12, 2015

Lest We Forget

                                                                 

On April 11, 1945, at 3:15PM, the U.S. 9th Armored Infantry Division arrived at a place called Buchenwald. It would be the first Nazi concentration camp discovered...and the smallest. 
As Captain Fred Keffer describes the scene, "we came upon this large concentration camp and, above the entrance was a German sign that read 'you get what you deserve'. What we found there scared us more than a hail of machine gun bullets...thousands of human skeletons walking around...we had never seen such horror...not even the horror of war could surpass it." 
The Jewish prisoners, despite their skeletal bodies, were so overwhelmed with joy that they made frantic attempts to lift their liberators into the air, shouting with joy at their survival. 56,000 did not survive; they were used as human "lab rats" to test typhus injections, enduring white phosphorus poured over their bodies, then timed to see how quickly they died. Some of the dead were skinned, their skin to make lampshades for the Nazi elite. Over 1100 were shot in the back of the head, a thousand Jewish women were peeled off and sent to the camp whorehouse. The vast majority just died from overwork in Nazi factories. 
As the Americans moved through the camp they found one building, meant to house 12 horses, occupied by over 1200 prisoners, mostly those so starved or sick they could not rise from their wooden slat beds. At first the Americans were horrified, even scared to look on these remnants of human beings. Then they became quite angry. Captain Keffer ordered the Mayor of a nearby town to free up all the food stored in store rooms, and all the food in local markets and bring that food to the starving prisoners. The emaciated prisoners ate like wolves, then, unused to such generous meals, threw it all up, wiped their mouths, and began eating again. Many were too sick to eat; American G.I.'s would spoon feed broth to these wretched folks...until they could once again tolerate solid food. 
Despite the horror of Buchenwald, even greater horrors would be revealed as the Americans began liberating all of the Jewish concentration camps. Tragically, for nearly 7 million Jews that liberation would come too late. 
As we watch events unfolding in the Middle East, and here in our own country, as we see rising anti-semitism and hostility to Christians from our liberal elite, we should never forget the capacity to destroy by those who believe "their beliefs" are the only beliefs and everyone else can go to hell.

Saturday, April 11, 2015

"Riden' With Biden"

                                                                 

Note to readers; if you look over on the right side you'll see that I just passed a million page views last night.  Thanks to all of you who made that possible.



Okay, all you Hillary haters; you can relax now.  Crazy Joe Biden has just rode in in his iconic Corvette, shades in place, and ready to take on Hillary for the top job.

The Hill just reported on Thursday that a political Super Pac has been formed to promote Joe Biden's ascendancy to the American throne.  They're calling their theme "Ridin' With Biden" and they're ready to spend big bucks to get Joe ensconced in the Oval Office.

And what might we expect from a Biden campaign?  Will he be feeling up little teenage daughters of newly elected senators as he did during those Senate swearing-ins?  Will he steal a baby's pacifier and put it in his mouth, then swap out a Vice Presidential Coin for it,  which found the baby aghast as the poor swap?

                                             


Joe hasn't formulated his election platform yet but he did give the White House press corp a heads up when he said, if elected, he'll scuttle the current press room and restore it to it's previous incarnation as the White House swimming pool.  Joe has repeatedly said he likes to swim naked and he certainly doesn't want to create any press photo ops on that 72 year old body.

Joe has promised not to utter some of his earlier inanities....like "we need more gun laws because we don't have the time or manpower to enforce the ones we have.".  Or "You cannot go to a Dunkin Donuts or a 7-11 unless you have an East Indian accent...I'm serious!"  Or "This is a big fucking deal" (as said on live Mic to Barry at the White House signing of Obamacare) 

Joe says, if elected President, he'll carry out all of Obama's policies....that may be the biggest joke of all.

So, who's "ridin' with Biden?"

Friday, April 10, 2015

Moms Against Guns; Gunning For Kroger

                                                             

The Kroger Company operates the largest grocery chain in America.  They employ hundreds of thousands of people, operating under several names.  In Arizona Kroger operates under the Fry's logo, once a local chain that Kroger bought up several years ago.

Kroger does very well in the grocery business.  In an enterprise where a three percent profit margin means success, and two percent means failure, Kroger is good at what they do.  They offer clean, attractive stores, extend great customer service, and nearly always beat behemoth Walmart on pricing.  In fact, though I have access to a military commissary, I still shop as much at Fry's because their pricing is better, especially if you follow the sales.  They have an excellent line of health foods and their generic brands are excellent.

Our Fry's store here in a senior community offers the best customer service I've ever seen.  Each time I go I see Fry's employees accompanying a senior riding in one of those shopping scooters going from aisle to aisle and pulling items off of high shelves, or quoting price comparisons between various products.  The front of their store looks like a small motor pool as there are always more than enough handicap scooters to accommodate anyone who needs one.  

Well, despite all of Kroger's success, they are "under the gun" from an army of libtard moms called "Moms Against Guns."  Unlike Target and Starbucks and a whole host of other retail establishments who have caved into political correctness, Kroger prefers to follow the gun laws of the states where they operate.  Arizona is an "open carry" state so customers are allowed to carry guns if they wish.  And Kroger accepts that.  In states where open carry is prohibited Kroger honors those mandates as well.  

Well, this past week Kroger held their shareholders meeting.  And, yes, Moms Against Guns stood outside with their protest placards, and screamed spittle filled hate words at anyone who dared to attend the meeting.   Thankfully Kroger went about their business and politely ignored these PC goons.  They announced that business was so good that they'll be hiring another 20,000 American workers so that we'll be paying for welfare and food stamps for 20,000 fewer people.  

I don't expect the libtard moms to ever get it, but I'm glad that Kroger understands that a gun can be a good thing indeed when lawless thugs walk into a store and begin mowing down innocents.  In fact, just a few months ago, right here at a Kroger-Fry's store a good samaritan with a gun put down a thug intent on mass killing.  And, just one open carry gun owner could have stopped the Gabby Gifford massacre in a Safeway parking lot down in Tucson a few years ago.  I don't expect these anti-gun people will ever get it.  They completely overlook the plague of murders in Detroit and Chicago where gun laws are very strict and, instead, come after the good citizens whose only aim is to protect their families from the rising tide of violent thuggery.

So, good for you, Kroger.  We haven't lost the battle to the libtards just yet.  Live long and prosper, Kroger.

Thursday, April 9, 2015

A Death In Spring

                                                           


April 14, 1865.  It's good Friday.  Abraham Lincoln awakes with a smile on his face.  Even a casual observer would have noticed the deep worry lines in his face had eased.  Four years of war, four years of mourning the death of every union soldier, four years of steering the Union toward victory had at long last ended.  Just last Sunday afternoon Lee had sat down with Grant at Appomattox Courthouse and surrendered, thus ending the American Civil War that had claimed the lives of 600,000 young Americans.

Lincoln's happy mood surprised his friend, Ward Hill Lamon, who only three days before had listened as Lincoln recounted a dream he'd had about ten days before:

About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. I saw light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. 'Who is dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers, 'The President,' was his answer; 'he was killed by an assassin.' Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which woke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since.

The dream, now forgotten, Lincoln arises, washes up, gets dressed and greets the White House staff in grand good humor.  His wife Mary frets over her husband's ebullience, believing such a dramatic change in mood is a sign of bad fortune.  Lincoln shrugs off his wife's silliness and convinces her to join him in a carriage ride around Washington.

As Abe and Mary ride beneath shady elms, a morning spring breeze, freshening their cheeks,  they both open up to each other, the strains of the past few years easing.  Their marriage has been strained by so much, the death of their young son, the weariness of the war years, even those differences in themselves that has kept their relationship strained, sometimes with the remoteness of strangers.  Both feel a return of affection for each other and pledge to do better in the coming years.

Following the carriage ride, Lincoln sends an invitation to General and Mrs Grant to join them that evening at Ford's Theater to attend the play "Our American Cousin".  Grant politely declines, aware of the recent strain between Mary Lincoln and his wife Julia.  Lincoln then extends the same invitation to a young army major and his fiance...they accept.

Lincoln would spend much of the afternoon signing legislation and arranging welcoming festivities for the triumphant return of the Army of The Potomac.  

While Lincoln is living out his last day John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators are wrapping up plans to assassinate Lincoln and much of his cabinet.  Bitter at the Confederate loss, Booth vows revenge and Lincoln is his prime target.

Neither Lincoln nor his cabinet officers enjoy any special protections.  As Lincoln, with party of four enter the balcony at Ford's theater, Hail To The Chief is played and the entire theater rises in applause to the man who saved the Union.

Shortly thereafter John Wilkes Booth will fire a pistol shot into Lincoln's brain.  Booth will leap from the balcony to the stage, shout "death to tyrants" and flee on a broken leg.

Lincoln will be taken to a boarding house across the street from the theater where his long frame and the short frame bed will require laying him crosswise on the bed.  Lincoln will begin a slow death that finally reaches him at dawn the next morning.

For the next few days Washington will be in a state of chaos as the news of events unfold; Grants murder thwarted on an outbound train, the vicious attack on Secretary of State Seward who lays near death for days before he finally recovers.

When Lincoln's staff attends to his desk they find further irony; Lincoln has signed on his last day of life a bill authorizing the formation of the United States Secret Service.

Further irony; Booth killed Lincoln to avenge the South.  Yet it was Lincoln, and only Lincoln who advocated for a forgiving Union, who had already demanded that the southern states be treated with a gentle respect and vast patience as the Union healed itself.  Had Lincoln lived there would have been no Northern carpetbaggers who exploited the people of the South, who sparked the hate and resentment that would not be healed for a hundred years.  

And like another kind soul whose fate would be decided on a Good Friday some 1900 years earlier, a good man, a great man, and our greatest President will have his life snuffed out...a gentle soul...a death in spring.


Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Why China Is Kicking Our Ass

                                                             

Chinese leaders are in a panic these days.  Their economic growth rate may shrink to 6 percent.  The U.S. would invade a foreign country to get that kind of growth rate.  Our current 2 percent growth rate won't even service our current government obligations.  Forbes just reported last month that, if we don't get our GDP growth above 5 percent there's going to be some serious societal upheaval as baby boomers retire and begin collecting social security and making Medicare their prime source for health care.

Let's assume China fore goes using prison labor to shove out their egg beaters and Lenovo computers and applies a more human approach to human labor.  Maybe Chinese employers will only require 60 hour work weeks and boost pay to a buck an hour.  That will still enable China to kick our ass because no one in America will ever want to work that hard.  

USA Today just reported on Monday that Millennials are demanding greater and greater work benefits in exchange for their psychology and gender studies degrees.  They want six months of both maternity and paternity leave every time they have a kid.  And they would like the privilege of working out of the home at least two days per week until the child reaches five years of age.  Were that all, it would be problematic but not unsolvable.

Nope.  The Millennials also want free lunches, work place massage, putting greens, ping pong tables and free child care on the work site when they do have to drag little Joanie and Johnny along with them to work.

They also want to go to medical appointments on company time; scheduling medical appointments on their personal time is just too stressful and might cause them to miss "Ellen" or Rachel Maddow.  

I used to feel sorry for those Millennial kids living in Mom and Pop's basement, unable to find work.  Stats show half of them have been relegated to living with mom and pop after securing that coveted "Social Psychology of Old White Men" degree and working the drive-thru window at McDonalds.  Now, after reading their job demands I don't feel sorry them so much.

The article today says Millennials will dominate the work force by 2025.  I'm guessing just about that time is when pampered Millennials will undergo a huge attitude adjustment.  China will no doubt own much of American business and they won't be taking kindly to demands for work place massages and putting greens.  And there won't be any free lunches....there never has been.

Sigh.