Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Post Election Woes

Yesterday was the California Primary election, and here in the 50th District we were voting for who would replace Randy Cunningham since he was sentenced for corruption.

If you want to know the results knock your self out.

This was a bad election, a lot of mud slinging, and the end result with the wrong people in office. All this election did was confirm my need to get out of this state.

The only real reason why I voted this time was to elect Bruce Ruff for Sheriff. But he lost, big time. When I saw it on TV my heart sunk into my stomach. All that campaigning, time spent meeting with the people, the money he spent. He worked his ass off 100 times harder than the incumbent Bill Kolender, but the people of San Diego are obviously to ignorant to realize what's good for them. That's the main reason why I hate this state, to many stupid people in it, I'm just fed up with it all.

So I don't know, I've lost faith in the democratic system. (And don't say its cause I'm a sore looser.) The good people don't get elected, and the wrong people do. And who is to blame? The voters? The candidates? The financial backers? I'd say it's all of the above. But yet, if I don't vote I have no right to complain; talk about a true conundrum. Its like life, sometimes its not worth it but you just cant stop, there is a purpose behind it, you just cant see it.

So now I'm really depressed and will be like this for a few days. And on that note I leave you with a personal saying of mine, "Life is a bitch you just can't slap."

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

ON SHEEP, WOLVES, AND SHEEPDOGS

I did not write this but it is too great for me not to share. I hope the author doesn't mind me sharing this.
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By LTC(RET) Dave Grossman, RANGER, Ph.D., author of "On Killing."

Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always, even death itself. The question remains: What is worth defending? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for? - William J. Bennett - in a lecture to the United States Naval Academy November 24, 1997

One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me: "Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident." This is true. Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another.

Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million.

Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep.

I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me it is like the pretty, blue robin's egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell. Police officers, soldiers, and other warriors are like that shell, and someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful? For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators.

"Then there are the wolves," the old war veteran said, "and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy." Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.

"Then there are sheepdogs," he went on, "and I'm a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf."

If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen, a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero's path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed.

Let me expand on this old soldier's excellent model of the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial, that is what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world. They can accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why they want fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout their kids' schools.

But many of them are outraged at the idea of putting an armed police officer in their kid's school. Our children are thousands of times more likely to be killed or seriously injured by school violence than fire, but the sheep's only response to the possibility of violence is denial. The idea of someone coming to kill or harm their child is just too hard, and so they chose the path of denial.

The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, can not and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheep dog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.

Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn't tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, "Baa."

Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.

The students, the victims, at Columbine High School were big, tough high school students, and under ordinary circumstances they would not have had the time of day for a police officer. They were not bad kids; they just had nothing to say to a cop. When the school was under attack, however, and SWAT teams were clearing the rooms and hallways, the officers had to physically peel those clinging, sobbing kids off of them. This is how the little lambs feel about their sheepdog when the wolf is at the door.

Look at what happened after September 11, 2001 when the wolf pounded hard on the door. Remember how America, more than ever before, felt differently about their law enforcement officers and military personnel? Remember how many times you heard the word hero?

Understand that there is nothing morally superior about being a sheepdog; it is just what you choose to be. Also understand that a sheepdog is a funny critter: He is always sniffing around out on the perimeter, checking the breeze, barking at things that go bump in the night, and yearning for a righteous battle. That is, the young sheepdogs yearn for a righteous battle. The old sheepdogs are a little older and wiser, but they move to the sound of the guns when needed right along with the young ones.

Here is how the sheep and the sheepdog think differently. The sheep pretend the wolf will never come, but the sheepdog lives for that day. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, most of the sheep, that is, most citizens in America said, "Thank God I wasn't on one of those planes." The sheepdogs, the warriors, said, "Dear God, I wish I could have been on one of those planes. Maybe I could have made a difference." When you are truly transformed into a warrior and have truly invested yourself into warriorhood, you want to be there. You want to be able to make a difference.

There is nothing morally superior about the sheepdog, the warrior, but he does have one real advantage. Only one. And that is that he is able to survive and thrive in an environment that destroys 98 percent of the population.

There was research conducted a few years ago with individuals convicted of violent crimes. These cons were in prison for serious, predatory crimes of violence: assaults, murders and killing law enforcement officers. The vast majority said that they specifically targeted victims by body language: slumped walk, passive behavior and lack of awareness. They chose their victims like big cats do in Africa, when they select one out of the herd that is least able to protect itself.

Some people may be destined to be sheep and others might be genetically primed to be wolves or sheepdogs. But I believe that most people can choose which one they want to be, and I'm proud to say that more and more Americans are choosing to become sheepdogs.

Seven months after the attack on September 11, 2001, Todd Beamer was honored in his hometown of Cranbury, New Jersey. Todd, as you recall, was the man on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania who called on his cell phone to alert an operator from United Airlines about the hijacking. When he learned of the other three passenger planes that had been used as weapons, Todd dropped his phone and uttered the words, "Let's roll," which authorities believe was a signal to the other passengers to confront the terrorist hijackers. In one hour, a transformation occurred among the passengers - athletes, business people and parents. -- from sheep to sheepdogs and together they fought the wolves, ultimately saving an unknown number of lives on the ground.

There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men. - Edmund Burke

Here is the point I like to emphasize, especially to the thousands of police officers and soldiers I speak to each year. In nature the sheep, real sheep, are born as sheep. Sheepdogs are born that way, and so are wolves. They didn't have a choice. But you are not a critter. As a human being, you can be whatever you want to be. It is a conscious, moral decision.

If you want to be a sheep, then you can be a sheep and that is okay, but you must understand the price you pay. When the wolf comes, you and your loved ones are going to die if there is not a sheepdog there to protect you. If you want to be a wolf, you can be one, but the sheepdogs are going to hunt you down and you will never have rest, safety, trust or love. But if you want to be a sheepdog and walk the warrior's path, then you must make a conscious and moral decision every day to dedicate, equip and prepare yourself to thrive in that toxic, corrosive moment when the wolf comes knocking at the door.

For example, many officers carry their weapons in church? They are well concealed in ankle holsters, shoulder holsters or inside-the-belt holsters tucked into the small of their backs? Anytime you go to some form of religious service, there is a very good chance that a police officer in your congregation is carrying. You will never know if there is such an individual in your place of worship, until the wolf appears to massacre you and your loved ones.

I was training a group of police officers in Texas, and during the break, one officer asked his friend if he carried his weapon in church. The other cop replied, "I will never be caught without my gun in church." I asked why he felt so strongly about this, and he told me about a cop he knew who was at a church massacre in Ft. Worth, Texas in 1999. In that incident, a mentally deranged individual came into the church and opened fire, gunning down fourteen people. He said that officer believed he could have saved every life that day if he had been carrying his gun. His own son was shot, and all he could do was throw himself on the boy's body and wait to die. That cop looked me in the eye and said, "Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself after that?"

Some individuals would be horrified if they knew this police officer was carrying a weapon in church. They might call him paranoid and would probably scorn him. Yet these same individuals would be enraged and would call for ..t train. Your only defense was wishful thinking. Hope is not a strategy. Denial kills you a second time because even if you do physically survive, you are psychologically shattered by your fear helplessness and horror at your moment of truth.

Gavin de Becker puts it like this in Fear Less, his superb post-9/11 book, which should be required reading for anyone trying to come to terms with our current world situation: "...denial can be seductive, but it has an insidious side effect. For all the peace of mind deniers think they get by saying it isn't so, the fall they take when faced with new violence is all the more unsettling."

Denial is a save-now-pay-later scheme, a contract written entirely in small print, for in the long run, the denying person knows the truth on some level.

And so the warrior must strive to confront denial in all aspects of his life, and prepare himself for the day when evil comes.

If you are warrior who is legally authorized to carry a weapon and you step outside without that weapon, then you become a sheep, pretending that the bad man will not come today. No one can be "on" 24/7, for a lifetime. Everyone needs down time. But if you are authorized to carry a weapon, and you walk outside without it, just take a deep breath, and say this to yourself..."Baa."

This business of being a sheep or a sheep dog is not a yes-no dichotomy. It is not an all-or-nothing, either-or choice. It is a matter of degrees, a continuum. On one end is an abject, head-in-the-sand-sheep and on the other end is the ultimate warrior. Few people exist completely on one end or the other.

Most of us live somewhere in between. Since 9-11 almost everyone in America took a step up that continuum, away from denial. The sheep took a few steps toward accepting and appreciating their warriors, and the warriors started taking their job more seriously. The degree to which you move up that continuum, away from sheephood and denial, is the degree to which you and your loved ones will survive, physically and psychologically at your moment of truth.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Bush, pussy, what?

Small amounts of people have commented on my last post where I said President Bush is a pussy. So with this I think I should explain myself.

Bush has his back to the wall. Our nation is so divided on so many important issues that it has our President unable to please both sides. Republicans want to control Illegal immigration; the liberals want to allow anyone here. (Yes they do, don't give me crap about it!) The nation is divided between common sense and sheer stupidity. Common sense would dictate for to keep the troops in Iraq, kick out illegals here, build a fence on the border, lower taxes, and beat the crap out of Iran. The liberals who don't use common sense but bias emotion think the contrary. So this leaves our President in the middle. Our nation though is no longer in a state of existence where the President can ride the fence like he is, we need a man in office who can get the job done no matter what dumb-ass democrat/protestor/marcher is saying. We need a man who has a pair and isn't afraid of throwing punches! And I'm just not seeing that in our current President, I'm sorry. Do I want him out of office? Hell no, that would be stupid! That would do more damage than letting him in. Bush isn't a bad guy, I just think he's a tired guy, tired of having to not only fight the terrorists, but also the Democrats, the protestors, and the world. He's a good man with good ideas, he's just not acting on them and that's why I called him a pussy. Is he a real pussy? No. On a personal level I think George Bush is a man's man. Someone who you could go get a burger and a beer with and tell a good joke with. I respect the man; in fact I wouldn't mind spending an evening with him drinking beers and watching a good game, that's something I couldn't imagine John Kerry doing, he'd probably want to watch the ballet. My calling him a pussy has to do with his leadership in the Oval Office only, and that is only due to the fact that he is against the wall and wont stand up against the liberal Asses and do what needs to be done. That's it. If you don't like that, oh well.

Friday, June 02, 2006

Stop Iran, Or You Wont Get A Cookie

Story
"The United States and five other major world powers agreed Thursday to offer Iran a broad new collection of rewards if it halts its drive to master nuclear technology, but they threatened "further steps in the Security Council" if Iran refuses. "-WashingtonPost.com

So, isn't this like telling a little boy that if he stops hitting his sister he'll get a cookie? All we're doing is rewarding Iran's defiance, and once they realize that they'll continue defying us more and more. We are taking the pacifist mentality on this, and you can't do that with these people, they only respond to sheer power. They are building Nuclear Weapon with the intent of striking Israel and possibly the United States; and anyone who disagrees is a fool. We are dealing with a modern day Hitler and the world has to realize that. What the Bush Administration needs to do is put their foot down, tell Iran they have X amount of days to shut down their factories and turn over the uranium or otherwise we will start to bomb their nuclear factories.

Why don't we do it? Because Bush is too much of a pussy to stand up to the liberals in this nation. The Republicans are to focused on winning the house and Presidential office in 2008 that they don't want to make any waves. That is pure bull. As a powerful nation, it is our duty to confront this threat head on. Please Mr. President, don't be like France; we need strength, not weakness.

Don't be surprised if you wake up one morning with the headlines saying: "Israel has just launched an attack on Iran wiping it off the map." That would be a glorious day.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Moore Gets Served!

Story
Sgt. Peter Damon has a right to be angry. Not at the fact that he has lost both his arms in a Blackhawk crash in Iraq, but because the anti-American filmmaker Michael Moore has used his tragedy for his own financial gain. In Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11, it shows an NBC interview Sgt. Damon gave about how he felt after the accident and how the medicine was helping the pain. But Moore took that clip and sandwiched it in to the film to appear as Sgt. Damon was complaining about the war and the treatment of Vets by the Senate, which was not the case. Sgt. Damon is very much America and proud that he served to help liberate Iraq. Sgt. Damon was so made at Moore for this defamation of character that he is now suing Moore and NBC for $85 Million for misusing his comments.

I say to Sgt. Damon, good for you! Hold this anti-American scum accountable for his negligent actions. I will be praying for you Sgt. Damon and that justice will be served. I hope that others who Moore has use their words irresponsibility follow, maybe that will wake up the filmmaker and tell him that he isn't a god.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Why Time Travel Is Impossible

I was on the 'can' doing what I always do there; provocative philosophical thinking, and I noticed something in my magazine. There was an ad for a book that was titled, "What If Jesus Was Never Born?" or something like that. And I got thinking of what if our Savior was never born, or was born years later. How would the world be different? What if we created a time machine and the devil went back in time and kill baby Jesus. WOW! What ramifications that would have! So then I started contemplating the idea of time travel, is it possible? Can I go back and not have made an idiot of myself on that date? Could I have stopped the planes from hitting the Twin Towers on 9-11? What if, what if? My conclusion to all these questions was, no. And let me explain.

For time travel to be possible God would have to be able to do it, right? God would have to want to and have a need to. But for God to have that want or need to time travel it would have to be for a purpose of correcting the past. Why? Because God had the whole world planned and thought of from day 1 and before that, before the creation of the Universe. He knew where I would be and what I would be doing today a million years ago. So since God knew all this from the beginning, for him to correct it would require a mistake and or a lack of knowledge on his part, which would contradict His divinity. God doesn't make mistakes or have a lack of knowledge; if he did he wouldn't be God. So by this circular assessment we know that God cannot through his divinity time travel into the past because it would go against his perfection. For him to go back he would need a reason and that reason would contradict his Holiness.

Now some skeptics will say that we can do things God can't do, i.e. Sin. But that's not the same and in no way does this impede his omnipotence. Man can sin but God can't for the same reason he can't time travel. God can't do these things not cause he's stopping Himself, but because He is Holly and Holly cannot sin. It's like trying to create a round triangle, it just can't be done. And we can't time travel just because God allow for it to happen. He planned it all, and He's not going to let us ‘Man' screw it up.

Now for argument sake when I say time travel I'm referring only to traveling to the past, not the future. Though we know some of the future through God's revelation to a few people like John and the other prophets, they did not nor could they travel to the future to affect the outcome. They were just given a vision, that's all. So I am just referring to time traveling to the past. We cannot affect what has not yet occurred. We can only be shown through prophecies of what is to come.

Now there are other reasons why time travel is impossible other than it contradicting God's divinity. One, if we could go into the past what would stop Satan from going there and killing the baby Jesus to stop the messiah from coming. God would not in anyways allow for that to happen.

Also time is linear and for time travel to be possible it would have to be non linear. But then you get into the whole ‘space time continuum' debate. Which I know nothing about.

So there you have it. A short but powerful argument for why time travel is impossible. I know not many will argue with the logistics of it; any logical thinker will come to the same conclusion. They only might argue the theological aspect of it. But I just wanted to bring that theological view to it so that's why I'm writing.

And as for those dreamers out there who wish to relive high school, I want to apologies that I had to pop your bubble and bring you back to reality.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Thank You

I send out a special Thank You to all those who have died for Freedom and for those still fighting.