Bill Gates hits the nail on the head

Love him or hate him, he sure hits the nail on the head with this! To anyone with kids of any age, here’s some advice. Bill Gates once gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world. Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it! Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself. Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both. Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity. Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them. Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room. Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life. Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time. Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually Have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs. Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

Facebook Changes

I have been on Facebook for about a year now and for the most part I really like it. I have been able to connect with old friends and family I have not seen in years. I was even able to talk my wife who use to not spend much time on the computer to join. She now has more friends then me and is happy to hook up with old friends she has not seen since she was a kid.

She was Even able to find her lost half brothers she has not seen since childhood. So I think Facebook is a great Internet tool. Some of the games are kind of fun too and I can let the world see the new pictures of my grandson. It gets many more hits then this site and more people can see it. Plus it lets me keep up with my friends without being on the phone 20 hours a day.

I tried MySpace and some of the other networking sites but for a middle age married guy like me Facebook is much better. MySpace is mostly young people. Not that there is anything wrong with that but it is not for me. Facebook has plenty of young people but also plenty of people around my age. Even my daughter is on it. So you can see I am a big fan of Facebook and do not criticize to be mean but hopefully maybe Facebook will take my words and improve some things that I think are wrong.

I am a programmer so I know as well as anyone the problems with launching any new application or web site. And an application or web site that thousands or maybe even millions of people are using wile making upgrades is 10 times harder so I do sympathize with this latest change to Facebook. However there are some thing I am not happy with as a consumer of the site. 

For one, if you want to see just your page and wall you have to go to your home first then click on your page and if you are luck you don’t accidentally click on your profile. Those two links are too close together. 

They hid the logout button in the Account drop down box. This is never a good thing to do, the login and logout links should alway be easy to fine. It took my wife a couple of Min’s to figure out where it was. This is especially dangerous for someone using a shared computer like at a library. Would you want to have a stranger using your account and saying things to your friends that you would not say yourself because you forgot to logout? Displaying the logout link where it is easy to find reminds us to logout when we are done.

If you had any apps, you use to be able to click on the app no matter whee you were because the app was bookmarked in bottom bar that remained regardless of the app you were currently using. Now if you want to go to a specific app you have to go back to your home page and then click on the app. Some people play multiple games and it is a pain to have to go back to your home page every time just to change apps. If anyone knows of anyway to get around that please let me know.

Now there have been some problems where people are logging on to their homepage and finding a message you have no new feeds. Sometimes you have to click on “Home” two or three times to get your friends feeds.

My daughter reported that she was having problems with uploading pictures to her Facebook account, but to be honest, I found it better then it was to upload photos.

People want a change that make things less complicated. The less number of clicks you have to make the better. Come on Facebook what is up with that? When you make major changes like that you are suppose to tell people you will be making changes, when the changes happen and changes should not go into effect until extensive testing has been done. I am sure you have done your testing, but your customers should not be finding bugs. You should be paying programmers to do that.

The European Union and the tragedy in Haiti

I find myself two days in a row agreeing with President Obama. We must be experiencing climate change because even Hell is freezing over. Yesterday I wrote a post on how I agree for the first time since he took office with President Obama on the subject of Net Neutrality. Now I find myself agreeing with him on the quick and massive response to the tragedy in Haiti. I only partial agreed with him on sending more troops to the war because he didn’t really want to. He did it out of pressure and knew the consequence if he didn’t. He know many more American lives would be lost there if they did not get the help they needed. But this is not a discussion on his war policies.

Getting back to the relief effort in Haiti, President Obama did the right thing with swift action in responding to the tragedy. The only ones that were there before us was Israel. They are particularly adept at caring for the sick and injured in mass tragedies. There country has missiles flying in that kill and maim people by the hundreds at a time. So they have plenty of experience with mass casualties. But this post is about the EU response or lack of it and their jealousy of America. The job of the President of the EU is to bring unity to the Union. But now they are reduced to squabbling over the question of why they allowed the U.S. to take charge of the situation in Haiti. It is actually very simple, because someone had to. If Haiti had to wait for the EU or the United Nations to respond they would still be waiting and the death toll would be even higher. They argue and bicker over what to do but they have found some common ground on which to agree, anti-Americanism. Berating the courageous and almost super human effort of not only the military but also the civilian organization that have answered the call to help the people of Haiti is a way of somehow diminishing their own failure to respond in the humanitarian effort.

Most of it seems to be around the idea that America sent in the military to take over that small island nation and make it our 51^st state. Of course they give no consideration to the idea that the US military are experts at logistics in extreme hazard areas and the large planes, ships and vehicles that the US military possesses allow for massive transportation of humanitarian supplies and food. Not to mention they are experts at setting up field hospitals to help the sick and injured. The U.S. has the most and largest hospital ships in the world and they are stationed off the coast working on the sick, injured and dyeing.

Then there is the American Red cross who are also experts at getting help to victims of disasters like this. I know the Red Cross was not made in America, I believe it came out of one of the neutral counties, Switzerland or Norway. But the American Red Cross had done just as much if not more to help disaster victims. Because of the generosity to the American people, the American Red Cross has become a larger, better equipped and more relevant organization then the original Red Cross, although if I am not mistaken, the original Red Cross is also in Haiti providing relief efforts while Europe argues.

The common theme among the pundits in Europe seems to be that Americans are somehow genetically incapable of humanitarianism. I find it strange that they would think this since the vast majority of Americans are from European stock. If it were genetically true would not we be on the same footing with Europe? The truth is that the American culture, not our European heritage that makes us the most generous people in the world. America in her 234 years has given more aid in the form of supplies, food, money and human effort then all of the European nations combined. Not only providing humanitarian efforts during disasters, but also to help the poor, needy and hungry around the world during non disasters. It was an American scientist Norman Borlaug that developed the high yelled disease resistant crops that feed the world and defied the so called experts that predicted world wide famine in the 1970 and single handily fed the entire world. Billions of people are alive today because of this American scientist. Is there still hunger and famine in the world? Yes there is, but that is mostly the cause of the governments and greed of the countries that are starving, not because there is not enough food to feed the world.

But the most common EU complaint seems to “Fault” the US for controlling the situation. Envy over American power and leadership seems to be at the heart of the European complaints. America acted quickly and decisively and I applaud President Obama for this. This embarrassed the European Union who claims to be a superpower but who can’t decide how to conduct relief efforts and bickering has once again demonstrated that they are not the equal to the United States.

Some of the worse talk is coming from countries that are perceived as America’s friends. Italy’s Guido Bertolaso who is the head of their government said that the US led efforts in Haiti is a “pathetic” failure that is turning a national tragedy into a “vanity show for the television cameras.” Bertolaso, who holds Cabinet rank in the center-right government of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, also said: “When confronted by a situation of chaos, they [the Americans] tend to confuse military intervention with what should be an emergency operation, which cannot be entrusted to the armed forces. We are missing a leader, a co-ordination capacity that goes beyond military discipline.” Bertolaso called for the appointment of an international civilian humanitarian coordinator, under the supervision of the United Nations, of course. This of course is a load of crap. The American military are trained for humanitarian efforts as well as war. Maybe that is the one thing lacking in the armies of Europe but not America.

As reported by Soeren Kern of Pajamas Media French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet, a member of the center-right government of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, accused the United States of “occupying” Haiti and demanded that the United Nations investigate U.S. aid efforts. “This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti,” Joyandet said. He called on the UN to “clarify the role of the United States.” At the same time, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner lodged a protest with the U.S. State Department, complaining that the airport in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince had become an “annex of Washington.”

Left wing and some right center newspapers have are also debating on American motives in taking such action in Haiti, all of them political and military and not humanitarian. Once again they show their envy of America.

The European Union is such a joke. I really thought that England would be the one country that did not join the Union. Of all the country that showed the most national pride, England seemed to be the strongest. I guess they gave in to the pressure of the leftist and progressives in their own country. It is not too far removed to have this happen to America as well. Americans for the most part take pride in their National sovereignty. I for one would fight to the bitter end to keep America out of the hands of the Europeans. I predict if it does ever happen it will start with the North American Union and then be absorbed into the European Union as part of the one world government. The idea of some unknown Europeans who we did not elect making decisions that affect the well being of America just does not sit well with us. That is one of the very reasons for the American Revolution to begin with. Joining the EU or the NAU would set America back 200 years. And they call it progressive, more like digressive.

Fair winds and following seas,

Sailor Ray

Net Neutrality

Finally, after a year there is something I can agree on with President Obama. At least according to his web site he supports net neutrality to keep the internet free. For anyone that does not know why net neutrality is so important let me explain it from my prospective. I am a computer programmer who does most of his work on the internet. My clients contact me thru the internet; I look for jobs on the internet. I use the internet everyday to make a living. I build websites that some businesses use for advertisement and e-commerce on the internet.

There is a plan in the works by the major Internet Service Providers (ISP) to make the internet a pay service much like your television cable company does. They will package specific web sites and services and sell it to you at various prices. If you want to use web sites other then what your package has, you have to pay extra. My ISP is also my cable provider, but I pay one price to have the internet service and I can surf the web to any site I want to go to. If the ISP’s have their way, it will cost me extra every time I have to go to a client website to make changes or fix something.

If you are really into Face book, or MySpace or one of the other networking sites and it is not provided in the package you chose it will cost you extra every time you go to check your page. Ever paid bills over the internet, what if the sites you go to pay your bills are not on the package offered? Guess what, you will probably be writing more checks and buying more stamps. You want to go to a food site to get a recipe for dinner? What if it is not on your package? Pay extra for dinner. Into sports? Sure you can check all the scores with the extra sports package.

What sights will be on the basic package that they will offer. Chances are it will be the most popular and/or the sites that shell out the most money. That means the big name companies that can afford to get on the basic package will get the most traffic. Most of the sites I build to make my living are not big name companies that can afford to pay the high premium prices it will cost to get on the best packages. That means for me less work. Why go thru the expense and time to build a web site if no one is going to your site?

Before I started my own business I was working as a consultant at various businesses doing programming for them. Almost every company I worked for used the internet on a daily basis. One thing we used it for was for out time sheets. We would go on the site and put in our time sheets and the boss would approve or deny the time sheet and then I would go on to the consulting company I worked for. No paper work, more trees still alive and I would get paid in a timely manner. Some companies use their external intranet for things like this but because I worked for an outside consulting company we used the internet. Just the time savings was worth it. I spent less time getting my time sheet signed and then faxing it then calling the company to make sure they got the fax. If the companies have to pay extra to use sites like that why even bother when they have a fax machine?

One of the reasons the internet has exploded over the last 10 years is because it is a free network. Large and small business can use it for advertizing and sales, internal procedures. Millions of people use the internet for everything from banking to playing games. There are thousands of businesses that are internet businesses that will simply shut down meaning lost jobs and revenues from taxes. Millions of people spend millions of dollars on the internet every day. That number will decrease drastically. One of the ways that money is made on the internet is advertizing on sites like Facebook and MySpace and Google. That money will dry up because there will be less and less people hitting those sites.

Some sites use the ad money they get just to keep their sites going. For those of you that has never built a site that was not a free site builder like Tripod or others it is not cheap. Website hosting providers charge a fee to have your site hosted on their servers. By selling some advertizing space you may be able to make enough money to pay for the monthly service fee and keep your site up. I do this on my site; otherwise I could not afford to keep my site going. The money you make by selling advertizing space depends on the number of hits your site gets. If no one ever goes to your site because it is not on one of the ISP packages then why keep the site. I would just close my site down.

This is not just in the USA. ISP’s from all over the world is going to attempt to do this. It will not work for the ISP’s unless all the other ISP’s get on board. Why would you pay to get only some internet service when you can go somewhere else where you can get the entire internet for just the one price? I suspect it will be run like your cable. You can get the basic package with maybe 40 or so channels but if you want the movie channels or special sports packages you have to pay extra.

I was thinking about how this is not unlike Television. For those of you that are old codgers like me, you remember when T.V. was free. Then came along cable and now we have to pay for it and we don’t seem to mind it too much. But there was a big difference, back then there were basically three, count them three stations, CBS, NBC, and ABC. If you were lucky you might get one or two UHF stations but they usually were not as clear as the basic stations. And on stormy days even those stations might not come in so good. Cable brought us better quality service, more channels and being able to break away from Ma bell by offering phone service and internet service too. If they do this to the internet, we will be paying for less service and less channels.

Either way, this is not going to be pretty for us the consumer, if they get away with it be prepared to pay more money to get the service you may need. If they are stopped from doing this, be prepared to pay more for your monthly service to make up for the lost revenue they would get if they did it. I am more willing to pay more to keep the net free then I am to pay for a restricted internet. We can stop this; we can call and write letters not only to our representatives in the government but also to the ISP’s to let them know we will not stand for a restricted internet.

I don’t completely trust President Obama, he has broken his promises before and he has only been in office for a year, but I really hope this is one promise he can keep. I have been looking for something I can agree with him on. I respect the office of president, but the man has to earn my respect and so far he has not. I have not been able to agree with him on anything. Maybe this will be the one thing that we can have some common ground on.

 

Is liberty over rated?

This past weekend on The McLaughlin Group 2009 Year-End Awards, the host of the show John McLaughlin stated when talking about the most over rated subjects of 2009, “The most overrated is freedom,” McLaughlin said. “When faced with economic uncertainty, people don’t want freedom. When they can’t see their economic future, they want the nanny state.” Is this true? Would the majority of Americans give up some or all of their freedoms for a cradle to grave nanny state? The left-stream Media seems to thinks so.

I suggest these inside the beltway pundits are so far removed from the mainstream of America and so involved with radical left wing politics that they really believe crap like this. Arianna Huffington of the Huffington post in a recent blog stated and I am paraphrasing, Freedom of speech is fine but we should have rules for people like Glen Beck and Rush. In other words the basic freedoms granted to all Americans are good for some but should be modified for others that do not tow the liberal line. This is just one of the many reasons why I despise liberalism. It is based on radical Marxist theology, so many of the elite liberals are so confident about their ideas that they think anyone that does not think like them are beneath them and not entitled to the same rights. Whatever happened to equality for all men/women? Or does that just apply to the people who think the correct way?

More and more every day I feel that is the way the Democratic leadership in congress feels about the people of America that they are the smartest people in the country and they are going to do things their way regardless of what the people think. The health care bill is proof of that. Is there any wonder that for the last 4 years this congress has had the lowest ratings among the people then any congress in history? Their brazen disregard for the constitution has never been seen before. I think people in America are waking up. The Tea parties of this past summer is proof of that. I have heard that the tea parties planned for next spring and summer will make last year’s tea parties look like a family get together. I know that I will be attending any that will be in my area this year. These were not paid protesters like the left often uses. These were average law abiding Americans that had not been involved in politics before but are mad that their elected officials are not listening to them. These were working men and women, teachers, doctors, truck drivers, factory workers, grandmothers and children from every walk of life. This really is a grass roots movement regardless of what Nancy Pelosi and her henchmen say. She speaks for maybe 30% of the country. The other 70% of America disagree. The Left-stream media would be included in that 30%.

To be honest with you, I really hope the left and the Democrats in congress keep it up and keep making people mad to the point where Americans will remember who has been representing them come next November. I just hope they do not do so much damage to the country that is not repairable. If we keep these people in congress, we will lose our right little by little. You will know we have lost our country, when some of the rights granted to all Americans will have conditions on them for some but not for all. It is time to take back our country before any of that happens. We can do it next November, at the ballot box. I do not want to see another revolution, American against American, brother against brother. But I for one will not see our right taken away and America transformed into something it was never intended to be. I did not serve for 20 years fighting for America and our freedoms to have them taken away by tyrants.

Fair winds and following seas,

Sailor Ray

 

 

 

 

Hollywood Victims – Poor rich man.

Poor little rich men in Hollywood are now victims of the evil Catholic Church. Last week actor Sam Eliot, who I have enjoyed watching in many films, whined that the Catholic Church shut down the making of sequels for the movie The Golden Compass. Eliot complained the church lambasted the company that produced the film New Line Cinema and scared them off. The truth is the movie was boycotted by one group, The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, boycotted the movie because the series of the books are anti-Catholic and anti-religious. When was the last time a religious group was responsible for shutting down a trio of movies?

The truth is that New Line Cinema is not going to make a sequel because the movie is not a very good movie and did not do well at the box office. Mr. Elliot should have checked other box offices smash movies like The Da Vinci Code, The Twilight sequel New Moon, Harry Potter and “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” – a movie based on C.S. Lewis’ religious allegory of God and redemption all were condemned by the Catholic Church for various and obvious reasons. But all of these movies had sequels made the most successful being Harry Potter to date has had seven sequels. What is the difference between all these movies and The Golden Compass? They were all good movies that people actually wanted to pay $8.00 a pop to see.

But Mr. Eliot is not the only one to claim victim hood for his failures, Michael Moore also claimed the famed victim hood trophy for his box office flop, Capitalism a love story. He claimed his film did not do as well as it could because Disney would not distribute his film. It never occurred to him that it would have still been a flop if Disney would have distributed his film. Who does he blame I wonder for all the books he wrote that very few people even want to read? Michael Moore is in the words of his book a rich hypocritical “Stupid White Man” and a sorry excuse for a human being.

Mr. Eliot, this is the first time I have heard you say something really dumb so I am going to give you a pass but Michael Moore I hardly even think of until stupid stuff like this comes up otherwise he is not even worth my time.

Fair winds and following seas,

Sailor Ray

The dangers of Socialism

America under a capitalist society has brought more wealth to more people than any economic system in history. And I am not talking about only the very rich. It has also created the largest middle class in the history of economics. It has closed the gap between the very rich and the very poor. You may say but there are still millions of poor people. Yes I agree there is. But if you look at the places around the globe that are the very poorest they are the countries that do not run on capitalism at least not in the sense of a free market. Most of the poorest countries have despots running them who spend more money on homes then on their own people. These are not capitalist economies. It is the capitalist economies that provide the wealth to send money and feed the very people that are in these poorest nations.

Socialism does not create more rich people; it only creates more poor people. It takes the money away from the rich and distributes it to the so called poor. But how much of that money reaches the poor? All of it? Not very likely. There will still be rich and there will still be poor. The difference is there will be lest rich and more poor people, the middle class will shrink and not because they are becoming rich but because they will be poor. It is the nature of Socialism. One reason we Americans can even consider socialism is because under capitalism we have created such wealth to be spread around. How long do you think that will last under a socialist system? Eventually the money from the rich is going to get less and less because there will be less of the rich to contribute. What will happen in the future are your grandkids or great grandchildren will live a life poorer then you because they will not have all the opportunities that we have under capitalism.

Up until about 1913, capitalism was allowed to prosper unrestricted. There was very little unemployment; there were massive innovations in manufacturing and farming that put more people to work than ever before. There was never a depression under this type of capitalism. There were some short recessions to be sure. But they were short and shallow because the government kept their hands out of it. Capitalism is a self correcting system. It requires no government intervention what so ever to prosper. If a manufacture or business fails, there is another one waiting to take its place in the market. The only intervention of government should be to protect from fraud and to enforce the rule of law. The Roosevelt “New Deal”, kept the country in a depression longer then was necessary and longer then it would have lasted had the government let capitalism run its course.

Innovation is not a government mandate; I know the current administration is trying to make it that way in the area of energy. Any innovations that are created will come from a capitalist looking to make money. And it will happen sooner, cheaper and better. When the market is ready, it will create the energies of the future. Right now, the administration is trying to force energy sources that are less efficient, more expensive and less plentiful. Eventually these energy sources will be more efficient, less expensive and plentiful, but it will take time. Forcing them before they are ready is just going to make matters worse. It will require more and more government regulations to force the issue. Gasoline is still cheaper to produce and buy, and more efficient then bio-fuels, there for the market demand on gasoline are higher. When bio-fuels are less expensive and more efficient then gasoline then the market will chose bio-fuels. When an all electric car can go as far on one charge as a gas car can get on one tank of gas then the market will be for electric cars. It should be noted here that because more and more corn is being diverted to bio-fuels due to government intervention and subsidies, starving people in the 3^rd world are getting less food. It also creates higher food prices for us as more and more crops are plowed under to raise corn for bio-fuels. Not just corn prices and food made from corn but beef, chicken and pork price rise as feed cost rise due to the shortage of feed corn. And at the time of this writing, corn bio-fuel is more expensive to produce and less efficient and cannot produce enough power without mixing with gasoline and produces a larger carbon footprint then gasoline. So why are we using it?

When natural gas and coal powered electricity becomes more expensive without artificially raising the price thru taxes and regulations then wind and solar power the market will choose wind and solar power. But the environmentalists that are pushing the movement through the government do not want to wait for the natural occurrence to happen through the capitalist system. Unfortunately our elected officials in the administration and the congress are not capitalist and are more than happy to see capitalism fail so that they can push their agenda on our country through programs like Cap and tax. Tax and regulate current forms of energy to the point they are so expensive the system is force to use the new forms of energy even before they are ready. We are in no danger of running out of oil or natural gas. New areas of oil and natural gas have been found to last at least for another 50 years or more. But running out of these fuels is not the question. They tried that in the 1970’s declaring that our oil was running out and it did not discourage usage of it. New oil reserves were found after that and oil production has actually increased since the 70’s.

What about the morality of socialism. Socialism is just one form of statism. Marxism, Socialism, Communism, and totalitarianism are all forms of statism. All these forms of economic and government are nothing more than various extremes of collectivism. Capitalism works just fine without the government and as a matter of fact, works better without government intervention. Collectivism on the other hand cannot exist without the big hand of government. It is the statist that makes collectivism possible. The statist does not see human beings it just sees the group. And everything the statist does is for the better of the group regardless of the state of the individual. To a statist the individual does not exist. Your life, your property, your work and your very existence is only to serve the collective. You have no other purpose. You belong to the state and as such the state can decide not only how to use you but how to dispose of you.

It doesn’t matter how many poor people there are as long as everyone is poor. There will never be a system where everyone is rich. That is an exclusive club that only the statist can belong to. In our current system, no matter how poor you are right now, you have the opportunities, if you are willing to do the work and what is required, to rise above where you are. In a collective, everyone is the same; no one will rise or fall, just stay the same and maintain the status quo. There will always be classes, rich, poor, and middle no matter what system you use. There will be less middle and more poor in the statist government and using class warfare for political games is dishonest at best and pure evil at worst turning brother against brother in the name of politics. But the Marxist uses it well, and has successfully divided the country.

A business professor of mine ones told a good description of the difference between Capitalism and socialism. In a capitalist society, if you own a cow you can sell the milk and trade to your neighbor for eggs, milk for his family and eggs for yours. You can also sell enough milk to buy a bull and mate with your cow producing more cows and bulls. Pretty soon you can supply not just your neighbor but all your neighbors with milk and beef and cheese. And your neighbor making money from his chickens can buy more chickens and feed more people and make more money. In a socialist system, you have a cow and make money selling the milk and beef and buying more cows to feed more people. The state steps in and says you have too many cows and give one or two to your neighbor so you never have the opportunity to feed as many people as you could and neither does your neighbor because the state said he had too many chickens and took them too.

Everyone knows the story of the industrious ant and the lazy grasshopper. This is the socialist version. The industrious ant spent all summer working hard to build his home and collect and store food for the coming winter. The lazy grasshopper lay around in the sun watching the ant going and back and forth and laughed at him not enjoying the warm summer air and thought “What a sucker working so hard on such a lovely day”. This happened all summer as the ant worked hard to build his house and store his food.

When winter came the grasshopper found himself freezing under the skimpy shelter of a few leaves and saw the light in the house the ant built. He looked in the window and saw the ant warm and cozy eating the food he spent all summer storing. He said to the ant how about sharing some of your food and warmth of your house to which the ant replied you had your chance all summer but you decided to play in the fields instead. He gave him a little food and sent him on his way. The next day the grasshopper contacted the government and told them his story. The government came and took the ant’s house and all his food and gave it to the grasshopper who would not share with the ant but the government said that was ok because he was the victim not the ant. The following winter the grasshopper was freezing because the house the ant built was falling down and the grasshopper didn’t work on it over the summer and his food supply was gone but he could not take from the ant again because the ant froze to death the past winter when the government kicked him out and would not help him because he was not a victim.

Fair wind and following seas,

Sailor Ray

Political Correctness 101

What is political correctness? Political correctness is changing a word or phrase to something that to the weak mind changes the meaning, In other words, to hide the truth. Calling an illegal alien an undocumented worker hides the truth that the undocumented worker is breaking the law by entering the country without permission. By calling someone an undocumented worker, they are no longer illegal, they are not breaking the law, and they must have the same rights as American citizens. I wonder how many of those “American citizens” voted in this last presidential election. Calling a terrorist bombing a manmade disaster changes the meaning, again to the weak minded, that it was caused by man rather than a politically correct protected group of men. By changing the meanings the statist can change the debate. The debate is no longer weather illegal aliens should be deported back to their home countries but whether they should be afforded the same rights as American citizens.

At this point in time Democrats push political correctness the hardest, to be more specific, liberal democrats? But why do they do this? One school of thought is in the area of illegal aliens they have a new voting bloc. Of course legally they cannot vote, but these days, that doesn’t really matter. Who is going to check? Anyone who questions it is labeled a racist. Most people do not want to be called a racist so they let it go. It also creates more victims.

I have often wondered why some people push victim hood so much? If victim hood is so bad, why create more victims? Why create programs that create more victims or at the very least do not stop it. Programs like welfare that promote single mother hood. If single mother hood is because the husband died, of the woman was beat often and divorce was the best way out or something of that nature then the mother has no choice. By having programs that encourage single mother hood like welfare that is almost permanent rather than any programs to help the woman make it on her own promotes single mother hood among women that become mothers at an early age due to promiscuous sex and become mothers before they are able to provide on their own for their children. Children of single parent families are more likely to be on welfare when they grow up. The morality in this case is not produce for yourself but let society take care of you.

Proponents of victim hood don’t like people like me. They call us right wing extremist or tea baggers or fascist because we chose to take care of ourselves. We provide our own shelter, we provide our own food, and we provide our own living or get jobs on our own and refuse to live off of others. We believe that if we are put in a situation that we have to accept food stamps or welfare we are failures. Not saying that others are failures for doing so. But because we believe in finding our own way thought life without a lot of help from others or society in general we have failed. We believe that every person is responsible for themselves. That people living on welfare and food stamps and other social programs for long periods of time are burdens on society. They are afraid of us because we refuse to be victims. We take away their power because if they have nothing to offer us then we feel no obligation to vote for them. Because their message is so weak they must create a voting bloc that feels they have an obligation to keep them in power or lose their entitlements.

Some people think political correctness started in the 1990’s under President Clinton. No he just put it on steroids. Some people believe it started in the 1960’s, but the truth is it just reemerged then. Political correctness did not even start in this country. It was started in a small school in Germany just outside of Frankfurt called the Frankfurt school for social research named after Frankfurt University. It was not really a school; it was a think tank of followers of Carl Marx that created the school to figure out why some of his predictions were wrong. Marx predicted that in the next Great War the workers of the world would revolt and a new area of communism would begin. World War I came along and not only did the workers not revolt, they put on the uniform of their respective countries by the millions and went to fight each other.

The Marxist at the Frankfurt school wanted to know what went wrong and dedicated their life to figuring it out and set out to change the world. What they came up with was basically that people in Western Europe at that time were too happy with what they had and they did not understand the utopia of Marxism. They understood that what they had to do was destroy western culture. The only way to create Marxism in the west was not to bring Marxism up to the great western culture because they couldn’t; they had to bring western culture down below Marxism so it would seem to be the better choice. Once they established to bring down western culture they had to come up with a way to do it and they created Critical theory. Critical theory is not the same as Critical thinking. The theory of critical theory is just that, to criticize everything about western culture. They were very careful to say what they were against but not what they were for. Critical theory also has the tenant that logic is separate from context. In other words, arguments for Marxism are logical and arguments against Marxism are not. Facts are irrelevant when the argument is against. Does this sound familiar? Global warming is true due to the facts regardless of any facts that are presented against it.

Not to say all global warming alarmist are Marxist. But it is curious how the left has one argument after the other using this tenant. In the 1930’s they fled Germany because the socialist government led by Adolf Hitler was an even bigger threat to the Marxist. Hitler’s socialist government hated Marxist and most of the people in the Frankfurt school were Jewish. They found a home at Cornell University with the help of The University’s president who himself was a Marxist. Once in America, they shifted their focus from attacking German and Western Europe society to attacking the society and culture of its new place of refuge. Besides applying Critical theory to America they added some new elements. One was the new studies in prejudice. Theodor Adornao a member of the society wrote a book, The Authoritarian Personality. In it he argued that the American people possessed many fascist traits and that anyone who supported traditional American culture were mentally unbalanced. One of the reasons the left likes to call anyone not like them fascist.

By the 1950 it was clear to the Marxist that the working classes were not going to bring about the Cultural Revolution because people understood that Marxism would not work in the American culture and the working class liked capitalism because it brought more money to more people than any system before. Since the working class was not going to play the role that traditional Marxism had expected of it, they had to find new minds to corrupt. They found the perfect group in the American university students of the 1960’s. The Frankfurt school created the victim groups that comprise the politically correct coalition that included blacks and women and was the start of the feminist movement. They also broke down the tradition of sex and sexuality as well as the family in America as being repressive and the traditional roles of women as home makers were products of evil western and American culture, the family interferes with affairs of the state so that must be broken down also.

Herbert Marcuse wrote the book, Eros and civilization that condemned all restrictions on sexual behavior. Sexual repression was one theory that would help bring about political correctness. Marcuse gave the students the intellectual justification of free sex. In the 1960’s the theme on college campuses was free love. People will come up with all kinds of justifications to be able to do what they want to do especially at that age of a college student and Marcuse gave them the reason weather they were right or wrong.

Marcuse is also the source for one of political correctness characteristics, its total intolerance for any view point other than its own. This goes back to the beginning of critical theory that logic is separate from context. He argues that our free American society is a deception that it is actually repressive. He argued for liberating tolerance. What he meant by that was tolerance of ideas coming from the left and intolerance of ideas coming from the right. I have yet to figure out how this is any way better then tolerance of all ideas. In the 70’s 80’s and 90’s if you had a strong sense of who was politically correct, you could have the moral authority to be tolerant of those who were and intolerant of those who were not. Talk about repression, it gives the moral authority of the politically correct to deny speech to those that disagrees with them in a country that was founded on free speech without limitations. One of the greatest wins for political correctness and Marxism was the Supreme Court ruling that hate speech was not protected speech under the constitution. Of course it would be the left that determined what hate speech is. The ideology of political correctness is the enforcement wing of the Marxist society. Radical multiculturalism is another way to bring down American culture by separating us into groups. Divide and concur. It is much easier to bring down a divvied culture then one that is bonded together by tradition.

If the original leaders of the Frankfurt school could come back today and see the culture on American universities and in the American political arena they would be very happy that their ideas of a Western Marxism is taking shape in America, although I think they would be disappointed that it is taking so long. I like to think that people like me who fight the idea of Marxism and political correctness every day are making a difference and fighting back the tide of poison of Marxism and political correctness. If I can piss off at least one Marxist or liberal every day then my job is done for the day. We can win this war if we do not give up and make no mistake this is a war. It is a war for the very survival of the American way of life and the American culture. It has taken over 90 years for Western Marxism to get this far. I think the Marxist underestimate the strength and pride of Americans and that works in our favor. We need to continue the fight so the next 90 years and beyond will be one that the American culture has survived and our grandkids and great grandkid and great-great grandkids still have all the rights and liberties that we do and that freedom as we have know it will survive.

They have not won yet. People like me who two years ago didn’t even know they existed in this country are waking up. The Tea Parties are proof of that. The people that attended these rallies were not paid activist, or politically motivated individuals. Not one of them were homeless people gathered off the street and paid $20.00 to hold a political sign or 20 something collage students with misguided ideologies. No, these were working class average American. Most of them between the ages of 35 and 65, most of them had never been to a political rally or been involved in politics other then feeling a duty to vote. These people are the kind of people that spend their lives raising families, going to their son’s baseball games or daughter’s soccer games, people that work 40 hours or more a week and pay their taxes so they can take care of their families. These people spent their own money to attend the Washington D.C. Tea party from as far away as San Diego, Seattle, Orlando and Texas because they are angry. Angry that we have people in power that think nothing of spending away our money like it was theirs. People in power that think they are smarter than the rest of us and will force us to do things we do not want to do, people that think their ideas and beliefs are more important than our constitutional rights. We are angry because the people in power represent special interest groups and not the majority of the people. We are the people that think socialism is a bad word. And the idea of socialism is a flailed ideology that has failed time and time again all over the world.

People that think Marxism, socialism, or any other totalitarian and repressive form of government is better than the system we have built in America based on individual liberties are morally repulsive and intellectually challenged. They turn around the ideas of selfishness and sacrifice to fit their own needs. To want your neighbor to be able to take care of himself and not be a burden on society is not selfish. The neighbor that is willing to let his needs be met by others and or the state is the selfish one. To want to work and make as much money as you can to take care of your family and contribute to society without assistance of others or the government is not selfish. It is being a man. Government taking as much of your money to give to special interest groups and pork laden bills is selfish. No one believes that congress was working the weekend to work on the healthcare bill because they were selfless public servants. They were working the weekend out of fear and frustration and taking so long to pass this bill. Afraid the power they will get from this will slip from them once again. These are the people that think throwing good money after bad on failed social programs is a good thing. Albert Einstein said it best when he said “Crazy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results” or something along those lines. Liberals will never admit when one of their programs fail. They just think they have not spent enough money on it. Look at education, the government has increased spending by over 90% since 1971 and kids coming out of high school today are no smarter or better educated then they were before 1971. As a matter of fact, there are more dropouts and test scores are not any better than in 1971.

They talk about sacrifice as if it were a good thing when they don’t even know the meaning of the word. If a mother buys food for her child rather than the hat she wanted it is not a sacrifice if the child was more important than the hat. It is a sacrifice if the hat was more important than the child but she bought food for the child out of duty rather than love. If she buys the hat rather than the food it was the child that sacrificed not her. If a man buys a big screen T.V. rather than food for his family it is a sacrifice. It was the family that sacrificed for him. If a solider gives up his life for freedom it is not a sacrifice because he would rather die as a free man than live as a slave to the state. If he gives up his life for a cause he does not believe in then it is a sacrifice. If you give money to a friend or relative that means something to you that is not a sacrifice. If you give it to a worthless stranger, that is a sacrifice. You are not only sacrificing your money, you are sacrificing his self-esteem and his ability to provide for himself. If you give someone a penny for a dollar, that is not a sacrifice. If you give someone a dollar for a penny, that is a sacrifice. If you vote for someone who you think will be good for the county and they are a liberal, then you have sacrificed your vote. Those who would tell us we need more sacrifice are the very people that will not have to sacrifice. Those who would rather give up some or all liberties for security and welfare are selfish and it is a sacrifice. They also do not deserve the liberties they have. It will be the American people and American freedom that will shoulder the brunt of the sacrifice.

Fair winds and following seas,

Sailor Ray

Democrat or Democrat light, this is what some people in the media want for Republicans

I have been noticing a disturbing trend in the left-stream media lately. And it started with the past November election in New York. The liberal republican candidate was ousted by the conservative candidate and then she threw her support behind the democrat. The republican Dede Scozzafava was more Democrat and more liberal then the Democratic candidate Bill Owens. The media is now making a lot of noise about how the Republican are destroying their chances of regaining power in Washington because we are purging the moderates from the party. The storm really hit when the RNC issued a demand that potential Republican candidates take a litmus test before getting any money or support from the RNC.

I have a couple of problems with this. First, do the left-steam media really think we are that stupid? Do they really think we believe they have the best interest of the Republican Party in mind? We know they would be happy if the republican never gained power again. Are we really supposed to take the word of the very people that want the conservative movement to go away? I got news for you, not only are we not going away, we are gaining more and more power every day. The conservative movement is the base of the Republican Party. Without us, the republicans would be just another third party. More of us identify ourselves as conservative first and republicans second. As for me, if I have the choice of a liberal Republican or a Conservative, I will vote for the conservative. If I have a choice between a conservative Democrat like John F. Kennedy and a liberal Republican, I will vote for the Democrat. It is not the Democrat Party I am against, just the liberal wing of it.

The second problem I have is why does the left-stream media keep on calling Scozzafava a moderate republican? She was more liberal then the Democrat. Liberal Republicans are RINOS not moderates and we do not want them in our party. Why can’t they understand that? Why would we want people in our own party to fight the very things we stand for and are for the things we are against? It is counterproductive to have a RINO in the Republican Party. A RINO to a Republican is the same thing as a Blue Dog to the Democrats. The only ones that benefit from RINO’s are the Democrats. But I think that is the goal all along.

So to the left-stream media, I say to you. Keep your so called helpful suggestions on how the Republican Party should be run to yourselves we don’t need your help. Republican will decide on the fate of our party, not liberals. We will take your suggestions no more seriously than you would ours.

Palin and the Left-stream Media

Isn’t it amazing how one strong woman who opposes 99% of their views can make left-leaning Alpha-males scream like little girls and left leaning Alpha-females trumpeting like bull elephants? Women like NBC’s Nora O’Donnell who went to a Palin book sighing with crib notes to attack Palin fans. Men like Mitch Stewart director of Organizing for America whining about how Palin is dangerous to America for attacking Obama’s health care swindle.

Neither of them spoke or have spoken or intend to speak on the dangers of giving international terrorist a major platform for more terrorism and recruitment. No the danger is she is very popular even more now than she was when she was running for Vice President and that she opposes everything they stand for. The danger is her free right to free speech. Although they would fight tooth and nail to maintain their rights to speak they feel Palin should be shut down because she opposes them. It is different because they are the enlightened ones. The hypocrisy of the left never ceases to amaze me and has no bounds.

For eight years, we had to listen to these same people and people like them, whine and complain like little children about President Bush. But oppose Obama and any of his programs and they want to shut you down. Do you think the war on Fox was about the news? No, it was about the news that the left does not want you to know. If there is news and you don’t see it on CBS, ABC or MSNBC, you can bet you will see it on Fox. If any of the afore mentioned “news agencies” were really objective and non-bias, they would have better ratings then Fox. The American people are not the twits they take us for. We understand they only want us to here the positive stories about Obama and his programs while downplaying or not reporting at all anything that would show the administration in a negative light. The D.C. Tea Party last summer was a good example there was either a couple of hundred, or a few thousand or as much as ten thousand reported by the left-stream media if they reported it at al rather than the reality of at least 100,000 people. I saw it on C-Span which is not a right leaning organization, and the crowd stretched from the capital building all along the National Mall. If this was a left-wing protest in support of the health care bill, the reported numbers would have been in the millions with the same amount of people.

One reason they hate Sara Palin is because she is not politically correct. She says what she feels and political correctness be dammed. Political correctness is one of the reasons I decided to retire from the Navy rather than continue my career for two more years but it was not the only reason. When I retired was the end of the Bill Clinton administration when political correctness had taken a strong hold on America. I never thought the irresponsibility of political correctness would take hold in the military but it did. After all, it is the politicians that hold the military’s purse strings.

Political correctness is just as responsible for the 15 brave men and women that died at Fort Hood as the shooter himself. I say 15 because one of the victims was an unborn child and that life counts just as much as the others. There were warnings, but because Muslims are protected by political correctness more so then most other groups, nothing was done about him. The result of political correctness is 15 dead.

Sara Palin haters are almost all of the left and a few on the right. But there is no arguing she connects with many, many people. She has more in common with the average American than any news pundit who live in their ivory towers knowing they are safe as long as the worship at the temple of Obama. Sara Palin in this sense is a heretic, who not only does not worship Obama but opposes everything he stands for. To them that makes her just as dangerous as any terrorist. Anyone who makes liberals hates her by being herself alright with me. If she upsets just one liberal, she is doing her job. You go girl.

Fair winds and following seas,

Sailor Ray