Appropriation – What’s Sauce for the Goose

I think I could rock this look!

I always wanted to do corn rows in my hair sometime or other – just for the heck of it. Now I’m afraid to lest an irate African American college student attack me with scissors. Apparently, by braiding your hair in certain ways you are “appropriating” black culture for your own nefarious white honky purposes.

I know most black people find this appropriation business stupid – at least black people I know do. I think sharing each other's culture is a kind of compliment. How do people get theft out of somebody imitating their favorite things. Imitation, they say is the sincerest form of flattery. 

In fact, this kind of phony outrage is mostly encouraged by university professors and so-called diversity advocates – most of whom are guilt-ridden white liberals.

Okay, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that my corn rows would be an “appropriation” of black culture. So tell you what. I’ll deny myself a head full of corn rows. This is a sacrifice for me. It’s taken a while to grow my hair out long enough to do proper corn rows, so it’s a real wrench for me to give up on my corn row dreams. But hey, I wouldn’t want to take what’s not mine.

That said, (and you knew this was coming),  I’d like you guys with the corn rows to give back us honkies something that belongs to us. 

RAP MUSIC

You see rap music is identical to a loosely structured dipodic rhyme form known as Skeltonic or Tumbling Verse.  This form of verse has the following form according to the website Poet’s Collective.

• Any number of lines without a Stanza break
• Each line consist of two heavy stresses and any number of unstressed syllables
• Lines are mono-rhymed until the poet decides to begin a new rhyme.
• The poem should have energy and be fun.

Skeltonic Verse was invented by English honky poet John Skelton (1460-1529). Skelton was a colorful character. He was a teacher of Prince Henry, later King Henry the Eighth (the original party king). Leading the way for modern rappers, Skelton spent some time in the hoosegow.  He was also banned by the Church as a corrupter of youth.

Like rap music, Skeltonic verse has two stresses per line and any number of unstressed syllables. Every line is rhymed with the line before it – unless the poet decides to change the rhymed last word. So sometimes you’ll get 2 lines that rhyme with each other and then two more with a different rhyme. The rhymes could be repeated three or four or ten times – however many the poet decides he wants to repeat the rhyme. The rhyme pretty much goes on till the rhyme runs out of “energy”.

Given that Skeltonic verse was invented in the 15^th century in England, I think it’s fair to say that the rap rhyme scheme was appropriated from ancient Caucasian culture – at any rate, we had it first. In exchange for my foregoing corn rows, I demand that you forego appropriating our white rhyme schemes.

As John Skelton would say,

If you play it loose

The sauce for the goose

Is sauce for the deuce

The goose and gander

Don’t mean to pander

Don’t get up your dander.

I want you to know

The same is so

Wherever you go

I don’t know

You can puff and blow.

But your cultural practice

The simple fact is

That history backed this

That the things we like

In front or back of the mike

Every recreation

Came from some other nation

And was an appropriation.

Peace out!



© 2016 by Tom King

 

The PC Police Go After Huckleberry

(c) 2010 by Tom King

The PC police finally did it. I knew they eventually would. It's been coming for a long time. Mark Twain, like most authors who tell the truth, was doomed from the beginning. His original sin was telling the truth about African Americans. He portrayed “one of them” as an authentic and admirable human being, while the white folk who surrounded him seemed a motely lot of con men, gossips, swindlers and dimwits. It was a revelation for its time and Huckleberry Finn, particularly, is an important book. Much of what we common folks understand about the black community of the early 1800's South, we learned in high school, not from Harriet Beecher Stowe's melodramatic Uncle Tom characters, but from Mark Twain's gentle and surprisingly wise Jim.

Twain's prose is authentic, gritty and realistic for the time. It's really sad. If he'd laced Tom and Huck with f-bombs, he'd be a literary lion in today's educational world. Instead, Sam Clemens used a word beginning with “N” that, used in virtually any context these days, will not only end your career, but get you sued in the process. An Auburn English Professor has decided to protect us all from the N-word. Twain Scholar Alan Gribben has removed every incidence of the word, replacing it's use mostly with the word “slave”.

I'm not sure I like Slave Jim any better and it certainly doesn't have the kick in the gut that N.... Jim does.

I blame Walt Disney, the Brothers Grimm and J.K. Rowlings. We all grew up listening to and reading stories in which certain words were magic. “Open Sesame” and magic doors stand ajar. “Alakazam” and bad guys disappear in a puff of smoke.

Myself, I don't believe in magic words. Words are tools for good or ill. We use them to communicate ideas. They have no power outside the context in which we use them. If we attach some sort of imaginary “power” to words like the one I'm talking about, we are, in essence, saying there are things that cannot be said or ideas which may not be considered. I, for one, have a real problem with the “F” word and do not ever use it. I might in a discussion find a reason to discuss and even use the word. I might not even bother to read a book laced with that type of profanity. I don't pay much attention if it's used in context – say quoting someone or adding a little authenticity to a very nasty character.

I wouldn't rewrite the book to leave it out, though. You don't fiddle with art like that. Twain used language to exact purpose. A “Twain Scholar” ought to know better. I usually don't hope another author's book fails, but in this case, I'll make an exception.

Oh, well. Mark Twain is no stranger to having his books censored. That's one of the dangers of being truthful. Lots of folks really hate that.

Just one man's opinion....

Tom King

My Racist Computer

Political Correctness Steps into the Twilight Zone

I knew political correctness had gotten out of hand, but I didn't know just how bad it was.  I got a note last night from an editor. I had to read it a couple of times before I was able to comprehend the instructions I'd been given.

The article I was writing was about how to enable a CD burner in Windows XP.  I described the process of installing and setting up a new CD burner in a PC.  One type of CD burner is an IDE drive.  And IDE drive works on the same sort of connector that and IDE hard drive uses.  In fact, to save space, instead of hooking up an extra cable, you can chain the new CD drive to the same IDE ribbon cable that you have your primary hard drive connected to.

But to do so, you have to set jumpers on the CD burner to the "slave" setting, so that the the hard drive is the "master" drive.  I described how to set up the master/slave relationship between the hard drive and CD burner.  Easy peasy - no problem.  Then I got a rewrite request from the editor it said:

• "Not sure about the technical terms and it may be correctly used, but can you write around the "slave the drive" and the "master/slave" references. That's the only change but I didn't want to make the change myself and mess up the set up process by choosing the wrong words."  -Editor

When it finally struck me that the editor was asking me to remove the "racist" terminology from my article. I've done a couple of articles on hooking up CD's and DVD drives in the past using the same "master/slave" terminology because that's what it's called.  If you've ever installed hard drives, you're familiar with master/slave drive settings. Apparently, the D.S. editor found these terms offensive and wanted me to "write around" the terms - meaning find another way to say the same thing without actually saying "master/slave". 

When I stopped laughing, I revised my article and I sent this explanation to the editor.

• I tried to clarify the whole Master/slave thing for you. The problem is that these are the correct terms. Computer people do not find them racially insensitive. The slave is a secondary or subordinate drive, but no one calls them that or would understand what your were talking about if you called them that. The installation instructions clearly label where the jumper pins go for the "master" or "slave" positions.
  
  I really can't eliminate the words without inventing new terminology which would sound a little ridiculous. I tried to clarify the article a little in case the problem was understanding what a "slave" drive was.
  
  Anyway, until Bill Gates signs an Emancipation Proclamation for CD burners, we'll just have to make do with the terms as they are.........   ;-)

 I put the little winking smiley face in there to let her know I was joking. I doubt it will help.




Tom

Doublethink: Tools of the Trade in 2009

A recent survey of Britishers (who were evidently strapped to a polygraph on completion of the survey), discovered that 2 out of 3 lied about what books they have read. The book that Englishmen and women lied about having read most frequently?

George Orwell's 1984!

The classic novel about totalitarian society run amok is apparently on the top of everyone's "ought to read" list as well as on the top of their "don't want to read" list.

Orwell would not have been surprised. Everybody thought that when 1984 passed safely that maybe we were going to miss Orwell's more dire predictions. Some enterprising souls, I remember, tried to make Ronald Reagan out to be Big Brother. They were never very successful. Reagan always came off as more of an avuncular uncle than as someone who wanted to control your very thoughts or peer at you through your TV set.

Reagan was too busy tossing back a brewski after hours with Tip O'Neal to spend his time worrying about what people were thinking anyway.

The survey may explain why Britain has, while decrying everything from McDonald's Quarter Pounders to Tony Blair as "Orwellian", steadily slid toward the very socialistic nightmare that Orwell predicted. (Did you know you can't walk anywhere in downtown London without having your face scanned repeatedly by hidden cameras and run through facial recognition software). Sadly, their American cousins are right behind them standing at the top of the slope, sled in hand!

The word "doublethink" is an Orwellian invention, just for the novel that pretty accurately describes the Alice in Wonderland convolutions of liberal politics in the good old U.S. of A. of late. Doublethink is, as described by Orwell, "holding two contradictory beliefs in your mind at the same time and believing both of them."

It's easy if you try. Here are some examples:

1. The planet is warming because of man-made carbon production
AND
The planet has been cooling for the past decade

How do you reconcile it. The planet is cooling BECAUSE of global warming.

I'm taking Tylenol now before this goes any further.



2. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are working fine under the Congress' supervision and we don't need any further regulation or supervision says Barney Franks and Maxine Waters, dismissing warning of problems by the president and Republicans in Congress.

AND 6 months later.....

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed because there wasn't enough regulation and supervision

How do you reconcile it. "Eight years of failed policies under the Bush Administration" Say that over and over and over again....

I'm putting duct tape over my head to keep my brains from leaking out!



3. We are stealing from our children's future by spending 80 billion dollars on this war in Iraq and Afghanistan!!!!

AND

We are preserving our children's future by spending this 700 billion dollars to prop up failing banks and corporations.

How do we reconcile this? "We need hope and change." Say it over and over and over and......



4. Corporate greed got us into this economic mess.

AND

We can fix this big mess by giving truckloads of money to the big corporations

We reconcile this how? "Eight years of Failed Policies by the Bush Administration means we need hope and change".


As you wade through the news, the speeches and even our children's "New" history books (an exercise in Newspeak and Doublethink if you ever want to see it in action), you get the feeling something is wrong. You're not sure what, but something is definitely wrong.

The beauty of doublethink is that it's a self-sustaining self-deception. You create a lie that supports your belief. That lie covers the truth that challenges your belief. You lie to yourself that the truth was a lie and the new lie is, in fact, the truth. Then you cover up the fact that you've lied by believing you've told the truth because if you've told the truth then the new truth supports your belief system and there never was anything to contradict that belief system. Now should the new truth develop problems, you simply create a new lie which becomes the new truth and then you lie to yourself and convince yourself that you never made up a new truth and that the old lie was a lie (since it truly was a lie anyway because you told that lie to cover up the original truth which, by now you've convinced yourself was a lie since it contradicted your belief). As you layer lie upon lie you become more adept at believing that the new lies are the truth and at believing you are not, in fact, lying at all, but are creating truth (since the new truths support your beliefs).

You try to get your head around it, but your best buddy tells you not to worry. Don't you know. Everybody knows that we need hope and change. We can trust the president. The stock market is in free fall because it has to get worse before it can get better. Spending like a maniac won't get you, personally, out of hock, but that's how it works for the government. How do we know? Why Obama has said so and he's the smartest president ever. How do I know? Everybody knows that!

For 8 years, the Bush Administration has been accused of wanting to be Big Brother and to control everyone's lives.

The proposed antidote to the oppressive Bush government?

• Make the government bigger
• Bring the military back home and create a military style homeland security force to keep the population in line in case of "emergencies".
  
• Take over the banks,
  
• More federal control of schools,
  
• Government mandated preschools (get the kids into training and indoctrination sooner).
  
• Take over the auto industry,
  
• Take over the housing industry,
  
• Take over the health care industry,
  
• Take away incentives to give to charity and give the money to the government instead through taxes so they can choose what charities are "deserving" of government support.
  
• Take away secret ballots and get every worker into a union.
• Never let a crisis go to waste!
  

God help us!



I need more duct tape!

Just one man's opinion

Tom King

(c) 2009 by Tom King

Artificial Wildness is Poor Policy for Tiger Keepers!

I was saddened to hear over Christmas that 3 young men were victims of a Christmas Day tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo and that one had died as a result of his wounds. I would also like to express my condolences to the staff of the zoo who also lost Tatiana, a female Amur tiger in the incident. It is the policy of many AZA zoos to minimize contact between keepers and the big predators like tigers, but keepers do develop a strong affection for the creatures they care for.

It is natural, in the wake of an incident like this to look around at the smaller tiger refuges, zoos and animal theme parks and wonder just how safe visitors are there. We don’t like to think a simple outing at the zoo with our children can end with a tragedy like this.

“Captive is captive,” says Tiger Missing Link Foundation director, Brian Werner, “…and you cannot duplicate a wild setting in captivity with captive tigers, all captive tigers should be acclimated with people as this better ensures safety of the tigers and people.

At Tiger Creek and facilities like Jack Hannah's Columbus Zoo, the keepers work extensively with the cats to develop a relationship with the animals. This provides an extra layer of safety so that should a cat escape for some reason, it is far less likely to attack someone. Many AZA accredited facilities discourage keeper interaction with their tigers and lions on the theory that somehow it is better for the captive animal to remain in a "wild" state.

Jack Hannah, interviewed on Good Morning America argued against this policy saying, “Tigers you see in captivity today, are NOT taken out of the wild. Tigers are born and raised here in the states. Tigers are endangered. You see more AZA escapes and attacks as each year goes by due to human error, AZA zoos do not encourage any handling of their animals, this is where the fault lies. If there was human interaction then maybe the outcome would have been different.”

As we have seen, if a "wild" tiger does escape its pen, its instincts are going to be to find prey- which is exactly what happened in San Francisco. In this case, there may have been some taunting of the animal by the victims and if this proves to be the case, it only accentuates the need for adding every layer of additional security possible to our animal exhibits.

“While tigers are always wild animals,” says Brian Werner, “One advantage that we have here at Tiger Creek is that our animals are conditioned and have what we refer to as ‘cage manners’. Basically our tigers are imprinted or acclimated to people through various types of training and teaching methods. The tigers at Tiger Creek could still be dangerous just not typically as aggressive as the zoo cats. The zoos like to keep their tigers in their "wild state". They actually pride themselves on this fact. At Tiger Creek we know that this zoo approach makes a tiger much more aggressive and more stressed and even scared of people, which in turn could more easily lead to an adverse situation if confronted without barriers.

“A secondary factor is that some of our best-trained and experienced staffers here have been in with a tiger and know how to work with the cats and not against them. Zoo staff has zero experience at that level which in turn could make for an even more nervous situation if confronted head on with a tiger. It's just as important that staff be trained and acclimated to tigers as it is for the tigers themselves. Nonetheless despite all of what we do we do not mean to undermine that in general tigers are and can be dangerous.”

Maintaining a 'wild' tiger in captivity only makes the animal more angry, unhappy and likely to hurt someone. A hand-raised tiger that knows and has genuine affection for its keepers, that lives in an environment with plenty of mental stimulus and opportunities to play is unlikely to summon up the sort of rage that Tatiana (the SF tiger) exhibited in breaking out of what should have been a safe area. Had keepers paid more attention to her and to making her content and happy, the incident might never have happened. At least, someone should have kept a better eye on visitors to the tiger viewing areas.

At Tiger Creek, we escort visitors around the facility and even when they are allowed to “look around” on their own, there is never a staff member far from the party to prevent young people from taunting the cats or doing foolish things that could get them hurt. We keep double and triple barriers between the cats and visitors and maintain two additional safety barriers – Our staff and the relationship they have with the cats.

Tiger Creek staff maintains a close watch on visitors at all time, eliminating the chance of a visitor causing a tiger to become agitated as apparently happened in San Francisco. There is also a strong interactive relationship between tigers and the keepers. Because Tiger Creek’s cats are either hand-raised or have a great deal of human interaction during rehabilitation, our keepers know their personalities. Problem or spooky tigers are kept farther from the public behind more barriers where visitors can’t disturb them. They are rotated to exercise yards and given play toys. Staff do target training to make it easier to provide care to the animals without having to risk getting in the cages with them. Access to the animals’ living spaces is limited to senior keepers who know their business and take no chances. A content, happy tiger is a lot less likely to jump over a wall and attack a visitor.

Tiger Creek Wildlife Refuge is working on building a new program at the refuge to train zookeepers and wildlife professionals in how to implement this multi-layered captive management approach that layers facility, maintenance, training and relationship building into an integrated safety system with greater redundancy built into it. As the number of tigers and other large cats in captivity inevitably increases, it is important that we thoroughly train a new generation of captive managers and keepers.

If you’d like to be a part of creating that training program and improving the safety of our zoos, refuges and wildlife parks, contact me at (903) 714-2353 or by e-mail at development@tigerlink.org to find out what you can do to help us prepare provide a safe home for our tigers and a safe place for our children to watch and learn about them. You can also visit us at http://www.tigerlink.org/ and http://www.tigercreek.org/ to find out more about what we do at Tiger Missing Link Foundation.

There are just over 320 tigers in AZA accredited zoos in the US. There are more than 3,000 in refuges, animal theme parks and smaller zoos. The majority of attacks, however have occurred in AZA zoos and often in large ones like San Francisco, San Antonio and Denver, while smaller refuges like Tiger Creek and zoos like Tyler’s Caldwell zoo, which shares the Tiger Creek philosophy of hand-raising captive cats, have had few major incidents. Tiger Creek has had no serious injury or incident on its grounds or during the many sponsored rescues it has conducted since it opened 12 years ago. Tiger Creek manages nearly 40 cats in its facility with up to 9 intern/trainees on staff at a time. The Refuge's safety policies have worked there as they have in hundreds of other refuges and small zoos and I believe it is because these folks take a practical approach to captive management that recognizes that a happy cat is a safer cat. That's one more safety layer that AZA should consider recommending to its associated zoos.

Finally, we're already hearing from the left-wing Animal Rights community declaring we should hold no animals in captivity EVER and using this incident to support their position. Ironically, it's the zoo's misguided attempts to placate the AR people that I believe has led to the too-common policy of keeping captive animals in a supposedly pristine "wild" state. Like Brian said, "Captive is captive." It's not safe or responsible to deliberately cultivate large captive predators "wild nature". The Environmentalist newspaper, 'Daily Green' calls San Francisco Zoo's policies "enlightened". If so, is there a correlation between enlightenment and poor safety. This is the second time Tatiana has attacked a human.

How many more tigers and humans need to die before someone rejects this politically correct, but wrong-headed nonsense. There's not enough room in the wild to maintain a genetically healthy tiger population or insure the safety of humans living in Southeast Asia. Sending all tigers back to the wild as The Daily Green proposes, merely insures their extinction. It would be nice to do for all animals to live in the wild, but we can't right now unless we're willing to accept their extinction. Self-righteous pressure from the greenies to keep animals in some idealized "natural state" has only promoted half-measures by zookeepers and compromises public safety.

Just one man's opinion

Tom

Santa Kinda Creeps Me Out Now....

It's happened again. In the constant evolution of the English language, there are moments that change our culture forever. The invention of such phrases as "You know" as an interjectory interrogative (I'm like, you know, going to, you know, go fix some, like you know, supper, you know!" have really slowed down the pace of American life. Other great moments in the evolution of English include the addition of new usages for words like , "Dude","Man", "Like" and "Inappropriate".

Well, listen up all you fans of politically corrective changes in the language (remember the attempt at substituting "hir" for the use of "his" as the standard possessive pronoun when you didn't know the sex of the person). We've got it goin' on this Christmas.

You'll be pleased to know that in the interest of interracial sensitivity, Santa Clauses are now being prohibited by the owners of toy stores, malls and department stores from saying "Ho, ho, ho". We all recognize that there has been a lot of uncomfortably negative recent publicity surrounding the use of the word "Ho" by radio shock jock Don Imus.

Apparently the word is a colloquial reference to women employed in a less than prestigious line of public service.

Santa Clauses now have been instructed to say "Ha, Ha, Ha" instead of the traditional "H.." word. One Aussie Santa has even been fired for refusing to go along with the switch.

Now, I'm all for political correctness and all, but having heard Santas out there going "Ha, ha, ha", I have to admit it kind of creeps me out. Frankly, it sounds like he's laughing at the children rather than with them.

I know, when I was 8 years old, if Santa had said to me, "Climb up in my lap little boy, Ha, Ha, Ha....", well I'd have been climbing up over the fuzzy red barrier and crawling for safety using the fake reindeer for cover.

I mean we might as well have Santas up there going, "Hey, ever played the 'altar boy' game - ha, ha, ha!" or maybe, "Pssst, kid! Ever watch gladiator movies?" I actually put on my Santa suit and tried out alternative laughs in front of the mirror.

"Hee, hee, hee," sounds too rodent-like.

"Hoo, hoo, hoo," sounds like a baboon (or Tim Allen when he's not actually playing Santa Claus). That's no good.

"Haw, haw, haw," is way to British aristocracy for my taste.

"Hmm, hmm, hmmmph," came out sounding a little sinister (...is that a candy cane in your pocket, there Santa, or have you been out standing in the cold north wind again?)

"Ho, ho, ho" is really the only way that sounds non-threatening.

Look this kind of thing has been tried before. Remember when Enco discovered that it's company name was some kind of obscene insult in French or Belgian or one of those snooty European languages. They did a search to find a new name that wouldn't offend anyone. What did they come up with?

Exxon!

A name which apparently offends nearly everyone equally - at least everyone who "counts" in the incestuous world of the politically correct.

Oh, well. from this Santa, a big old, a non-threatening, culturally neutral...

"Ho, Ho, Ho!"

And a very Merry Christmas, Hannukah, Ramadan, Kwanza, Winter Solstice and Fiscal New Year (the sacred holiday of all tax accountants)!*

*No offense intended to any person living or dead. The expression "Ho" is not intended as a comment upon the occupational choices, worth as a human being or personal habits of any woman, man or person of ambiguous gender. Anyone using this essay for the purposes of hurting the feelings of any person living or dead, their family, friends, lawyers or CPA's are advised that such use violates the implied writer/reader contract implicit in the posting of this work of attempted humor/opinion in a public space. May not be used without permission of the author, the RCIAA, ASCAP, Michael Jackson Properties, Ltd, Halliburton, Inc. and the National Association of Serious Tax-Accountant Yuppies (NASTY). Improper use of this essay will force the author to send his cousin, "Thumbless" Guido O'Hoolihan, the Irish-Italian enforcer over to your house to let the air out of your tires, to put a stink bomb in your mailbox or to toilet paper the trees in your front yard, so you better just watch out! (c) 2007 by T. King esq.

Forget Their Very Names

When I wrote this, in the wake of the Omaha Mall shooting, the news media is rushing to get the killer's image on their front pages as quickly as possible. In the next two weeks we will be treated to an exhaustive study of the young man who killed 8 innocent people - his history, his psyche and his motivation. 

 

Endless television, radio and print media reporters will beat their chests and cry "Why, why, why?" As I return to update this blog, a tatted up, drug-addled skinny white kid who fancied himself a progressive anarchist rapper opened fire on a 4th of July parade in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago, killing 6 and putting 24 in the hospital including children. So far in this second year of Joe Biden's administration, we're already over 300 mass shooting so far this year.

Why? The media is answering its own question.

The news media will now trot out pundits who cry for more gun control and for less gun control because political fights are fun for reporters, who enjoy tossing raw meat in amongst the hyenas and watching the fun that follows. The wise men amongst us will speculate as to who is to blame as though the issue were entirely black and white.

It is not. I have extensive experience confronting violent people. I worked for many years with violent children and teens. I've stood nose to nose with a young man who had a 6 inch hunting knife pointed at my unprotected belly and talked my way out of it. Violent behavior cannot be understood in black and white. Many speculate about whether allowing mall patrons to carry guns would have made a difference and in the ensuing verbal smoke, we all ask ourselves whether, if we had been there and we had been armed, would we have been able to fire the shot that ended that young man's life - even if it might have saved the lives of the innocent bystanders.

I know that answer for myself because of my training and experience with violent people. If I were the only one in the line of fire, I would think twice. I used to work with mental patients and with a patient who was having a violent episode, I would always try to talk him down before doing any sort of restraint of physical intervention. I am prepared to turn the other cheek so long as that cheek is my cheek alone.

However, if there is another person, in danger, threatened especially by an armed individual, I would not hesitate to take the attacker down. The large teenage boys I dealt with in the psych facilities where I worked, soon learned that so long as they only threatened me, they were not likely to suffer the indignity of being taken to the ground by a paunchy old guy and were more likely to walk away with some dignity in tact. They also knew that if they continued to attack or seriously threaten someone else, especially someone smaller, it was the quickest way imaginable to find themselves pinned to the floor by said paunchy but surprisingly strong and agile old guy. The sudden ignominious end to the confrontation entirely spoiled the drama for them, so they quit threatening others in those situations and confined themselves to shouting obscenities at me - much more dramatic and satisfying for them.

There is a reason every major massacre in recent years has taken place in a gun-free zone. No homicidal killer wants to raise his gun and have someone shoot him in the head before he can start killing people. This actually happened recently at a graduation party where a gunman drew his weapon on a crowd and a lady reached into his purse, extracted a large and impressive pistol, took careful aim and put an end to a potential bloodbath. It totally ruined the effect he was aiming for and saved lives. It takes away all the drama for reporters when nobody but the bad guy dies. All that's left for them is naval gazing and "what iffing" in an attempt to serve the anti-second amendment narrative.

 

My work with deeply troubled teens gave me a real insight into what goes on in the minds of people who resort to large scale violence to cope with their unhappiness. I actually had kids in therapy who told me that their career plan was to "die in a hail of police gunfire". They wanted to die spectacularly and to become famous. For them a mass shooting was the best way to get their suicide note to the largest number of people possible. It's a pathetic search for a way to leave a mark in a world that they feel they have no stake in.

But, if we deny them the fame, then we deny them the very thing that motivates them to kill. The most effective tool we have to prevent this sort of mayhem is to make sure that whoever does this kind of thing is wiped from our collective memory - their names forgotten for all time. It's the only thing that will work. To ever do this, we would need to re-invent our culture and make our morbid curiosity generally unacceptable. We could still allow for the morbidly curious to get their news fix about the perps - simply use obviously fake names.

Those who want to die in a hail of gunfire have a deadly fear of being anonymous. The last thing they inevitably say in this life is something to the effect that "I'll show them. They'll never forget me."

How about let's show them? How about let's forget them? Let's not even remember their names. It would be a kindness to their families. It would be a kindness to the victims' families. It might even dissuade others from copying these young men's examples. It might just save some lives and all it requires is that we give up our morbid fascination with mass murders. How hard is that?

Sure, with a free press, you'll always get bloggers and sensational newspapers that won't go along with it, but even then, if they are in the disapproved of minority, the killer still loses his or her desired fame and attention and, more importantly, sympathy. If you're only going to be remembered by some obscure blogger or weekly gossip rag, what's the point. These guys are going for national news media and front page headlines, not a place beside Bigfoot and that space alien that tells the presidents what to do.

I'm doing my best to forget them all. When I read a news story, I deliberately avoid paying attention to the name of the killer at all. To this day I couldn't tell you who the Virginia Tech guy was or name a single high school shooter or the McDonald's guy, the Killeen shooter or any of the other mass murders of the past 20 years. You can deliberately forget someone if you try hard.

So....

What if every one of us pledged to never say or write the name of a mass murderer again? What if we each told ten friends and asked them to do the same and they, in turn, told ten friends and so on and so on. In just a few repetitions, you can wind up with an astronomical number of people who have heard the idea. If half of us took the pledge, we could create a cultural phenomenon where a culture (or at least a sizeable chunk of that culture) consciously decided to change itself and renounce the glorification of these people.

What if we threatened to stop watching news media that ran endless photographs and profiles of the killers. I noticed today that I haven't seen one single photo of the victims, yet, but that smarmy delinquent that murdered 8 innocent people is on the front page of everywhere. It makes me sick and it's cruel to his family.

So, let's just stop it. I'll write my ten letters. How about you?

Just one man's opinion...

Tom King

PS:  Since I first wrote this a large number of mostly conservative news outlets have ceased telling viewers the names of mass shooters and terrorists. It seems others have had the same idea. It's a good sign....

© 2007, 2022

Preparing for the end of the world....

Somebody started a discussion on global warming on one of my favorite forums (Banjohangout.com). What banjos have to do with global warming I'll never know 0ther than misguided attempts by the political correctness crowd to have banjo playing classified as a source of rural noise pollution and to include in the Kyoto Protocols, a ban on the use of banjos, accordions and bagpipes in all public places.

Actually, we've had a cool summer in Texas this year - lots of rain and flooding. It hit the 100's today for about the first time all summer. Is global cooling back? I remember 25 years ago we were gonna have an ice age for the same reasons we're now being told it'll be a melt down.

I decided after living an exciting year in Houston, Texas that it just don't make good sense to live along the coast. Hurricanes WILL hit everywhere along the coast at sometime or other. And if the sea rises or a tidal wave rolls in, it's going to be a mess. I deliberately don't live on earthquake fault lines or downrange of volcanoes. I live far enough south where blizzards are not a problem.

Our only headache here in East Texas is the odd tornado and they prefer trailer parks and small Oklahoma towns and besides they're only a couple of hundred yards wide, so if you go sideways really fast, you can avoid them most of the time.Every century you get an evil despotic dictator who starts a nasty war or conducts a genocide. Asteroids and big meteors - you're never gonna see 'em coming. Space aliens would pretty much whup us with their technology.

If the Apocalypse and the Second Coming happen, there's gonna be no place you can hide.

So, I figure I'll just sit on the porch with my banjo and work on Foggy Mountain Breakdown till I get it right. My plan is to master the high up on the neck part before we all freeze, roast, explode, get rolled over by a tank or caught up in a cloud....

It's not a big dream but it's mine.

Just one man's opinion....

Tom King

Selling Indulgences for the New Catholic Religion

There is a new "Catholic" church in the world and I don't mean what you think I mean. The new "church" isn't exactly a church. It's almost an anti-church. It doesn't worship God the Creator, it worships the creation. Man is not made in the image of God. Man is a cosmic accident that isn't turning out to be such a good thing and (except for certain enlightened exceptions) will probably need to go extinct if the planet is to be saved.

I am, of course, referring to the church of environmentalism. Its theology embraces evolution, the doctrine of global warming, the belief that human non-interference in nature is the way to go and that America is the cause of most of the world's problems because we're too rich and complacent (except, of course, for the wealthy devotees of the new religion).

I call the religion "catholic" because that word "catholic" actually means "universal" or "all encompassing". Environmentalism we are told embraces everyone in a cloud of universal guilt. We all have sinned against our environment. This concept is being taught in schools, churches, magazines, television, radio and everywhere else its message can be spread. It is a religion, because its tenants are taken on faith and based on theories derived from evidence limited by the capacity of current science and the data on which it relies. We are to trust that science - the same science that once proclaimed the earth flat and told us straight-faced that there was a fifth element (in addition to earth, wind, fire and water) called phlogiston that made things burn. The idea eventually lost credibility to the point that a 60's rock group decided to drop "Phlogiston" and water from their name because (a) Earth, Wind, Fire, Water and Phlogiston was a bit much even for the sixties and (b) it violates the "Rule of Threes" (Never name more than 3 elements in literature, marketing or theology to make your point).

Like the worship of God, the worship of the environment is based on the idea that there is something greater than yourself that deserves your worship, sacrifice and devotion. In the same way, Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists base their own worship on the idea that there is a being or "force" that is greater than themselves, the environmental movement abases itself before the idea of an idealized "nature" which knows better than we do how to take care of itself.

Both "religion" and environmentalism rely on bodies of writers like Solomon, David, Moses, and Paul or modern authorities like Al, Rachel, Alec, Barbara and Michael for the tenets of their beliefs. Each of those writers tell of their experiences of either God or mother nature in order to reveal to believers, the character of their god.

What both of these styles of worship have in common is that there exists within each body of believers, individuals seeking power who are willing to utilize the devotion of the faithful to increase their power over the believers. This has happened throughout Christian history, Muslim history, Jewish History AND the history of the environmentalist movement.

What is at the base of it all is the lust for power. It was the cause of Lucifer's original downfall and it is the cause of all of the misery, the blame for which is laid (unfairly) at Christianity's door. In our world, it is not only Jim Jones, Osama Ben Laden and David Koresh, but also Michael Moore, Barbara Striesand AND Al Gore that take the slide down the slippery slope into blind fanaticism and drag their followers along for the ride. Theirs is a fanaticism that brooks no challenge to its theology. Those who disagree are singled out for ridicule, suicide bombs and machine gun fire. Brilliant, respected scientists who challenge the "universal" belief that man is single-handedly destroying the planet are shouted down. Educators, policy makers and pundits who challenge the science that purports to show that a global disaster is on the way if we don't all park our cars and start walking will find themselves quickly marginalized, castigated in the media and sometimes losing their jobs.

Groups like The Conservation Fund and Carbonfund.org make a tidy living planting trees to "offset" the carbon emitted by celebrities flying around in their private jets, cruising in their SUV's and burning the lights in their multi-million dollar mansions. They are as jealous of the dogma that protects their income as Jim Baker and Oral Roberts were. There is not a whit of difference between Scientologists milking Tom Cruise for financial support and the Conservation Fund milking Delta Airlines' corporate guilt to cover the agency's operating budget.

There is no difference that I can see between selling religious "indulgences" and environmental "offsets". Johann Tetzel, a Dominican monk, went about selling indulgences to wealthy 16th century Germans to fund the new St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Rome got money for more marble and the German jet set got a little guilt free debauchery. The Carbon Fund sells carbon "offsets" by planting trees in exchange for generous donations. In return, Al Gore can fly around to his well paid speaking engagements in a luxurious business jet instead of waiting on the runway for the snow to clear with the rest of us peons sitting for 7 hours in Jet Blue business class. Angelina and Brad can fly around the world adopting orphans, ostensibly without releasing more carbon dioxide through their afterburners than the trees they bought can clean up out of the air. Barbara can get to her concert in Rome where people are plunking down $1000 per seat and she can arrive in a time to have her wardrobe fluffed in a nice hot dryer - all without guilt because the Carbon Fund planted some trees for her.

Nice if you can afford it. Meanwhile people like me can't afford to buy enough trees to get to work and back.

Look, I'm not to saying that environmentalists aren't true believers in what they are doing. It's just that the leaders of their movement are not any more immune to the temptations of hypocracy, excess, greed and lust for power than are the leaders of churches, cathedrals, monasteries, mosques and synagogues.

So give it a rest. We grant you the right to believe what you want to believe. We ask for the same right. We may have to allow for the fact that what each of us genuinely believe may be, in some respects, repugnant to one another. You believe in "choice" and anything else is to you an abrogation of a woman's rights. Others believe abortion is murder and an abrogation of the right to life of an unborn child. Is there any way to solve that without one side forcing the other side to bow to its demands?

Not really.

Many Christians believe we were placed upon the Earth to till the soil, to garden and to take care of the animals. A vehement group of animal rights activists and Earth-First conservationists believe we need to leave the earth alone and let it take care of itself - as though nature had a mind of its own and knows best what is good for it. Can the two opinions be reconciled?

Probably not.

So how do we handle the fact they we have not just two sides, but a multitude of cultures, faiths and belief systems that are often totally at odds with one another?

We compromise. It's how we do things in America. We find a solution that allows everyone to retain his beliefs while acknowledging that others have a sacred right to their beliefs. The compromises are often unsatisfying to everyone, but they allow us to live together in relative peace. We allow a person to change his belief system as a result of rational discourse without being in danger of a beheading or banishment. Joe Bob goes to church on Sunday, I go on Saturday. Machmud goes on Friday while April Dawn communes with nature on the weekend. We disapprove of burning down churches, kidnapping people to make them join your church or passing laws that say you have to belong to any one church.

That leaves an awful lot of room for everyone to practice their faith. The case of Desmond Doss springs to mind. Desmond was a skinny Seventh day Adventist kid who got drafted at the outset of World War II. He was a concientious objector - refused to carry a gun or kill anyone because of his religious beliefs. He met his service obligation by becoming a medic. He was hated, reviled and tormented for not "defending his country", but he remained steadfast. Soon after his unit hit the islands in the Pacific, everyone learned a new respect for the skinny medic. One afternoon in Okinawa, he rescued 75 wounded men from an escarpment where they were pinned down. Bullets rained down on Doss, but he was never hit and kept standing at the edge of a cliff in full view of the Japanese, lowering one man after another to safety. One Japanese sniper later reported that his gun jammed every time he tried to shoot Doss. Corporal Doss won the congressional medal of honor for his action that day, was later wounded and was permanently disabled in the service of his country. The men in his platoon respected him so much that they all went back onto the battlefield under fire after he was wounded to recover his Bible.

We are a nation of many beliefs and values, but there is room for all of those values so long as there is tolerance as well. By tolerance, I do not mean that we must embrace and encourage all beliefs ourselves without question. One may believe that homosexuality is a sin and still fight for another's right to be gay if they want to be. You may believe that as a Christian I am an infidel and that is okay so long as you don't hinder my right to be one. We can argue and we can debate these issues all day long, but we each have the right to have our beliefs respected.

Shouting each other down in the public forum does no good to either of our causes. I'll go to my revivals and rallies and celebrate my beliefs. You go to yours. I won't throw rocks at you. You don't throw them at me. That's how we do it in America, okay?

Just one man's opinion.....

Tom King

Let's Stop Giving Mass Murderers What They Want!

My wife was becoming more and more upset as the day's news about the massacre at Virginia Tech went on. I turned off the TV to calm her down, but something she said made more sense than anything any of the pundits had to say.

The shooter in this situation got exactly what he wanted. He took out his anger on as many people as possible, he got his message read to millions of breathless TV viewers, he became famous and he set a new record for carnage in the process.

Hardly had the last spent cartridge hit the floor before the news media were calling it possibly the worst such incident in history. Within 24 hours, the copycat bomb threats had begun. If I were a student on an American college campus today, I'd be packin' heat, so that I could shoot back if anyone marched into my classroom bent on imitating the evil man in Virginia!!!! There are going be other mentally unbalanced individuals out there in the coming weeks that will want to challenge the new record. The massive media coverage of the V-Tech incident will almost demand a response from any number of unbalanced individuals.

The Beatles had the right idea about how we should respond to murderers like this. After John Lennon was murdered by a crazed fan, they agreed among themselves never to mention the name of his killer. He's referred to as "he who must never be named" by many of Lennon's fans as well. Such an approach should be taken to every mentally deranged person that shoots up a school, blows up a bus or kills another human being. Their names should never be spoken again and they should be erased from public memory.
I would like to see just one news outlet have the courage to change their policy on reporting of terrorism and mass murder. It's true that the American public has a morbid curiousity to know why these things happen. So what! Who says we have to know everything.

How about let's use the forces of political correctness to do some good for a change. Let's make it politically incorrect to EVER mention the name of any psychotic individual who slaughters others. The Colombine Murders would be a fine way to refer to the boys who marched into their high school and started shooting their friends. "The 9/11 terrorists" would be all we'd ever need to refer to those guys. If you need to talk about one of them in a documentary, you could say, "One of the 9/11 terrorists".

You don't read their manifestos. You don't negotiate with them. You don't spend months blaming everyone else for the misdeeds of these miscreants. You only have to say the Virginia Tech Murderer was a seriously disturbed individual who senselessly killed his classmates and friends. That's all anyone needs to know about him. We don't need to know his race or to talk about how many he killed or discuss his statistics versus someone else's. No news media outlet should announce any part of any note, manifesto or weblog created by the perpetrator. His purpose should be forgotten. After all, getting his message out there was why he did this in the first place. If we make mass murder unprofitable, maybe they'll quit. If doing this will get you absolutely forgotten, why would you go to the trouble. No one will know it was you, will know why you did it or will care what terrible thing you thought was done to you that justified your murdering people.

If anyone does anything like this ever again, his or her name should be blotted out of existence and never spoken again as a sign of respect and reverence for the victims. Heroes like the professor who held the door while his students escaped out the windows, a Holocaust survivor who died with his hand on the doorknob is who should be remembered, not the tortured psychopath who killed him.

Our culture should begin a tradition of erasing mass murderers from existence by general agreement. It should be considered the height of disrespect to the victims of serial killers to mention the killer's name ever again. We could do that. If you want to punish someone like the cult leader who killed Sharon Tate and her friends, you forget him. No attention, not even his name should survive. He should be purged from our collective memory.

Would it work? You know I bet it would. You see, I couldn't tell you the name of the guy who killed John Lennon. I've actually forgotten.

If I were President of the U.S. I would suggest just such a thing from the bully pulpit he occupies as our nation's leader. It would be risky, but I guarantee if he asked the American people to do it, there would be a whole lot of us who would adopt the practice of refusing to say the name of the evil ones.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be forgiving and try to understand that an unbalanced mind can sometimes snap. That's helpful. It helps us watch for others who are in danger of coming apart at the seams. If we do that, maybe we can catch them in time to get them some help. But for the sake of other folks with schizophrenia, bipolar and other psychoses, lets not help feed their delusions by giving them a national stage on which to act out their tortured delusions of grandeur.
I will start taking my own advice by refusing to watch any newscast or documentary that mentions the name of the Virginia Tech Murderer. I would urge you to do the same and encourage your friends to do so.

Just one man's opinion...

Tom King

Let's See Who Can We Offend And Get Away With It?

Guys like Don Imus need to be more careful who they insult. It can be a career killer if you offend the wrong people in this country. Try googling "Don Imus" for instance. You'll see page after page describing the controversy as a "firestorm" . What the aged shock jock did (for those of you who were hiding under a rock the past two weeks) was to drop a racial slur in the process of making one of his crude jokes on his morning show.s. No matter that the slur is in common use. I searched the term on Google and got more than one million hits.  Because he used the term, he's at least temporarily unemployed and may be unemployable for the forseeable future.

A cartoonist prints an arguably funny cartoon in a tiny little Sunday supplement of a newspaper with a miniscule readership. It depicts the prophet Mohammed. That offends Muslims. The worldwide media turns it into a witch hunt, castegating the author as though he were guilty of genocide, baby-killing and driving an SUV.

The president of Iran leads groups of Iranian citizens in chanting "Death to America, Death to the Jews!" It doesn't make the mainstream news anywhere.

A judge hangs the ten commandments in his courtroom and the media creates a "firestorm" over it, hammering on about the story over and over. An atheist family sues a school district because their daughter's school sponsors the recital of the pledge of allegiance with the words "under God" included. The pundits and "experts" carry on a mighty debate for months, largely supportive of the offended atheists.

Rosie O'Donnell on ABC's The View said that "Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have separation of church and state." It started a row in the religious media. If you google it, however, you'll have to wade through 109 entries before you get to a mainstream news outlet that reports on the incident (Fox predictably).

The media wailed in anquish for months over the morality of "Arab profiling" by airport security in the months after 9 terrorists (Arabs, all male, age 20-45) wiped out three plane loads of people, The Twin Towers and damaged the Pentagon.

Then, early this month, the Burlington Township High School ran a terrorist attack drill featuring a scenario where "Right Wing Crusaders" who don't like the public school system take kids hostage because the school wouldn't let a child pray before class. I guess that the school board and local police department who sponsored the drill decided fundamentalist Christians were the only group left you could safely offend.

I had to go down 49 entries on a Google search before I found a mainstream media outlet (Fox again) that even reported the incident. Surprise, no firestorm from the mainstream!

Well why should they report it. White Christians are the only minority group left that you can safely insult. Rosie can call us more dangerous than Islamic terrorists, Bill Mahrer can say religion is a neurological disorder. Melissa McEwan can call Christians "Christofascist Godbags".  No one in the mainstream reports it, much less finds a problem with it.

Here's what I get from that.

1. You must not under any circumstances say anything negative about black people, Hispanics, Muslims, Buddhists or any other religion that comprises a minority.
2. If you, under any circumstances, you do even inadvertently offend such people, you should lose your job and have your life ruined as completely as possible.
3. If you are white (male or female), fat, conservative (or better yet a fat conservative), Christian, Asian-American, Jewish or wealthy, then Don Imus, Rosie O'Donnell or Bill Mahrer are free to call you whatever name they want to (and have) without much fear of anything bad happening to them. Imus' problem was that he was so secure that his liberal base was with him that he got too familiar. Spike Lee can use the same term to refer to black women and it's okay. Don found out that he wasn't black enough to get away with it, no matter whether he intended it to be racist or not. He probably meant it to be racist in a non-racist sort of way - under the "as-long-as-it's-funny-it's-okay" principle. I don't thing Imus should have been fired for the racist remark - he's made plenty of those so it was no big surprise. What he should be fired for is for not being particularly funny. He's just offensive. Where's the entertainment in that?

Poor Imus. He really blew this one. This was a perfect opportunity for the left to attack the bain of their existence - radio talk show hosts. It doesn't matter if he was one of their own camp followers, these guys eat their young (and old apparently). If one radio talk host screws up, it's a perfect excuse to conduct a witch hunt for all talk show hosts the mainstream media and left wing politicians disagree with. If they set fire to one of their own, so what. The opportunity was just too good to miss. If you can blow up Imus and skewer Rush, Glenn or Sean with a thigh bone fragment, no sacrifice is too great (especially somebody else's sacrifice). These guys remind me of Aztec priests standing over their bloody alters screaming, "Next!"

Make no mistake. This whole big furor is not about race. It's about power. The mainstream media and the left wing establishment that supervised the training and creation of the mainstream media have been seeing their power base slip away at the hands of bloggers, talk show hosts and upstart media like FoxNews and other suddenly popular news alternatives that are draining the big boys' ratings.

To be fair to Don Imus, he also picks on Arabs, women, Asians and practically everybody else. He was an equal opportunity offender. Maybe what his case teaches us is that the folks you want to be careful not to offend are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. When those two go after you, you can bet everybody else that doesn't want to face the wrath of "Jesse and Al" is going to line up behind the two of them and start beating you up, "Look, Al. Hey Jesse, see this. I'm really whupping up on these guys. Please don't sue me or anything."

What's hilarious is that the left is blaming the uproar on the right and the right is blaming it on the left. And we have the nerve to decry the tribal violence in Africa and the Balkans. What else is this, but plain old tribal warfare. The far right and the far left are both guilty of it. None of it helps solve the problems of the world.

I just wish we could get them to lighten up on Christians. "If you prick us do we not bleed?" To listen to the media today, you'd assume Christians carried assault rifles and dragged negroes, Arabs and homosexuals around with our pickups as our primary means of recreation. Sure we've had our share of nutcase terrorists (anti-abortion bombers - which doesn't make ANY sense to me, gun toting weirdoes like David Koresh and cult leaders like Jim Jones and Marshall Applewhite). Those guys aren't any more Christian than Osama is a true Muslim. Very few Christian ministers preach "Death" to anyone or any particular country or culture from the pulpit. I've never seen even the most radical of Christian televangelists suggest training Christian children to strap bombs to their bodies and blow up their fellow human beings.

So lay off a little okay? We might have to get "offended". Of course, it wouldn't matter unless we were willing to blow some things up because of it and since most Christians are hemmed in by that pesky old Golden Rule, there's not much fear of that so who cares whether Christians get offended or not.

Just one man's opinion...



Tom King

Immigration Policy We Can Live With

I got one of those e-mail petitions today against the idea that illegal aliens who pay social security taxes should be allowed to draw social security. Admittedly this is kind of a goofy idea. It's one law that contradicts a whole host of others. How do you pay social security if you're working illegally.

This petition is doomed to failure because it's an email petition. There is no way for it to reliably reach an elected official. I'm sure the president won't ever get one in his e-mail box. There's no way for the "signatures" to be authenticated. Because it's sent out scattergun fashion, most of the copies of this will have duplicate signatures. Who's going to sort through all those? The only reason for an e-mail like this is that it's an excuse to rag on illegal aliens and portray them as criminals, illiterates and sponges.

The only way you can effectively register such a complaint is to send a personal message directly to your congressional delegation, the presidents or heads of government agencies. Even then, you'll be speaking to an aid who counts them up as "for" and "agin" and informs his or her boss as to the tally.

It is true that the immigration reform bill passed by the U.S. Senate in May 2006 included a provision allowing undocumented immigrants to collect Social Security benefits accrued if they paid taxes while working in the United States. You may disagree with this bill, but characterizing all illegals as criminals doesn't solve that problem.

E-mail petitions like this are completely ineffective because there’s no way to collect them once they’ve got enough signatures. We still have to do things the old fashioned “hard way”.

As to the illegal immigration issue, I’ve seen precious few “illegals” living in the lap of luxury as described in some of these e-mails and pushing ahead of little old people to buy expensive name brand stuff while grandma (who lived through the depression) eats catfood.

There are 38 colonias in the 14 counties served by East Texas Council of Governments – cardboard villages where these people live without running water, sewers, transportation or electricity. The rose growers and nurseries send a pickup in the morning to pick up the men and take them to the fields and greenhouses. If their families are with them, mama pays $40-80 to get a ride to town to buy groceries - enriching an unscrupulous Americano who preys on illegals because they are vulnerable and afraid and don't have cars. These folks are living in their own depression right now and IT’S BETTER THAN HOW THEY LIVED IN MEXICO!!!

I’ve seen these guys work. Many are skilled and it's a myth that they don't want to learn English. When Peggy Lustig’s folks at Gateway to American Opportunities offered them a chance to learn English, 150 showed up for class the first night at one place. A bunch of them walked some serious mileage to get there too!

While I understand that some people feel they ought to be run out on a rail, I’m not so sure. If they’re working and staying out of trouble, give ‘em a green card and a fair shot at becoming a citizen. The gain is ours. In earlier immigration waves, we depleted many countries of some of their best people.

The problem is not with the laws anyway. The problem is we don’t enforce the laws we have. Writing new laws is a racket by which lawmakers convince you they are doing something about the problem so you will re-elect them. They don't intend that such laws will actually be enforced. We tie the hands of our border patrol agents, so they can’t stop them at the border. We hire them because they work cheap, so we encourage them to stay. I understand why they come across too. If you lived in the pesthole they did, you’d try and get out too.

Also, remember the great lie that liberals use to hold on to political power – the idea that the economy is a zero-sum game. We’ve been suckered into believing for all these years that if someone does well, he or she must be causing someone else to be poorer.

This is not true! An economy is healthy when it is active. The more people that work, the more money is moving through the economy. A business generating a million dollar payroll contributes about 7 million dollars worth of activity to the economy of its community as the payroll gets spent and respent in the community. The more people working and spending their earnings, the more money there is flowing through the stores and shops and services in the community and the more other people are working. Rich people spend money hiring people to do work for them. They create factories and jobs and businesses. In the same way, illegal aliens, allowed to work simply increase the activity within the economy. They don't really take anything away from us, whether we want the kinds of jobs they do or not. Working people create jobs, simply by working and spending.

I agree we shouldn’t be providing extensive support for folks who are in the country illegally, but from what I’ve seen, these guys aren’t looking for a handout. They’re looking for a job. They are very often religious, family oriented and hard-working. Those who aren’t can easily be taken care of simply by enforcing the existing laws that are on the books. They aren’t stealing from us by and large. They contribute to the economy. If we make it so that hard working Mexicans can come in as guest workers and bring their families, we won’t see the drain of cash going back to Mexico. When we had vast immigrant waves from China, Ireland, Italy, Germany and France, the influx of workers served only to deplete those countries of their hardest working citizens and to give our economy a badly needed kick in the pants. Not only that, but we got some great restaurants and nifty inventions from immigrants like ice cream, hot dogs, hamburgers, Chop Suey and Tex-Mex food.

I say, to solve the problem, we don’t need new laws. We need to simply enforce the ones we’ve got. We need to lock down the border and gently but firmly take anyone who tries to cross back to their own side. We need a generous guest worker program that allows them to come across legally. And we need a no hanky panky policy that deports anyone who causes trouble.

President Reagan tried that, but the strict enforcement part got watered down by the Democrats so badly, it didn’t work!

He had the right idea though. We just need to try the whole thing and that’s what the President has proposed this time around. If we want to help, we should send overwhelming numbers of letters to our senators and congressmen and to the president, stating we want enforcement, the border locked down, a guest worker program and a one strike you’re out policy for convictions for serious crimes.

Just one man's opinion...

Tom

Left Wing Feeding Frenzy

Oh, these are heady times for the political left in America. They have smelled blood in the water and the electronic seas are churning as members of the media, left wing pundits, commentators and unemployed liberal talk show hosts elbow their way in front of the nearest camera or microphone to explain to us how Bush has been neutralized, the Democrats are in the catbird seat and good times are back again. The feeding frenzy is so predictable that it’s almost laughable if it weren’t for the potentially disastrous consequences it could have for the country..

If you’ve watched television at all lately, the majority of the news media seem to think that the left is so firmly in power that only thing that remains for us all to do is decide whether we want Barak Obama or Hillary Clinton for our next president.

This should be interesting….

I suspect that the left, in it’s long and exhausting fight to win back power at any cost, to expand government and to increase taxes so they can spend like drunken sailors, has, in fact, drawn a big old pistol, loaded it up with high caliber ammunition and taken careful aim at its own foot.

If conservatives are smart, they’ll stay out of the way and let the Democrats, Greens, socialists and union bosses pull the trigger at their leisure. When taxes take a sharp turn upward and the economy takes a dive, when we crawl back from Iraq with our tails between our legs and the IED’s start going off in New Jersey, Hollywood, Florida and upstate New York, the Dems will take a swan dive into obscurity. The socialist thinkers will probably have to rename the party to get back in power again.

Till then, conservatives like me can only cringe at the onslaught of political correctness, left-wing propaganda and defeatist rhetoric aimed at us by a newly invigorated left. Hopefully, the American people are watching this and make wise decisions next election.

Hey, if the left can save the world, bring peace in our time and eliminate want, more power to them. I mean there are so many shining examples of leftist success in that regard. There are lots of examples of high tax, big socialist governments that have done so well in the past hundred years. You’ve got your National Socialists in Germany, the Communists in the Soviet Union, the Cuban workers paradise, Communist China and dozens of third world countries still locked in poverty to this day. Don’t we ever learn from history. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse Tung and Fidel Castro, all of them believed that smart, compassionate people should hold great power and use it to make all workers equal, to eliminate private wealth and create a so-called “worker’s paradise”. Look at how that worked out.

How many millions died because total socialism turned out rather badly in practice and the egomaniacs in charge decided to cover it up by killing anyone smart enough to figure it out?

When you think you can tell millions how to live and when you believe that the perfect government you have created is going to change the world for the better, you set yourself up for failure. No one can manage the lives of that many people and create a perfect society simply by creating and enforcing laws. You can't just demand that everybody be the same, make the same amount of money, and be content with the same type of lifestyle as everyone else simply because you say they should. If you provide little or no real incentive for your citizens to put out extra effort at their jobs or to excel in their personal lives, you shouldn't be surprised if you've created an inherantly mediocre society as a consequence. You can’t make people be good simply by threatening them with punishment if they don’t believe the way you do and act the way you want and do what the government orders them to.

Incentives drive success. Capitalism offers all kinds of incentives for success. Socialism reduces those incentives. Want to guess what system generates most of the innovation that happens on this planet?

Another problem: If your socialist system doesn’t work very well, who do you suppose gets the blame? Of course, you’ve got absolute power, so you can just pretend that your system isn’t failing after all and you can blame the failure of everything you worked for on the people or some other country that’s not as enlightened as yours. The beauty is that you don’t have to accept any blame yourself. Since your system is perfect (because you said it would be in the manifesto) and since in that system, you are conveniently all powerful, nothing could be going wrong, ergo nothing is! Besides, if you were to admit that the system you are running isn’t perfect, you might get thrown out of your expensive dacha and have to give up the privileges you gave yourself as the smart guy in chief.

Then there are all those pesky naysayers who insist on blaming you anyway, forcing you to send them off to the gulags so they don’t tell everyone else the system isn’t working and discourage “the people” from being happy (as you knew they would be - remember it's in the manifesto).

Okay, all socialist countries don’t go completely off the rails into the swamps of totalitarianism – at least not right away. You’ve got some European countries that have embraced higher levels of socialism and seem to be doing okay (though some of them take advantage of American generosity and trade incentives balanced wildly in their favor in order to stay afloat). It helps that no one actually mentions this embarrassing fact when they’re telling us about how great their family leave policies are. They have practically perfect societies (just ask their governments or any American liberal you care to talk to). Of course some of their citizens disagree, but then they can always move to America and get good jobs, condos and drive an SUV and stop causing trouble if they don't like it.

For these and other reasons, conservatives like me tend to fear any group that wants to increase the size of our government. Sure the war is tough and isn’t going perfectly, though I do not believe it’s going as badly as the media portrays it. If you compare this war to practically every war we’ve ever fought, our casualties are fewer against a disproportionate number of enemy combatants who have been taken out of action. We’re actually doing pretty well. It’s messy, but war is like that.

I hope that war fatigue doesn’t wind up leading Americans to reject the conservative trend we've enjoyed and its attendant economic benefits in favor of a more socialist leadership in this country - backing away from the principles that made us strong in the first place.

Mainly, though, I just can’t stand to listen to liberal gloating.

Just one man’s opinion.

Pluto: Planet with a Disability

Okay, now I'm mad! A dinky little group of elitist astronomers just voted to demote Pluto from a planet to something called a "dwarf" planet which is actually not a planet at all, but a "trans-Neptunian object". Can you imagine some third grader trying to say "trans-Neptunian object", must less memorize it!

Pluto is one of my favorite planets due to it's spunky out of kilter orbit. You've gotta love a planet that's sometimes the farthest planet out and then, part of the time it cuts inside of Neptune and becomes the next farthest out. It has a little moon called Charon that's almost as big as it is. How cool is that?

There ought to be a Planets with Disabilities Act to prevent discrimination against planets simply because they are size challenged. The term 'dwarf' planet unfairly labels planets of limited stature. What we need is to encourage astronomers to use "planet first" language. I propose we send an official letter to the International Astronomical Union to express our outrage at their discriminatory language toward Kuiper Belt objects like Pluto and demand the use of "Planet First" language. Dwarf planets are planets first, therefore People for the Ethical Treatment of Planets (PETOP) proposes the use of terms like "Planets with size challenges" or "Planets of dimuntive size". In this way we emphasize that objects like Pluto are planets first. Small planets are planets, not dwarfs. No planet should be defined entirely by its size. A planet of diminutive size may have as much or more character as one of those overblown blobs of methane like Jupiter and Uranus!

PETOP also proposes standards for equal accessibility to orbital paths for planets with size challenges like Pluto. These should include protecting a planet with size challenges from being jerked out of orbit or sucked into the gravity well of a gas giant. No planet should be forced to become a moon against its will.

How we'll enforce the PDA, I can't tell you, but, hey, when did that ever stop a bureaucrat from drafting a law.

Just one man's opinion...

Tom King

Double Standard Where Offending the Faithful is Concerned

I will say this for the Germans. They did learn their lesson from their experience with the Nazis. This week they ruled in favor of allowing a cartoon series that lampoons the Pope and all things Catholic when German bishops tried to get the series legally banned. This was consistent with their 'freedom of speech' stand in support of neighbor Denmark for allowing the infamous Mohammed cartoons. Not everyone has been consistent, however.

The Mohammed cartoons spawned many copycat cartoons and tributes (all in tremendously poor taste as is to be expected from those who deliberately torment people over their religion) and a whole lot of worldwide media hand-wringing. Predictably, the twinkie-munchers in the blog community got into the act. One blog proclaimed it "Draw Mohammed Week!" and posted lots of new pictures of the prophet in a less than flattering light. The blog got a tremendous number of hits from web-surfers who live in the Middle East - the faithful looking for something to be offended about no doubt. It's interesting that most of the blogger's readers were people who had googled the site looking for Mohammed cartoons. Then, of course, they promptly got offended.

I checked Wikipedia for international reaction to the Mohammed cartoons. They listed official responses from 36 nations, the United Nations, the European Union and The Organization of Islamic Conference. Most condemned the cartoons roundly, although about a third managed to mumble something about free speech in there somewhere.

Now along comes "Popetown" which is not just a couple of cartoons in an obscure Danish magazine, but an MTV animated series that features Jesus sitting in a Lazyboy in front of the TV and the pope bouncing through 'Popetown' on a pogo stick. The series offends Catholics six ways to Sunday and does so deliberately.

So, I checked out the international reaction to Popetown on Wikipedia - statements by governments in reaction to the arguably anti-Christian cartoons as I had done with the arguably anti-Islamic cartoons before. Want to guess how many countries got officially upset?

Two! Germany and New Zealand and then they took aim at the Catholic Bishops who sued to have the series taken off the air. The freedom of speech angle was not mumbled about, but spoken about rather clearly - in essence telling the bishops "Too bad you're offended. We have that pesky free speech thing going..." Great Britain, which paid for Popetown in the first place, never allowed it to run on the BBC and hasn't had much to say about it since. I didn't find the round condemnation that the Mohammed cartoons got. Nobody suggested any studies of potential anti-christianism or decried the rise of anti-christian sentiment in the EU or compared it to Nazi led anti-semitism as dozens of countries did over the Mohammed cartoons. The whole reaction to Popetown has been a distinct "Who cares?"

Hey, in the U.S., we've got the "Simpson's" and "Southpark". We're used to seeing Jesus in the wrestling wring with Satan or drunk and soliciting hookers in a back alley. Popetown is pretty tame compared to that and this stuff goes pretty much lawsuit free over here. I guess the German and New Zealand bishops thought that after all the hoopla over the Mohammed cartoons, they might get some traction if they were to get offended too.

Sorry guys, but Catholic bishops aren't likely to blow anyone up over this and we're not afraid of lawsuits. So, their efforts to stop the show have largely fizzled and since they shut down the Inquisition several hundred years back, the Catholic church has been pretty much left without an enforcement arm unless they want to start stuffing the novice nuns' habits with explosives.

Now, I believe strongly in freedom of speech since free speech tends to protect freedom of religion. I also believe in the Golden Rule, which, unfortunately, if enforced by other than the free will of believers who practice it, soon becomes a device to enslave and control people. The Golden rule only works if everybody obeys it because they want to, not because the law says you have to. I, personally, would not do anything to deliberately offend someone over their religion - unless, of course, they stop me on the street or come to my house on Saturday morning and seem to want to participate in an open theological debate, and then I may say something controversial, though not deliberately hurtful.

What protects our freedom in this sinful world are laws about free speech and religion. That protection means some folks with less than pure hearts will say hurtful things about your religion and do it deliberately. We are only guaranteed freedom to speak, not freedom from speech. I think it's a pretty good system. Apparently, some countries do not.

Also what is blindingly apparent is that unless you express your displeasure at having your religion made fun of by blowing up things, beheading innocent bystanders and knocking down skyscrapers, nobody really cares if you get your feelings hurt...

Now, class, what lesson have we just taught to terrorists about how successful their methods are? The recent book "The Lessons of Terror" by Caleb Carr makes a brilliant case that terrorism doesn't work very well as a tool to accomplish a national purpose. In all of history, terror never works well as a tool of societal evolution. If terrorists were really interested in accomplishing what their stated goals are, they might pay attention to that lesson and resort to other tactics. The problem with terrorists is that they aren't in this for the greater good of Islam, Communism solidarity or a United Ireland.

I think they're all in it for the girls!!

Okay, maybe not directly, but think about it. It's about power. It's about who's in control after the revolution. And.... whoever has the power gets the best women. It's pretty simple. So, what about women terrorists. Well, if you believe the movies, terrorist gals are only impressed by males with a great deal of perceived power (like a license to kill - which accounts for 007). Women terrorists in movies are either attractive, loose women whose taste in fashion runs toward spandex or they are sweaty, pistol-packin' man-killers or they are totally dominated by their male counterparts (don't hit me again, I promise I'll trigger the detonator this time!). Suicide bombers are promised 70 virgins in the Islamic terrorist version of heaven. Case closed, I think!

I have a hard time believing that terrorists really are thinking about societal change when they try to make people more respectful of their religion by blowing up women and children or beheading some electrical engineer who came over to get their lights running again for them.

Does anyone think, "Hey, he blew himself all to bits and took out the old lady and the baby carriage at the same time. How cool is that! Sign me up for that religion! I am so in!"

Maybe they'll blow up enough of their followers to make themselves ineffective. We can only hope.

Just one man's opinion...

Tom