The Indian chief and the rattlesnake.

Did you ever hear the tale of the Indian chief who found a rattle snake dying from the cold at the top of a mountain?

The snake pleaded with the chief to carry ...him down the mountain so he could get warm and recover and live. 

The good hearted chief took pity and took the snake down the mountain. There the snake gave him a deadly bite. The chief asked the rattler how he could do such an evil thing. The rattler replied "you knew I was a rattle snake when you picked me up"! 

Moral: compassion should not outweigh common sense.

Just saying.....

Now is the time....

Back in the days before computers or even word processors typing was done on something called a typewriter. Some of us are old enough to remember those. Some of us are old enough to even been around when they were in use. Others would have to Google “manual typewriter” or visit a museum to have any clue what I’m talking about here.

Anyway, an old “drill and practice tool” from typing class was the phrase “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.” Students would type this phrase over and over again to strengthen the finger muscles necessary to reach certain keys and the like.

In light of the horrors that Islamic “extremism” has wreaked on the world most notably since September 11, 2001 and all the apologist rhetoric from those wanting to defend the religion of Islam as “peaceful,” “tolerant” and all that stuff, I’m going to modify that typing class phrase to raise the following challenge; IF Islam is truly a peaceful and tolerant religion that has been hijacked by extremists who commit atrocities inconsistent with Islam and all its true teachings, then now is the time for all good Muslims to come to the aid of their faith and hijack it back! In fact it’s way past time.

IF Islam doesn’t teach, condone, encourage or even ignore these kinds of atrocities that are almost daily committed in its name, then it’s time to remember the proverb that “actions speak louder than words.” In short, it’s way past time for all the good, peaceful and tolerant Muslims who are supposed to be disgusted, appalled, revolted and horrified like the rest of us at these barbaric, inhuman, intolerant and savage brutalities and atrocities to speak up, rise up and take Islam back to an obviously, outwardly and consistently peaceful and tolerant and non-violent religion. Not token protests with a few Muslims who after much pressure say a few key things then go totally silent again. I mean every individual member of that faith right up to the Imams and Mullahs and Ayatollahs who lead and represent its faithful.

To do otherwise, is tantamount to silent support of the current violent and intolerant state of the religion that most people think Islam to be.

Will Syrian refugees bring Shariah Law and civil war like happened to Lebanon?

Brigitte Gabriel saw the influx of Islam destroy her native Lebanon. "when militant Muslims from throughout the Middle East poured into Lebanon and declared jihad against the Lebanese Christians."* This led to a 15-year civil war.

Lebanon "used to be the majority Christian country in the Middle East—the only majority Christian country in the Middle East. We were open-minded. We were fair. We were tolerant. We were multi-cultural—we prided ourselves on our multi-culturalism. We had open border policy—we welcomed everyone to our country from the Arabic countries surrounding us...the minority Islamic population in the country became the majority simply because of the way they multiplied, compared to people like us, who come from a Judeo-Christian background—they have multiple marriages, they have many children out of each wife."** [Emphasis added.]

 "In 1975, the Muslims and Palestinians declared a Jihad on the Christians in Lebanon, massacring thousands of Lebanese Christians. At age ten, Gabriel saw her childhood home destroyed. Her family moved to a bomb shelter, where they remained for the next seven years. To stay alive, Gabriel had to eat grass and crawl under sniper bullets to get water from a spring."***

"The more concessions you make, the more they will pick on you," she said.***

Wake up, America. Obama is insisting - despite public opinion against it and more than half of state governors saying no**** - trying to flood our country with Muslim refugees from Syria. This is reckless, irresponsible and because it could very well make us end up like Paris and like Lebanon and/or with the Islamic State imposing Shariah Law on us.

*MacMillan Publishers (n.d.) Advertisement re Because They Hate; A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America. Retrieved 19 November, 2015 from http://us.macmillan.com/becausetheyhate/brigittegabriel

**Gabriel, B. (14 June, 2012) Radio interview with Roger Aranoff on BlogTalkRadio. Transcript retrieved 19 November, 2015 from http://www.aim.org/podcast/take-aim-brigitte-gabriel/

***Yellin, D. (n.d.) Warning the Western World; Brigitte Gabriel: A Lebanese Christian Journalist Battles for Israel. Chabad.org. Retrieved 19 November, 2015 from http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/882938/jewish/Warning-the-Western-World.htm

****Fantz, A. and Brumfield, B. (17 November, 2015) More than half the nation's governors say Syrian refugees not welcome.CNN.com. Retrieved 19 November, 2015 from http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/16/world/paris-attacks-syrian-refugees-backlash/

The new American way of life.....

I think I've heard it ALL now....

This country is about one step from coming undone. I think the closest it's ever came to this before in my lifetime was perhaps 1968.

Similar to 1968, racial tensions - between blacks and whites, particularly - are at a breaking point. But, I'm not sure they've ever been as bad as they are here in 2015. Take for example, "After at least 129 people were killed in coordinated attacks on Friday in Paris, several protesters took to Twitter to express anger at 'losing the spotlight' in the media.

"'Racist white people kill me, you want everyone to have sympathy for YOUR tragedy, but you have none for ours,' wrote user Melanin Monroe under the Twitter handle @NeonElectricity in a post that has since been removed."*

But, the difference between 1968 and now was we still had a federal and state system that were pretty much in agreement with each other and a federal system that still valued the rule of law as set out in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, et al. 

Now, even that's went down the crapper with the puppet government we have now.


*Foxnews.com. 18 November, 2015. "All about them: Mizzou, Black Lives protestors say Paris attacks took spotlight. 

Too good, too "spot on"...well, not to share!

Can there be any doubt left?

How can anyone retain even a shred of belief that Obama has America’s best interests at heart when 1) in the immediate aftermath of the Paris terror attacks this weekend, 2) 31 of the 50 governors of US states say they don’t want Syrian refugees admitted into their states because of they pose a huge security risk similar to what happened in Paris, yet 3) Obama still insists he’s gonna let them in and shove them into the country all across the USA.

Tell me this clown isn’t a Muslim himself! Tell me he isn’t trying to facilitate a terror strike just like happened at the Boston Marathon* in 2013 and last weekend in Paris right here in the USA!

Can there be any doubt left in anyone’s mind that Obama is out to bring America down?


* "The brothers [Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev] who are alleged to have planted bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday reached the United States in 2002 after their ethnic Chechen family fled the Caucasus. They had been living in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan and were prevented from resettling in war-racked Chechnya." 

Finn, P., Leonig, C., Englund, W. (19 April, 2013) Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were refugees from brutal Chechen conflict. The Washington Post. Retrieved 18 November, 2015 from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/details-emerge-on-suspected-boston-bombers/2013/04/19/ef2c2566-a8e4-11e2-a8e2-5b98cb59187f_story.html

So, what's the answer?

French President Francois Hollande says the Friday the 13th terror attacks in Paris were an "act of war." Well, Monsieur le Président, I say bon chance* with that. Firstly, France hasn't won a war since WWI. They didn't win in WW2 - we basically won that for them and the rest of the world. They didn't win in French Indochina (not that we fared much better there) and they didn't win in Algeria.

For one thing, the French military isn't that large - or that strong - like it was in their days of empire. They would need - badly - allied support, big time, to win anything of any size and deployment.

But, most importantly, even if they - or the civilized world starts a war against ISIS - I don't think they or the rest of the non-Muslim world has the fortitude needed to finish it.

A quick look at history is appropriate here. By 1864, America's Civil War was dragging into its 3rd year with no end in sight. America's own Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman told Union Commander in Chief Grant that as long as the War was a distant reality to the South, the Confederacy was not motivated to end it.His philosophy became "War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over." 

Sherman's infamous fiery and terrifying “March to the Sea” was executed so to frighten the civilian population of Georgia into abandoning the Confederate cause. Sherman was convinced the Confederacy was being kept strong not from its military but from the moral and material of Southern Confederates.

Sherman knew he had to quite literally "fight fire with fire." And the experts in terrorism analysis say we need to do the same here in the 21st century to defeat Islamic terrorism.

For one thing, the naysayers are quick to mention that unlike the Confederacy, unlike the Hun of WW 1 or the Nazis of WW2, Islamic terrorists are not a uniformed military fighting for a centralized national government. Instead they are - like the Viet Minh and Viet Cong of Indochina/Vietnam - by their very nature obscure forces embedded into the very societies of various nations in which they strike - including France and the United States.

However, by their very nature, embedded terrorists rely on the same moral and military support of their surrounding societies and various Middle Eastern countries very much like - even more so - the uniformed armies of the Confederacy did from the civilian population of Georgia.

So, like Sherman did to Georgia, I agree with current US presidential candidate Donald Trump that we should ""bomb the (expletive deleted) out of ISIS."**

Just this morning I got mildly taken to task by a friend who chastised me for saying bombing we should literally carpet bomb the crap out of that part of the world (in the spirit of Sherman's philosophy of bringing the pain to them). Her opinion is that to do that would hurt a lot of the good Muslims who don't agree with the radicals and terrorists.

Like I say, just like in Vietnam we lack the fortitude to do what is necessary to finish it against an enemy like the VC of the 1960s or the Islamic terrorists of today.
But to those who worry about the fate of the "good" but silent people in that part of the world, I say firstly it's long past time for those good but silent people to rise up and turn out the radicals. Those good but silent people and governments need to leave the terrorists and those of like mind with them absolutely no safe havens to hide or train in - not in homes, not in mosques, not in sympathetic countries. Those good but silent people and governments need to go beyond silence or platitudinous statements and make it specifically well-known and very damned well-demonstrated that to support terrorists in any way means pain - death and destruction the likes of which the terrorists bring to US!

We keep on doing it until terrorists have no friendly places to hide, train or do business in. We keep on doing it until every one terrorists turn to and everywhere they run to slams the door in their face and shuts them out in the cold to be captured or killed. And we keep on doing it until this crap completely stops!

If our protection from being gunned down in a concert hall, sidewalk cafe or blown up at a soccer stadium or by a hijacked airliner slamming into our places of business and our national and cultural survival means the pain or death of "good" but silent people and governments then, I'm sorry, but so bloody be it! Some day - probably sooner than later - it's gonna come down to either us or them. And I know which way I'm gonna decide on that one.

Lastly, to those who say we can't "fight fire with fire," I say, then what's your solution? Whatever it is, we better come up with an effective solution and damned quick.



*"good luck"
**Gore, L. (13 Nov., 2015) Donald Trump: "I would bomb the s--- out of ISIS," AL.COM. Retrived 14 Nov., 2015 from http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/11/donald_trump_i_would_bomb_the.html

A sad event on the eve of Veterans' Day 2015

Last July 2, 2015, Wichita, Kansas Mayor Jeff Longwell ordered the removal of the CONFEDERATE BATTLE FLAG from the Open Air Flag Museum in his city's VETERANS' MEMORIAL PARK.  Yesterday, the Wichita Board of Park Commissioners demonstrated their lack of historical and legal knowledge on point by voting the flag would remain removed from the park. 

The CONFEDERATE BATTLE FLAG had flown on it's flag pole in VETERANS' MEMORIAL PARK for over 40 years.  All the while at the base of its pole, a plaque under the BATTLE FLAG reminded visitors of the great test our country went through during the War Between The States.  

However, BEFORE yesterday afternoon's meeting, the supposedly open-minded Wichita Board of Park Commissioners that was supposedly interested in seeking public comment from both sides had already detailed workmen to have the plaque for this flag removed. So much for open-mindedness while seeking public opinion at the yet-to-happen meeting! 

Even the media can't get it right because they, nine times out of ten, will call the CONFEDERATE BATTLE FLAG the CONFEDERATE FLAG.  And that is not correct. Neither are allegations that:

• Kansas was never part of the Confederacy, so the flag doesn't belong in the Park. The reality of it is, that BATTLE flag flies there in honor of the Confederate dead who lost their lives in the Battle of Mine Creek - in Kansas! (near Pleasanton).
• The Confederacy lost so therefore its improper to honor its dead veterans. The reality of it is, US Public Law [H. R. 358] 72 Stat. 133 (e), recognized "… the term 'veteran' includes a person who served in the military or naval forces of the Confederate States of America…."  Therefore, this flag very much belongs in this park.
• The US flag which flies over the dead Union veterans in cemeteries such as WIchita's own Maple Grove Cemetery on Hillside Avenue was a flag of a nation that was against slavery. Not exactly. The reality is that the Confederate Flag was only flown as a slave flag for a mere 4 years. The U.S. flag was flown as a flag over a land in which slavery was legal and endorsed for 85 years. 

Education, facts and the truth are supposed to be mightier then impulsive emotion.  But, instead of relying on such inconvenient things like US federal law and historical fact, the "leadership" of the City of Wichita preferred instead to yield to ignorance, emotion and political-correctness thereby embodying the statement of "when your emotions are high, your logic is low".  You don't think straight.  

A damned sad occurrence on the day before Veterans Day, 2015.