I Have Informed You Thusly

I wish this story about the Pence family was isolated, or specific to them. I have no respect for their particular brand of politics, but they are no different than the Koch’s or Rockerfeller’s or DuPont’s before them, just a smaller scale.  These are the ones that bitch and complain the loudest about the waste of government, and then leave their mess to be cleaned up by that government.  Then they get themselves appointed to regulatory office, and work to defund that office and refuse to enforce the law completely. Not for any purpose other than because it does not matter to them that people will be permanently injured or possibly die from their pollution and actions. I suppose this is not about the Pence’s as a rule, but about the state of regulation we voted for. The EPA was an outgrowth of myriads of events, like Love Canal, NY, and other sites that ended up being Superfund sites. Now, we have taken this fever that somehow, the EPA is the problem.  Regulating...

242 years ago, there was a momentous moment in history. Our Founding Fathers, in a humid and hot Philadelphia, approved a declaration of our independence from England owing to tyranny, terror, discrimination, lack of representation, taxation and violence. Down through our history, we have seen many different conditions on this celebration of our independence. Depending on how you define the start of the revolution, from the Boston Massacre or from "the shot heard around the world", by 1776 we had been at war with England for 1-6 years. As with most things about Congress, they were late to the party and behind the times. When our nation was only 85 years old, 1861, we were grinding into the most deadly war in our history, fought amongst ourselves, on our own land, to determine whether that independence we proclaimed would apply to all living souls on this land, or not. We still have not decided that question, though we have almost ended the physical fighting. One hundred...

There are significant disagreements and fighting and partisan wrangling ahead of us.  There has become a partisan knife fight ritual about Supreme Court Justices.  Not that it is any worse than the past, but with the advent of social media, unfortunately these things bring out the obvious failings of the education system. According to the Constitution, the President picks a nominee.  That nominee is then vetted by the Senate, and interviewed. The Senate’s responsibility is to advise and consent to the President’s nominee. There is very little required for a person to be qualified to be a Justice.  The person must be a citizen. The person must receive approval from the Senate, and that is about it.  There have been Justices that were not lawyers.  There have been Justices that were Klan members. There have been Justices that had never voted in their lives. There have been Justices that were nothing but political hack appointments (and many nominated that...

Here is the thing, I was raised by a car mechanic and a clerical worker in the government. My Mom's parents were a machinist and a school lunch room cook. My Dad's parents were service industry workers and farmers. All of my great grandparents were farmers/commercial fishermen/day labor.  None of these people possessed more than a high school education. Almost all of them did not possess that. However, not a single one of any of them was stupid. There is a false correlation that we seem to draw between education level and intelligence. Education is earned, intelligence is native, you are born with it.  However, even high intelligence, unharnassed and uninformed by education and a breadth of experience and outlook, cannot be relied upon to cure all ills. What is the point Joe? Well, I listened to three different interviews done yesterday with Trump voters. A farmer in Iowa, a commercial fisherman in Louisiana, and a coal miner in the mountains of Kentucky. Vastly different ...

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph..." December 23, 1776 Thomas Paine The Crisis Imagine you are pulled over for speeding 6 mph over on federal land. They take you to jail for an indefinite period while your case goes through the court system. They take your kids who were with you, and put them in a detention facility, because they were with you. It is the same level of misdemeanor as the people seeking asylum at the border are being charged with. They are not imagining it, they are living it. There are 7 month olds in that HHS facility with the North Korean style mural of Donald Trump at the front door. It does not matter to me w...

Look, this is all the religion I can take today on social media. But, moving our embassy to Jerusalem is not some act of holiness. It is a decision by a secular government, about civil powers, that is ill considered and creating an issue contrary to what the New Testament teaches. Nothing about this fulfills prophesy. And, I am sorry that so many of you are wrapped up with "preachers" that confuse this current state of Israel with the nation the Bible describes. They also confuse this current President with a Christian. They speak in double language and crave power and access to this secular government they preach against on Sundays. They pervert the teachings of Christ into some myth that God cares if you are ever rich or poor, that success will be yours if only you believe enough. The unspoken part of that contract that we all reap the evil consequences of, is that others are worthless and corrupt if they have less than these "Christians:, and the proof is in their...

There has not been, in my lifetime, ANY verified evidence of widespread voter fraud, anywhere in this nation. Statistically, there has been zero impact to any election, that has even had proven voter fraud. The immigrant (including the illegal immigrant community) is statistically much less likely to commit crime, especially violent crime, than any other segment of our population. The military cannot do policing at the border, it is against 18 USC 1385 (Posse Comitatus Act). Ask anyone you know in the military, literally every one of them gets trained on this. The law prohibits them from making arrests, assuming policing powers, conducting lawful searches or use of force against US citizens outside of the confines of a US military compound. These are the facts. I don't care what you think about Russia, or what you think about Trump. But, please, for the love of God and all that is holy, at least educate yourself before you just accept the Sinclair/Faux News/Trump/MSNBC/CNN li...