This is how we support our troops?

I can't wait to see how this gets explained as the truest form of support for our troops. Guess officers don't count.

Makes sense

I guess since so many tech support and call center jobs have gone to India it only makes sense that this should happen. We have to protect those call centers. Not that we can understand what they say, but they're working for American companies after all.

Well said.

Yet another former soldier with issues with one of our elected officials. Personally, I think Durbin's apology was about as believable as Jimmy Swaggart's but we'll see what his constituents have to say. Hopefully a lot.

Carnival of Liberty

For the two or three people who actually see my blog, you probably already know about this but one more person mentioning it can't hurt anything.

You don't say?

This is intersting. From a gulag to a country club in two weeks. Is this Extreme Makeover: Detention Facility Edition?

Justice may be blind...

But she's got a wicked sense of humor.

What is liberty?

There’s a lot of talk going around these days about freedom and liberty and everyone assumes that they know what the writer is talking about. Do they though? What exactly are freedom and liberty? Are they the same thing? Is one required for the other or are they independent? Let’s take a look.

Do the definitions help us out at all? Freedom is defined as the capacity to exercise choice; free will. Liberty has it's meaning as the right and power to act, believe, or express oneself in a manner of one's own choosing. Looks to be pretty much the same thing, right? Wrong. Freedom is just the capability to make a choice. Every person in the world has that. Since we all know there are billions of people out there considered to be oppressed or not free how is this possible?

Let’s use North Korea as an example. The people in DPRK have the ability to make choices(we’ll discuss consequences later so put your hands down) every day. What they don’t have is liberty. Liberty is a right and rights are something due a person thru law or tradition. DPRK doesn’t have laws or traditions granting it’s citizens the right to make choices so it’s population has freedom, but lacks liberty. DPRK goes a step…okay a whole lot more than one step further and has tried to suppress it’s citizens exercising their freedom by use of draconian punishments for anything deemed anti-social or basically against that short funny looking guy who runs the place. The consequences don’t take away their ability to choose so their freedom is intact. So, oppression isn’t the taking of freedom. It’s the denial of liberty.

Since liberty is a right and not simply an ability it can be taken away. The most obvious example is criminality. Liberty is a right afforded under law. If you violate those laws, your liberty can be forfeit. This is not oppression or cruel. Some believe it hypocritical to claim to be a land of liberty but then to take away liberty by means of incarceration. What they fail to understand is that anything granted by law can only be valid as long as that law is followed. If someone breaks the law they have put themselves contrary to that which granted them liberty in the first place.

So what about unjust laws and laws the restrict liberty for no good reason other than political gain? There are really only two recourses in a situation like that. Work within the system to correct the mistake, or open revolt. One requires patience and a belief in the system. In order to revolt you usually have to have lost all faith in the system and not care about the consequences if you fail. For many reasons working within the system is the better option. However, there are instances where revolt is the only option left. Our own nations founding was the result of one such instance.

Okay, how about responsibilities and consequences? Any choice you make will have consequences either good or bad. As this is the case, freedom and liberty are meaningless if there is no personal responsibility to accept the costs of those choices. Regardless of what circumstances lead someone to make a choice, in they end, they did choose and need to acknowledge the obligation put on them by making that choice be it positive or negative. And contrary to what many would say, even not making a choice is simply a decision by default.

Feel free to comment to your hearts delight. I chose to post this and I have no problems dealing with whatever consequences are the result.

Enough already

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

Take a good look. Seems pretty simple, doesn't it? Then explain to me why we're once again having to deal with a case of someone being offended and thinking that this clause gives them the right to sue to have the offensive historical object removed. As the Ten Commandments are a part of this nations heritage there is no 'establishment' by their display. Congress has not passed a resolution forcing everyone to convert to Pentecostal or Baptist.

So why did the Supreme Court have to review not one but two seperate cases about displaying the Ten Commandments on government property? Because there are some people out there who just cannot stand to have anything that disagrees with their narrow view of the world on public display. It offends them to see the Ten Commandments so the Ten Commandments must go. It's this mentality that is causing so many issues in this country anymore.

Where does it say in the US Constitution that you are promised a life free of ever being offended? Where does it say that you will be able to impose your views on others to avoid being offended? Make no mistake, the people who are so 'sensitive' that they can't handle the mere sight of something like the Ten Commandments are doing just that. They want to be able to go through the day happy and carefree and not have to confront anything like this. If they have to trample on some other people and their rights along the way they have no problem with that as long as they get what they want in the end.

Gangsters used to work with casinos, drugs, and alcohol. Now the extortion and racketeering is done in the courtrooms. Wanna get made? Go to law school.

Bats

I got to see Batman Begins this weekend. Was it the best Batman ever? Depends on what you're looking for. There's something to be said for the campy original Batman movies where everything was Bat-labeled. I also thought the first Tim Burton Batman was a great movie and made the Dark Knight truly Dark. That being said, I think this new Batman is far and away the best. Christian Bale has always been on my list of top actors and he didn't disappoint in this role either. Morgan Freeman and Rutger Hauer did great jobs with the limited roles they had. Michael Caine has never failed to deliver a great performance and Gary Oldman played a young Gordon very well. Katie Holmes was lacking, but she didn't get cast for your acting ability. Probably the best of the bunch, though, was Cillian Murphy. He did a great job with, IMHO, what is one of the best villians Batman ever had to face: Scarecrow. Bottom line, go see this movie. And I mean in the theatre. stop downloading the DVD screener and actually go see it. I mean it. Put the mouse down and slowly step away.

I try to be nice...

But some people just make it so difficult. This guy wants all positive support for the war in Iraq terminated unless you've actually enlisted. His supposed point is that if you're not willing to put your life on the line then you don't really believe in your convictions and so should just be quiet. It's amazing to me the lengths that people will go to in order to silence those with contrary viewpoints. If people actually listened then in one fell swoop he would have silenced all those who oppose him and the only thing we would hear about Iraq is how bad it is....wait, isn't that pretty much the situation now? I've got news for the people like Sirota. The essence of free speech is not 'all speech that agrees with me is okay.' The essence of free speech is that all people have the same right to air their opinions/feelings. I disagree with you, and quite frankly think your conclusions are asinine. Notice though, that I'm not telling you to shut up. It's like you think the louder you get, the more sense you'll make. Volume does not denote quality. You can play Garth Brooks turned up to 11(if you got it, good. if not, you need help) but that doesn't make it music. So how about coming down off the soapbox, putting down the megaphone, and allowing other people to have a say? I realize that I'm asking you to recognize that people other than yourself might have good points and ideas, but I don't think I'm asking too much here.

So why are you paying that mortgage?

Especially if some local yahoo with a cousin in business wants the land its on? Thanks to the Supreme Court pretty much ruling that private property no longer exists then there's no point in paying for a home or land anymore. Just tell the bank that you are taking it for the public good and refer them to the Kelo decision by the Supreme Court. What on earth were they thinking??? When did the right to own property become an outdated idea? How is it okay for local government to remove you from your home, not for roads, schools, or public works, but for somebody to build a strip mall??? Where do these judges live again, cuz I'm thinkin that I want to take their land and build a strip club, a McDonalds, and a gun store. That will increase tax revunue on all three businesses. It'll increase health insurance premiums from all the people getting fat at McD's so the corporations make more money. And finally the gun store will decrease crime(an armed populace is a polite populace) so it's all for the Public good.

Double Standards Anyone?

Lets see if I understand this. Howard Dean specifically calls out Republicans and proceeds to go on about how they're the evil party. For many Dem's this was okay while the Repub's wanted an apology. Karl Rove mentions liberals, he doesn't use party names, and the Dem's get up in arms about wanting an apology and now the Repub's are saying his comments were okay. So it's okay for Dean to label Republicans specifically as bad but it's not okay for Rove to say liberals? And last I checked, given the demonization of the word liberal by the right, most Dem's had tried to distance themselves from this word so why the anger at Rove's comments? Unless of course they hit a little too close to home.

Would you believe...

That a fedearl appeals court is debating whether or not to overturn an Arizona law that denies welfare and other benefits to illegal aliens? Is this for real? I just love the response though about how it's a plan to deport illegals. Explain to me how it has anything to do with deportation. Verifying citizenship before dispensing state and federal fund in the form of welfare or medical insurance has NOTHING to do with taking someone's border-jumping, law-breaking, welfare-living butt and sending them back to whatever country they wanted out of in the first place. Why do we reward people for breaking our laws? And how on earth would a federal court even begin to have the authority to strike down a law approved by a majority of voters? Of course, since the MALDEF attorney says that "The state has no authority to enact it" I guess we get a good idea of what his opinion of democracy is.

Color me surprised

Well, the LA Times has a little bit of information that really isn't surprising. At all. I guess we all misread Amnesty International's report. It was really the inmates running the asylum and causing all the problems. Silly us.

Am I the only one....

That picked up on the fact that Howard Dean said the only minorities at a Repub convention would be the hotel staff? Wow, talk about your positive attitudes toward minorities. Yup, the hotel staff have to be minorities cuz Howard Dean said so. Granted, a lot of his idiotic statements lately have been overblown but how can this be ignored? This man is the chairman for the 'party of inclusiveness' and here he is talking about minorities being hotel staff. Let's ignore that though and move onto the actual meaning of his comments. How many of the US Senators are minority? FYI: I'm not including women as a minority. They're half the species after all. If you look at racial minorities there are three Democrats and one Republican. The funny thing about two of those Democrats though is that they're from Hawaii. In that state, they are the majority, not the minority. So in all actuality the two parties are dead even when it comes to having minorities in the US Sentate. Man, I'm glad to know the Dem's are the inclusive party. Are they planning on showing it anytime soon?


UPDATE: Guess not.