Conventional collectivist created authority is a deception in consciousness. You are your own Authority!

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Government Sociopaths

Many government employees, agents and officials today perform their functions much like mindless soulless zombies, i.e. sociopaths – people who exhibit antisocial personality disorders while not feeling the least bit guilty about their abominable behavior towards others.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in particular seems to attract these types; people in uniforms who relate to other people without empathy, humanity, decency and kindness in deliberate disregard for the dignity of their victims.  
Such was the case earlier this week at an airport in Florida where a coldblooded reptilian TSA agent deliberately opened a sealed container of human remains over the protests of a passenger, then stirred the ashes with her finger spilling as much as a third of the contents onto the terminal floor.
Passenger John Gross of Indianapolis was visiting relatives in Florida when his uncle gave him a portion of his deceased grandfather’s ashes in a tightly sealed jar, marked “human remains.” When he arrived at the TSA checkpoint, “They opened up my bag, and I told them, ‘Please, be careful. These are my grandpa’s ashes.’ She picked up the jar. She opened it up.”
That conduct violated the agency’s policy.  The agent not only opened the sealed jar, but stirred the contents with her finger, allowing a large portion of the ashes to spill out on to the floor. Gross frantically tried to scoop up as much of his grandfather’s remains as he could, “She didn’t apologize. She started laughing,” he said, “I was on my hands and knees picking up bone fragments. I couldn’t pick up all, everything that was lost. I mean, there was a long line behind me.”
TSA policy states that crematory containers must pass through X-ray scanners, but the organization’s website indicates that containers holding human remains should never be opened under any circumstances by TSA personnel. “I want an apology from TSA, said Gross. I want an apology from the lady who opened the jar and laughed at me. I want them to help me understand where they get off treating people like this.”
An apology; is that all?
That woman should be fired and never allowed a position of authority over others again. She desperately needs sensitivity training and mental health treatment. She’s a sociopath working within a government agency of sociopaths.
In Greenville, SC, Anna Gonzales, a drunken unlicensed illegal immigrant, ran over a young man with her car killing him, and eventually plead guilty in the case because the incident was entirely her fault.  She’s now serving a 17 year prison sentence for her crime.
After the accident, a slimy swamp creature government official for the city had the audacity to send Loretta Robinson, the deceased boy’s mother, several bills, including one for cleanup of the street.
"I had to pay to have the vehicle towed," the grieving mother told a South Carolina court Tuesday, speaking of the emotional and financial toll following her son Justin Walker's death. “I had to pay for the vehicle removed and to clean up the street from Justin's blood on the ground."
Robinson told the judge she has been unable to work due to the emotional impact of her son's death, and can't pay the bills she keeps receiving from the accident even though her son was not at fault.
She said the $50 bill to clean the street stung the most. "First of all, having to open the mail and look at the charge to the deceased, Justin Darryl Walker -- the deceased! It's just a hard thing to deal with in the context of your child," she said. She doesn't expect to get any money from Gonzales. The state's victim assistance fund has provided some money, but it primarily covers funeral, medical and counseling expenses.
What kind of human being would do a thing like that to another human being? In my opinion this is a clear cut case of intentional infliction of emotional distress. The mother ought to sue the city of Greenville and the government lizard that sent her those bills. Any reasonable jury would compensate her big time.
The accident was not the boy’s fault. So the administrator of his estate had no legal obligation whatsoever to pay any of those bills. The government agent who did this had to know that but still deliberately sent those bills to a grieving mother knowing full well of the monumental mental anguish and distress it would cause.
This is one more example of government sociopaths at work.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Congress Hostile toward Establishment Clause

The United States Air Force top brass, which for decades has openly mixed evangelical Christian religion with military duty in blatant violation of the First Amendment Establishment Clause, finally took a few necessary steps recently to correct the problem after prompting from concerned organizations including The Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
Changes in Air Force policy included: decisions to remove a Latin reference to “God” from a logo/motto for the Rapid Capabilities Office; stop requiring staff to check for Bibles in Air Force Inn rooms; removal of a document from a distance-learning course for Squadron Officer School that suggested chapel attendance is a sign of strong leadership; that chaplains, not commanders notify Airmen of Chaplain Corps programs; and the suspension of an ethics course because the material included Bible passages.
These innocuous changes have 66 members of Congress with their panties all in a bunch over what they describe as military policies which signify a developing culture that is "hostile towards religion," and which exceeds the Constitutional requirements of separation between church and state.
"Censorship is not required for compliance with the Constitution," they wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta claiming that the Air Force is denying religious freedoms to individuals and has "succumbed" to demands from outside groups.
But in fact there is no censorship at all and clearly no denial of any individual’s right to religious freedom. The policies merely bring the Air Force a little closer to compliance with the United States Constitution First Amendment Establishment Clause which requires government neutrality in matters of religion.
There is no Air Force hostility toward religion here. The hostility is generated by Congress toward the Establishment Clause. These 66 Congressmen have it in their minds that compliance with the Establishment Clause amounts to hostility toward religion. That’s the problem here.
In the case of the Squadron Officer School course, the learning document in question stated that: "If you attend chapel regularly, both officers and Airmen are likely to follow this example. If you are morally lax in your personal life, a general moral indifference within the command can be expected."
Of course, that language clearly suggests that officers who don’t attend chapel regularly are morally lax in their personal lives, and that regular church attendance is a requirement for commissioned Air Force officers in order to demonstrate positive morals to subordinates.
How does removing that obvious derogatory language toward non-religious officers create a culture of hostility toward religion?
The removal of the “God” logo involved this Latin phrase: "Doing God's Work with Other People's Money." It was changed to say, "Doing Miracles with Other People's Money."
How does that change possibly amount to hostility toward religion?
Regarding the Air Force Inn rooms, a question from its checklist asking whether a Bible was provided was removed, however it did not order Bibles to be removed. So the Bibles are still in the Inn rooms for anyone to read.
How does that change result in a culture of hostility toward religion?
The Air Force said in a statement responding to the letter that airmen are "free to exercise their constitutional right to practice their religion -- in a manner that is respectful of other individuals' rights to follow their own belief systems."
Airmen are free as always to practice their religion in accordance with the First Amendment Free Exercise Clause, and the Air Force has become more neutral in matters of religion which serves to put them into better compliance with the First Amendment Establishment Clause.
How in the name of all reason and logic does this amount to a developing culture which is hostile to religion?
It doesn’t.
These 66 Congressmen are simply guilty of political pandering to their Bible thumping constituents on the religious right – a large group of individuals who hate the Establishment Clause and who ardently believe that if the government does not support and promote their religion then that amounts to hostility toward their religion.
The hostility is not toward religion – it’s toward the Establishment Clause.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

With Lawyers Like This, Who Needs Attorneys?

I watched with utter amazement, disgust and disbelief after the verdict last week as Jerry Sandusky’s lead attorney, Joe Amendola, violated, within just a few minutes of TV time, virtually every solemn professional obligation a lawyer owes to his client.  
His client had just been convicted after a three week trial on 45 out of 48 counts of heinous sex crimes committed against little boys over a 15 year time span. Faced with this kind of predicament, any reasonably competent professional defense lawyer would have followed the advice any competent defense lawyer always gives his clients.
At a minimum he would have kept his mouth shut.
He should have kept his flapping mouth shut. If there were ever a time that a client desperately needed a lawyer and proper counsel, this was that time.
But instead of honoring his professional commitments and obligations to his client, this guy approached a TV media microphone in front of the court house and millions of television viewers, and proceeded, with a long, rambling and self serving statement, to throw his already convicted client under the bus.
“The Sandusky family is disappointed with verdict but we respect the verdict,” said Amendola. “We faced a mountain of evidence … it was like attempting to climb Mt Everest … obviously we didn’t make it… the jury believed the witnesses and that is no surprise … we expected that… we have no problem with the jury’s verdict … they acted genuinely … in good faith … we had a good jury …”
“… the prosecution handled the case in an exemplary manner … we congratulate them, Amendola continued,
“… the judge was marvelous … the ultimate jurist … he was fair … firm … reasonable with everything we asked for … except on our request for a continuance … it would be my privilege to serve in any case in front of Judge Cleland in the future … he gave counsel and the defendant a fair shake and a fair trial … he did an outstanding job …”
“… we feel we didn’t have enough time to prepare … we feel we have some decent appeal issues …
Essentially, this defense lawyer is admitting to the world that his client got a fair shake and a fair trial; the prosecutor was great; the judge marvelous; fair; reasonable, etc. etc. He would have liked a bit more time to prepare but that will be the issue for an appeal. Obviously, he has nothing else.
Now even if all of that is true, and it most likely is, there are still some truths which are best left for others to say. It is not the job of a defense lawyer to lay bare for the entire world to see the weaknesses in his client’s case. That’s the prosecutor’s job.
Then out of the blue he launched into the reasons why Sandusky didn’t testify as if there were no such thing as attorney client privilege; no such thing as privileged communications between a lawyer and his client. Sandusky, according to his attorney, apparently didn’t testify at his trial because his adopted son Matt came forward late during the proceedings with his own abuse allegations against him.
“… Jerry wanted to testify … and our whole case was predicated on that … we had to reluctantly keep him from testifying… even though he still wanted to … he denied abusing the boy … but it would have destroyed any chance of acquittal if he testified and then the son rebutted … We anticipated that he (Matt) would be a defense witness … Jerry said that Matt has had problems ever since he lived with them … which led him to do irrational things sometimes …”
“Essentially, Jerry will receive a life sentence …,” his lawyer concluded.
The very next day, Sandusky's other defense attorney Karl Rominger, on his personal radio show, reiterated that he and his co-counsel, Joe Amendola, were simply unprepared for trial. Rominger went so far as to say both he and Amendola tried to get off the case the morning of jury selection.
How about that! Defense attorney’s have personal radio shows where they discuss privileged client information for the benefit of the world’s curiosity, and admit trying to ditch their client in his time of need.  
“I thought Joe Amendola's press conference was bad enough. I was wrong. His interview with Anderson Cooper -- at least the beginning of it -- was worse,” opined columnist Bryan Floyd.   
“This just seems like one big joke to Amendola. He's mugging for the cameras, smiling and laughing. Again, he was the defense attorney for now-convicted sex offender Jerry Sandusky -- a man found guilty of child sex abuse. But here he is, asking if he's talking to someone cute when being put on with Anderson Cooper.”
“This is a real attorney in a high-profile case. He just got finished up with an incredibly messy trial that involved gut-wrenching testimony and graphic details. And he's joking around everywhere he goes, hopping from TV station to TV station.
It's just incredibly insane. Show some tact, man.”
Tact is not something these defense lawyers are familiar with. They’re in the profession for themselves – not their clients.
Defense attorney Karl Rominger told CNN yesterday that Sandusky is being held on suicide watch in protective custody away from other inmates. The jail would not comment on Sandusky's condition to ABC News.
The jail won’t comment but the attorney will.
With lawyers like this, who needs attorneys? 

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Compulsory Education Humiliation, Part 2

Compulsory education today involves public school students being forced to attend classes so that they may be routinely humiliated, bullied and violated as part of their state dictated learning process.
My last post detailed the aftermath of a so-called “catastrophe award” presented by the teacher in front of the class to a little third-grader for not finishing her homework; a ninth-grader slapped in the face repeatedly by her teacher in front of her classmates because she forgot to bring her homework; and an eight-year-old boy stripped naked and washed by two female school officials because they thought he needed a bath.
Clearly, far too many public school officials in America nowadays have it in their statist minds that the children and young adults under their domination have no constitutional rights, in fact, no rights at all. They think that they can get away with treating human beings like so many domesticated animals in cages.   
Today the news is about ten-year-old Justin Cox, a third grader at Union Elementary School in Clinton North Carolina who was strip-searched by a female assistant principal after another student accused him wrongly of theft.
A little girl classmate dropped a $20 bill. Justin picked it up off the floor and returned it to her. Evidently she lost it again and this time accused the boy of stealing it.
Female assistant principal, Teresa Holmes, in total disregard of the student’s rights, specifically his Sixth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures without a warrant based upon probable cause, took it upon herself to order a strip search.  
Justin was ordered to strip to his T-shirt and boxer shorts in front of her. Then "she came up to him and rubbed her fingers around inside of his underwear," reports his mother. "If that isn't excessively intrusive, I don't know what is."
The strip search yielded no money, no evidence – nothing. So the assailant hugged the boy and apologized to him. Later someone found the $20 bill underneath a lunchroom table.
His mother said that, with or without an apology, her son was violated.
But a Sampson County Schools spokeswoman, while admitting that mother should have been informed prior to any search, insisted that the assistant principal had done nothing wrong because a male janitor was present. "The assistant principal was within her legal authority, her legal right, to do the search," Warren said. "She may have been overzealous in her actions."
Legal authority! What legal authority?
Since when does an assistant principal at an elementary school have the authority to suspend the mandate of the United States Constitution Bill of Rights?
Since when does a female elementary school assistant principal have the authority to order a male student to strip in front of her so she can feel around beneath his underpants?
Can school administrators strip students now as long as a janitor is present?
The arrogance of these school house tyrants boggles my mind.
And some of them even want their hapless little captives to pledge allegiance to them regularly just like they are coerced into pledging allegiance to the United States government and its statist flag.
For the past decade, every Monday of the school year at Asher Holmes Elementary School in Morganville, N.J., has started with students reciting a pledge written by a fourth-grade teacher honoring the Marlboro Township School District and its teachers, who “help [students] learn” all they need to “know for the future.”
"I pledge allegiance to Asher Holmes and the Marlboro Township School District and to the teachers who help us learn all that we need to know for the future," the pledge states. "We promise to respect ourselves and others, to try our best and always be proud of our schools."
This unbelievable violation of rights would still be going on today had a parent who found out about it from her kid not complained.
So the school board voted to nix the pledge and opted instead to rewrite it as a school song instead. "Over the summer, a school spirit song will be created to replace the pledge, and will be put into effect for the 2012-13 school year," said the Marlboro Board of Education in a news release.
Compulsory education by humiliation: It never ends.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Compulsory Education Humiliation

The travesty of compulsory education as practiced in America requires all parents to send their children to school upon penalty of the law if they fail to comply, and all children to attend school whether they want to or not, usually until the age of 16 years.  
In short, the little ones are forcefully compelled by the state to surrender their liberty during the greater part of their formative years so that the state may indoctrinate them as it pleases.
And during the sausage making process of that indoctrination the kids today are all too often required to surrender to the state their personal privacy and dignity as well.
Such was the case just last month with 8-year-old Cassandra Garcia, a Tucson AZ public school student, who was humiliated in front of all her third grade classmates when the teacher, a certain Ms. Plowman, decided to present her with a "catastrophe award," for being the "one student with the most excuses for not having their homework done" during the year.
"All the children were laughing at her," the girl's mother said, characterizing the incident as bullying. Ms. Plowman, on the other hand, said she saw the award as a joke.
It was a joke alright – at the expense of the tender feelings of a vulnerable little 8-year-old girl.
When ninth grader, Dionne Evans, a student at Malibu High School in California, forgot to bring her homework to class last month she was called to the front of the classroom whereupon her teacher asked, "Did you see 'Bridesmaids'?" She then slapped the girl's face several times in an attempt to slap some sense into her by imitating a scene in the movie.
"My client has not been back to the class, she's been doing her school work in the library," said her attorney. "She has been humiliated and devastated. She will be seeking counseling. It has been horrible."
But these two incidents amount to nothing compared to what happened to an 8-year-old Texas third grade school boy last November who was forced to strip naked and shower in front of two female administrators because they thought that he "smelled badly, was dirty and had bad hygiene."
His parents filed a police report over the incident but no charges were brought. The cops apparently have no problem with two grown women assaulting a helpless little school boy and forcing him to strip naked in front of them so he could be “washed.”
Would they feel the same if it was a little girl and two grown men? Maybe so; school officials are licensed to assault, batter and otherwise do exactly as they please with their captive charges these days.  
The parents have filed a lawsuit alleging that their son was singled out and taken to the nurse's office at Peaster Elementary School where he was forced to remove his clothes. The two women then "began violently washing his body with a washcloth, scrubbing him over a large portion of his body, stuck cotton balls in his ears, all while ridiculing and harassing him about being dirty.”
The incident left the boy traumatized -- "visibly and severely distraught," and he had to see a therapist afterward. "He just kept on and on, wanting to take baths," said his mother. "You know, he just felt so disgusting," adding that he never had a problem with body odor or cleanliness.
We have to wonder what goes through the minds of these depraved school officials who actually believed they had the right to treat a student like a stray dog they found on the street. They thought he needed a bath so they took it upon themselves to strip him naked and scrub him down whether he wanted it or not.  Why didn’t they just call his mother?
This was a deliberate and premeditated assault and battery for the purpose of humiliation; clearly a sexual assault had it been committed against an 8-year-old girl by two grown men. The slapping incident was a humiliating assault and battery against a defenseless young girl, and the “catastrophe award” to a third grader for not doing her homework was humiliating harassment, i.e. bullying.
Those school officials deserve the same done to them, or face the loss of their liberty for awhile as punishment at the very least. They need to learn that children have dignity and a sense of personal privacy too.
The two witches who stripped the little boy deserve, in my humble opinion, a public humiliation Biblical style, whereby notice is published beforehand of the spectacle in which they are forced to strip naked in front of a crowd of jeering and hooting strangers, scrubbed with soap and a stiff bristled brush, then rinsed down with cold water from a garden hose and left outside to dry in the wind.  
Perhaps that would teach them a lesson against education by humiliation.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Bloomberg Bites His Big Fat Apple

Last week I scoffed at New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg taking a big gulp out of liberty in his city by banning the sale of large sized soft drink servings on his anti-obesity crusade, and warned that if he could do such evil with soda pop he could do it with other foods too.
I just didn’t think he’d move to do it so quickly.
But that is the nature of the statist mind. When they find themselves in positions of power they begin trampling upon individual liberty without so much as a backward glance. They enjoy interfering, meddling, and dictating into the lives of others. It makes them feel good.
I’ve always thought it was a mayor’s job to represent his town to the world, preside over city council meetings, see that the trash is picked up regularly, and oversee the responsibilities of the city’s employees.  It is inconceivable to me that the duties of a city mayor might include overseeing a food police department.
Now his target is set on large sized popcorn containers at movie theatres, milkshakes and “milk-coffee beverages" throughout the city, and who knows what other treats and snacks might come under the microscope next.
His New York City Board of Health expressed their approval last Tuesday for his soda pop proposal and now is hard at work thinking of other draconian methods to trim the fat from the waists, thighs and butts of the Big Apple’s obese denizens.
Member Bruce Vladeck proposed limiting movie-theater popcorn containers. "The popcorn isn't a whole lot better than the soda," he said. Another member suggested limits for milkshakes and "milk-coffee beverages."
While they’re at it, why stop with popcorn and milkshakes? Why not ban the sale of big candy bars, Twinkies, pizza slices, double dip ice cream cones and foot long hot dogs?
That great old tyrant, Ivan the Terrible, the first Tsar of Russia, was said to have once issued a royal decree proclaiming that all the men in his empire should not shave their beards, must not shave their moustaches, or pluck them, upon penalty of death. And Ivan demonstrated much ingenuity in his death sentences, including burning barefaced men at the stake, impaling them on poles and boiling them in pots.
It seems to me that Mayor Bloomberg is doing his level best to imitate the Russian Tsar American style as he takes another enormous bite of liberty out of his big fat apple.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Bloomberg Takes a Big Gulp out of Liberty

Governments have been taking big bites out of liberty these days, and now the mayor of New York City is taking a big gulp.
You see, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has this pathological obsession about obesity. It’s not about his own shrimp sized body, which would be fine -- he’s not obese -- but instead he obsesses about the body fat on everyone else in his fiefdom.  
So the man has been campaigning against his subjects’ obesity ever since he became the Mayor. First he went hysterical about trans-fats in restaurant food; you know the stuff that makes it taste good. So he banned the substance altogether in his city. Now you can’t get a meal or a snack with trans-fats in it anywhere in the entire city of New York.
Then he forced restaurants throughout the city to post detailed calorie counts for every item on their menus as if anyone but he and his merry band of statist food nannies gives a shit about it.
Lately he’s been focusing his tyrannical attention on soda pop of all things. He doesn’t like the thought of his serfs drinking too much soda pop. They might get fat and that bothers the Mayor.
First, he tried to make the consumption of soda pop less appealing to the cities’ sheep by proposing a statewide tax on the soft drinks but his grand idea was foiled by the politicians in the state house at Albany. Then he attempted to block people using food stamps from buying soda pop at the stores but federal regulators squashed that move.
Not about for one second to give up on his anti-obesity crusade, now he’s proposing another ban on the “unhealthy” soda pop business in his jurisdiction. He wants to outlaw Big Gulps, super-sized sodas, and other sugary bottled or fountain drinks larger than 16 ounces per serving at restaurants, movie theaters, sports venues and street carts.   
Any food establishments caught violating the ban would be subject to pay $200 fines. Bloomberg declared that he "thinks it's what the public wants the mayor to do."
At least one of the Mayor’s fawning subjects agrees with him, opining that "sodas are really unhealthy and I don't see any reason you need to drink 20 ounces of soda."  Instead of making a reasonable resolution to keep his own soda pop consumption to a minimum this fledgling tyrant thinks it’s just fine to stomp on the liberty of everyone else.
Personally, I would have trouble downing 16 ounces of soda. I’d have difficulty drinking a full 12 ounces, but I’m the last person on Earth who would interfere with the right of any business to sell any quantity of a lawful product that any customer desires. After all, this is America. We’re all supposed to be free here. Who am I to say no?
It’s one thing to restrict or prohibit smoking in bars, restaurants and other public places, an edict which Mayor Bloomberg has also accomplished to his credit. The stinking smoke that smokers emit from their filthy habit actually interferes adversely with the personal space and health of others. Prohibiting smoking in public is therefore justified for the same reasons using a bull horn to speak in public might rightly be proscribed.
But it is quite another thing to prohibit the size of soda pop servings the consumption of which has no affect upon others. It’s none of a city mayor’s business if someone in his city wants to drink more than 16 ounces of soda pop at once. It’s none of his business that some people are fat and consume too much for their own good.
If the Mayor can dictate the size of soda pop servings, he can dictate every other aspect of any business in his city. He could pass an ordinance restricting donut shops from selling more than 2 donuts at a time to a customer. He could outlaw larger portions of French fries; more than one pork chop per plate; any serving of steak more than ¾ of an inch thick – there is no limit to what evil he could do to our appetites.
Me thinks the Mayor this time has taken too big a gulp of our liberty to swallow.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Stealth Binging

The United States Department of Defense has long ago become the Department of Offense.
That old cliché -- “spending money like a drunken sailor” -- fits perfectly when we consider the $billions upon $billions of taxpayer dollars the military forces are gobbling up today.
Now the Department of Offense is hyping a so-called “super stealthy destroyer warship” designed for more and louder American saber rattling. Its major purpose is to intimidate China with the “capability of sneaking up on coastlines virtually undetected and pounding targets at several times the speed of sound with electromagnetic "rail guns" right out of a sci-fi movie.”
During a visit to Singapore recently, U.S. Offense Secretary Leon Panetta said the Navy will be deploying 60 percent of its fleet worldwide to the Pacific by 2020, and that new high-tech ships will be a big part of its shift.
It makes me wonder how the Great American military baboon colony would take it if China announced that it was deploying a majority of its military forces to just off the California coast with a compliment of brand new stealth warships capable of sneaking up on the coastline of Los Angeles or San Francisco virtually undetected and pounding those cities at the speed of sound with electromagnetic "rail guns" right out of a sci-fi movie.
That sort of blatant provocation would have our President and the big brass knuckle draggers at the Pentagon screaming like banshees, for sure.
But China has done no such thing and there is no reason to believe that it will. So why is the United States of America deliberately on a fools course to provoke China, a nation which, given the right kind of diplomacy, could conceivably be our friend and ally?
They’re doing it because they can. The Navy says that its money well spent. The rise of China has been cited as the best reason for keeping the revolutionary ship afloat.
We have the largest most powerful military force in the world, and by God we intend to use it. Why make friends when it’s much easier to make enemies and have fun with stealth technology and missiles?
So the Pentagon has lately been heavily promoting this newest outrageously expensive boondoggle, the DDG-1000, as the most advanced destroyer in history -- a silver bullet of stealth, calling it a perfect fit for what Washington now considers the most strategically important region in the world -- Asia and the Pacific.
The first of the new ships are set to be delivered in 2014. "With its stealth, incredibly capable sonar system, strike capability and lower manning requirements -- this is our future," Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, said in April after visiting the shipyard in Maine where they are being built.
 Its ability to carry out missions both on the high seas and in shallows closer to shore is thought to be especially important in Asia because of the region's many island nations and China's long Pacific coast. It features a wave-piercing hull that leaves almost no wake, electric drive propulsion and advanced sonar and missiles.
But the usual cost overruns and technical delays plaguing bloated projects like this one have left many military experts wondering if the whole endeavor is too focused on futuristic technologies for its own good.
It’s similar to the problem-ridden F-22 stealth jet fighter which was hailed as the most advanced fighter ever built but was cut short because of prohibitive costs. And its successor, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, has swelled up into the most expensive procurement program in Defense Department history.
Get this: the bill to the taxpayers for just one of these new ships is $3.1 billion, actually $7 billion each when research and development is added in, and the Navy originally wanted 32 of them – that’s a staggering $224 billion dollars.
It won’t get that many. "Costs spiraled -- surprise, surprise -- and the program basically fell in on itself," said Richard Bitzinger, a security expert at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. "The DDG-1000 was a nice idea for a new modernistic surface combatant, but it contained too many unproven, disruptive technologies."
One of these $7billion dollar tin cans is too many as far as I’m concerned.
China has so far remained quiet about the American threat. But Rear Adm. Zhang Zhaozhong, an outspoken commentator affiliated with China's National Defense University, scoffed at the hype surrounding the ship, saying that despite its high-tech design it could be overwhelmed by a swarm of fishing boats laden with explosives. If enough boats were mobilized some could get through to blow a hole in its hull, and "It would be a goner," he said.
It should be a goner before the first one is built.
American has had quite enough of stealth binging.

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Kill the Sinners

Thank you, thank you, thank you, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, and all the other wise founding fathers of the United States of America, especially for the First Amendment Establishment Clause. If not for that surely or nation would be a theocracy today.
John Adams, our nation’s second president, once said: "The question before the human race is, whether the God of Nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?"
His sentiments about religion were shared by our third president, Thomas Jefferson, who stated the obvious: "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot."
Then followed James Madison, our fourth president, who observed that: "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
These men understood the mortal danger involved with the mixing of government and religion. That’s why they made absolutely sure that the very first provision of the Bill of Rights would be the First Amendment Establishment Clause.
If the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights were conceived and written today, I fear there would probably be no such clause; no separation between church and state. There might not even be a Bill of Rights. Much of that has been torn to shreds just within the last two decades.
There are many people in America today who fervently believe that the government ought to embody and literally enforce all the laws God commanded from the mountain top to Moses as revealed in the Old Testament of the Holy Bible.
Pastor Curtis Knapp of New Hope Baptist Church in Seneca, Kansas is one of them.
The pastor says President Barack Obama has gone too far in supporting same sex marriage and it’s time for the U.S. government to begin killing gay men and lesbians.
“Terrorists are dangerous, the economy is a real and present danger,” he told his congregation on Sunday. “But there is simply nothing other than the holocaust of the unborn which imperils the safety of our country or places our people in jeopardy as does the leader of the Western world publicly raising his fist at the heavens and declaring that the bedrock institution of society, ordained of God and meant to be protected by the state, is little more than a convention of convenience with the children of Sodom to transform the meaning of something, which is precious to Jesus Christ, and a living picture of his love for the church into a legally protected justification for perversion and a vehicle of hatred aimed directly at that love.”
Quoting from Leviticus 20 he read: “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death.”
“They should be put to death,” Knapp preached. “‘Oh, so you’re saying we should go out and start killing them, no?’ — I’m saying the government should. They won’t, but they should.”
“You say, ‘Oh, I can’t believe you, you’re horrible. You’re a backwards Neanderthal of a person.’ Is that what you’re calling scripture? Is God a Neanderthal, backwards in his morality? Is it His word or not? If it’s His word, he commanded it. It’s His idea, not mine. And I’m not ashamed of it.”
“He said put them to death,” he continued. “Shall the church drag them in? No, I’m not say[ing] that. The church has not been given the power of the sort; the government has. But the government ought to [kill them]. You got a better idea? A better idea than God?”
Yes, fortunately for most of us, our founding fathers had a better idea than God. Their idea protects us from the rabid religious psychopaths like pastor Knapp and others who would have the Bible as our source of morality and law.
And I don’t think for one minute that pastor Knapp and his ilk would stop at government cleansing the society of gays. His God gave Moses a lengthy laundry list of sinners who must be put to death.
They like God’s idea:
Kill the sinners!