Birther baloney

Donald Trump took some painful unnecessary lumps Monday night during the debate with Hillary Clinton when he seemed to struggle for credible answers on the so-called “birther” issue. The Democrats and Clinton campaign have been trying to label Trump an evil racist because he had the temerity to question whether Barack Obama was born in the United States and thus qualified to be president. But did Trump start that controversy? No! Did Clinton start it? No! Well, who started it then?

As a matter of fact, Barack Obama started it himself 25 years ago in 1991 when the publisher for one of his books circulated a promotional booklet containing a short biographical sketch declaring unambiguously that he was born in Kenya. So anyone doing in-depth research into the whereabouts of Obama’s birth could have found it and, more importantly, Obama never took steps to correct it if it was inaccurate. On top of that, he stonewalled the release of his Hawaii birth certificate until Trump successfully forced his hand.

Now, few people today, including me and Donald Trump, question the apparent fact that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii USA. That’s because President Obama produced the proof of the matter. Was simply questioning his birth place racist? No. Trump and others questioned Ted Cruz’s qualifications too as he was admittedly born in Canada. That certainly wasn’t racist. Cruz is a white man. There was a legitimate constitutional issue as to whether both men were qualified to be president.

Why, if it was a mistake, didn’t Barack Obama disavow the biographical sketch declaring that he was born in Kenya? Surely he was aware of it. Surely he signed off on it. Doing nothing about it then was a tacit admission that he was born in Kenya. Why did it take 21 long years for the publisher to discover that it was a mistake? Because he was running for President, that’s why, and he would not be qualified if he were born in Kenya.

Why do the Kenyan Parliamentary minutes of November 5, 2008 state of Barak Obama:

“Mr. Obama, is a son of the soil of this country (Kenya). Every other country in this continent is celebrating the Obama win. It is only proper and fitting that the country which he originates should show the same excitement, pomp and colour.”

Why did First Lady, Michelle Obama say candidly some years ago in a recorded speech that Kenya is her husband’s home country?

“When we took our trip to Africa and visited his home country in Kenya, we took a public HIV test for the very point of showing folks in Kenya that there is nothing to be embarrassed about in getting tested.”

Did Barack Obama want to have it both ways? Did he lie about being born in Kenya so that he could sell more books? Who knows? But surely there was enough information out there to create a legitimate suspicion about exactly where he was born and merely investigating the facts about it was not racism.

Trying to tar Donald Trump as a “birther” and therefore a racist is just birther baloney. 

The thief and the grave robber

Do you remember when a certain First Lady of the United States moved out of the White House with her husband after his time as President expired in January 2001, and was caught red handed taking with her as much as $190,000 worth of White House china, flatware, rugs, televisions, sofas and other expensive items which didn’t belong to her?

Faced with the negative consequences of her dishonesty, she sent back $28,000 worth of the items, and agreed to pay an additional sum of $86,000 – a total of $114,000 – to make her pilfering problem go away.

Who was that First Lady? Why Hillary Rodham Clinton, of course. Yes, Hillary Clinton is a thief. The current Democrat Party nominee for President of the United States of America is a common thief.

Hold on; it gets worse; a lot worse. Now she’s brazenly pilfering money from her poorest supporters by reportedly purposefully and repeatedly overcharging them after they make what’s supposed to be a one-time small donation to her official campaign website The Wells Fargo Bank fraud department is presently inundated with calls from low-income Clinton supporters reporting repeated unauthorized charges.

Talk about biting the hand that feeds her; this is an example of the most disgusting dishonesty and thievery I’ve ever seen. The overcharges are occurring so often that Wells Fargo alone receives up to 100 phone calls a day from Clinton’s small donors asking for refunds for unauthorized charges to their bankcards.

Hillary overcharges small donors by repeatedly charging small amounts such as $20 to the bankcards of donors who made a one-time donation. It takes care not to overcharge these donors $100 or more because the bank would then be obligated to investigate the fraud. You see, no one ever said that Crooked Hillary wasn’t a smart thief.

OK, we know that Hillary Clinton enjoys stealing money from innocent people while they are alive; now we find out that, if elected President, she’s intent on bilking them even worse after they’re dead. She fancies herself a modern day grave robber. She’s going to confiscate up to nearly two thirds of the wealth that an individual has accumulated and paid taxes on over an entire lifetime.

But at least the loot won’t be going directly into her pockets. Clinton wants to impose a 65% death tax on the largest estates and make it much harder for wealthy households to pass appreciated assets on to their heirs without paying huge amounts taxes. So lots of kids will be forced to sell the family farm or other business when their father dies. It’s all part of her greedy and grandiose plan to increase taxes by about $1.5 trillion over the next decade.

That’s Hillary Clinton – the thief and the grave robber. 

The great American Skittles flap

Immigration has been a central issue in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign from the beginning. He has maintained repeatedly that America should be exceedingly careful about admitting refugees from places like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other Islamic countries until they can be properly vetted so that we know who they are and why they want to come here.  

Trump wants to keep out radical jihadist Islamic terrorists – bad apples, if you will -- who want to immigrate to America in order to kill Americans. Hillary Clinton and her Democrat Party, in contrast, want to admit hundreds of thousands of such refugees, 600,000 of them, I’m told, even though there is presently no way they can be properly vetted. She’s willing to take the risk that perhaps a small percentage of them – the bad apples -- might be terrorists.

Trump’s logic is simple and straightforward enough; if 99% of such 600,000 refugees are good, innocent and well intentioned people while only 1%  are bad radical jihadist Islamic terrorists, that would mean that as many as 6,000 radical jihadist Islamic terrorists would be admitted and set loose upon the American homeland to commit their jihadist mayhem and kill Americans.

Donald Trump Jr. wanted to explain that logic in simple every day terms so he took to his Twitter account to make an analogy with a bowl of candy – skittles. He pictured a big bowl of skittles and tweeted:

“If I had a big bowl of skittles and I told you that just three would kill you, would you take a handful?

That’s our Syrian refugee problem.”

It’s a pretty good analogy, isn’t it? It makes the risks quite easy to understand, don’t you think? Perhaps that’s why Hillary and the leftists were so outraged by it. “Trump Jr. draws outrage after likening Syrian refugees to poisoned Skittles,” the headline declares.   

If Trump Jr. had pictured a bushel of apples instead of a bowl of skittles to demonstrate the risk of eating a bad apple, the leftist mob would be howling just as much about his comparing the poor Syrian refugees to bad apples.

“Oh and human beings fleeing oppression and terror aren’t skittles,” tweeted ultra-leftist celebrity, John Legend. “Man the rancid apple does not fall far from the tree.” You see, it’s OK for him to draw an analogy to the Trump family as bad apples – not people -- isn’t it?

“Disgusting,” tweeted Nick Merrill, a press secretary for Hillary Clinton.

“Skittles are candy. Refugees are people. We don't feel it's an appropriate analogy,” said Denise Young, VP of Corporate Affairs for Wrigley Americas, which owns Skittles. 

Well, yeah, skittles are candy and refugees are people, but what does that have to do with anything? It’s an analogy, stupid. Surely it’s nothing to be outraged about. Surely it makes no difference if it’s about poisoned candy or bad apples, which is an analogy used by people all the time to make a point about taking risks with people. You know, there are bad apples out there.  

Really, does anyone in his or her right mind believe that Trump Jr. meant to imply that Syrian refugees aren’t people? Has it come to the lowest point of the political abyss where anything the Trump campaign says is a legitimate trigger for outrage?

I guess so. And the great American skittles flap is the proof. 

The Snowden example

The Edward Snowden example is just one of the many reasons why I no longer trust the motives or believe the explanations for anything my government says and does. The irrefutable fact is that Snowden exposed the United States government intelligence community as guilty beyond any doubt of criminal conduct in violation of the laws and Constitution of the United States against the people of our nation. Now we know; our government is and has been unlawfully spying on all of us.

Snowden proved that our government betrayed its obligation to uphold the Constitution. It deceived and betrayed the people of the United States. It is therefore a traitor in every sense of the word. Our own government is traitorous. Our own government is criminal. Our own government is corrupt. He didn’t do it for money. He didn’t do it for sex. He didn’t do it out of disloyalty. His motives were pure. He did it for the American people.

Despite all the irrefutable evidence that our government is the traitor, it still insists falsely that Snowden is the traitor. It admits the facts which establish its own guilt but refuses to accept any responsibility for its treason. Instead, it wants to punish Edward Snowden for exposing its crimes.

The government has a right to keep state secrets, but no government has a legal or constitutional right to keep its constitutional and legal violations secret. It has no right to hide its crimes. Therefore, Edward Snowden did the right thing when he blew the whistle on it. Edward Snowden then is not a traitor; he’s an authentic American hero.

The intelligence community wants Snowden’s blood and won’t be satisfied until they have it. He deserves a presidential pardon for his service to the nation but the intelligence goons are willing to do anything; say anything to make sure that never happens. So it has written a mostly classified report smearing Snowden as a disgruntled ex-government employee; a liar; a “serial exaggerator and fabricator.”

It accuses Snowden of doing “tremendous damage to national security.” Sorry, but I just don’t believe it. Snowden’s lawyer, Ben Wizner, says it is a “dishonest report that attempts to discredit a genuine American hero. After years of ‘investigation,’ the committee still can’t point to any remotely credible evidence that Snowden’s disclosures caused harm… The truth is that Edward Snowden and the journalists with whom he worked did the job that the House Intelligence Committee was supposed to do: bring meaningful oversight to the U.S. intelligence community. They did so responsibly and carefully, and their efforts have led to historic reforms.”

Significantly, the report makes no claim that Snowden was a spy or “an agent of influence” of Russian or Chinese intelligence, as some former U.S. intelligence officials have alleged. So, again, his motives were indeed pure.

This is a good example of why I no longer trust my government – the Snowden example. 

Welcome to statist USA

It’s Sunday afternoon in America. and the football game is about to start. You’re sitting comfortably in your living room on your favorite leather recliner chair with a can of cold beer.  In front of you is your brand new wide screen LED television set. On your lap are a big bowl of popcorn and a jumbo bag of Cheetos. On your huge ultra-high-resolution screen you see a close-up of the American flag waving in the breeze at the stadium. Then you hear the national anthem begin playing.  

Do you put aside your beer, popcorn and Cheetos to stand up and salute the flag with your right hand over your heart until the anthem is finished? Or do you remain seated? Have you ever stood up at attention to salute the flag when you were by yourself or with family and friends at home watching the game?

Be honest now. I bet you have never done that or even felt in your mind the slightest obligation to do that. I bet you remain seated every time. If so, does that mean you are disrespecting our nation’s flag as well as all the brave soldiers and cops who have sacrificed and died for us since 1776?  Should you and everyone else who does that be condemned and ostracized from proper society for being unpatriotic and disrespectful of the American flag?

Do you have an American flag hanging on your living room wall or on a pole in a corner of the room? Do you, with your wife, kids, neighbors and friends, stand at attention in front of it at least once every day saluting with your right hand over your heart while reciting out loud the Pledge of Allegiance? No? I didn’t think so. Who does that, really? No one does that. And no one, including you, thinks it’s disrespectful of the flag and our nation under God for not doing that.

So why then is it considered flagrantly and unforgivably unpatriotic and disrespectful at the stadium with the crowd or in the public school classroom with the class?  Isn’t it because ostentatiously showing respect for the national anthem and Pledge of allegiance in public are statist rituals meant to be performed together by the whole crowd – not individually when no one else is watching? 

It’s a group display of patriotism thing. You do it because of the social pressure exerted upon you do it because everyone else is doing it. If you don’t stand with the group in public you are being disrespectful, but it’s not disrespectful if you are home essentially alone.

That doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense, does it? You see, it really has absolutely nothing to do with the American flag or the national anthem. It’s about conforming to the statist expectations of the crowd. When anyone declines to conform to the statist expectations of the crowd – even in situations where non-conforming is a fundamental constitutional right – you have the mob of irrational statists screaming for retribution and punishment.

Statism is an irrational worship of the state as an entity which supersedes the rights and interests of the individuals who created it. Statists are advocates of the practice of forcing individuals to conform to their idea of state worship. It’s a group thing characterized by both legal and social pressure to conform. And it’s politically non-partisan to the extent that conformance is demanded of every individual irrespective of political Party affiliation.

This is why Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem has generated such a firestorm of controversy among the statists. He’s refusing to conform to their irrational expectations involving state worship. He’s not worshipping the state in public with the crowd as he and everyone else is expected to do. We’re all expected to act in public like a herd of lemmings.

Missouri State Senator Jamilah Nasheed, a St. Louis Democrat, likewise refused to stand while her colleagues recited the Pledge of Allegiance in the state Capitol, explaining that her silent protest on the Senate floor was intended to show solidarity with the San Francisco 49ers quarterback. That prompted statist Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder to release a statement calling her protest an "occasion for great sorrow." He said he worried about "the example she is setting, particularly for our young people."

"As part of the privilege to represent your country, we have an expectation that our players and coaches will stand and honor our flag while the National Anthem is played," announced the statist U.S. Soccer team in a statement after star player Megan Rapinoe declined to do so before a recent match in Thailand.

A statist high school teacher in California actually thinks she has the authority to lower a student’s grades in her class for the “offense” of not standing up for the Pledge of Allegiance. “She told me I was being disrespectful and I was pretty mad,” explains the student who is Native American. “She was being disrespectful to me also, saying I was making bad choices, and I don’t have the choice to sit during the pledge.”

A statist Chicago Vietnam War military veteran and retired city alderman has proposed a city ordinance which by law will force all people to stand when the Star Spangled Banner is played. People should face the flag with their hands over their hearts and men should take off their hats, the proposal provides. The proponent acknowledges that it’s unlawful to force a person to stand but he thinks the move would signal that the city acknowledges the reverence that should be displayed during the National Anthem.

Public school students in the State of Louisiana have been told by the statist education authorities that they would be punished for sitting during the daily Pledge of Allegiance ritual in the classrooms. Failure to conform in public to their irrational expectations of state worship amounts to disrespect in their minds.

The obvious irony of all of this is that it's really the statists who disrespect the nation, our Constitution and American values – not the individuals who are merely exercising their fundamental American constitutional rights.

Welcome to statist USA! 

Should partisan ideology be promoted by public schools?

If your politics was Democrat; you voted regularly for Democrat Party candidates; and believed in the Democrat Party platform; how would you like it if the public school your child attended promoted and taught Republican Party ideology and politics in your kid’s classroom? What would you think if the school teachers and administrators put up Donald Trump posters in all the classrooms and common areas at your child’s school?

If your politics was Republican, and you wanted to impart that ideology to your children, what would you think if your kid’s public school promoted Hillary Clinton for President? The answer is easy. You wouldn’t like it. You would probably be inclined to complain about it. And your reason would be that the public schools have no legitimate business promoting partisan ideology to the children; especially as they are forced by law to attend.

By the same token, if your religion was Christian; you believed in Christianity; and wanted your children to believe in it too; how would you feel if  the public school your child attends started  promoting and teaching a different religion or no religion at all to your kid in the classrooms, the assembly’s and common areas of the school building?

Again, I think you wouldn’t like it. I think you would be inclined to complain; and your reason would be the same -- the public schools have no legitimate business promoting partisan ideology to the children; especially as they are forced by law to attend.

And you would be absolutely right. Partisan ideology, whether it be political, religious or cultural, has no rightful place in the learning curriculums of public schools. Parents and children should not be forced to participate in schools which promote partisan values.  

I don’t believe that the government authority should be involved at all in the education of children. I think that is unconstitutional. In a free country education should be the sole responsibility of the parents, the individual and the family.

But if there must be public schools, and if otherwise free individuals can be forced to participate in them, surely the only legitimate purpose is to teach the kids how to read, write, figure and assimilate peacefully with their peers. Once that educational goal is accomplished each child is fully equipped to pursue his or her life, liberty and happiness in society. Politics, religion, and all other cultural values can easily be learned and practiced at home and after the children leave their public school.

People who believe that public schools should be employed to promote partisan values – typically Christianity -- to hapless conscripted children make me angry.  They never stop trying even after their efforts are struck down by the courts. They whine and cry pitifully when a “School district boots Jesus Christ, a prayer and a hymn” from the educational curriculum. They really think that our government should take sides in matters of partisan religion. They want the public schools to teach all the kids Christianity.

“Jesus Christ is no longer welcome at a school district in Tipton, Missouri. And neither are prayers or a religious hymn,” they lament. “The Tipton R-VI School District decided to cleanse itself of anything remotely affiliated with Christianity after they were bullied by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. They even pulled down a giant portrait of our Lord that was displayed in the grade school’s library.”

 Well, of course the school district only did what the law required it do. That’s because sponsoring, promoting and teaching any partisan religion ideology in public schools plainly violates the United States Constitution – it’s patently unconstitutional.

So stop your whining. You know that if the shoe were on the other foot you would be demanding that the school follow the same law. You would be demanding that no partisan ideology should be promoted by public schools.

American Nazis

I am sickened by the escalating chorus of American cultural authorities croaking out their cruel mindless nationalistic rebuke over Colin Kaepernick’s First Amendment freedom of expression decision to remain seated for the ubiquitous national anthem ritual at football games.  This man has hurt no one. He’s totally innocent of any wrongdoing. He’s merely sitting down. Yet the cultural Gestapo police are after him. They won’t be satisfied until he is punished.

I’ve listened with disgust to Bill O’Reilly, Eric Bolling and many other good Americans who I like, admire and respect, admitting on the one hand that Kaepernick enjoys a fundamental right to express his protest in that manner, but then calling for his substantial punishment on the other.

Today I heard Bolling opine at length on the O’Reilly Factor that if Kaepernick doesn’t want to stand up and respect the national anthem he should get out of America and go play football somewhere else. What does he think good Americans are supposed to be – a bunch of goddamned Nazis? 

That’s how Nazis think. That’s what Nazis do. They were all expected to stand up, salute and worship their nation; worship their swastika flag; and worship all that it stood for. Those who chose to do otherwise were punished severely.

I thought America was different than that. I thought that good Americans respected our Constitution and the Bill of Rights a whole lot more than a piece of cloth and a lousy poem written 200 years ago by a slave owner and anti-abolitionist.

That’s right. Francis Scott Key, the guy who wrote the Star Spangled Banner in 1814, was a slave owner – he actually owned black people and kept them as slaves – and he used his position of government authority as a U.S. Attorney to suppress abolitionists and the abolition of slavery movement.

In 1833, for example, he secured a grand jury indictment against Benjamin Lundy, editor of the anti-slavery publication, the Genius of Universal Emancipation, and his printer, William Greer, for libel after Lundy published an article that declared, "There is neither mercy nor justice for colored people in this district [of Columbia].”  Key held despicable ugly prejudices against Black people, once insisting that free Black men and women be sent back to Africa.

Now, I don’t agree with Kaepernick’s protest and his reason to remain sitting during the anthem, but never-mind that. I personally don’t like the national anthem either. It has horrible lyrics my opinion, and is set to a horrible tune which grates upon my ears every time I hear it. I feel no obligation to stand for it with my hand over my heart. Does that make me anti-American and unpatriotic? Hell no, it does not, nor does it when Kaepernick sits it out.

Be honest; how many of us only stand for the national anthem and that fascistic loyalty oath, the pledge of allegiance, so that the mob of cultural Nazis won’t get mad at us and make a scene? That stigma that they attempt to smear good Americans with is really nothing more than their inflated ideas of patriotism and nationalism of the kind that can, and often does, turn to mob violence.

Mindless nationalism of this kind – instilling blind rituals of patriotism in the minds of the masses -- is a means for the government authority to manipulate public opinion, solidify their power, and brainwash the populace. The same object is accomplished with instilling blind rituals of religion, e.g. our government God – the “In God We Trust” motto, and our “Nation Under God.”

Force fed nationalism, patriotism and religious ritual is dangerous to our rights and freedoms. Colin Kaepernick is simply expressing himself and bravely holding firm to what he believes in spite of the consequences; the ridicule, vitriol and prejudice thrown at him by the Nazi mob. That is truly what the United States of America stands for.

It’s the mob’s conduct that is un-American; not Kaepernick’s protest.

He’s just another victim of American Nazis.

Baby crimes?

As the title of my blog implies the focus is on Authority!  What is it? Where does it come from? What does it mean? You know in your heart and your mind that authority is that learned cultural mechanism in consciousness which dictates the sum and substance of our lives. We’re surrounded by it. It’s all man made. You can surrender your consciousness to the cultural authority imposed by others or decide for yourself your authority. It’s up to you.

You are your own authority. Sometimes it’s easy to decide – like the case of the 2-year-old baby girl who received a $75 dollar citation from the local police “authority” for the “crime” of “littering.”  If you’ve decided in your conscious mind that babies can’t commit crimes then you will automatically reject any authority which holds otherwise – like government authority which seeks to hold a baby guilty of, and therefore responsible for, a crime.

If you think that no government authority would seek to charge babies with crimes; think again, because that is exactly what the police authority in Washington D.C. has done to a 2-year-old baby girl. They issued her a citation for littering near an alley by her home. Her totally astonished mother called the Department of Public Works to complain but they refused to void the ticket.

According to The Washington Post, sanitation workers found a piece of trash with the baby girl’s name on it so they had the baby charged with littering. You see, the authority didn’t have probable cause to charge this baby with a crime even if she were not a baby; even if she were an adult. Mother contends that her daughter didn’t haul trash to the alley and there is no witness to say that she did.

So now, after this situation has been reported, and it is crystal clear that the authority is attempting to charge a baby with a crime, the Department of Public Works has issued a statement saying: “Inspectors always evaluate the contents of the waste that appears to be in violation and use identifying information found within the waste to issue a citation. In this instance, we are working with the resident to gather the necessary documentation to dismiss the violation inadvertently given to the two-year old.” 

Only now do they admit that they never had probable cause in the first place and that they may have inadvertently charged a baby with a crime. But how can a police authority “inadvertently” issue and hand a $75 dollar citation to a 2-year-old baby unless they thought they had the necessary authority to charge a baby with a crime? 

Don’t the authorities know from simple reason and logic that babies can’t commit crimes? 

Cop cowards in California

Just as I was starting to once again feel some genuine sympathy for the brave American police officers who often risk their lives to protect our rights and personal safety, after some of them have been ambushed and killed recently, a group of boneheaded cops in Northern California have reminded me that many of them are just a bunch of cringing cowards who care only about themselves.  

Sadly, a few Northern California Cops are actually threatening to stop working San Francisco 49ers football games unless the team punishes Colin Kaepernick simply for exercising his First Amendment rights by sitting out the national anthem ritual before preseason contests in protest of what he perceives as police brutality and racial injustice in America.

the Santa Clara police union, which represents  70 police officers who work eight 49’ers home games per year, told the 49ers organization that they wouldn’t work at the stadium if it doesn’t “take action” against Kaepernick over his protest.

I guess that shows us just about how much these cops are interested in protecting individual rights and serving the public interest. If Kaepernick isn’t punished for exercising his rights, they aren’t going to show up to do their jobs.

"The board of directors of the Santa Clara Police Officer's Association has a duty to protect its members and work to make all of their workings environments free of harassing behavior,” the letter says.

What’s the big deal? What harassing behavior? These poor little cops feel harassed by someone who sits out the national anthem? That’s harassment? Their tender feelings are hurt and they’re mad because of that? They have to be protected from that?

Are they joking? They’re cops! Cops are supposed to ignore trivial crap like that and go about doing their jobs. Instead they’re afraid of someone who doesn’t like them; is protesting against them. That’s what it’s all about. They’re supposed to be protecting Kaepernick’s right to protest.

Now other pro football players are supporting Kaepernick and joining his protest. Last week he decided to kneel for the national anthem in San Diego during the Chargers’ Salute to the Military. He was joined by defensive back Eric Reed. Seattle Seahawks player Jeremy Lane also sat for the national anthem when the Seahawks played the Oakland Raiders.

Are all the cops going to start crying like a bunch of infants now and refuse to do their jobs just because a few innocent, if perhaps misguided, protesters exercising their First Amendment rights are doing something that makes them feel bad? If someone doesn’t love them they can’t take it?

It’s ridiculous. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Ironically, Kaepernick has pledged to donate the first $1 million he makes this season to communities that help people.

So who is the patriot and who are the cowards?