Roots

The more I learn about the origins of the common practices and traditions that pass for modern Christianity, the more upset and disillusioned I become. I was just reading about the origins of Christmas and all its attendant practices and traditions. Christmas trees, caroling and even gift-giving have origins that were secular at best and ranging all the way up to blatantly pagan, which is to say diametrically opposed to the deity of Christ. We celebrate the birth of Christ at the wrong time of year. Indeed, the scriptures make no mention of celebrating a person's birth, not even the birth of our savior. The gifts of the Magi were the types of homage rendered to a king.

Note that I do not say that I am moving away from the actual cause of Christ; far from it! I long to move closer to Christ than ever. The problem is that I can't seem to find anyone who wants to go there with me. Everyone is so mired in the rituals and traditions that spawn from extra-Biblical sources including everything from the worship of Ashera and Baal to Druidism and Pantheism.

What would truly Biblical living, worship and koinonia look like? I imagine that such practices would be so radically different from all the modern denominations as to appear to be a completely separate religion. Christmas would disappear completely. Easter would change to a Passover Seder with no rabbits and no egg rolls. The pastorate would change from a corps of overeducated professionals who do nothing but solicit funds and build ridiculously huge churches, and instead become a collection of men and women striving to build Christ's Church, one believer at a time, leaving the massive manifestations of divine power to the Holy Spirit.

One of the greatest problems in the church today is the ascendency of the so-called Prosperity Gospel.  This line of thought teaches that those who are truly devout will be richly blessed, but in order to achieve such blessings, one must commit as much as possible to the ministries of a large church, with a high-profile minister.  What these churches resemble is not the image of a First Century church so much as they do a multi-level marketing scheme, where only the leader and a handpicked few really prosper.  And, since when did the measure of the success of a Christian ministry become the affluence of its leaders?  It just seems to me that we are rewarding the wrong behaviors.  

Socialists everywhere I look

What in the world has happened to a large proportion of our leaders these days?  There seems to be no middle ground on any issue and the result is that our country is gridlocked and getting nowhere fast.  Even the so-called independents are getting into the act!  I watched a video of an interview of former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura and though some of the things he was saying sounded interesting and decided to check out his book from the library and see what he has to say.  I was flabbergasted to find that he advocates a 90% tax on people who make over $400,000 per year.  Really? 

A person works hard, builds a company (contrary to the opinion of our current president) and, when he begins to achieve an executive salary, he must give back $360,000 of his earnings and live on only $40,000.  What would be the incentive for a person to excel in such a scenario?  Why would anyone bother to recruit, train and retain quality workers?  Why would they work hard to keep track of a payroll and meet their share of investment and health care contributions?  Is the intent of such taxation to make every business a local street corner operation where the owners scratch out a living year after year without any reason to expand?  When will politicians stop treating success like a crime? 

While I agree our current tax code is a mess, I do not agree that the way to fix things is to tax our most productive citizens far beyond reason.  Change the tax code!  Simplify it and take out a bunch of those stupid deductions!  Make sure that those below the poverty line are not paying tax!  Why is there a poverty line when it is meaningless at tax time?  If someone is impoverished, they ought not to have to pay any tax!  But to suggest that someone who has succeeded should have to give up what they have won by their labor and intelligence simply so the government can expand and give money to those who did not succeed is simply ridiculous. 

That way lies malaise, as those who can achieve great success begin to see that there is no reason to do so.  Where then will jobs come from and who will fund the programs that we really do need to retain?  We are already seeing the effect of governmental policies that are toxic to business as Campbell Soup and others pull out of California.  How many more businesses will have to close their American operations and move to other countries before our politicians realize they are causing this migration that will make our country extinct all too soon?

Ron Santo - humble hero

Ron Santo – humble hero

A hero has gone from among us. Ron Santo, sportscaster and former third baseman for the Chicago Cubs finally lost his battle with cancer and his lifelong enemy, diabetes on December second. Santo was exemplary in so many ways. He was a ten-time National League All-star pick, four times a Golden Glove winner and awarded the Lou Gehrig Award in 1973 by Phi Delta Theta. He scored 1,138 runs, batted in 1,133, put out almost 4,600 runners, led the league in triples in 1964 and got on base 3,400 times. That is the stuff of eight and nine digit salaries these days. This brings up the most noticeable way that Ron Santo was exemplary.

It may seem trite to note that Ron Santo was a different breed of professional athlete than we often see today. His exploits were outstanding. His ego was not. Ron Santo was a humble man. He did not show up in the celebrity gossip columns or the police blotter. He did his job and went home to his family. He was far from unusual in this during the years that he played. Very few players in the sixties and seventies did any trash-talking or grandstanding in press conferences. Those who did were not usually well regarded by their teammates or the fans.

This is a major reason that Ron Santo was so beloved by those who were his fans during his career. It was the humility that cemented the affection and made it so long-lasting that Santo was still well regarded long after he retired from the field and will be easily and fondly remembered for many years now that he is gone. Ron was a phenomenon on the baseball diamond but he saw himself as a common guy who just happened to work on a baseball diamond. The third base line was his office. He did his job and then he took off the uniform with the number 10 on it and went home. The closest he ever came to bragging was to run down the third base line and click his heels after a home win. Ron Santo will be greatly missed by those who miss a more innocent type of professional athlete. I like to think I can picture number 10 going along a golden road, clicking his heels. Farewell, Ron!

Murder by spotlight

Murder by spotlight

It's happening again. The media are stalking some new prey. There's blood in the water and they are closing in for the kill. Some of you may say that this is ridiculous, the media doesn't kill anyone. Perhaps Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, Anna Nicole Smith and some others may disagree with you.

Being pursued, hounded, watched, spied upon and scrutinized doing even your most routine and normal actions over a prolonged period has to have a marked effect on a person's mental well-being and behavior. Indeed, such effects have been well documented in groups such as survivors of the Holocaust and prisoners of war. How can it be that we, as a society, have missed this relationship when it comes to celebrities in stressful situations? Can it be that we actually don't see it or do we just refuse to care? After all these people have courted the cameras before to achieve their celebrity status! This is the same mentality that says a prostitute or stripper can't possibly be raped by virtue of the nature of their professions and it's a mentality that has no place in modern society.

Why have celebrities become media whores according to the rest of society, forced to perform at any and every time someone else chooses? What makes us think we have the right or the need to see how a celebrity dresses when they go to the market? Furthermore, why should anyone else get to criticize and comment on how a celebrity looks during those private moments? Those times are not performances. They are not intended for public consumption. What happened to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”? Do these cherished rights not apply to someone in the public eye?

Furthermore, there seem to be several double standards at play here! A President admits to marital infidelity and nobody says he should step down or recuse himself from making speeches but, when a golf pro makes the same admission, members of the media begin to comment that he should concentrate on his sex addiction rehab and stop pursuing his livelihood. Beauty queens are cashiered for youthful indiscretions in men's magazines prior to their pageants but there is no mention of any need to forgive other public figures who consorted with known traitors and terrorists in their younger days.

Wake up, America! If you don't think the major media outlets are calling the shots, then you just aren't paying any attention. Look at the way that our opinions are shaped relative to the items cited above! Why was it okay for E!and Inside Edition to hound poor Anna Nicole Smith to death? Shouldn't there be some sort of limits put on this type of media feeding frenzy? Some may say that the media didn't force Anna Nicole to commit suicide! I say that type of thinking carries a distinct aroma of bovine residue and though the media played a huge role there was one other group that was even more culpable.

Those “inquiring minds” that the tabloids and tabloid programs claim as consumers are the most to blame. That's right! Every time someone buys one of those tabloid rags or turns on Inside Edition or TMZ (God, help us!) they are feeding the beast that is stalking other people to death! Isn't it time that we all come to our senses before there is another tragedy? How many more have to die in the name of entertainment? I think it would save a lot of time and be a lot more honest if we would just bring back the Circus Maximus. At least the Romans weren't hypocrites about their love for watching people suffer!

There ought to be a law

Or perhaps there already is a law that makes propagating malicious programming on the web a criminal offense. The latest perpetrators are the folks at TotalSecurity.com. These worthless pukes have been running around sending out their Total Security program. This program is a well-known piece of malicious rubbish that infiltrates computers and begins to tell the owners of those computers that they are infected with malicious programs and viruses. Of course they are, the program's name is Total Security! The program does a fictitious scan of the "infected" computer always finding the same number of viruses, no matter which computer it is scanning and then offers to clean up this mess for an exorbitant fee.

This is nothing short of extortion. These people send nasty programs around to plague your computer so you will buy protection from nasty programs, which they propagated in the first place! The worst thing about this is that these criminals have names and addresses that any child could find. This program comes from TotalSecurity.com, which has to be registered somewhere to be on the web. The name and location of the business can be found easily by plugging the name into a domain merchant's site, such as GoDaddy.com, which then spits out the name of the parent company and its address.

So the question becomes, why are these jokers still in business instead of behind bars? Get on the stick, police forces of the world and lock these miscreants up! How often do you have criminals hand you their names and addresses so easily?

Kevin Skinner won! Now what?

This season of America’s Got Talent on NBC was off the hook. There was more actual talent on the stage than in any previous year, so much that on some nights Piers scarcely touched his beloved buzzer button. Out of this plethora of rising stardom emerged a man unlike most of the others. He was a simple man, a man of the country, a man laconic of speech but enormous in talent. He had to leave his job as a chicken catcher behind because his boss wouldn’t hold it for him. (Your loss, Mr, Legree! You should have sponsored the man and gotten all that publicity. You’ve been hanging out with your chickens too long.)

Kevin Skinner sings simple songs in a simple way. His approach to singing is honest, earthy, elemental, his delivery like a soft, warm, summer rain that refreshes without chilling. He is so lacking in the crafty artfulness so many singers now impose on the songs they sing that his modulation is scarcely detectable. Kevin came to the contest a diamond in the rough with a backwards baseball cap and an old cloth coat, looking like David coming to find his brothers. He took out his guitar and sang and everybody quit wondering why he was there. He went on to win the whole thing despite overwhelming odds.

Now comes the reward! Kevin is to be given his own show in Las Vegas, Nevada. I am reminded of a story I once read about a Scottish nobleman who had come to America and became part of the fur trade during the time of the mountain men. He had met and become friends with Jim Bridger. At one Rendezvous, he gave Bridger a suit of armor he had shipped over from England as a present. Bridger had no use for the armor and cached it before going back into the mountains to hunt and trap for the winter. The reward Kevin Skinner received seems to be as inappropriate as that suit of armor.

Las Vegas is a noisy, profane excuse for a town, trying desperately to live down its history. It is mostly glitter, with very little, if any substance. The closer one gets to the Strip, the truer this becomes. Enter Kevin Skinner! Not only do I believe Kevin will be uncomfortable with Vegas, I doubt Vegas will have much of an idea what to do with Kevin Skinner. I envision something along the lines of The Electric Horseman. Only on the movie screen does glitz and glamor have any dealings with honesty and simplicity.

Hollyweird has been assuming again! They believe that the lifelong dream of every performer is to have packed houses to play to every day and make bundles of money while they’re still a hot property. They have missed, once again, the enduring attractiveness of truth, the value of simplicity. Look at George Strait and Reba McEntire! They sing simple songs as honestly as they can and their careers have lasted decades.

Don’t get me wrong! I hope Las Vegas and Kevin Skinner find a way to thrive together. Kevin won a tremendous victory and is incredibly deserving of a fitting reward. The problem is that Las Vegas just doesn’t seem a fitting place or a fitting culture for a simple man, singing simple songs from his heart. Nashville or Branson, perhaps, but not Las Vegas!

And now a message from the Belove'd Leader

Here comes more liberal Leftism, folks! Barack Obama is planning to make a speech to the schoolkids of our nation. Now that, in itself, is not so unusual or scary. Other presidents have spoken to our children. President Bush told them to stay off drugs in a televised address. Other presidents have had other messages for our students over the years. However, this is the first time that a Presidential speech aimed at students has included a lesson plan. And what a lesson plan this one is!

Students are encouraged to think about what the President is saying to them and what the President wants them to do. Isn't this an awesome load for kids not even in their teens? By the way, just exactly what does the President intend to say to our kids and ask them to do? Where is the politically responsible content in this lesson plan? Where are the questioning behaviors? Why is there no direction to ask kids if they agree with what the President just said or what they think we should do about whatever President Obama brings up?

The answer to that seems clear to me. The NEA was in lockstep with the liberals to get the Obamas into the White House and they are using the President's bully pulpit to press home their advantage to further indoctrinate our kids in what they deem to be proper socialization. When did our schools become all about how our kids are socialized instead of about the 3 R's? When will we realize that this is the garbage that takes up the time that is putting us farther and farther behind the rest of the industrialized nations in academics?

Fortunately for us, we homeschool our sons and the one that we have yet to finish off will be watching the speech with some additional questions. We are going to teach him to think for himself, not to sit around wondering what Barack Obama wants him to do. The Liberals want everyone to think alike, to act alike and have the same values, as long as they are liberal values, liberal thoughts and liberal actions. That is why they want our school children to be thinking about what President Obama wants them to do. Given some of Barack Obama's supporters and stances he has taken on issues our family cares about, I shudder to think what President Obama wants my sons to do.

How gullible are you - VroomLive

Talk about a tax on people who are bad at math! VroomLive is the ultimate in this arena! I was recently joining some additional social sites when I came across a link on one of them for something called VroomLive. It was represented as a way to make money online and save on things I purchase. When I checked it out, I found some incredible information on the How it Works page.

The way you purchase things on VroomLive is by buying Vrooms. Each Vroom costs $1.00. Each Vroom you use removes $.25 from the price of the item. The person who gets the item is the one who Vrooms it to zero dollars. Does anyone else see the reason this should be illegal?

This is basically an auction where every bid costs you a dollar, whether you get the item or not. In the final analysis, the item costs four times as much as its listed price. This will happen with every last item sold on VroomLive according to this page. The reason nobody has complained so far I think is that nobody ends up paying the whole price for an item. I'd be screaming bloody murder if I had to pay anything for an item I did not receive. That's not the way an auction works, Vroom staff!

The FTC needs to look into this now. According to a local auctioneer I talked to about this, it seems fishy to him, especially when he heard that people would be paying for each bid they make whether they win the item or not. There just doesn't seem to be any way this can be legal. I've never heard of charging people to bid. Auctions are supposed to be a way for the seller to get more value out of items due to the competition. A buyer can get some good bargains provided they are shrewd and don't tip their hand. Everybody has fun but nobody gets anything for nothing and nobody pays anything for nothing either!

Let me know what you think!

School Superintendent or Demi-god?

Well, boys and girls, it has happened again! Another school administrator has declared herself a demi-god, capable of overruling societal norms, commonly accepted behavior, the Constitution of the United States and just good old common sense!

Suzanne Lukas is the latest object of self-deification! She is the Superintendent of Bonny Eagle High School which held its commencement on June 12. One graduate (Yes, I called him a graduate, MS Lukas, because he should have graduated that day.) Justin Denney blew a kiss to his mother as he approached to receive his diploma. MS Lukas immediately ordered the young man back to his seat stating that "There's no fooling around up here". Really, MS Lukas? No fooling around at graduation? You seem to need to extract that stick from your backside and start looking around a little.

Every year, the news media brings us stories that show graduates of our service academies throwing their hats in the air at commencement. As an Air Force retiree, I can tell you for a fact that at any other time that would be considered conduct not becoming an officer. Are you saying that graduations are so hallowed, so sanctified that nothing should be allowed to interfere with your reverie? Wake up! It's a school, not a church. There is a big difference between celebrating and fooling around. Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls!

Are you going to tell us that graduations are not cause for celebration? Should we get hold of some of your classmates on Facebook and Classmates and find out how you acted at your graduations? I'm sure it would make interesting reading!

This is just another instance of a school official who has totally forgotten what schools and especially graduations are all about. It's all about the kids. It's not about your rules or any phony sanctification you attach to the ceremony. It's supposed to be about those kids and what they have accomplished. They are passing from your institution into the world and this ceremony was to be their big, memorable send-off; the last thing you did for them. Too bad that you ruined it so that now all anybody is talking about is you! For shame! Anybody who can forget that a graduation is all about the kids ought not to be in charge of one, ever again.

Digital TV So Far Not So Good

The transition of the broadcast stations to Digital TV has not gone smoothly despite the delays, subsidies, millions of messages and public service announcements. Nielsen has estimated that 2.8 million households are still totally unprepared. There are households that were unable to get the government coupons because there were no coupons available, households that were told they were not eligible for the coupons, and still other households who couldn't afford the boxes even with the coupons. There are also households that don't seem to care about the loss of broadcast TV.

Locally there is one household that bought two converter boxes, without the aid of the hard-to-get coupons. Did this solve all the problems for these people? Oh, contraire! Two converter boxes leaves this family four boxes short, so now they have four TVs that are only fit for video game use or recycling as boat anchors. One of the converter boxes continually drops channels which it fails to find on their small, indoor antenna. Thus, entire evenings of programming are sometimes lost through the whims of the converter box.

This family also cares for the wife's elderly mother, onto whose TV the other converter box was connected. She continually gets confused about which remote to use. The error is easily detected when another family member is in the living room and suddenly hears white noise begin to blare from the old lady's room, at which time a family member must go in and set the situation right once again. It is also reported by this senior citizen that her box keeps turning off spontaneously. Whether such is actually the case, or whether the problem is entirely rooted in operator error the family has yet to determine.

All of this expense, at $60 per box and $28 per antenna, was visited upon this family without their consent. They didn't get to vote on it. They lost a lot of cheap entertainment and regained very little of it. The government, in the guise of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), tells us the change was necessary to free up more bandwidth in the communications spectrum for first responders. I find this to be a curious reason since what I learned of signal propagation during my time in the military taught me that the bandwidth of a signal is inversely proportional to the smallest effective pulse duration the signal uses, i.e. the smaller the pulse duration, the higher the bandwidth. Now we are talking about digital encoding of television signals which is going to squeeze even more information into the same 6 MHz of bandwidth used by the now defunct analog signals.

This requires signals to be compressed. This causes smaller effective durations of information (pulses) which, in turn, should raise the bandwidths. However, the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) decided to go with a system that can have up to a 55 to 1 reduction in the bits of information that actually make it from the transmitter to your television set. Hmm! Still 6 MHz per channel, even more channels and a big loss of signal information? Just what was this big change all about then?

For one thing, it will move the bandwidth used by television signals to another part of the frequency spectrum since the carrier waves used for digital signals are far different from those used by analog signals. Another reason for the change was, in part, a bailout of sorts for the television industry. Since the late sixties, television networks have basically been broadcasting on two separate networks.

They sent out analog signals to Mr. and Mrs. Public and digital signals to the cable and satellite companies. What do you think that cable box on your TV has been doing all these years? It has been converting digital signals for use by your analog television. This is why folks who already have cable or satellite service didn’t need to buy converter boxes to keep getting the broadcast channels. All that was needed for this final switch was to build converter boxes for the folks who don’t or can’t pay to watch TV. What they also didn’t tell us is that digital transmissions are very susceptible to atmospheric attenuation.

The moral of the story is that this switch to digital TV had more to do with convenience for the broadcasting networks and an en masse shift of their signals to a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum that could allow the change to be nuanced as a boon to our friendly fire and police professionals. So the next time you get pixellated transmissions because of a thunderstorm on the night you were hoping to find out who won America’s Got Talent, buck up and know that you’re doing your part to make our country safer! Then you can turn off the set and go play Parcheesi!

Fear me

I wasn't aware when I got up this morning that I had become someone for people to fear. The country I served well and faithfully for over twenty years is now poised to add me to watch lists and terrorist alerts should I show too much evidence of being disgruntled. After all, I believe in such heinous things. I believe that Jesus Christ is the one and only Son of God and that He, not Barack Obama, is the only possible savior of the human race and I openly practice behaviors related to this belief and share my belief with others. I believe in the sanctity of life from the moment of conception. I am apprehensive of the intentions of the current administration towards the Second Amendment.

Apparently this makes me a security risk, according to Janet Napolitano. It's strange how such beliefs did not make me unable to hold a high security clearance when I was in the Air Force doing Intelligence work. Maybe it's because I'm too honest.

I tend to speak or write what's on my mind. Maybe I shouldn't tell people I listen to Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Pat Robertson. Maybe I should quit telling folks that I think it's not moral to kill innocent babies in the womb. Maybe I should quit telling people I am a Desert Storm veteran. You know Timothy McVeigh was a Desert Storm veteran and look what he did. This seems to be MS Napolitano's justification for putting veterans under the microscope. One whacko out of how many thousands of Desert Storm vets? But wait, don't forget Lee Harvey Oswald and Charles Whitman! They were veterans, too! I suggest you start watching Senator Kerry, too! Wasn't he a rather famously disgruntled veteran who threw his medals at the White House? Oh, I forgot! Those weren't actually his medals.

I know you supposedly apologized for the language in that report, MS Napolitano. I gave my grandfather an apology like that one once. My dad immediately cracked me across my smart butt and told me I'd better say it like I meant it. Like I said, I only gave Grandpa an apology like that ONCE.

By the way, I was wondering about that report itself. When I was in the Air Force I dealt with a great deal of classified information. If any report I handled which was labeled "For Official Use Only" had made its way onto the internet, the Air Force would have cheerfully presented me with a one-way all expenses paid trip to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where I would stay in the no luxury accommodations of the federal penitentiary. Are the rules so much different on Capital Hill? (When we get out of the current money mess, I'll start calling it Capitol Hill again.)

So, how about it, MS Napolitano? Am I to understand that any veteran who is critical of the current administration and its policies is to be considered an extremist, a terrorist, a traitor to the country he or she fought for? Are we to be banned from ownership of weapons? We once took up weapons to support and defend that which you now claim we are out to destroy. I weep for what my country has become.

Oh, well! I could be in worse company. I am a veteran like my grandfathers, my uncles, my brother and brother-in-law and my wife. I believe in the right of American citizens to freely bear arms like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. I also recall stories of another man who was considered an extremist, terrorist and a traitor by his country. They nailed Him to a tree, as I recall.

Love, law and reality

I think it has become much too easy to be labeled in our society. People get labeled all the time for a myriad of reasons. Some of the labels are warranted. Some aren't. The problem is that there are some labels that are so potent that they stay with a person for a lifetime, whether they were warranted or not, and these labels can ruin people's lives.

Little boys, as young as six, are being labeled in this way. I remember reading that it happened to a boy of about that age who tried to kiss a little girl he liked. Not so very many years ago, that was considered natural and normal behavior for little boys who were beginning to discover little girls. But I guess that was a different time. It almost seems like it was an alternate reality now; that time in which I was a child. It was expected that little boys and girls were going to begin to explore the mysteries of the attractions between the sexes.

However, this little boy was expelled. He was tried in a court of law. He was labeled a sex offender. His life is ruined forever. Isn't this an excessive punishment for a little boy just beginning to understand that there is a difference between boys and girls?

Then there are the labels that have been used for many, many years. Let me give you a scenario. A boy and girl meet in school and they date for some years. He is a couple of years older. Their attraction for each other takes a natural course and they have intercourse. Should this boy now be labeled a sex offender because of some arbitrary age limit that has nothing to do with the feeling these two young people have for each other?

Do not misunderstand me! I do not advocate sexual assault or statutory rape. I don't even advocate pre-marital sex! I just think that our society should go a little way towards helping our children avoid actions that will ruin their lives. The pressure to engage in sexual activity is bearing down upon children as it never has before. It is in the movies, TV, music, websites and conversations that surround our kids every day.

Have we really become a One-Mistake culture? It doesn't seem so when we deal with celebrities. How many times have some of the more famous celebrity divas been in court over the past five years? Maybe that's more of the message we are sending our children. Backing over a paprazzo's foot is okay if you have plenty of money, but ordinary little boys are banned from a normal life forever for doing something normal.

Now we have a teen celebrity who admits she is dating a man who is twenty. I am not pre-supposing that anything untoward has happened nor that it will. As far as I know, the young lady in this situation is just that, a young lady and a Christian whose values mean a lot to her. However, attraction is attraction and things do happen no matter how fervently couples are committed to waiting. If anything should happen, the current system says that legal action could be taken against this young man, whether the coupling were consensual or not. Why?

We are so messed up as a society when it comes to appropriate ages for certain activities. At 16, a young girl can decide to emancipate herself from her parents, or have an abortion without parental consent, or drive a car that could kill dozens of others if used irresponsibly but she is not empowered to make a decision that will keep a boy she loves from a life that is ruined forever. The boy, for his part, may drive at 16, must register for the Selective Service at 18, can serve in the Armed Forces at 18 but cannot have a beer when he comes home on leave. And God help him if he comes home from the hell of war and makes love to his sweetheart who is still only 17.

It all seems so very cruel and arbitrary. It's a minefield of laws and contradictions that is maiming and crippling the lives of the very children we say we are trying to protect.

Craigslist: Oo-ooh, that smell!

I want to hear from everyone who has had trouble with ads they have clicked on Craigslist. Recently, doing some job searching, I have been getting the same treatment from employers I contacted through craigslist. They sent me a reply to my resume` and say I need to go through some other application to qualify for an interview. Today a reply to a resume` sent me here: http://www.nationalcreditreport.com/lp/ncr1/index.php?cd=32 Being the observant guy I am, I saw the two asterisks by the word Free. I checked the disclaimers and found that the "Free" credit check would cost me $14.95 a month or $179.40 per year. Free? That stuff will grow mighty nice roses, pal! This is a scam. It's phishing. Anyway, I'd had enough, so I reported them to IC3. Have any of the rest of you been having this type of problem with craigslist ads? Sound off!

I also saw a blurb somewhere where law enforcement officials have said craigslist is complicit in millions of dollars worth of prostitution. The owner of craigslist fired back that they had nothing to do with that kind of business. My question would be, if that is so, what lies under the heading Erotic Services on your site? I know those are Marriage Counselors, right? Give me a break!

Windmills, anyone?

Check out this comic strip! Wind turbines may be the wave of the future but in this one they meet up with a blast from the past! Enjoy!

Alternative Energy Revolution

Things They Don't Tell You

I am becoming convinced that, short of one or two tutoring companies I have found, there is no substantive, legitimate telecommuting work available on the entire worldwide web. Every work-at-home or survey site I have responded to ends up being one of very few types of scams or dead-ends. People I know have referred to SPAM as an acronym standing for stuff posing as meat and folks online refer to SPAM as stuff posing as mail. I prefer to think of these sites as SPAW, stuff posing as work. These sites are set up to do one thing and one thing only. They exist to sell the unwary job applicant garbage he or she can ill afford. We will begin at the beginning.

1. Job ads on (fill in your favorite job search site) As often as not there are dozens of these ads set up to trap the unwary. They usually promise outstanding pay. There seems to be no other rhyme or reason to them, however. I have found them on craigslist and other job search sites under General Labor, Writing, Admin, Customer Service, Nonprofit, Marketing and Web. Some are as obvious as the home improvement firm that is supposedly looking for appointment setters. They receive your resume` and respond that you need to fill out one simple form for which they provide a link. The link sends you to a form that allows you to sign up for their home improvement service, as a customer.

Most of these ads will send you an email for your inquiry. The email includes a statement saying you have been approved. I have never been turned down, by the way. There is also a link to go to their site to check out what they do. That's when they start to become a little different.

2. Check out the Terms Of Service carefully! Very few of the sites you end up at will make it clear that you are signing up for a free trial. To get to that nugget, you must dig through the Terms of Service file which is written by lawyers with one purpose in mind. These "Terms" are labyrinths designed to keep those with little time to waste or no legal training from discovering how short is the free period and how high is the price of missing out on that period. The subscription after the trial, some of which are as short as 7 days, can be $69.95 per month or more! For this they provide you with links to either surveys or offers you can complete. Oh, joy! This is another point of differentiation.

3. Offer sites These insidious dens of vipers should be illegal. Consider, they offer you a nominal sum, say $10 to sign up for some "offer" that will cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars over the next year to 3 years. Talk about a Pigeon Drop! And the ONLY way you can get the nominal sum is to commit to the costly contract. These people aren't even honest to the people they are shilling for, because they tell you in the intro literature that you can cancel the offers right away and they will still pay you. They probably know what I know. I used to work for a mobile phone company and I am painfully aware of how hard it is to cancel most of these free trial "offers".

4. Survey sites Some of these also try to suck you into a free trial. They all go through the same start up. They start you out with surveys that extract every bit of demographic information they can get about you. They tell you that this is so they can match you with the surveys that will best fit you. Then the other surveys begin to arrive and you start to notice something. You can spend anywhere from 2 to 20 minutes filling out a survey only to be told something like, "We are sorry but you are not qualified for this survey". After all the demographic info they gather at the outset, how do they not know which surveys you are qualified to complete?

5. Secret Shopper programs So here's the deal! You sign up for their program and then you get to go buy some of their product. Then you write up a report of what you thought of the product and the service and submit it and the register tape for reimbursement and to get paid for your time. This might be nice if you had a steady job to allow you to buy the products in the first place. I put this under that same old rule for applying for work. Never pay to work!

Do you still want to go into a work-at-home scheme? I wish you luck, sincerely. You are going to need it and another good job before you're through!

Toxic TV- Family Guy

"It seems today that all you see
is violence in movies and sex on TV
But where are those good old fashioned values
On which we used to rely" Excerpt from Family Guy theme lyrics

They sure aren't on the Family Guy!

Foist upon us in 1999 by Seth MacFarlane, Family Guy is an on-going cesspool of bathroom humor, sex, gratuitous violence and outright perversion that would make Homer Simpson blush and the kids from South Park snigger all day long. It's no wonder MacFarlane developed this show since he gets to write, direct, produce and play numerous parts. Sid Caesar, you say? Oh, contraire! While there is indeed talent here, it is not suitable for the prime-time airwaves.

Family Guy is a potpourri of sitcom stereotypes. Peter is the quintessential idiotic suburban dad. He is vain, gluttonous, oversexed, morbidly obese and terminally moronic. Of course Lois, his wife, is somewhat more intelligent at times and has a fabulous figure, aka King of Queens or Life With Jim and does not seem to find her gelatinous spouse sexually repugnant. Chris, the eldest son, is a chip off of Peter's warped block in almost every way except sexually. Meg is overwritten as the neglected middle child going through awkward pubescence as she is continually snubbed by her family. Stewie, a Machiavellian toddler, continues to plot ways to take over the world and kill his mother. By the way, if Stewie comes to the point of Oedipal musings, Peter is toast, given the enormous gap in their intellects. Brian, the family dog, talks, smokes, drinks liquor like a fish, gets busy with nearly anything female and has a gay brother. All that aside, Brian is usually the most intelligent and sensible member of the family.

I understand that Family Guy is intended as satire. I understand that we live in a free society with freedom of expression. However, the fact that Family Guy is a cartoon makes it answerable for some of its excesses in pushing the boundaries of decency. I read somewhere that it rated as the top primetime show for kids 2 to 12 at one point. Since this is supposedly not the targeted demographic for this show it begs the question of intent of Mr. MacFarlane and his cast. South Park is not shown on network TV until late night and then I understand that it is an edited version of the cable content. How is it that Family Guy is shown by local Fox affiliates during the hours when kids are coming home from school and being allowed a little TV while dinner is being prepared?

It's just another step in the long, long march toward total repudiation of what used to be mainstream American values. Ten years from now, our mainstream values will probably look just like the ones espoused by the Griffins. Won't that be sad?

Say It Ain't So!

I just saw a blurb from the AP that said the Democrats were blasting Rush Limbaugh for a comment on Ted Kennedy. I'm shocked! Imagine Democrats taking issue with the scholarly erudition that flows like scented honey from the the oral cavity of the self-proclaimed smartest man alive! I would be even more shocked if it were not for one thing.

They are right this time! Rush let a comment fly about the proposed Democrat health care reform bill, stating that the Democrats will likely wish to call it the "Ted Kennedy Memorial Health Care Bill." While such may come to pass, it shows poor form, Mr. Limbaugh, to comment that a bill that may be attributed to a man who has recently been diagnosed with cancer which is supposedly inoperable, is therefore going to be named posthumously.

Do not get me wrong! I am not a Democrat, nor am I a liberal. I do not ascribe to Senator Kennedy's politics or his liberal values. I do, however, applaud Senator Kennedy for his many years of service to the causes and values he believes in. I believe we need to try to get back to the type of politics that were practiced by President Reagan and House Speaker Tip O'Neill in the early 1980's.

Their political wrangling would go on and on. Then President Reagan would notice it was after 5 pm and call a halt for the day, at which point they would head off to dinner or to the bar. It was civilized. They were gentlemen who had respect for each other. The fact that we communicate our opinions through unofficial channels does not excuse us from similar conduct, sir!

Rugged Individual Stupidity

The California Liberal courts have done it again! Now it's okay to sue a Good Samaritan who helps you out when you are in a car crash, according to them. So I guess they would re-write the old parable this way:

A certain man was driving along a road in California and was in an auto accident. He was badly injured and helpless in a car that was still on the road and could have been struck by another car at any time. The first person to find the man was a clergyman who decided because the man was not of his faith that he should not touch him. The second person to find the man was a business person who was late for a meeting and just pulled to the far outside lane to get around the crashed car. The last person to find the man was a Good Samaritan who stopped and got out and was about to help the man. Then the Samaritan's lawyer pulled up behind him and said, "Don't touch him! He'll be able to sue you if anything goes wrong." Then the Samaritan and his lawyer got back in their cars and drove away after calling 911. The man bled to death before any help came.

It would be poetic justice if the people who were responsible for this ruling were the ones lying there waiting for the first responders. When are people going to get it? The government CANNOT do everything for us, people! Nor should it! We applaud incident after incident where people act in emergency situations to help their friends and neighbors. We make sure the stories get on TV and YouTube and we watch them over and over. But the first time something goes wrong, we're ready to throw these same people under the bus of our victim-driven society! Thank God this mentality didn't exist in the days of the growth of this country! The Younger Brothers might have gotten away Scott-free from Northfield! Many of the potential drowning victims of the Dayton flood of 1912, the Johnstown flood and numerous hurricanes would have just had to drown, I guess. The more I hear about this kind of garbage, the more I want to be back in the military where refusing to leave a wounded comrade behind is part of the core of every person around you.

Beware, litigious miscreants of the granola state! Some day it may be you laying there wounded and in need of aid! Have fun waiting for the EMTs while your fellow citizens stand by, afraid to touch you for fear you might sue them! How about this instead? How about we jail people who refuse to render aid to wounded people, disbar any lawyer or judge who would help the recipients of such aid when they try to sue the person who aided them and definitely sentence the lousy ingrates who would sue someone that helps them in an emergency situation to some kind of community service? Maybe then people will start making sense and realizing that an emergency situation is one in which extraordinary acts are expected from ordinary people and that the recipients of those acts ought to be grateful to be alive!

Our Girl

I am now a grandfather. Her name is Rebekah Lorraine and she was born on October 6th. She is a serious doll face and a very good baby.

Who says talk is cheap?

A really neat comic about the potential cost of talking to radical dictators from a strip called State of The Union.

State of the Union