Why get angry over nothing?

Why do some people get so angry about something they say doesn’t exist?

By definition atheists all agree that God doesn’t exist; He’s a hoax… sort of like the Loch Ness Monster or Big Foot, only apparently more dangerous because somehow the belief by much of the rest of the world that there is a God and that He exists in some form must be enough reason to scream, shout and sue.

Maybe someone smarter than me can explain the philosophical logic in the notion of protesting the belief in something that doesn’t exist.

Keep more of your money… a tax protest worth starting

© 2000, Columbia Pictures, Inc.

I just came across an excellent idea that was not mine, but deserves to be shared.

Everyone tomorrow needs to change his or her tax withholding status to 9. This is apparently the maximum allowed. By doing so you will keep more of your hard-earned money in your paycheck each time you get paid.

The protest angle in this is it seriously slows the amount of income taxes being collected by the government until that time when taxes are due (typically April 15th, but with legal extensions, this can be postponed). The goal is to slow the amount of money going on a regular basis into the US Treasury. Oh, they’ll eventually get the money, but it won’t be before it is legally due.

This also prevents the government from borrowing YOUR money, tax and interest free.

Typically people have low withholding numbers on their tax forms so that at tax time they get a refund. I’m arguing that we need to turn this around and simply wait until the legal date to submit your taxes. You can’t stop paying them — at least legally — but you can seriously slow the flow until the last minute.

Then, write letters to your elected representatives, letters to the editor, and in blog posts sharing that you’re protesting the use of YOUR money by the government in ways that you do not support. Tell your congressman that you simply want government to live within the same means that you are forced to live within while your employer cuts your salary and eliminates your ability to make more money.

It’s not your employer’s fault (I’m speaking to those who work in the private sector); it’s government’s fault for not living within the means of the income that is created by the private sector.

While this will force most of us to pay money to the IRS on April 15th, the point is to put government on notice, without firing a shot, that we’re not going to take this anymore.

This is not the only thing we can do to try to take our country back from the brink of the destruction being foisted upon us by over-spending politicians and a White House that wants to destroy capitalism and America as we know it, but it’s certainly a start.

Conservative thought expands through social media

While there’s about as much truth in Al Gore’s claim to have invented the Internet as there is in many of the other things he says, I’m finding it increasingly ironic that the World Wide Web may become the world’s truth detector, much to the chagrin and undoing of Liberals and other despots around the world.

The popularity of social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook have given voices to those who previously had no voice, or at the very least were ignored as the lone voice crying in the wilderness. Moreover, social media seems to be the one bastion of media left where conservative thought and ideals can flourish.

One such voice in the social media’s expanding wilderness comes from Joe Dan Gorman, a musician and Conservative beacon from Kentucky. Gorman uses his talents as a musician and songwriter to illuminate issues in thought-provoking and sometimes humorous ways. His talent for writing catchy tunes with provocative lyrics and a punchy beat has drawn a ground swell of support through social media outlets.

Gorman is just one of countless others in what might be called the 21^st Century’s democracy movement here in America that is capitalizing on technology to promote an old idea. That is, citizens disgusted with government today are really no different in their ideals than those who rallied against the crown over 200 years ago and subsequently wrote the Declaration of Independence to certify their opposition. Today’s brand of patriot literally has the world at his fingertips through the World Wide Web.

Recently Gorman’s freelance media creations on YouTube surpassed 100,000 unique hits, all within a four-month period. Folks started following Gorman earlier this year through his Facebook sites and gradually moved to YouTube and now his Web site at JoeDanMedia.com, which features many of the same things his like-minded followers have found interesting.

So what drives this middle-America man in fly-over country?

“I do these videos because I love it,” he said. “I love writing music and I love my country.”

It’s easy to see his patriotism through video titles such as: “Right Wing Women Rock,” “Mainstream Misinformation,” and “Soldier.” He doesn’t hide his love of country, nor hide behind it.

Gorman’s goal is to attach a Conservative label to his music of choice: rock.

“Over the years the only conservative music has been country,” he said. “And while I like country alright, I write what I write, and that’s rock.”

Through this he hopes to take what has been stereotyped and confined as “uncool” — that is, Conservative thought and ideals — and bring it into a more socially “cool” rock and roll world.

None of this comes without a price. Gorman has been self-funding his video and music projects, but it’s just not possible to continue at this pace, much less grow, without the influx of capital he’s going to need to continue funding things such as his Web site or promoting his rock and roll brand of Conservatism.

Currently he has links up on his Web site where people can make donations to his Conservative cause. He’s also begun soliciting for partners in his endeavors. “We’ve got to raise $2,000 to get me recording again,” he said. Requests have already gone out via his Facebook site for donors and partners. For $2,000, investors can have 10% ownership and royalty rights to his video “Right Wing Women Rock,” which has attracted more than 5,300 unique views since going up on Nov. 9^th.

Gorman’s focus is really on education and not merely mimicking another mindless talking-head who parrots talking points e-mailed from some central committee. He instead likes to talk about what he calls a “widespread mentality of ignorance and entitlement.”

“This breaks my heart,” he says of that mentality. “These people have no idea what they are throwing away: no clue as to the sacrifices that were necessary for the United states of America to become the greatest nation in the history of man.

“When I am able to cause someone to rethink their position, it does my heart good.”

Let’s connect the dots before we vote to kill grandma

News reports this week say that some in the medical community think that decreasing the level and amount of health screenings for such things as cancer might be a good thing instead of a bad thing. The reports say that some in the medical community are recommending routine screenings for certain cancers start at a later age in people and that the frequency of those exams reduced for those who have “normal” test results.

Just a few months ago President Obama suggested that some folks might simply need to “take a pill” rather than be treated for diseases because the treatments might be too expensive. That came about the same time as the hue and cry over “death panels” that Conservatives pointed to by chapter and verse in the House version of the huge health care bill, and that Liberals tried to laugh off as the rants of lunatic right-wing kooks.

Isn’t it ironic how connecting the dots is so difficult at the outset of issues, but then in hindsight making such connections seem so elementary as to be absurd that we didn’t catch it in the first place.

Take the case of the Ft. Hood shootings and Major Nidal Malik Hasan as an example. His intercepted conversations with radical Imams and others in the Islamic community were apparently not enough to warrant further investigations or at least an interview with the Army officer, but after he kills 14 people in the name of Allah the writings in e-mail communications he had with these same clerics seem obvious to most folks that he should have been brought in for questioning at the very least.

So what about connecting the dots in the health care debate? Isn’t that relevant and prudent BEFORE we jump head-first into a plan that will cost this nation over a trillion dollars to implement and very likely lead to the economic collapse of the United States? Isn’t it plausible at the very least that the latest reports coming from some in the medical community could be coming from the same doctors who were said to be in full support of Obama’s health care proposals? What could the two parties gain in the release of these latest recommendations? How does it play in the larger picture of trying to ram socialized health care down the throats of an ever-growing population of distrusting Americans? I mean, most polls show that support for Obama and his policies is shrinking at a consistent rate.

So what about the death panels that Conservatives said was in the House version of the health care bill and Conservatives say is also included in the Senate version? If they’re not death panels, then what are they? What are they if they ration health care and recommend decreased vigilance in common health screenings that cost much less in the long run than treatments for advanced-stages of diseases such as cancer and heart disease?

If ever there were a time to not trust government and those supporting the status quo in Washington DC, it’s now.

How are the guidelines being proposed, and the health care legislation being proposed in the Senate, coupled with what was just passed in the House, going to improve the lives of Americans? How is it going to help us reduce unemployment and put more people back to work? How is it going to stimulate our economy and return us to the economic prosperity we’ve seen over the past 20 years?

The problem is with the media

Who's idea was this?

In the scope of stupid questions, Newsweek Magazine gets the dumb question of the year award for posting on its cover the following question: “How do you solve a problem like Sarah?”

Though I’m still trying to figure out how Sarah Palin is a problem, I guess if you’re an irrelevant news magazine with a shrinking circulation, it’s easy to blame everyone else for your problems.

Of course the big stink is Newsweek’s choice of cover art, apparently stolen from the August 2009 issue of Runner’s World magazine. On her facebook page, Palin writes: “The choice of photo for the cover of this week’s Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this “news” magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant. The Runner’s World magazine one-page profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness – a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation. The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention – even if out of context.”

That was the best that Newsweek could do? You mean to tell me that they don’t have one person on staff at Newsweek who could photoshop Palin’s head onto the body of Adolph Hitler or put her in the arms of some drunk, has-been actor in a tactic so often employed by the other check stand gossip magazines? Then again maybe Newsweek employes a bunch of 20-something computer geeks who spend their off-hours playing Anime videos online and in someone’s escape from brilliance they decided that a cover photo of a very attractive woman with great-looking legs would be just the ticket to improve magazine circulation, regardless of the context in which it was placed.

Kudos, however to Newsweek for at least attracting attention to their insignificant news rag; it worked. Though I hate to break it to the egos in the front office, bashing Sarah Palin isn’t going to turn your sagging circulation around. But then maybe that’s not your goal.

To answer Newsweek’s ever-so thoughtful question, the problem is not with Palin but with the premise that those at the magazine believe they are actually publishing a relevant piece of journalism that informs and educates.

Veteran’s Day every day

A Soldier holds a U.S. flag and his certificate of citizenship during a naturalization ceremony Nov. 11, at Camp Victory's Al Faw Palace in Baghdad, Iraq. Nearly 160 Soldiers and Marines, representing 60 different countries, became America's newest citizens during the ceremony. PHOTO BY US ARMY

We celebrated Veterans Day on Wednesday. While it’s good to celebrate this every year I think we couldn’t go overboard if we were to carry the attitude of gratitude for the veterans who served and for those who continue to serve in our armed forces into our daily lives every day.

Despite all that’s happened here in America and the politicians who continue to work to destroy this great nation, we still live in the greatest country on Earth. People from all over the globe still look to America as a beacon of hope because of our very liberties and freedoms that are not just engrained in our Constitution, but beat in the hearts of every human being on Earth.

I came across this photo that epitomizes the quest to become an American. Today we have numerous people serving in our Armed Forces who are not citizens of this great nation, yet they chose to serve America by wearing the uniform of our military. At a Veteran’s Day ceremony in Iraq close to 160 Soldiers and Marines from 60 different countries became US citizens. What an honor for those soldiers and marines, and what a blessing to this nation they are as they once-again swore allegiance to the United States of America.

Let’s work together not to build anything new, but to keep going the freedoms and liberties that allow us to enjoy the life that God gives us.

Meanwhile, the next time you see a Soldier, Marine, Airman or Seaman — thank them for helping perpetuate America’s ideals.

Obama’s contempt for America

Another photo of a submissive President Barrack Hussein Obama as he bows to another world leader cannot be ignored. While his first act of submission was played off as he slipped or was doing something other than bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia, the latest photo of him bowing to the emperor of Japan cannot be spun any other way. Go ahead Mr. Carville, I dare you!

Barrack Hussein Obama is a national embarrassment! His utter disdain for America and its people screams for a righteous response while he runs around the globe apologizing for America and bowing to world leaders. Meanwhile, he refuses to respond to one of his generals who is trying desperately to win a war.

I don’t know what’s more offensive: our president (and I use that term loosely since he’s yet to prove his constitutional right to be president by submitting overwhelming proof of his natural born citizenship) bowing in submission to world leaders, him apologizing to the world for America when it’s America the world looks to as a beacon of hope that is encompassed in our freedom and liberty, or the fact that he continually looks down his nose at Americans as if we’re his subjects and not citizens of the world’s greatest nation.

Here’s just a few photos of Barrack Hussein Obama to illustrate my point.

Obama bows to Saudi King

Obama bows to Japanese Emperor

Looking down his nose on America, Obama sees us not as citizens but as subjects.

Newspapers must go further to reform bad business model

Pat Kiernan in an article in mediaite.com exemplifies the problem with today’s business model for American newspapers when he says “the days when a newsroom, even in the most ambitious newsroom, provided all of its content are over.”

The whole article, which is making its way through industry blogs and online discussions, talks up a recent decision by Tribune, owner of such newspapers as the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, to cancel its subscription to the Associated Press. While the decision is purely economic, according to Kiernan, he argues that the decision could have a dangerous ripple effect throughout newspaperdome if Tribune’s experiment works.

This doesn’t mean than reporters for the LA Times, for example, will now have to actually work solely on local stories: heaven forbid! Nope, they’ll simply collect stories from other services such as Reuters, Bloomberg and CNN. The argument against the AP is that their subscription costs are too much for publishers to bear.

In an effort to help out, Kiernan reports that starting next year, the typical fee paid by newspapers to carry AP stories will be 20% less than they were last year. His piece does not report how much those fees are or will be.

What attracted me to the story in the first place wasn’t Kiernan’s arrogant statement suggesting that any self-respecting newsroom wouldn’t be caught dead without its subscription to the AP, but it was, however, that statement that I believe points to a big reason why newspapers across America are failing.

I’m not saying that the AP is to blame for the downturn in the economy or, more specifically, the reason why readers across America are dropping their own subscriptions to newspapers. The reason why readers have stopped reading newspapers is that newspapers across America are not offering readers a valuable product. It’s the same reason why people stopped buying Ford cars years ago… Ford stopped making cars that people wanted. Now that they are once again making automobiles that consumers want, Ford is reporting profits for the first time in a long time.

Newspaper publishers for the past several years have complained that advertisers aren’t buying ads anymore. Don’t tell that to Conservative Talk Radio, which continues to profit in a tough economy. Newspapers have simply stopped providing their readers with a product worth reading and advertisers have taken notice.

As for the comment about the day of the local, ambitious newsroom being gone, don’t explain that to the host of small, local weeklies out there who rely solely upon local reporters, or their own one-man show, to provide the editorial content, photos, ads and everything else that goes with building a newspaper. I’ve worked for those newspapers and we did well. It was hard work at times, but we made it happen — we HAD to make it happen! We were in our communities and we focused on what was happening, instead cutting and pasting stories into our publications from far-away office buildings that had no day-to-day impact on our local readers.

Funnier yet is the comment about all of the services that AP offers its subscribers, including acting as a “non-partisan clearinghouse” for the news. Non-partisan?! Anyone who’s seen AP coverage of the news over the past decade, and particularly the past couple years, knows full well that the Associated Press is as non-partisan as Hitler was a Zionist!

Today’s newspaper business model is directly responsible for the shape the industry is in today. Cost-cutting measures alone will not make newspapers profitable again. Newspapers need to have value with their readers, who can make or break their local newspapers. The newspaper that stops belittling its readership by printing stories that insult their intelligence, that values its reporters and gives them the freedom to get into their communities to report what’s going on out there — the newspaper that focuses first and foremost on putting out an excellent editorial product through excellent reporting and photography — won’t need to hire additional advertising staff because the advertisers will be calling them, begging to be included in their publication. Put another way, the newspaper publisher who stops wagging the editorial dog with the advertising tail by cutting news content and trying to fill it with advertising will find that not only will the dog be healthier, but so will the tail. Advertisers don’t want to be in products that are 80+% advertising; advertisers want to be in publications that are read, and the only way to do that is to make it attractive to readers.

This arrogance is inbred into the American newsroom. Many editors believe that theirs and theirs alone is the right way to do things, and how dare the public comment on the deplorable reporting in the local newspaper! What other for-profit business in America can treat its customers the way that newspaper readers are treated by editors and their staffs?

A friend of mine once worked for a weekly newspaper in the suburbs of a major, metropolitan city that had no advertising staff. The newspaper employed photographers, editors and reporters — no advertising staff. They focused on putting out an excellent product that was widely circulated and actively sought by readers; in turn folks who wanted to market their goods and services began to call the publisher to ask how they could buy advertise in the newspaper. Not only that, the newspaper itself was circulated for free; you could pick it up all over town for no cost.

I’m sick of hearing newspaper industry whiners complain how the Internet is killing newspapers. The Internet hasn’t killed newspapers; publishers who pinch pennies while dollar bills fly out the windows are to blame for the industry’s downturn.

Should we follow FDR’s example?

An interesting story posted this morning at the Anorak Web site interviews the Imam who ran the Falls Church, VA mosque that Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan’s and some of the 9/11 hijackers once attended.

The imam praises Hasan for opening fire on fellow soldiers and civilians at Fort Hood, fulfilling his duties to Islam to kill Americans. In that instance, Hasan’s act was transformed from the act of a lone gunman to an act of domestic terrorism, perpetrated by a commissioned officer of the United States.

Nearly 68 years ago President Roosevelt, reacting to the attack on US warships at Pearl Harbor, signed Executive Order 9066, condemning over 100,000 Japanese living in America to internment camps. I was not alive then to understand the hysteria of the day related to Japan’s premeditated attack against US military forces, nor the fact that there were many Japanese people (many of them apparently US citizens) living here in the United States.

I only have the viewpoint of historical hindsight, which includes numerous visits to Manzanar in the Owens Valley and the opportunity to interview people who were once interned at Manzanar.

Some have tried to draw a connection between the attacks on New York on Sept. 11, 2001, and the attack on the Island of Oahu on Dec. 7, 1941. I think one of the glaring differences between the two is we could pin the attack on Pearl Harbor and Kaneohe Naval Air Station (on the northeast side of the island, opposite Pearl Harbor) on a specific nation united under one flag; the terrorist attacks on New York, and now at Fort Hood, come not from a nation united under a common flag, but from an ideology united under the flag of a religion.

Nevertheless, an equally appropriate response is necessary if we, as a nation, are going to avoid succumbing to a fate similar to what our sailors and airmen suffered that fateful day which continues to live in infamy.

Could the answer be to follow the lead of FDR and, beginning with the mosques and imams in America, round up everyone we know of who has sworn an allegiance to Islam? It might not be as difficult as one might think given the fact that we have all sorts of intelligence on those here in America now who harbor such feelings and hatred for America. It didn’t take 24 hours from the time Hasan opened fire at Fort Hood when we began to learn that the FBI and other government agencies had a profile on Hasan, and that even those in the US Army had their serious concerns about his motives and thoughts. It’s being reported on the evening news that the CIA was watching Hasan, but it’s unsure if that investigation was shared with military leaders, including his three-star commander at Fort Hood.

Is it time to round up the Muslims here in America that we have profiles on and imprison them until we can figure out what to do with them? Could it be that we might only need round up a percentage of these folks, rather than everyone professing faith in Islam, because there are reportedly some in Islam who apparently don’t support the radical tenets of the religion and have called for the end of Sharia Law.

If we’re at war with radical Islam, does that justify such action? How many more Americans, particularly on American soil, need to die horrible deaths because political correctness demands that we don’t profile people based on their religion or any other “protected” status? These and many other questions like it are going to have to be discussed with the goal of developing, at the very least, a defensive posture against what is obviously a vehement hatred of our way of life by a group of people bent on forcing their religious world view on the rest of us. Personally speaking, I’d like to take a more offensive approach to this war on terrorism because I think it’s the only way we’re going to keep terrorism from taking a foothold on our soil.

The left-wing lunatic fringe

Is it true that Liberals have similar complaints about their Democrat Party as Conservatives do about their Republican Party?

The following statement was attributed to Bill Maher on the David Letterman show: “The bigger problem is that over the last 30 years the Democrat party has moved to the right and the Republican party has moved into a mental hospital.”

Maher’s attempt at humor is as weak as Letterman’s, but aside from that, is there any truth to this statement regarding the Democrat Party, or is he, as is Letterman, simply off his rocker and in need himself of mental health services?

All during the election Obama ran a centrist campaign, though those of us who actually took the time to read and listen to statement’s he’d made over the past decade knew that he was and is anything but a centrist or moderate. Ever since the election Obama has legislated and given speeches from the extreme Liberal side of the aisle, using many of Saul Alinsky’s tenants in his book “Rules for Radicals” for his proposals and ideas.

You’ll remember that it was Tom Brokaw who, during the campaign, admitted that the mainstream media really don’t know much about Barrack Obama, although they knew enough to want to suppress it until after the election, such as his middle name, which was off limits until his speech in Cairo when he played his Muslim middle name up, much to the praise of his Muslim audience.

Ironically, John McCain also ran a centrist campaign up until the end, when he tried to juke right with the naming of Sarah Palin as his VP running mate. And, as much as Palin motivated Conservatives within the GOP, Democrats simply do a better job being Liberals than Republicans.

I think we might be seeing the onset of another GOP revolution, coming mostly from the Conservative side of the party, but joined in part by disaffected independents, who recognize that Obama lied to them and the rest of the nation when he campaigned from the middle.

There’s an interesting blog that discusses, with statistics, the polarization of the two parties. I don’t believe that this polarization is necessarily a bad thing in part because we’ve seen what happens when one party opts to cede its moral authority in exchange for being liked. As Republicans opted to move to the political center they left behind a whole host of Conservative constituents who responded in 1994 by electing a Republican majority to the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years and who were also a large base of support for Ronald Reagan’s two terms in the White House.

In short, it’s ludicrous to say that the Democrats haven’t gone far enough to the left unless you are completely off your rocker and think that political despotism is a good thing. As the defacto leader of the Democrat Party, President Obama is responsible for the party’s slide to the extreme left. His ultra-liberal ideals and radical training and proposals are anathema to what this country was built upon and what we stand for as a nation. It’s also dangerous to world stability as it sends the message to our enemies that it’s okay for them to develop nuclear weapons and propose the utter destruction of entire nations.