Guest Commentary: Self Reliance, Not Government Approved?

We have again come to Friday Night and with it the ever growing Guest Commentary. As you all know, I am such a fan of the guest commentaries. I, of course, get to take the night off from writing (although those who submit them will tell you that I spend a lot of time formatting, critiquing, and ultimately…. procrastinating on them). The real reason that I remain a fan is because it allows each of you the opportunity to use your voice and voice your thoughts as the center of attention in the same way I get to do it each night here on the site. I value each and every voice on this site, no matter which “direction” it comes from. And the opportunity to give everyone a shot at writing their own articles is one of my most rewarding endeavors on the site. And besides, the fact remains that as much as I might try to appear to know everything, I think I am exposed over the last 10 months to the fact that there is MUCH that I don’t know. Hearing all these other voices exposes everyone to knowledge they may not get otherwise! I felt like this was a good topic given the recent discussions we have been having about government intervention in the home. While not the same topic, it hits some of the same veins.

And Where Exactly IS the Line Between Parents and Government?

I didn’t have a lot of time to write about something big tonight so I wanted to find something I could write about off the top of my head. As I started to peruse the news, this article simply jumped out at me. I found it extremely interesting given the discussions that we had the other day during open mic about government intervening in order to protect the child. In Dallas, a father showed “graphic pornography” to his 8 and 9 year old daughters. I don’t know how graphic it was, they aren’t sharing that. But that was the description. The girl’s mother, who id divorced from the father, wanted to file charges against the father. Apparently there is a law that specifically states that he can not be prosecuted for doing this. I will be interested in hearing more about the rights of parents versus the rights of the state to intervene, especially in a case such as this, where the harmful material in question is really a matter of interpretation.

Foreign Policy Needs a New Policy

I am going to do my best to answer several of the positions taken on this site by various folks when it comes to our foreign policy. The fact is that our foreign policy in America is drastically flawed. Unfortunately so are some of the positions that have been espoused on the site when discussing foreign policy. The flaws are many, from taking a interventionist position within the world stage, to using that interventionist policy as a way to excuse away the heinous actions of others, many fail to see the reality of the world as it exists. I feel like I don’t suffer from that lapse in reality. I am not unique, but I am not just another dumb kid when it comes to examining the situation either. What I am is someone who has served this country, both here and abroad. I have seen the world first hand. I have seen the conflicts first hand. I have worked in Washington and seen the intel first hand. And what I offer on this subject is a voice not influenced by a hatred for either side and not rendered blind by a bias that keeps me from seeing the realities we face abroad. But that doesn’t make me right. So everything I say is certainly up for debate.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for October 27, 2009

Open Mic night once again rises. I have to admit that I feel a bit liberated this evening (which is WAY different than feeling liberal). I got an email from one of the readers on the site that was really nice and helped me to feel better about ignoring the petty claims against me. Basically pointing out that many will attempt to place me in a box that they can attack because they aren’t willing to discuss the merits of my arguments. I am sure there are some who will want to argue the point. You can make that USWeapon Topic #5 if you like. You know who you are who sent that email (and I will respond I promise), so I want to thank you for that. Tonight’s topics are quite varied, and I hope they will spur some vigorous debate. A little bit of disgust with American political figures, a little bit of disgust with further moves for government to control business, and a little bit of bullshit partisan politics on the Republican side. Release the Hounds!

Leave My Lions Alone

I saw this article this afternoon. I know that many of you here peruse a lot of the national news sources, so you saw it as well. There was a brief message posted about it in yesterday’s thread. I had already decided that I wanted to have a quick discussion about it. The discussion is obviously going to start around this t-shirt controversy that is being overblown at Penn State University. However, once I discuss that I am going to discuss the general tone of the political world, or more important the general tone of society. Because the Penn State thing is a very minor blip in a war against christianity that has been building for quite some time. And I wonder just how it got where it did, and how it will end up. Why is it that it seems that so many people are offended by anything to do with Christianity? And why is it OK to go on the attack over that offense?

Something Different and Short for a Change

I have come home this evening and watched a little baseball, which as many of you know I am passionate about (even with by beloved Red Sox sent packing), and caught a little football. Allow me to first, before I forget, offer my congratulations to those who are fans of the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Yankees. It should be a good world series. It isn’t often we get to see the real two best teams in baseball playing each other for the championship (heck, sometimes the best two teams in baseball reside in the American League East), but I really do feel like this year we are seeing the two who most deserve to be there duking it out for the title. As I watched, slumped on the floor with the puppy laying beside me, Mrs. Weapon walked in and said, “you are using one of your sick days tonight. You get 10 sick days a year on the blog, and tonight is one.” I chuckled and said I would love to, but tomorrow is Monday! Monday’s are bad enough without also missing out on waking up and arguing some topic with people at Stand Up For America. But I am fairly whipped tonight, so I offer something a bit different.

Guest Commentary – A New Constitutional Amendment?

And a good Friday to everyone. I hope that everyone is settling in for the weekend and planning some time with family and friends, hopefully watching my Nittany Lions go into the Big House and whip some Wolverine behind. All that really needs to be said is WE ARE… PENN STATE! (and it is OUR chant, so suck it Marshall, you stole it for your movie). I apologize for the last couple of weeks and the fact that we had no guest commentary posted. There have been some submitted. Last Friday I simply wasn’t able to get on and post one as I was traveling. The previous Friday I was just hanging out with Mrs. Weapon, and she didn’t feel like giving me up for the night. For those that have sent me articles, I promise I am looking over them and will get back to you soon. All the ones sent to me thus far are going to be used. They all look good. Tonight we have an article submitted by a reader of the site who has thus far not jumped into the fray of conversation. He sent me this proposal and I found it interesting, so….

The Looming Threat of Iran

I promised Black Flag that I would make this the topic for this evening. And it is about time that I addressed it. We have watched Iran for years and seen their rhetoric, their realities, their revolution. The western media has, no doubt, contributed to the negative image that Iran has in so many minds. I will have plenty to say here on the subject of Iran. I have studied that country for most of my adult life. I have been there. I know the people, the structure of their government, and their position relative to the United States. I find it a fascinating country. I also find them a scary country, and for some very good reasons. We are now in the midst of a Presidency that is interested in discussing things with them on a diplomatic level, and I have no issue with that. However, Obama should be aware that he cannot rely on those diplomatic measures to sway the opinion of a government that is quite radical at its heart. So tonight I open the discussion on Iran. The one request that I have for everyone is to please refrain from ranting against them merely because they are a muslim country. The fact that they are muslim has relevance. Treating being muslim as a general slur does not.

Spend, Tax, Cut, Save, or Give Up?

I was thinking yesterday about the statement made to me that I needed to understand Keynes and his macro-economic model in order to understand why spending is what the government must do in order to get us out of trouble. I have always whole-heartedly disagreed with that statement. As I often have acknowledged, I am not an economic guru, but I think I am a pretty smart fellar. I am well educated (as far as formal schooling) and well read (my friends all say I spend too much time with my head in a book). I try to take a realistic look at the situation and see where it makes the most sense to make a move. Now, our invited guest, who yesterday for some reason did not come and reply back to what I had written, obviously thinks this makes me dumb. But I think on a “macro” level, we might all benefit from having this conversation. I am not going to research out the wazoo for this, I am going to simply say what is on my mind, and let everyone have at it.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for October 20, 2009

Another Tuesday night  comes along for the open mic night and I have some general open mic topics and a couple that are directed at some of my many critics. You know I was reading the comments from my article from Monday morning, and I noticed that for about the hundredth time, I was accused of offering only scathing opinions of the moves from the left. I never seem to get an answer when I reply to this so I will be more direct. I also had a fun time discussing things with some folks on my wife’s facebook account, one of whom really got his feelings hurt when he was publically shamed for making a statement that “teabaggers are racists”. His friend who participated in the conversation seemed interested in honest discussion so I invited him here. I hope he replies. And of course there is the usual nonsense in Washington DC for me to comment on! So away we gooo….

Automatic Registration and Mandatory Voting?

I was reading through a lot of different things this evening. I was over at the Huffington Post reading some of the hoo ha that is offered there, and I stumbled across an article from Mark Green, President of Air America Media. He was discussing the fact that America has such a dismal voting record, especially at the lower levels of government. And he seemed to be willing to come right out and say that Americans should be forced to vote. He also espoused the merits of automatic registration. Given the vigorous debates that have occurred within this site over whether voting is effective, relevant, or necessary, I found his article to be interesting, while at the same time a bit disturbing. So I figured I would offer the article he wrote to all of you, and offer my thoughts on the concepts he discusses. I am sure Black Flag will have to weigh in on this topic, as will several others. But it seems to me that I can support the thoughts from Green on one part of his topic, but not on the other.

White House is Proving They are Not Fit to Lead

Well, I have returned home and can now get back to writing like I am supposed to write! I was out of town all last week and operating from a hotel with spotty internet access. On top of that I was quite busy with work, which had me on a weird schedule working in a different location. But I did enjoy my time there and met quite a few cool folks in Dawsonville, Georgia. I touched on this subject a week or two ago, and I was going to let it rest because when I talked about it them I thought it was nothing more than a bold and outlandish statement from a rogue idiot in the White House (Anita Dunn). But today saw all the top administration officials from the White House hit the Sunday morning media circuit to further their message and attempt to really begin to take down Fox News. It was one thing when a statement was made. It is quite another now that it has become clear that President of the United States thinks the most pressing item on his plate is taking down a media outlet that doesn’t ask how high when he says jump….

Late Night… No Time to Write

Unfortunately I don’t have the time to write tonight as I would like to do. I have been working on work stuff for the last several hours and will be doing so for another couple of hours tonight. Tomorrow night looks the same. So tonight I will offer no article, but will instead extend the open mic by offering a few more topics and letting everyone offer their topics throughout the day. I cannot promise an article tomorrow night, but will try to get at least a short one posted. I am still looking for guest commentary stuff so if anyone wants it considered for this week make sure it comes in by the end of the day on Thursday. I appreciate everyone’s patience during this very busy week.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for October 13, 2009

The first night of my busy week comes and here I am on time to post open mic! I am pleased to be able to do so! It has been quite a week of news this week. We had the Senate beginning debate on the health care bill being offered by Senator Baucus. We had the White House declare war on Fox News (for the record this bothers me to no end, because now it seems that every time I flip over to Fox hoping to find news, they are doing nothing more than whining about the White House coming after them). We have had the continued wait for an answer on the next step in Afghanistan. And above all else, we had a President that won the Nobel Peace Prize while having not done a single thing to have earned it, even by his own admission (thus finally relegating the Nobel committee as useless to any American who didn’t already think so after they awarded it to Al Gore or Yasar Arafat). But here are some other topics for your perusal. I look forward to your topics as well.

The RNC Wants Your Opinion…

Not a giant topic tonight, as I have a lot to get accomplished at home this evening. I have a hectic week coming up and it may eat a lot of my time. So this week could end up with some spotty posting of articles. For tonight’s topic, I decided that I wanted to share with everyone the absolutely ridiculous questionnaire I got from the RNC. I received in the mail the other day, a “2010 Congressional District Survey” from the Republican National Committee. I found it odd that it was sent to me since I re-registered as an Independent two years ago. But none-the-less, I decided I would sit down and read it, see what it says. As I read the welcome letter from Michael Steele, I was a bit glad to hear that the Republican National Committee was interested in learning how I felt about the issues as they decide on how to go forth in the political world.

Taking the Fight to Fox News

Let me start by letting everyone know that wordpress was down on Friday night for about 4 hours. It happened to be the four hours I intended to write, so that was why there was no guest commentary. It was not that I didn’t have submissions that could have been shared. Just wanted to give an explanation for why no article went up on Friday night. I was perusing the stuff out there this evening, hoping to find something that would strike my fancy in terms of interesting political news. I stumbled on to an article over at the Huffington Post discussing the White House’s recent decision to “go on the attack” against Fox News. I will be interested in hearing the opinion on this from the left. I know that we have discussed fox news before, and there are some who despise it. But I think that what we are seeing from the White House is something I cannot ever remember seeing before. And to be honest, it lowered my opinion of the White House a bit…

Claims of Racism Must Stop

I have been torn on writing this article for a couple of weeks now. On one hand I had hoped that the current environment would change and this issue would go away on its own. Unfortunately, calling someone a racist is such a magnificently powerful tool that it would be silly to think those in the halls of power would allow it to be put away. So I decided that I was, in fact, going to write about it. And I am going to be honest in my assessment. Because the fact that this is being used as a tactic by many politicians, partisans, and media jerk-offs is about as filthy a statement about their character as any claim they could make about me in the end. So we are going to take some time this evening to point out all the claims of racism in the political realm. Then we will discuss what I think the reality in America is. Finally I will ask for help from all of you to figure out how to stop this tactic from being used to divide the country as much as possible.

A Night With No Topic…

I wanted to write tonight and had every intention of doing so. Unfortunately, I am whipped. 15 hour day today and then when I got home the puppy was all about spending time with me. I felt guilty because I haven’t gotten to spend much time with him the last couple days. So we played and went for an hour walk at midnight and played some more. Then he curled up next to me while I read a book for a little bit and all was right with the world. So rather than spend all night writing an article, I figured I would bring forward a few of the conversations that I was in and continue them. I figure it will ensure that some of the debates I started continue to get discussed. Outside of what I bring over, I hope that those of you who were having good debates or discussions will copy and paste them to today’s thread and continue them as well. I know that it isn’t quite the same as getting a topic for the day, but it will have to do for tonight!

Tuesday Night Open Mic for October 6, 2009

Tuesday night comes again. Some weeks I reach Tuesday night and feel like it was just Open Mic yesterday. This would be one of those weeks. It has flown by. I would imagine that this is the result of an extremely busy week. Time certainly flies when you don’t have time to watch it. Mrs. Weapon is doing better and it looks as though she will be heading back to work within the next week or so. This week has me presenting some different types of articles for people to peruse. I admit that some of the articles are there because I know some around the subject, but I am hoping the economic and IT folks that read here will weigh in and offer better insight on the concepts. If I simply stick to concepts that I can explain we would be missing a lot of areas, as my knowledge is certainly limited. I see discussing these subjects that I am not as well versed in as a way to open the lines of knowledge for everyone beyond my own. I am hoping that folks with knowledge in areas outside of my areas of expertise will begin writing guest commentaries that will enlighten us all beyond my scope…

Health Care Part 4: Death Panels

I figured it was about time that I got back to the health care series and began answering some of the questions that are out there. You all presented a plethora of things that you wanted me to research and I have been attempting to read everything I can in order to find some answers. Tonight I am going to talk about one of the hot button issues that seemed to stoke the fires at the town hall meetings. It seems there was a lot of sentiment out there for the fear of government creating death panels that will decide life and death for our elderly. I know that there is strong belief on both sides of this debate. Those on the left compare anyone who even asks the question to the “birther” movement and therefore state I am simply crazy for even giving any time to look deeper into the allegation. But I say failing to do some research and find out what government is really up to is as naive and crazy as anything I have heard. After all, with this group of 535 criminals running the show, Death Panels isn’t that far fetched of an idea.

We Aren’t the Soviets… but Afghanistan is Killing Us

Alright, I decided I would take tonight to tackle the questions about Afghanistan that were asked of me and to offer my take on the situation we are watching play out in the political arena around the President’s decision, or lack thereof, to supply additional troops to the theater. Most of the questions asked of me the other night were about Iran, and Iran will get its own article at some point in the near future. The question asked about Afghanistan was whether it is time to bring the boys home and let that country do whatever they are going to do to themselves. That is a tough one to answer, but I will do my best. First, though, I want to talk about how this is all playing out politically. The conservatives are running crazy around the delays in answering the request for a surge. It seems they have a large issue with it “taking too long.” And the liberals are, it seems divided on the entire idea. So let’s take a look.

Guest Commentary – Coalition, Evolution, Movement… Is It Time?

Friday night comes to us again and with it is that wonderful thing we call guest commentary. I have to say how happy I am with the guest commentary submissions that continue to come in. As I have stated in the past, I know how much I enjoy the idea of sharing my thoughts with everyone and debating them. And I want everyone to at some point have the joy of having their work published in the public forum. To that end I hope to eventually have a guest commentary from every single reader here sent to me for publication. If I get overwhelmed with them, I will go to publishing a couple every Friday instead of one! Tonight I offer a piece that was sent to me a couple of months ago. As many of you know I have had so much going on the last several months, I struggled to keep up. So I now ashamedly offer this article long after it was written to run.

Another Night in the Hypocritical World of Congress

I am sorry to report that I will be offering more of an opinion piece on someone else’s work this evening. However, as I begin writing this it is already 2:50 am and I have no time to write a massive research piece. The good news is Mrs. Weapon is feeling a bit better and, as such, we were able to spend the evening hanging out and actually enjoying each other’s company (which means we hung out and watched Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice, which I can tolerate and even sometimes enjoy). Unfortunately her medication knocked her out all day so she is still up at this time of night, never a good thing for her. But she is recovering. It looks like she may get to return to work by the end of next week. But for now, she is up and moving around, which is a good thing. As for tonight, I again reach out to quickly discuss an article offered by someone else. It is a topic I though of covering, but I will instead simply offer my thoughts on what this author is saying on the subject. The guest commentary article for tomorrow is already written, which means tomorrow night I can hang out with my wife without any guilt, LOL.

Why Does the Left Hate Glenn Beck?

Whew…. I just finished finally answering Charlie in yesterday’s thread. As many of you will see, I got a bit lengthy there. I try not to but I want to be fair and actually try to answer the questions that he brings up. I am supposed to be off work on Thursday, so hopefully I will be a little better prepared to participate in the conversation as I had intended to do today. Work got a hold of me and never let me go. So I apologize publicly to Charlie for failing to participate today. I will do better at responding tomorrow baring any more emergencies. I was going to begin talking about Iran and Afghanistan tonight, but it is 2:00 am as I start working on a new post tonight so I only have time to finish one that I had already started. So instead I move up Glenn Beck to the discussion table. I know that the name brings chills down the spine of some of the more left leaning folks on this blog. And I simply don’t understand why. I understand the dislike for Rush Limbaugh. He is a blowhard who makes up facts as he goes. But Beck doesn’t seem to be cut from the same mold, even though the left is trying to paint him that way.