Mid Week Open Mic

If it’s not obvious by now, I’m helping LOI keep this blog going while USW is absent. I’m hoping to add some discussions on subjects that haven’t been beat to death here, but I can use some help. Mainly, what do you want to talk about? I have some ideas for some subjects, but not sure if many of them interest those who frequent here. I will, myself, stay away from the the far right conspiracy theory stuff. I want real subjects that need discussed about today’s issues. Today, I will put up some articles and see what happens. As is usual, if you want to talk about something, bring it up.

If it’s not obvious by now, I’m helping LOI keep this blog going while USW is absent. I’m hoping to add some discussions on subjects that haven’t been beat to death here, but I can use some help. Mainly, what do you want to talk about? I have some ideas for some subjects, but not sure if many of them interest those who frequent here. I will, myself, stay away from the the far right conspiracy theory stuff. I want real subjects that need discussed about today’s issues. Today, I will put up some articles and see what happens. As is usual, if you want to talk about something, bring it up.

Johann Hari and the Dying Wails of a Small Minded Mission

We begin another week with another look into the fascinating world of the global warming alarmists who, at this point, are merely incapable of using reason or logic to think things through. I have to admit that I admire the tenacity that these folks have. Despite massive amounts of counter-arguments, they still manage to move forward with the warning calls, completely ignoring all the things that simply render their argument moot. I think the thing that fascinates me the most about these carnival barkers is that they continually lambast opponents for using faulty logic or ill-conceived arguments, and then they go right ahead and do exactly what it is they just railed about. It boggles the mind. Global warming is something that I simply cannot ignore. The consequences of allowing the progressive movement to move forward with their plans are simply too devastating. At this point, I see the really loud voices in the debate as nearly as crack-pottish as Cesca is about racism. Therefore, I will continue to hammer them until the world shouts them down as the fruitballs that they are.

The Oil Spill Disaster… Criminal or Accidental?

I have followed this story since the beginning, as the rest of the US has done, mostly because I am not really given a choice. It dominates the news daily, which I wouldn’t really have an issue with if I thought it was doing so for the right reasons. Obviously, that statement means that I don’t believe that it is being done for the right reasons. I will get into that shortly. What I want to start with is a serious look at the spill, the company that is in question, and the way that the entire situation is being handled in the media. British Petroleum is really being hung out to dry and I have to question whether they are being treated fairly by the powers that be. I understand that they bear some responsibility for the disaster and the events that led up to the spill, but I really find myself questioning whether they are worthy of the absolute demonization that has happened from day one of this situation. After all, it isn’t as though they intentionally caused this to happen.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for February 16, 2010

Tonight we have a bit of a theme in our open mic topics, at least in the ones that I am providing. Those who add other subjects don’t have to stick to any theme. The theme seems to be partisanship. Evan Bayh says it is the reason he is leaving. Robert Reich says it has been the big obstacle. The DNC is using partisan rhetoric that is ridiculous against the GOP states that accept stimulus funds. And finally, Obama is doing something that I feel is a centrist move by investing in nuclear power. In three of the four articles, we see partisanship overcome or discussed as a negative by influential figures. Are we looking at a situation where the people in positions of power are beginning to understand that the partisanship is Washington is causing the majority of Americans to lose faith in the entire system? Or are these outsiders simply a few enlightened folks who see the issues and want to deal with them. Interesting day in the news cycle, none-the-less. So on to the open mic…

Man-Made Climate Change Exposed

So I am flipping through the Fox News articles this evening and I stumble across one that states simply, “Top Climate Scientist Drops Bombshell.” I thought to myself “this should be interesting.” I had no idea what kind of bombshell it might be or who is now considered the top climate scientist, but I figure if it is a bombshell, I have to read it. Imagine my surprise to find out that the top scientist they are talking about is none other than Phil Jones, former head of the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University. The same guy who had the email “hiding the decline” and “performing tricks”. But I was even more floored when I read what he had to say in an interview with BBC television. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t like the guy turned over and admitted that he made it all up, but he admitted to several things that, in my opinion, make the Anthropogenic Global Warming alarmists look a bit foolish.

State of the Union? Same old Crap….

So I have finished watching both the State of the Union and the Republican rebuttal. I thought both were weak. I thought both were full of bulldookey. I am not going to address every single thing that the President said tonight, but I am going to address some of the things that jumped out at me. Because in the end, I felt like he was right back in campaign mode, but more importantly, he was right back to claiming one thing while doing something completely different. I am sure that Black Flag will say “what did you expect?” I would answer that I expected exactly what I got. I am simply pointing out my disappointment that I was not surprised. And there are just so many things that I have to rebuke, if nothing else for the plethora of facebook posts from all manner of my friends saying how great Obama was and how awesome it is that he is on our side and how proud they are to be Democrats tonight. It literally almost drove me mad. Had I not had a few Raptor hybrids that D13 sent me to test out, I wouldn’t have had anything to kick and might have gone out and attempted to remove the pom poms and springs from Nancy Pelosi’s hindquarters. By the way D13, they really are as trainable as you promised.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for December 15, 2009

Tuesday night is upon us, and with it comes the ever popular open mic. I do have a bit of a request for folks who post articles for open mic, or on other days, for that matter. If you want to post an article here, that is welcome and great. It is sharing information. But add to the conversation when you do. Help those of us here to understand why that article is pertinent, important, or interesting. As you can see, with each topic I offer, I attempt to add some thoughts of my own, a synopsis or analysis of what I am reading. It helps folks to weed through it all. We have hundreds of comments here daily. Without understanding the importance or relevance of an article, many folks may simply skip over it and miss out! I appreciate the patience everyone has had over the last two weeks with my sporadic participation. Busy and long days for me. I feel good about the amount of articles I have managed to post, but I know that it is disappointing for some when I have a day where there is nothing new to discuss or comment on. I greatly appreciate the extra things others have added during discussions that help make up for my December shortcomings!

Tuesday Night Open Mic for November 24, 2009

Well, the open mic comes as we prepare to take a couple days for Thanksgiving. I will be taking some time off the blog as well. There will be no post on the night of Thanksgiving and I will do a guest commentary if I have one on Friday night, but if I don’t have a guest commentary submitted that night I will do either an open mic or not have an article. As many of you know, Friday begins my season of madness that lasts through Christmas. I will post as often as I am able, but there may be some nights with very little. I appreciate everyone understanding, as the season really is pure madness for me. The last couple days have been good conversations, but I do have to say that I am missing JAC and BF (Hope you feel better my pirate friend), especially on that first post this week about the path forward. I may have to rehash that article again later so that they can participate. I think we need to begin formulating a plan for what we can do. Tonight’s open mic has some good stuff, so I look forward to hearing what everyone has to say.

UN Climate Change Treaty

As many of you are aware, this December Denmark will be the site of the United Nations Climate Conference. Several weeks ago there was a video posted on this site, I don’t remember who posted it, by Lord Christopher Monckton. He was giving a speech at Bethel University and was discussing the upcoming conference, the treaty that was being discussed, and the ramifications of such treaty for the United States. I remember watching the video and wondering, “how much of what he says is real and how much of it is ‘Glenn Beckish’ in its conclusions?” So I began to read more, study more, and figure out what I could about the upcoming conference and the treaty being discussed. I was stunned to find that Lord Monckton was pretty accurate with what he was saying. And I decided that I was going to write about the subject. I have been attempting to gather information in the weeks since then. I am now ready to present to all of you what I found. Because there are only 12 days to this insane conference…

A Promise Broken… but Only for a Night!

I know that I told everyone that tonight I would offer the second part of the reason and values article. And I really tried to make it happen. Mrs. Weapon needed a little extra of my time tonight. I then started to get to work and found that I was rushing through in order to finish it tonight. As a result I ended up with a rant that had no coherent thought. I erased it all and started over. But I cannot finish it tonight without ending up with something I would not be comfortable posting. So I will push it to tomorrow and offer something quick this evening.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for September 22, 2009

Tuesday Night Open Mic is upon us again. I wanted to write last night. I really did. However, Mrs. Weapon needed me more than you guys needed me. So she won. For the record she is starting to improve. She is still pretty sore and she can’t be on her feet for more than a few minutes, but each day gets a little better. As always, I appreciate the well wishes from all of you, as does Mrs. Weapon. As I was reading news last night there were all these different things that I saw that I thought, “oh, that would be a good one for the ‘quick hit’ open mic style.” My hope is that I will be able to go back and find them all tonight. The upcoming days will see me addressing the race issue a bit further and continuing on with some good articles I have been working on. I am hoping in the coming couple of weeks to offer a couple of further pieces on health care and a couple more articles that help us to debate and define our positions going forward. Should be interesting.

A Response to Ray (and my other Critics)

Because of the view that I get of the comments that come into the site, I see what is posted in the order it was posted, not under whatever topic it is posted under. I know that many of you don’t always go back and read the past articles comments looking for new responses, and even if you wanted to, some of them have a long list of comments to look through. The other night I singled out Ray, stating that he “will label me a closet Republican who is serving a secret undercover agenda, possibly with the assistance of Dick Cheney and Sean Hannity”. To be fair, Ray, you have leveled claims somewhat to that effect at me, but I meant it as a joke. I did not mean it maliciously or as a jab at you, so I wanted to say that publicly and hope that you accept my apology if it offended you. But there is more for me to say here…

Friday Night Free-For-All

As I sat around this evening literally dejected over the results of the house vote on cap and tax, I was wondering to myself what this really means for you and I as we go forward in our worlds. I am going to touch on this briefly, at least offering what I think the next step will be. But in my true fashion for a Friday night where I don’t have a guest commentary ready to go, I am going to offer up something a little more substantive than I did the last time. Last time we had an open mic posted for Friday night. Tonight I am instead going to attempt to hit three separate topics, each of them quickly so that I don’t drone on forever. I will touch the bill passed today in the House, Michael Jackson and his legacy, and a strange case of the entitlement flu in the Black Democratic Caucus.

Strike While the Crisis is “Hot”

So I was perusing the news today while on my dinner break, reading about the South Carolina Governor Hoo Ha. I clicked back out to the main articles and delved into the articles about Ahmadenijad giving the US a stern verbal warning for interfering in their election process and governmental affairs (Did he even watch Obama’s press conference?). And low and behold I saw the article that would be the chosen topic for the day. The article was titled “Obama: Now Is the Time to Pass Climate Change Bill”. You guys know what I think of this whole man made global warming bullcrap. So I read the article to see what kind of bullcrap environmentalist rhetoric would be shared with us today. It turns out that this is a lot of more of the same, but we are already again seeing the terms crisis and imminent threat being throw around in regard to climate change. And I am not buying it even one little bit. Game on Mr. President.

March Towards Socialism Series Finale…

Ah… so we have marched through history gaining a better understanding of where the moves towards socialism/fascism began and grew. Now we move on to the last couple of years, with the end of the Bush Presidency and the beginning of the Obama administration. I must again say that I know there are a lot of things that I am not touching on here. I can’t write a full history of the US. I just write what comes to my mind. I think about things and go and research them. So in this final section we will touch on a few really big mistakes of George W. Bush, but primarily focus on the Obama administration and what they have done and plan to do, and why this is bad for our country.

The March Towards Socialism Part 5

Really? I have found the ability to write enough on this subject to warrant 5 parts? As a matter of fact I have. And you know why? Because this march was not started recently. It has been a long and slow march. But we are in the home stretch of this series, which hopefully is not the home stretch for the country as well. Tonight we will handle the run-up to President Obama. He will certainly warrant his own post as that is the evil of socialism/fascism that we can confront. The rest of these folks aren’t in power any longer, so we can’t do much but look at what they did to help the cause along. It is not that I want to live in the past. It is only that I wanted, with this series, to provide some idea of the scope of how long this build-up has been going on, so that you will understand how we got here and how difficult it will be to change course. I hope that there are those among you noticing that a certain thing is missing from this march to socialism series…

Man Made BullCrap…

I feel like I should do this post for Chris’s sake. Not that I don’t always enjoy covering this topic. But I invited Chris to the site after a small discussion on facebook. We were discussing global warming and I was unable to have the discussion in the limited space of a facebook note, so I invited him here to have the debate. I am hoping that he is still up for trying to defend what I think is one of the biggest farces we have seen in the last decade. It ranks right up there with terrorism justifying the Patriot Act and the Evils of big business justifying the unprecedented move towards socialism. But those are other topics for other days. Today I am talking about anthropomorphic (man-made) global warming, or the lack thereof…

Not In My Back Yard…

I offer a bit of a fluff piece for the night. I am currently at my brother-in-laws to celebrate my father-in-law’s birthday so I am in a strange house that takes me a bit out of my element for writing. But I saw this and it epitomized the movements towards energy independence for the US. The culprit this time is Diane Feinstein, a very liberal Democrat Senator from, you guessed it, The socialist republic of California. She is all for alternative forms of energy, so long as they are not in her back yard.

Coming Soon… The Breathing Tax

I appreciate so many folks understanding my night off last night. I try not to take a night off of writing very often. I went back to school a couple of years ago to pursue another degree. I graduate in 3 weeks. I will have so much more free time then. I cannot wait. Thank you to everyone who submitted some ideas for what to write about tonight. I vow to cover all the ideas submitted over the next week or two. But it seemed as though the one that was wanted by the majority was the cap and trade discussion. So that is what we will cover. I know it is confusing to many, because the name doesn’t really tell us what it is about, but we all need to be paying attention to this one. And we need to rally against it hard….