Mid May Musings

The odd weather continues.  Record snow in Maine and more flooding in Texas are in the news, while last Sunday, May 15th, we here in North West Pa had snow showers on and off all day.  I won’t go into how weather is said to be controlled, but maybe there is something to that chemtrail theory.  Yesterday was a nice day, but still cool.  I came across a newborn fawn, barely able to walk yet.  I took a couple pictures and went on my way.  It’s always nice to see the babies, cute little buggers.

The soon to be voted NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) looks like it will include having women sign up for Selective Service.  Might as well have equal slavery.  Not sure why we even need Selective Service, why not just a computer database that automatically includes one’s information on the 18th birthday using Social Security information.  If they can spy on all of us, why not something this simple…..OH, probably need to keep the BOOT on our throats.

Looking at the many reports being put out, our military isn’t in very good shape.  Along with the raping of the leadership ranks in recent years, one must wonder what the end game of this will be.  Maybe this is a clue to future happenings, like before the upcoming election.  HMMM, I wonder how bad they want to keep Trump out of the Whitehouse?  Hitlery’s campaign is crashing before she gets the nomination, as scandal after scandal are hitting the news.  Interesting times ahead!  It’s almost summer, enjoy the warmer weather (if it comes).

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Romney Reflections

During the last presidential debates, I strongly thought Romney would do a superb job managing our economy.  He  is a money guy, a self made millionaire with a record as govern that  shows it wasn’t luck.  But he lost the debates and election.  I remember Obama ridiculing him on his statement on Russia.  I think current events speak volumes on that subject.

He also warned about unrest in Tunisia.  I was unaware of anything newsworthy there, but not long after the election, the French suppressed a rebellion with US assistance.  Romney learned from 9/11.  Threats to the US and our interests are not the same as in the good old days.  The planning and preparation for the 9/11 attacks took place mostly while Clinton occupied the White House.  The media would portray Clinton as a peace seeking President.  Why then did Islamics attack the US?  Bush had not started any new wars or conflicts.  More to the point today, what does America need to concern itself with & what actions NEED to be taken?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitt-romney-the-world-needs-a-mighty-us-military/2014/09/04/f5234064-342d-11e4-a723-fa3895a25d02_story.html

A Nation Divided

Liberals claimed Obama would bring us together.  I think he made those same claims.  With his record before the election, today’s reality should surprise only the gullible.  America is more divided on race, the economy, health care, foreign relations and on nearly every issue.  Pick one and tell me it’s better now than under Bush or Clinton?  We just looked at Ferguson and the race/violence issue.  How about a look at foreign affairs.

First, what is Obama’s policy?  Damned if I Know?  Our military announced a shift to Asia, meaning possible confrontations with China.  Meanwhile things are going to “ell in the Middle East & with Russia.  At the same time, defense spending has been cut while entitlement spending is increased.. 

 

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/08/hillary_clintons_foreign_policy_failures.html

 

The new immigrants being distributed throughout the US are claiming benefits in what should be a surprising manner.  Register & go to school.  Tell them you are 16 or 17.  SO what if you have gray hair & wrinkles & no one will believe you are a teenager.  It doesn’t matter how old you are if the federal government say’s you get to go to school & collect, just take the money and welcome to America….

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/382483/adult-illegal-immigrants-posing-children-enroll-high-school-ryan-lovelace

Speaking the UnSpeakable

I do try to not make judgements on issues until the smoke clears & a clear picture emerges.  I mostly ignored the Zimmerman story for a couple of days.  I have tried to do so on Ferguson until enough facts emerged to form an intelligent opinion.  First fact, the MO Govern is a total tool & should be recalled, impeached or just shipped to Iraq to directly head negotiations with ISIS.  (OK, not a fact, just a strongly expressed opinion)

On Tuesday, August 19, Governor Jay Nixon (D-Mo.) called for the “vigorous prosecution” of Darren Wilson, the Missouri police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown last week. 

Despite the highly charged rhetoric by the state’s Democratic governor, NBC’s Today was the only network morning show to acknowledge Nixon’s comments, giving it a mere 41 seconds on its Wednesday morning broadcast.

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/#ixzz3B24u8XPJ

So what do you think?  Calling for vigorous prosecution before even determining if he committed a crime?  I have a different perspective.  Officer Darren Wilson should be awarded the highest awards available to a law enforcement officer for his actions.  By several accounts, Michael Brown & another male were walking down the middle of a city street, disrupting traffic.  (This was soon after the report of a robbery in that area.)  Officer Wilson yelled at them to get out of the street.  (this is a LEGAL order!  The ideal that this is a free country does not mean there are not laws such as those that restrict the streets to vehicles, not pedestrians.  Police also have the authority to enforce those laws thru tickets, arrest or whatever level of force is required)  Brown walking down the middle of the street after committing a strong arm robbery (battery) shows he was intent on violence, on provoking a confrontation. 

Officer Wilson ordered him out of the street.  Brown ignored him.  Officer Wilson started to exit his vehicle but was stopped by Brown & his accomplice, who shoved him back into the police car.  Brown then punched officer Wilson several times resulting in significant to severe injuries.  There are reports the struggled for Wilson’s gun.  Brown stepped away & Wilson exited the car.  Brown then taunted Wilson, “What you gonna do, shoot me”?  Brown then began an aggressive run at Wilson, who then shot Brown six times.

Reports indicate Wilson suffered a fractured eye socket from Browns attack.  A few days ago, I criticized Wilson’s marksmanship.  I was wrong.   While Brown was struck four times in the right arm, two went thru and struck the upper body.  Wilson was aiming center mass, exactly as police officers are trained.  That he was this accurate after a brutal beating, impaired vision and possible concussion or concussion like symptoms shows focus, restraint and professionalism of the highest order.  Brown had shown himself intent on violence and unwilling to submit to arrest.  Had Wilson allowed him to escape, who would have been his next victim?  Wilson, as a police officer, is entrusted with authority & powers not shared with the general public.  He is expected to protect the general public from violence.  Had Brown continued to walk away, Wilson would still be expected to stop Brown.  Compare that to you or I.  If we had been beaten & they walk away, we cannot legally shoot them or use lethal force.  Once the threat to our or others safety passes, we cannot legally engage even a violent criminal.  But in this encounter, we & officer Wilson have the clear right to self defense.  Brown reversed direction and began a fast approach toward Wilson.  He died an aggressor.  He died because he choose to attack others.  Wilson was injured doing his job stopping people like Brown.

And while I am happy to praise Officer Wilson, I think it should be contrasted with some criticism.  A few years back there was a shooting in Time Square.  I am still waiting for reports on what happened to the officers who shot innocent bystanders.  In California, during the Dorner manhunt, police twice fired on mistakenly identified vehicles, shooting one man & injuring two others.  Two separate incidents where two different police organizations violated the law & their legally recognized procedures.  If shoot on sight orders had been issued, they would have to have identified the suspect.  The first incident involved two women.  The second a small build white male.  Dorner was a large, black male.  NY could be excused, that they had to stop a threat to the public at large, even if it meant injuring innocent bystanders present at that time.  (I don’t agree with this, but acknowledge a case can be made)  But no such defense can be offered for the illegal actions in California.  One thing shared by both is the lack of accountability.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/15/justice/times-square-police-shooting/index.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/07/lapd-shooting-at-innocent-people_n_2638701.html

 

And like many, I share a distrust over the militarization of our police forces and that displayed in Ferguson, I also see a disconnect.  Violent rioters are nightly looting and attacking.  A large, civil disturbance that was the justification for acquiring such equipment.  The real question should be, why isn’t it being used?  Why are the violent people still one the streets?  Why haven’t they arrested dozens or hundreds?  Why aren’t they protecting the innocent citizens of Ferguson and their property?  It can only be politics.  The politics of Eric Holder, who ordered the Ferguson police to not release the video of Brown’s attacking a man in a store minutes before being shot.  The police chief defied Holder and obeyed the law, releasing the video as required by a freedom of information request.  And again, compare this to Zimmerman, where a firearm was used legally to defend against a violent attack.  Is this what Holder, Obama & the liberal press are trying to smear?  The right to self defense?

3AM? Where were you?

I have some friends that are/where Hillary girls.  Big fans who thought she could do no wrong.  There was this viral pic of her on a plane, wearing dark sunglasses checking out her Blackberry..  Funny that doesn’t make the rounds anymore.  Reality is it was a publicity campaign meant to build/enhance her image.

http://textsfromhillaryclinton.tumblr.com/

And it worked well until reality caught up with the image.  Benghazi was her 3am moment & she showed herself to be what she accused Obama of, unprepared & unable to deal with a crisis in real time.   What difference does it make?  One difference is you have proven you are not able to take that phone call, no matter what the hour.  Has Obama kept control over foreign policy?  Who makes decisions like going after Osama Bin Laden?  Isn’t one of the rules of a conspiracy that you all stand together or will hang separately?

http://nypost.com/2014/08/13/hammering-obama-hillary-has-only-begun/

And now Hillz & Bama have “hugged it out”.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeffrey-meyer/2014/08/13/big-three-provide-damage-control-following-clinton-obama-feud-insist-

Glad that went so well.  Seems like most of the nation is looking at a president & Sec of State that are complete incompetents.  He does his best work on the golf course ignoring other nations issues, lest he be tempted to “help”.

Makes me wonder about our phony media and the sheeple that embrace  illusion.  Two PR guys have a few drinks talking about how awesome is Hillary.  I don’t think I could ever get drunk enough to believe any of that bulldookey.

http://www.outsports.com/2012/4/11/4052930/texts-from-hillary-internet-meme-started-by-two-guys-in-a-gay-sports

 

Voter ID, Why Not?

The subject of voter ID has been around for awhile.  As most of you know, I think voting (in the Federal elections) is useless and a waste of time.  But that is for another day.  Requiring voters to have legal identification, however, just keeps rearing it’s head as a political issue.  I’m interested in getting some answers on this subject.  This will be an Open Mic Plus, as always so bring forward any subjects you choose.  Now for some questions.

1. For those against voter ID,  Why and what proof is there is “disenfranchisement” to support your side of the argument?

2.  For those who want voter ID, How much illegal activity in the voting process will this solve?  Please give proof of examples!

Let’s finally try and put this issue to rest, with PROOF, not political fairy tales.

When Are the Lies Enough?

What is it going to take in this country to see the Federal Government for what it is?   Benghazi, being bad enough, now the IRS targeting organizations based on political ideology.  Even as the IRS has admitted such, Obama still uses the word “IF” in his recent answers to the questions.   Is it time for the informed public to remove their consent of the Federal Government and dismiss them as criminal.  Demading the military remove them from office could be the next step in maintaining peace through the process.  Just some thoughts, feel free to post as an Open Mic and have a Great Day  🙂

Troubling Times Ahead?

There sure is a lot of things going on in the world, it’s hard to keep up with it all sometimes. Natural events like snowstorms, tornado’s, earthquakes, volcano’s and meteors to man made events like North Korea spouting off at the mouth, Syrian rebels using chemical weapons, strange economic solutions in Cyprus and Fukashima still spewing radioactive garbage into the air. One has to stay very busy to keep up with it all. There have also been many questions concerning the actions of our own government. Why does the DHS need all the firepower they are buying? Are drones a good idea over U.S. soil? Why are some states passing gun laws that are only going to be challenged in court, costing taxpayers millions?

At 7:02 am est, we welcomed Spring with a big hooray!  Then I looked outside to the blanket of snow  🙄  Bummer!  We will all keep moving ahead with whatever plans we have, just don’t slip on the ice!

Let’s start trying to find answers to the many questions that are out there.  It’s an increasingly crazy world, that may require increasingly difficult actions.

Tuesday Chat

Time to speed up the process alittle. I’m still curious about the Sequester mess that is all over the news. The way the MSM and the White House makes it out to be, this 2% cut in future spending is going to cause all the problems that Obama has been railing about. Is Obama lying again?  Probably a dumb question.  On another note, the Republicans have been rather useless, but then again, the MSM don’t give them much air time.  Should we not hold each MSM outlet accountable by calling them out? 

Weekend Open Chat

As we prepare some new articles to consume, let’s continue some chats that have been ongoing.  I have a discussion for Charlie that I will bring forward and hope some other subjects will continue as well.  I’m still in travel mode till Sunday.  Sunday is also the “Great American Race”, the Daytona 500.  This is usually the only race I watch, unless I catch one when the weather is bad.   I have not missed on Daytona 500 since they started being shown live on TV.  This year, Danica Patrick has the pole, the first women ever to hold a pole position in the history of NASCAR.  Good luck to Danica.

Mid Week Discussion

After last night’s State of the Union Address, I’m sure that there should be some fairly good comments on Obama’s speech. While I had some fun with it last night, I need to go back and read what he said more closely.  Here is a link to the speech:   http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/12/transcript-obama-state-union-speech/

After the speech, Marco Rubio took over the TV screen (I missed this completely) with the GOP answer to Obama’s speech.  His comments can be found here:  http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/13/rubio-obama-must-abandon-his-obsession-with-tax-hikes/

In other news, it appears that the Chris Dorner story has come to a smokey end.  He is believed to be dead in a burned out cabin in California, after shooting and killing one more cop going out.  The charred body must still be identified, but it looks like it will be Dorner.

Super Bowl Weekend

This weekend has a little bit for everyone.  On Sunday we have Super Bowl 47.  The collision of the coasts has the AFC Baltimore Ravens taking on the NFC San Francisco 49ers.  To top it off, the respective head coaches are brothers!  That is a first in the NFL’s  history.  I’ll pass on my predictions below.  Some folks, however, don’t follow football.  On Saturday, they get to enjoy waking up long before dawn to watch a groundhog determine how the rest of winter is going to play out.  You see, if the little rodent sees his shadow, we up here in the North get 6 more weeks of winter.  This is but one reason why we shoot these varmints when we see them.  This little rodent, known as Punksetawny Phil, will arise with much fanfare and anticipation on Saturday morning to pass on his normal bad news.

These times will be a nice break from all the doom and gloom of politics, the economy, and the off the wall stuff that all of that brings us.   Good Luck to the Super Bowl teams.  Enjoy Groundhog Day (would someone shoot that critter already).  But most of all, be safe out there.  It’s a dangerous world full of cops, politicians and woodchucks.

Open Mic for August 10, 2011

Another Open Mic day arrives. This time I am a little bit better prepared as I actually have time to add some thoughts to the contributions that I am presenting. I have been trying to take more time lately and dedicate it to writing here at SUFA. I know that it may not seem to be so to everyone, but I am trying to make the articles appear on a more regular schedule, similar to what used to happen at SUFA. I still haven’t gotten to the point where I have time to write more than twice per week, so unless we have regular contributions from others, we aren’t going to get to the point of having new articles every day for a while. For today’s topics I have offered up an opinion piece written by James Zogby over at the Huffington Post, touching on Iran’s image within the Middle East, and a debate over what is “free speech” and what isn’t during a political campaign…

Wednesday Morning Open Mic for February 9, 2011

Back to the open mic topics! I will have to wait and see how my night plays out before I know how this open mic area is going to look in the morning. I have three topics picked out that I want to write about but I am not sure I am going to have the time to write the commentary under the article at the same time. So I will begin to do so and if need be I will post the unfinished ones as articles and then go back and add the comments I have on them in the morning when I can find a few minutes. I will also be trying to see how the open mic works with the new format. It used to be a lot easier to distinguish between different comment threads. But now without the numbering and without the lines designating so it may be more difficult to see the separation between topics. If that becomes the case we will try to figure out a new way! So let me know throughout the day how you are doing with it. I have three topics planned and a fourth if I find time.

Open Mic Again…..

I lament that I don’t have the time to write a whole new article tonight (although I am sure that even if I did, it would not be enough research to satisfy you, Todd 😉 ). Plus I wanted to respond to Ray’s post as this bee is now in my bonnet and I think that it is worth pursuing so that I can put it behind me. So I figure that for tonight I will do another open mic night and hit a topic or two as well as allowing space for people to continue other discussions that were started in that long thread that was the Wednesday Morning Open Mic. I also want to take a moment to encourage people to begin writing guest commentaries again. I want to get SUFA back on track the way we were a couple of months ago and that means fresh ideas and new topics and perspectives to talk about. I will continue to offer my fodder for regular discussion and some of it will be completely new now that we have a different majority in the House of Representatives, but I think there is much more to be gained by getting some fresh topics that I wouldn’t normally touch on. So write some stuff and send it on over. I will begin tonight with my rebuttal to Ray and then try to add topics Friday during the day.

Wednesday Morning Open Mic for January 12, 2010

A hearty good morning to all on a fine Wednesday morning. Today’s open mic will be done a little differently. I am considering this going forward for a couple of reasons, chief among them being that with my new schedule, it might be easier to accomplish! What I am going to do is post this normal introduction and then add the open mic topics throughout the day, whenever time permits me to do so. I appreciate the discussions had on Monday’s post. I feel like some of us got a little off track, but that is to be expected (and even encouraged!). The key point to my article was that what happened were the acts of someone who was not right in the head, and as such I refuse to any longer accept acts such as this as part of political wrangling. It is about removing the partisan BS and focusing instead on logical and responsible solutions and observations. As such, I found it interesting that I was attacked as jumping to conclusions when I simply state that someone who shoots 18 people isn’t right in the head. I made no other conclusions to judge. It makes me wonder….

Tuesday Night Open Mic for January 4, 2011

Open mic night comes again and I get the opportunity to finally stand up for my previous company in a way that I was unable to previously, as you will see below. I do so because, first, what was said was factually incorrect, and second, because I kept a lot of people quiet on the promise that I would address it. So I really hope my target for the day doesn’t get upset with me for calling it out 🙂 . I am trying over the next couple of weeks to really get more settled into my regular routine again as I will be done with that previous company in two more weeks and now just have to adjust to different working hours. However, as I mentioned the other day, I will be requiring surgery at some point in the coming weeks and that could render me useless for a day or two (which some folks may argue is no change at all!). But for now, I write on into the new year. I think there are some good topics below and of course I welcome any topics that others may want to add. I will try to check in throughout the day and join in the discussion.

Wednesday Night Open Mic for December 15, 2010

I couldn’t get to the open mic last night but have found a spare moment this evening to get some posted. I have worked both jobs at better than 16 hours each day for the last couple of days, so to say that I am a bit tired is an understatement. But I am persevering through it all. The new job is going great and I am learning a lot about the industry and how to do the job they hired me to do. And the old job is, well, the old job. I know how to do it but it is December which means working late nights and being swarmed when you come in. I did want to note for everyone that I won’t be offering any new articles during the week between Christmas and New Years. I will be traveling and enjoying spending time with my family and want to give them the attention that they deserve. I will be trying to jump in and participate throughout the day on Thursday. It appears that I may be working from home at least in the morning as we have some weather developing and here in the South, they shut things down when it snows. It is a bizarre thing for a northern boy to understand.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for November 30, 2010

Another Tuesday Night comes and that means Open Mic. Please allow me again to thank all of you for your well wishes for my family and especially for your patience over the last couple of weeks. My transition to a new career is challenging to say the least. I am learning a whole new vocabulary and a whole mess of regulatory and procedural madness. I am not out of the woods yet. I will be working both jobs, old and new, until the beginning of January. That means some long days and very few days off. Come January I will no longer work the old job and things will ease up a little bit. But the new job will still have plenty for me to learn. So my time will be limited for quite some time. I will continue to work to post here on a very regular basis. I will say that any guest commentary articles are more than welcome though! I know I have one or two to process and post but the more the merrier! I have four topics below, but there was a fifth one that I wanted to get and ran out of time to look up. I heard on the news tonight that a farmer, I think it may have been in Georgia, was fined for growing food on his own land. If someone could find that article and post it I would be very grateful (even if you just find the link I will try to jump in during the morning and put it into my format and add comments when I have a moment). I would like to have some discussion on that topic as well! As always, feel free to pull forward your discussions that you might be continuing from the last article.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for November 9, 2010

I am going to do open mic a little differently this evening. I have been working around the house this week as I prepare for the new job. Yesterday I painted the bedroom (a warm orange) and didn’t get to bed until 8:00 am! Tonight I was cleaning the bathroom and apparently managed to find the sharp end of some tweezers that gashed my finger. As a result typing is a very slow process. Couple that with my only sleeping from 8:00 til around 10:00 this morning and you find an exhausted blogger who cannot type well. So tonight I will find the articles I want to put up for open mic and post them without my commentary. They I will begin answering comments from yesterday and adding my thoughts on the topics I post until I can no longer keep my eyes open. For tonight’s topics we have a Tea Party Candidate (and Palin lackey) being petty, Wealthy Americans cutting back on charity, Quatitative easing by the Fed, and the new START treaty. I will also pull forward a thing or two from yesterday’s discussion. Particularly, I want to pull forward a JAC topic and a comment or two directed at me.

Thursday Night Open Mic for November 4, 2010

Whew… It is good to be home and relaxing for a minute or two. I arrived home late Wednesday night rather than Tuesday night from my travels, so I apologize that I wasn’t able to do the open mic last night. I took what appears to be the last “business trip” with my current job (which is being addressed in USWeapon Topic #1 below!).  I have intentionally continued to avoid discussing the Tuesday night election results here on SUFA. I am not doing so simply to avoid the topic. I will be writing my articles next week all around the changes in Congress and what I think of the results we saw. I am not looking at the results in quite the same way as some may expect, so I look forward to discussing them next week! For this week we have a few interesting topics to discuss. We have the Oklahoma Sharia Law ballot proposition already being challenged, the United Nations deciding that China and Iran should get to lecture the US on human rights, and the possibility that the Supreme Court could take away the ability for consumers to file class action lawsuits. Of course feel free to add whatever topics you would like to discuss!

Tuesday Night Open Mic for October 26, 2010

Tuesday night crept up on me this week. I continue to have a lot to do with work and have managed to thus far keep my head above water with so much going on. I will be going through some big changes over the next month or so. I therefore may be changing some of the schedule of when I post articles and what nights become the mainstays (although I haven’t really figured that part out quite yet). I have received several emails asking why I am not talking more about the elections, as they are only a week away at this point. I simply think there is so much out there already that we would be wasting time attempting to discuss them all. Furthermore, I have my races that I am personally interested in but I have no idea which ones the rest of you are interested in discussing. As this is open mic, feel free to offer up your thoughts on any races that you are interested in discussing. I am following them as much as I can, but simply haven’t had the time to evaluate them. I will begin tonight with just three articles. I will try to find time tomorrow to add another article or two as time permits. I hope you all are having a great week so far.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for October 19, 2010

We come to open mic and I am still trying to recover from the last few weeks of work. I am working on some more substantial articles that I think are going to be pretty good when they are finished. And we will see Part 3 of Jon Smith’s series coming later this week as well. For tonight we have several interesting topics. We have a SCOTUS judge who decided that he is skipping the State of the Union, a Senatorial candidate that doesn’t know what the Constitution says, the idiot women on The View making complete asses of themselves, and a lame attempt by Democrats to buy the Senior Citizen vote with a $250 credit to each senior. As many of you may have noticed, I have tended to stay away from stories about specific races for the upcoming elections. Realistically, all the madness out there is getting more than enough coverage. But the other side of that is the races that are most interesting are so bizarre or idiotic that these candidates simply don’t deserve the time it would take to write about them.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for October 12, 2010

A hearty good evening (or morning as it may be in reality as I am writing this at almost 3:00 am). I will again be keeping it short this evening as I am still having a bit of trouble typing at my usual rate of speed. I have thus far determined that they wrist is not broken. Instead it must be something in the joint or tendons or something. It can hold weight just fine, I just cannot turn the wrist or move it quickly without pain. I also have the big event this week at work: The release of a new product that will revolutionize the industry yet again. Very exciting times, and very busy times as I have all the bigwigs at my location for launch on Thursday. So tonight I will be adding only two articles to start and hoping to add more as the day goes on tomorrow (although I cannot promise). As always, feel free to add any topics that you want to discuss. It’s all fair game….

Tuesday Night Open Mic for September 28, 2010

We come to the open mic night on the heels of a good conversation around public education. I would like to once again thank GrafZeppelin127 for taking the time to write an article that was interesting and excellently written, and then for also coming by and participating in the conversation around the article. I hope that he will find time in the future to write for us again here at SUFA, and further that he will find time to drop in now and then and participate in other conversations. I will not be available to write an article for Wednesday night and perhaps Thursday. If that is the case I intend to post one on Friday night. I will be trying to do one Thursday night though. For tonight’s open mic topics we have Pelosi perhaps losing support from her peers as Speaker of the House, an interesting poll on where voters get their information, Colbert going to Congress, and the US government looking for even more access to private communications in order to “protect the citizens.” I look forward to the conversations!

Tuesday Night Open Mic for September 21, 2010

We reach Tuesday night on the heels of some interesting discussion around Atlas Shrugged and the concepts of the Objectivist philosophy. I will attempt to find time today to answer some of the comments directed at me. I will say up front that there were quite a few fallacies built into the opposition to my articles. I have grown accustomed to such things. But I will once again point them out and do my best to discuss them to completion. I appreciate everyone’s thoughts on the two articles. I assumed there would be folks on both sides. But I was surprised by the lack of understanding on them. Perhaps I needed to do a better job explaining or discussing. For tonight we have more ridiculous name changes from the White House meant to fool voters, a company that is majority owned by government contributing to government campaigns, an attempt to marginalize through association rather than substance, and an interesting poll discussing voter’s feelings about candidates who are willing to compromise. Feel free to add your own topics, as always.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for September 7, 2010

Tuesday night finds me quite under the weather. What started yesterday as a minor annoyance in my sinuses has grown into a full blown summer cold! Not something that I am used to, as I rarely get sick at all. Apparently this cold/flu has been circulating at work, as I am now the 3rd person to fall victim to it at my workplace. Fortunately, I have been working on the open mic topics for the last couple of days, always searching for new topics. It will mean, however, that there will only be three topics presented by me this evening. I am now getting hopped up on NyQuil and Mucinex, which I am hoping will lead to rare night of sleep before 4:00 am. With any luck, I will get ten hours of drug induced sleep and feel much better tomorrow (I sure hope so because I never call out from work, I’ve missed one day for sickness in 20 years). So I ask that some of you please pick up my slack and offer a few additional topics today!

Tuesday Night Open Mic for August 31, 2010

Tuesday night has again crept up on me. I offer some more good articles for discussion this week, including one sent to me by a friend. I included it because it really did kind of speak directly to how I was feeling about Beck’s rally this last weekend. It is the first article below, so thanks for sending that over. Elsewhere we have UCLA firing a scientist because his scientific results didn’t match their political opinions, the possibility that the Republican party could embrace gay rights, and absolute impotency of the federal regulatory agency that always lets us down, the SEC. I will be posting a guest commentary on Thursday night but will be largely unavailable this weekend, as my sister is getting married. JAC, if you could bring the topic forward that I mentioned would be good for open mic, I would appreciate it greatly. Still taking applications for regular contributors to the site as well! Enjoy your Tuesday everyone. I will be weighing in all day when possible.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for August 24, 2010

Tuesday night comes again. This week we are on the heels of my proposal to eliminate the FDA. I was a little disappointed with the first day’s responses, but I felt the second day was better. I especially liked Mathius’ alternative plan offering. While I am a little skeptical of it, I love having alternatives offered and the real ideas discussed without the silly games of simply attempting to discredit the original idea with nonsense. If people would like me to, we can sit on the FDA thing for a week or so and repost some of the stuff later for more discussion after people have time to think it through. Let me know if you want to do that. For the open mic we have three topics from me, including Hillary continuing to beat the climate change thing down people’s throats, California cities looking at punishing accident victims by charging them taxes for emergency services and then charging them fees when they use them, and my personal frustration with the conflicting information spewing from all sides of government these days. Additionally, we have a topic carried over from Peter in Indy and the possibility of Snopes being exposed from Cyndi. I look forward to the conversations.

Tuesday Night Open Mic for August 17, 2010

I have to tell you, the more I do the open mic nights, the more I begin to enjoy them. There are several reasons that this is so. First, the open mic articles are easier to write. They don’t take nearly as much research and thought as some of the other articles that I write. More important for me is that the open mic format allows me to tackle much smaller items that I wouldn’t normally be able to support with a whole article. They are the quick shots of the political blogging world. There are so many times I used to see topics and think that they would be great topics but far too short. I have committed myself to doing some shorter stand alone articles, but the open mic allows me to hit other ones. For tonight’s topics I have a bit of a theme around the use of words to form opinion and either attack or help someone. The first three stories tonight focus on language and campaign strategy and the ways we see it play out in our politically correct and over-analyzing society. The 4th article is unrelated to that stuff and the 5th article is a submission from Common Man for discussion.