The Week in Review (1)

Well, it’s been a big week so far.  Items in the news thus far have included a Supreme Court ruling stating that states may not require proof of citizenship before casting a vote; the Pentagon announced that we now live in the movie G.I Jane and; The Republican Party has decided that the best way to continue to be relevant is to devalue the citizenship of every American and pander to the illegal population.

Yes sir…we are well on the way to hell in a hand basket.

Here are my thoughts.

1) In a discussion several years back with Eric about voter fraud and illegals he stated to me emphatically “Illegal immigrants cannot vote!”  Uh… yes, yes they can, and they do.

Your typical liberal will say utterly ridiculous shit like “Voter ID laws a racist and disenfranchise the black community”.  I really wish black people paid attention to things like that.  Do you realize what they are actually saying is that you are too stupid, too lazy or too poor to get an ID, BUT you are smart enough, industrious enough and wealthy enough to make your way to the polls and cast an informed vote…  really?

When you rinse away all the bullshit, here is what it boils down to.  Democrats thrive off of voter fraud, uninformed ignorant ass voters, and entire segments of the population which are brain washed and bribed in to voting democrat.  If you require ID and citizenship all you effectively do is insure that only people who have a right to vote are voting, and that they only vote once.  The only reason to oppose that is, that you want people who do not have the right to vote, to vote…and that you want as many of your supporters as possible to vote as many times as they can.

How exactly are these “poor” people cashing welfare checks, receiving benefits, applying for assistance, etc., without showing ID?  How are they travelling, driving a car, buying 40′s at the liquor store, applying for credit cards, and just generally conducting their lives…without ID?

Are poor people exempt from a request by law enforcement to produce ID?  When you must go to the hospital, are you exempt from having to produce some form of identification?  Come on…

2)  The purpose of a military force is simply put, to kill people.  It is not to promote gender equality, conduct social experiments or build the self-esteem of people.  It is to engage the enemies of the nation and destroy them.

The introduction of women in to the Special Forces will be a complete disaster.  I don’t give a shit how people feel about it, the bottom line is women are NOT equal to men in physical strength, bone density, muscle structure, endurance, or any of the other things that are specifically required by a combat role.  Standards will be lowered to accommodate weaker people who should not be there in the first place.  The finest fighting force in the history of the planet, and the most elite units in that force, will be reduced to a third-rate, joke.

Bottom line is simple.  I am 6’4″ and 254.  Find me a woman who can throw me over her shoulder and run 100 yards while taking incoming fire from an enemy unit…and SHE can try out to be a SEAL.  Otherwise, you are going to have wounded men being left behind because their female comrades got in under the “revised” standards and are unable to perform the ACTUAL duties of the job, as opposed to the politically correct version.

3)  Wow.  Here I thought being an American citizen had value.  Come to find out, they’re just giving the shit away.  It’s 1986 all over again.  Amnesty for millions now, and an empty promise of border security somewhere down the road.  And 20 years from now we’ll be right back where we are today, taking about Amnesty for the millions more illegals we have accumulated over the time.

But, because the libs control the spin via the media, the public will believe what they are told to believe.  No one will think or reason.  No one will consider.  We will just tear the country down, one brick at a time until there is nothing left.

I hope there is a special place in hell for the men and women who have taken the last, best hope for mankind; the city on a hill; the land of the free and the home of the brave; the land of opportunity; America the Beautiful…and reduced it to Venezuela.

May your punishment be unending, unmerciful and swift in coming.

 

Next?

Ever had one of those periods in your life where you are facing a tough time, but you think you have a solution?  But the solution isn’t an easy one, and the tough time will still be tough…  So you vacillate back and forth between, “I got this” and, “What am I going to do?”

I’m in one of those right now.

It is *possible* that my current employer will find somewhere to place me and I will just roll on like nothing happened…mainly because, if they do that then nothing will have happened.

It is also possible that I will find another job, in my industry, in my pay range, and continue to roll like nothing happened.

It is however, entirely possible that I will wind up unemployed and collecting unemployment benefits.  Which are not enough to keep the bills paid.  Thus, leaving me with an interesting decision to make.

As Thaeda alluded to yesterday, if there is a way to be found I usually find it.  But this time the way I am contemplating will be a tough one.  A path not easily walked.  A pill not easily swallowed.  As I said, it’s just something I am pondering, but here it is nonetheless.

If I wind up long-term unemployed and unable to pay the bills, I may have to consider bankruptcy.  Nothing new, lots of people do this.

However…because of the nature of the work we do and the involvement of various persons in the federal government in our personal lives; ( my wife was recently told she had to choose a new nail technician because the lady at the strip mall shop she goes to is not an American citizen… if you can freakin believe that….) I may actually have to separate from my wife, and possibly go so far as to divorce her, so that my bankruptcy does not affect her clearance.  We are looking in to all of that.

Not a great start to the plan….

Next thing would be to pay off the things I absolutely want to keep, like the car (hard to get to work without one), and let the other stuff go.

But then we reach the part of the plan where things start looking up a bit…

I enroll in college full-time and bust my tail.  I live off the wife’s income for a few years while I get a degree, and come out better equipped and prepared to have an actual career.

But…

A degree in what?  Ah.  The plan gets complicated again.  Only got one shot.  Can’t screw it up…

Go with what I already know something about, which would be IT or IT Security?  Or go with a whole new direction, pursue a passion, do something meaningful?  Tough choice.

I could get a business degree and open one… but the environment in this nation these days does not lead one to conclude that being a small business person is a wonderful thing.

The direction I am leaning at the moment is towards doing what I do naturally anyway.  I am thinking of getting some education in the appropriate areas (and perhaps Thaeda can shed some light on what those would be) and then opening a non-profit for the purpose of counselling and assisting battered women, impoverished single moms, etc.  In short, taking what I do now simply because it seems right to me…and going pro.

I have talked a lot recently about the search for significance; doing something meaningful; making a difference.  This would seem to me to be a way I could do that.

I guess, in the end, one feeling I cannot stand is that of being helpless.  I do not like having no choices, or feeling like my life is already laid out before me and there is noting I can do to change it.  I know that all over this nation right now there are people who wake up to that reality every single day.  I cannot help all of them.  But I can help some of them.

And maybe I can kill two birds with one stone.  The more single mothers I help to get off of welfare, food stamps, WIC and Section 8, and in to jobs where they can support themselves and their kids…  the more I take votes away from the democrats and reduce the “dependency” voting block they rely so heavily on.

I am under no illusions.  I cannot change the system.  But the people running the Underground Railroad weren’t trying to end slavery by doing what they did.  They were simply trying to smuggle out as many people as they could.

Choo!  Choo!

Comments Sought

I imagine all of us have heard a song we really liked and ended up picking up the cd.  Unless of course you just downloaded the single from somewhere…

In any event, we listen to that one song we like over and over, and sometimes never end up really listening to the rest of the cd.

In the recent past I copied my entire music library to a thumb drive and I began listening to it as I drove to and from work.  From time to time I pick an artist that I know I like a song or two by, and I let the whole cd play.  And on occasion I come across a gem.

I find that even when I really like a whole song there is frequently a single line, or maybe two, that sticks in my head.  This morning I came across an example of that, and it led me to write this post.

I am going to post a couple of lines from a couple of songs that really speak to me, or mean something, or just struck me as profound in some way.  Lyrics that made me think, or changed my life, or changed my mind.

I’d like to invite everyone who reads this to do the same in the comments section.  Perhaps in the sharing we will discover something new, or find that we are not alone in being touched in some way by a piece of music.

Anyway, here goes.  Starting with the song that hit me this morning.

From “At This Point In My Life” by Tracy Chapman;

You see I’ve been climbing stairs, but mostly stumbling down
I’ve been reaching high, always losing ground
You see I’ve been reaching high, but always losing ground
You see I’ve conquered hills, but I still have mountains to climb
And right now, right now, I’m doing the best I can
At this point in my life

From Lose Yourself by Eminem

Another day of monotony
Has gotten me to the point, I’m like a snail
I’ve got to formulate a plot or I end up in jail or shot
Success is my only motherfucking option, failure’s not

From Eyes of a Stranger by Queensreich:

How many times must I live this tragedy
How many more lies will they tell me
All I want is the same as everyone
Why am I here, and for how long

And I raise my head and stare
Into the eyes of a stranger
I’ve always known that the mirror never lies

That’s it for now.  More later no doubt.  Until then, I look forward to your comments.

You’ll Be All Right

It has been said that you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time.  I guess my life is proof of that.

As I creep closer and closer to my “end date” (July 8th), I grow more concerned about what I will do next.  The economy is still in trouble.  Sequestration is shrinking the arena in which I work.  My clearance has been downgraded as a result of working in an environment that did not require the whole thing.  But these are not the main things that have me concerned.

I have, over the many years, developed skills in a variety of areas.  The problem is I have no specialized.

I have done cabling and telecommunications work; help desk; administration; requirements, the list goes on…

I know a little Unix, I know a little networking.  I know a little of a lot of different things.  So when someone asks me “What can you do?”, my honest answer is “Anything you need done, given a little time to get up to speed.”  The problem is, people are not looking for jacks-of-all-trades anymore.  They want Subject Matter Experts.

A quick scan of any job board will show you that the majority of positions are looking for Bachelor’s Degrees plus experience, if not Master’s Degrees.  I have neither.

That same scan will show you that many of these positions are for much lower pay than the requirements would tend to make you think.

So, the truth is, I am not sure what (if anything) I will be doing for a living in a month or two.

But the part of all this I find interesting is the number of people who say to me, “You’ll be all right”.  Really?  How do you know?

They tell me that I always figure things out and find a way.  They tell me that I am smart and hard-working and I will find a job.  They tell me that I get knocked down but I don’t stay down.  But here’s the part that I find funny.

They tell me those things about me, because I told them those things about me.  There are only 2-3 people who have known me long enough and well enough to have ever actually witnessed any of those things.  Everyone else is just parroting back what they heard, and apparently forgetting where they heard it.

Will I be all right?  Probably.  But that depends on how you define “all right”.

Will I be homeless and starving, living in a box on a heat vent in D.C.?  No.

But my lifestyle will most certainly change.  My income will change.  My address may change.  My occupation may change.

All of these things could be good things, but they could also be not so good.  Only time will tell.

One thing I know is, because I will struggle; because I will refuse to go down without a fight; because I will continue searching for a solution until I find one; I will stand a better chance of getting through this ordeal than someone who does none of these things.

But in the end, much of it is out of my control.

I cannot make someone hire me.  I cannot make an employer offer me a position that pays what I have become accustomed to making.  I cannot change the economy, or the environment in the defense contracting industry.

So maybe I will in fact be all right.  But, it is by no means guaranteed.

Casting Stones

This post is going to cover several subjects, but they all relate to the same person and the same situation.  It was brought about by a telephone conversation I had, but my thoughts have expanded beyond simply the content of that phone call.

So… here’s the deal.

I have a friend.  She has two kids.  One of them has already been diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder.  The other is showing signs, and may well wind up being diagnosed as well.

I am by no means an expert on these matters, and so I will not discuss that aspect further.  I simply wanted to mention it.

Both of these kids get a little hyper, as all kids do.  I have personally been around them.  I have tried to keep up with them, provide them some discipline and structure, help their mom out, etc.  It’s tough.

My friend is raising these kids alone.  Their father is worse than useless, he is absent.  Though he chooses to be present from time to time, and build the kid’s hopes that perhaps daddy will turn out to be a human being one day.  But, that’s not the case.  Daddy is a piece of shit.  Always has been, always will be.  So she raises them on her own and deals with him showing up once a month or so, usually when he wants to try to talk her in to having sex with him.

My friend is seriously overweight.  As in, not healthy…you’re going to die…you HAVE to change…overweight.  As a result of this she suffers from a number of other issues and conditions.  In no particular order:

She has low self-esteem.

She’s tired all the time.

She cannot keep up with her kids.

She cannot find gainful employment

She cannot really even tolerate being out in public for more than a short while.

So… what is it that our wonderful, bleeding heart, liberal lovers of all things, who snicker at the notion of “compassionate conservatism” do for her?

Well… they toss her a check to sit on disability, presumably for the rest of her life.  She gets food stamps and WIC.  She is provided with an 800 sq. ft.  two-bedroom apartment in the ghetto, in which to raise a boy and a girl.  And she is left, with no hope, no future and no assistance to develop hope or a future.  That’s liberal “compassion”.

I came along and offered her a little bit of conservative compassion.

I told her, you got yourself in this condition and you have to get yourself out.  But, I will help you.

I told her, you need to go to school so that you can one day get off the system and start fending for yourself and raising your kids.  And I bought her a computer, a desk and a chair so that she could do that.

I tell her daily about the differences between the mindset of failure and that of success, and how believing in yourself is the first step to accomplishing something.

And I have begun looking in to buying a house in the suburbs, or even out in the country, that she can then rent from me, so that her kids can get outside and play.

I have slowly helped her to weed out the negative people who only serve to weigh her down further and who use her for what little she has.  I have begun introducing her to real people, who can set good examples, offer reasoned and practical suggestions, lend a hand from time to time, etc.

That’s compassionate conservatism.  I will not carry you, but I will walk with you.

Libs just toss you a check, give you the bare minimum needed to survive, all provided with other people’s money, and then go home feeling good about themselves because they “helped”.

A liberal will man a spot in a soup kitchen.  A conservative wants to know why you need the soup kitchen to begin with, and how they can help you fix your LIFE, not just your dinner.

So my friend is looking in to school.  She is working on her weight.  She is working on being a better parent.  She is working on being a better person.  She is seeking counseling, and friendship with real people.  She is getting around people who are where she’s headed instead of where she’s been.  She’s taking all manner of positive steps, and I am taking them with her.  It’s a long road, but one that can be, and must be, walked.

In any event, I was on the phone the other day with a person I have long suspected of being shallow.  She finally proved it.

She looked at a couple of pictures of my friend’s kids on Facebook, and stated that it was obvious that they were lacking emotional support, were psychologically traumatized, that my friend was obviously a horrible mother and her kids should be taken away from her.  So… I unfriended her.  But the more I thought about it the more pissed off I got.

Bear in mind that these two women have never met.  Nor has the one in question ever met the kids.

Also bear in mind that the pictures she was referring to were taken by me…  so I was there, and I know what was happening at the time they were taken.

I told her that perhaps if she were to try to raise two kids under the same circumstances she might find she wasn’t doing such a great job either.  She replied that she had in fact raised two kids alone…

Yes…  one of them is a bum who just became a father, and will not speak to her.  The other is a spoiled, entitled little gold digger who expects mommy to take care of everything, until she finds a boyfriend, and then she expects mommy to stay out of the way.

Quality work!

I’ll tell you what.  Anyone who wants to talk shit about how good a parent they are or how bad a parent someone else is… I’ll put my girls up against your kids any day of the week.

In the meantime, I have a little exercise for this woman and everyone like her to try out.

Try keeping your mouth shut when you have no idea what you’re talking about.

If you can’t walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, try at least walking a mile *beside* their shoes before you judge them.

And when you are walking around with a fucking 4×4 sticking out of your eye… don’t fret so much about the toothpick in someone else’s eye.  (Thought I’d throw a little scripture at you).

Try developing some character.

Try being part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

Try not being an elitist snob.

Try growing up.

Try having some compassion.

Try volunteering at the YMCA…and if they don’t have an opening, I hear the STFU is understaffed…

And to round it out, let me give you one more little piece of scripture that is wholly pertinent to this discussion.

“Judge not, that you be not judged.  For with what judgment you judge you shall be judged, and with what measure you meet it shall be meted to you again.”

That verse does not mean that we shouldn’t judge things.  Jesus, Paul and others clearly call us to test and judge things in numerous places.  What it says is, if you judge someone by a standard you will be judged by that same standard.  So here’s a final thought.

When your son is speaking to you again, THEN you can talk about other women and their sons, and how good a job they are or are not doing as mothers.  Until then, you have far too much work to do in your own life to be sitting around casting stones at others.

Besides…we all know that people in glass houses shouldn’t be casting stones in the first place.  Right?

Blowing the Whistle

I want to state that I have worked around some really amazing people for the last several years.  I will not name any of them because I have not asked their permission to do so.  But, I have told a number of them in person.  They know.

We live and work in a world that is removed from the everyday life of everyone else.  We work backstage, behind the curtain.  We sign papers and take oaths.  We agree to protect whatever information we may come in to contact with, and to never reveal it.

Which brings me to Edward Snowden.

The general feeling amongst those that I have talked to is that he revealed classified information and he should be prosecuted.  I agree the law was broken, and there is a penalty for that.  He knew what the penalty was when he chose to break the law, so I guess he is willing to pay the price.  But I have a few questions…

Martin Luther King Jr. willingly broke the law, and paid the penalty, because his cause was more important than the law.  Was he wrong?

When it was revealed back during the Bush Administration that we were snatching people off the street and sending them to foreign soil to torture them for information, the left was all up in arms about THE CRIME.  To my knowledge, no one was prosecuted.  Now the left appears to be all up in arms about the whistle-blower, and not so much about the Constitution.  Why is that?

Is it really okay for a government agency to do anything they want, legal or not, constitutional or not, and to cover it up by slapping a classification on the program?

Do you really want to live in East Germany?  Cuz that’s where we’re headed.  In the interests of “safety and security”, in order to protect us, we are slowly losing all of our rights and our liberty.  And half the country doesn’t even care.  They got their phone from the government, so why does it matter if the government wants to know who they are calling?  Right?

The same government that will compile information on everyone, will use that information to single out individuals.  The guys who will look at your phone records will one day be listening in on your phone.  The people who “scan” your emails, will one day set up webcams in your home.  And they will say, “If you have nothing to hide it shouldn’t be a problem”, right?  And YOU will agree.  And one day you will wake up in an Orwellian society, and wonder how you got there.

Don’t worry…if I’m still alive, I will remind you.

But I am cut from old cloth, and cling to outdated ideals.  So it is not likely that I would survive long in the society you are helping to create.  Because I will not yield, and I will not comply.

I was born free.  I intend to remain that way.

You keep looking at the straws and saying, “It’s just a straw, what’s the big deal?”

You better start looking at the camel…

 

People I’d Like to Thank

In light of my pending unemployment, there are a few people I’d like to thank.

I would like to thank Barrack Hussein Obama (Peace be upon him) for being the most ineffective, completely unqualified, bumbling scrub of a President in the history of our nation.  That distinction used to belong to Jimmy Carter.  It is therefore unfair to say that comrade Obama has not accomplished anything.  He broke a record which has stood for 24 years.  That is an accomplishment!

I would like to thank the do-nothing, know nothing, say anything Congress of the United State of America.  Working hand in hand with the Comrade in Chief you have managed to do more harm to this nation in terms of economic disaster, loss of liberty, and the transition from the Republic we once were to the Republik we are becoming, than any Congress in recent memory.

You have allowed arbitrary cuts to the defense budget which will have an immeasurably harmful impact on our economy.  Sequestration was a bad idea to begin with and it gets worse with each passing day.

The best part is that you have actually fooled some people (one of whom emailed me) in to thinking that somehow with these sweeping, arbitrary cuts, the size of government is shrinking, its reach retracting, its’ scope diminishing.  You and I know that isn’t the case.  When the money is all tallied up at the end of the year you will have simply used sleight of hand and accounting tricks to shuffle the dollars around.  We will not be less in debt.  We will not have a lower deficit.  We will not be more financially sound.  You know this.

But here is the real impact of what you have done.

I make just shy of 100k a year.  So does my wife.  We both work for the same company.  We are both defense contractors.  We are both in danger of losing our jobs.  I am definitely losing mine.  Her program is being cut back, so we have to wait and see.  But let us assume that only I am long-term unemployed.  What might the impact of that be?

Well… first and foremost, I cannot pay taxes on income I am not earning.  So you lose that income stream to the government.  Bear in mind that there have been predictions that in my area alone Sequestration could cause the loss of up to 450,000 jobs.  So multiply everything I say about me times 450k.

Secondly, at half our income we cannot meet all of our obligations.  So, some things will not get paid.  (And at no income, if she loses her job too, nothing will get paid.  But I digress.)

The question is which ones?  Child support?  Mortgage?  Car payments?  Loans and credit cards?  Utilities?  Food and other living expenses?  All are important, but all cannot be paid.  So… I have to eat and so do my kids.  I have to be able to get to a job if I find one, so the car has to stay.  Gotta keep the lights on, the water running, the internet (because that’s how you look for jobs these days).  So maybe it’s the house we sacrifice, and move in to an apartment.

Boom!  You just lost property taxes.  The short sale of my home just depressed prices in my neighborhood and put my already underwater neighbors further under water.  And there is now one more empty, for sale, home sitting on an already flooded market.

Of course I am going to file for unemployment.  So not only did you lose the money I was paying in, but now you are going to pay out to me instead.

If things go on long enough and get bad enough, I may have to file bankruptcy.  I don’t even know all the implications of that, times millions, across an economy.  But I can’t imagine it’s a good thing.

In short, here is what you have done for me and hundreds of thousands of my fellow Americans (and this is JUST with Sequestration, and does not count all the other shit you have done).  You have taken hard-working, productive, tax paying citizens and turned them in to benefit receiving, hand-out taking, dependents.  GRATZ!!

The American Dream lives on!  Get on the dole and do nothing for a living!  Yay!  Thank you for all that you do.

And thank you unqualified black man from Chicago, for making the rest of America look like Chicago.  Keep up the good work!  Before long we’ll just be the largest ghetto in the world.  But hey… we’ll all be equal, right?  Equally poor.  Equally hopeless.  Equally dependent.  And you guys will have successfully reverted America back to a kingdom full of serfs and peasants, run by an aristocracy, lorded over by the “entitled”.  Wow, welcome back to where we came from!

Lastly, I would like to thank my employer.  Over the past 4 years you have systematically moved me in to positions which lowered my clearance level, until now I can only sit and watch as hundreds of jobs I could theoretically apply for simply disappear because I am not cleared to fill them.  I came to you with something, I am leaving with substantially less.

Thank you for holding career fairs while letting existing employees go.  Your apparent attempt to hire college grads at lower rates while letting men and women with families to support and bills to pay go, warms my heart.

Your excited announcements of new contract awards, couple with the announcements that unfortunately you have no place to transfer the majority of the people in my office, all of whom are losing their jobs… is truly wonderful.

I am happy to hear that the multi-billion dollar company will be doing just fine as I am losing my home later this year.

Oh… I’m sorry.  I misspoke.  The last group of people I want to thank are the morons.  Thank you for voting for this group of losers.  Thank you for electing the first black president, simply because he was black.  Thank you for continuing to vote for people who are transparent in their apathy concerning the rights of the citizenry.  Thank you for electing tax cheats, liars, frauds, con-men, perjurers, flip-floppers and turds.  Thanks for believing the commercials, buying the lies, accepting the bribes, and putting yourself before your country.  Thanks for contributing nothing and taking everything.  Thanks for directly contributing to the destruction of the nation (and I know…as long as you get yours, who cares, right?)

That’s it.  That’s all I have to say.

Now I have to go apply for unemployment, food stamps, welfare, and an Obama phone.  Cuz I think I’m going to join the soon to be majority and just sit in the wagon watching the world go by.  Who knows…maybe I can develop a permanent disability before my two years of unemployment runs out, and just sit here forever.

That is what you guys want…right?