Blog Archives

The Declaration of Independence

7/1/2017

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the celebration of our great nation. I think it can be easy to forget and take for granted what a challenge it was to put our country together. First there was the bravery of issuing the Declaration because they knew at that point that a bunch of farmers, fishermen, merchantmen, etc., were going to have to fight one of the greatest militaries in the world. I find this inspiring.

But even after winning the war it took a number of years to get the Federal government together let alone state governments. It wasn’t until 1787 that the U.S. Constitution was signed and George Washington took office. The Continental Congress began meeting in 1774 which included amazing leaders like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and it took them and other great leaders around 13 years to structure our government. During many of these years we were at war and the men involved putting our government together were in secret meetings risking their lives because British Loyalists were everywhere.

I’m so proud of the men and women who were amazingly brave and took the fight to Great Britain. The words Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence are still some of the most famous in history: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” Beautiful.

I’ve seen where a lot of young people aren’t as proud of our country as the generations before them and I find this sad. How could anyone who has studied our history and compared what we have as a nation compared to other countries not think they’re blessed? They need to understand that we don't celebrate July 4th, we celebrate Independence Day.

This Month's Posts

7/1/2017

Hello! There was so much going on politically during this past month so I had to include several posts about things such as: Bernie Sander’s attack on Christianity, Canada’s new gender pronoun law, killing white people, CNN and other Fake News, how much it costs to buy a Congressional seat, James Comey’s testimony and being fired, the DNC refusing to work with the FBI and HLS, the military paying for transgender surgery, defunding Planned Parenthood, the failed Russian investigation, the Republican’s Healthcare Bill, why it isn’t a Muslim Travel Ban, etc.

But to counter the political posts, I’ve got some very interesting articles about ancient sports, Sir Edmond Hillary, Bernie Madoff, effective communications, the amazing Newt Knight, what motivated Confederate soldiers, college tuition, the death of Otto Warmbier, the money entertainers really make, a new women’s prison in New Mexico, the unknown superstar, etc., so as usual if you don’t want to read about a bunch of political issues you can skip them and go to the other articles.

Thanks so much for visiting the sight and make sure and let your light shine!

It's The Climb

7/1/2017

Sir Edmond Hillary was the first man to reach the summit on Mt. Everest in 1953 after unsuccessfully attempting it in 1951. He spent years training for it by climbing other mountains and he dealt with extreme weather conditions when he reached both the North and South Poles on expeditions.

What a lot of people don’t know is that when Edmond reached the summit he only stayed there looking down on the world for 15 minutes. Think about this, years of training and a climb that had harrowing moments, and it was for 15 minutes of being on top of the world.

Edmond was asked about this and he said just reaching the top was all he needed; he had to know if he could do it. He said it was all about the challenge and the character building that occurs when you push yourself beyond anyone’s expectations including your own. Edmond said it’s the climb that matters regardless of what that proverbial climb is for each of us. He also said that most people who have achieved a major goal in their lives knows the joy itself is short-lived; it’s the person you become along the way that ends up positively changing your life forever; it’s all about the climb.

Defund Planned Parenthood

7/1/2017

I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve heard this brought up by Democrats over the last several months and once again they mislead their constituents.

The goal to defund Planned Parenthood is to take the tax dollars that were going to them and redirecting them to the countless number of free women’s clinics all across the country; there are four within 15 minutes of my home. The clinics typically offer more comprehensive services including mammograms that Planned Parenthood hasn’t been providing.

So the goal is to provide better healthcare services for women because Planned Parenthood was heading down the path of the VA. When it comes to abortion purposes, Planned Parenthood can continue to offer it to their patients. Remember, they weren’t supposed to be co-mingling our tax dollars to fund the abortion side of their clinics so defunding them shouldn’t matter unless they were in fact using tax dollars that weren’t authorized.

Democrats are demonizing Republicans over this issue trying to make it appear that Republicans don’t care about women which I don’t understand how anyone can believe them (but naïve voters do). There are over 20 million women who are members of the Republican Party so why would they stay with them if they didn’t care about their needs?

It’s ridiculous that Democrats try again and again to make Republicans out to be a bunch of rich, white guys when the demographics don’t support their claims. But it shows once again they are the Party of the end justifies the means. This isn’t good for our country but it keeps them employed in D.C.

Women's Prison (Four Minutes to Read)

7/1/2017

I watched a documentary on a new prison for women called the Springer Correctional Facility and it’s located in New Mexico. They took around 450 women from other prisons and gave them a better environment where they had more freedom to walk around the prison grounds verses being stuck in their cell block most of the day. The prison also offers a wide variety of training programs so the inmates can get their GED’s and learn job skills. The focus of this new correctional facility is to help inmates successfully transition back into society. It’s too early to know how effective they will be but here are some things I learned:

•          Around 33% of all women incarcerated around the world are in the U.S. At first I found this shocking then I realized that our per capita drug use is through the roof compared to other countries and in one way or another, drugs are why most of them are in prison.
•          Of all inmates in our prison system, women only make up around 10% of the population which is statistically very low considering that women make up around 51% of the U.S. population.
•          When police began a heavy crackdown on drugs, women were being incarcerated at a much faster rate than men as men are generally in prison for more severe offenses. Currently, the growth rate in female prisons is 7% while male inmates are rising about 5.7%.
•          Roughly 64% of the women incarcerated were their children’s primary guardian. Most of them don’t come from stable home environments where a husband/father is in the picture. From what I could tell, many of the children ended up in foster care or with their grandparents.
•          Because so few women commit crimes compared to men, most states have only one female prison which means nothing can be done about trying to make it more convenient for a prisoner to be close to family. The “great” state of New York has 54 correctional facilities for men. Even though the state of Louisiana ranks 25th in population, they by far have the highest percentage of their population behind bars. One report showed that around 10% of the citizens of Louisiana are incarcerated.
•          White women are the minority in our prison system with Hispanics having twice as many women incarcerated than whites and African Americans having four times as many. This makes it a terrible challenge for white women who are behind bars because there’s often a lot of hatred towards whites in the African American and Hispanic communities that inmates often come from.
•          In most of the Western World, the prison guards in women’s prisons are female but in the U.S. more than half of the guards are men because of “gender equality” laws. Silja Talvi, author of: Women Behind Bars - The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System, argued that in theory gender equality makes sense in most occupations but in practice having male guards watch over female prisoners is problematic.
•          The use of drugs (usually heroine), is why most of the female inmates are there, meaning most of their crimes stemmed from the need for drugs (i.e. assaults, burglary, larceny, prostitution, etc.). New Mexico has more deaths due to overdoses than any other state. It amazed me to see that within one week of prisoners entering the new correctional facility that drugs were being smuggled in and women were sneaking off into the showers to get high.

Prison guards are sometimes the source of drugs and other contraband like cellphones which are a hot commodity. The guards typically get paid for these things by family members and friends of the inmates. The prison does random inspections of the cells but since some of the guards are providing the contraband, they overlook it during the search.

There are a lot of female prisoners who offer sexual favors to payoff prison guards for helping them out. Being a prison guard isn’t a lucrative career and the conditions they work in are pretty bad, so it lends itself to this kind of illegal activity.

The chance of a guard getting in trouble for their involvement in sexual misconduct is very low. One report read: “When authorities confirmed that corrections staff had sexually abused inmates in their care, only 42% of those officers had their cases referred to prosecution; only 23% were arrested, and only 3% charged, indicted, or convicted.” With this in mind, why would a female prisoner say anything if she were assaulted by a guard? There’s nothing but a terrible downside for complaining.

Probably around 90% of the women at Springer had tattoos with a majority of them having several including on their arms, face, and neck. How in the world can they find a decent job with ink all over them? If they interviewed for a job they can wear sleeves to cover up their arm tattoos but hiding their face and neck tattoos would be extremely difficult. What employer would want them in front of their customers?

The bottom line is when many of them leave prison they go back to using drugs and because they typically can’t get a job for a variety of reasons like not having a high school diploma/GED, having a criminal record, and not having the physical appearance to be in front of customers, they’ll use illegal means to get money and will end up back in prison. It’s the epitome of the revolving door of justice.

Warning: What you’re about to read is for a mature reader. There’s no other way of saying it but most of the inmates appeared to me to be lesbians which makes sense because of how many tattoos they had and how they carried themselves like gang members. It’s hard to believe that 64% of them have children. I couldn’t imagine my mom having any tattoos let alone tattoos covering her arms and face. Let’s face it, there’s a huge difference in the lesbian community from those who are on the more masculine side (a.k.a. butch), to those who aren’t, like Ellen DeGeneres and her beautiful wife, Portia de Rossi.

I don’t know the percentage who were born gay or just became that way because of the environment they found themselves in (many were sexually abused as children), and/or being institutionalized (prison system), but prison guards who were interviewed said it’s one of the main causes of fights because inmates often fight over and for, girlfriends.

It does appear that when President Bush signed the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003 it helped reduce the amount of rapes in both the men’s and women’s prison. For some prisoners getting five years added on to their sentence for each incident wasn’t worth the risk. As it stands now roughly 16% of the men are still being raped and around 6% of women. Personally I don’t trust these figures because I’d imagine a lot of rapes go unreported.

What can a victim do? If she says something to the authorities she’s marked as a nark and the outcome generally doesn’t go well for her. If she’s moved to another cellblock, which means she would no longer see the person(s), who raped her, it doesn’t take long through the grapevine for her new cellmates to find out she told on someone.

In their prison society it means members of her new cellblock have to do something about it out of respect for the cellblock she came from and to ensure she doesn’t become a tattletale in their cellblock. The way it generally works is the inmate in trouble gets taken into the shower area (where there are no cameras), and beaten.

In a situation like this, the beating might not be a one-time event and she might get attacked on and off for a while. Her way out of it is to become a girlfriend to one of the power players on her new cellblock so she’d have protection.

Regardless of whether it’s a men’s or a women’s prison, it’s all about control, power, and mostly respect. Not respecting someone is by far the number one cause of fights in prison. It could be something as simple as walking into someone’s cell uninvited because they’re very paranoid about someone stealing what little stuff they have. If one of the power players wants an inmate’s desert and she doesn’t give it to her, it’s a sign of disrespect and by their code, she’s required to take the other inmate into the shower to beat her up or be called a “punk” and lose her status.

Many of these women like to intimidate and excerpt power over weaker inmates. Can you imagine trying to transition back into society after experiencing something like this? Just a guess on my part, but I’d imagine that smaller, weaker, women who go to prison the first time, probably are less likely to commit another crime and it’s probably the same with men. If this hasn’t been studied it would be interesting to know.

By the way, having consensual sex in prison is against the law but preventing it from happening is another story especially since most prisons are understaffed, it’s mostly taboo for prison guards to enter the shower area, and of course there are no cameras in the shower area so that’s where laws are broken.

Some inmates who are about to be released commit violations so they can extend their stay then some get out for a while and realize how tough it is on the outside and will commit a crime to get back in. How sad is this? Just how bad are their personal lives outside of prison to where they prefer being locked up?

When I was in the 9th grade a friend of mine’s dad who worked in law enforcement took us to a men’s prison and walked us around. We weren’t used to men shouting out how attractive we were and needless to say, both Sergio and I were scared straight. Although the experience shook me up, I’m really glad he took the time to share what life was like behind bars because I’ve spent the last 40 years making sure I didn’t end up there.

CNN and Fake News

7/1/2017

I truly don’t know what happened to CNN as they’ve become such an anti-Trump platform. In the last three months, 93% of CNN’s news coverage has been negative regarding Trump. I’m not saying Trump is perfect but it doesn’t take much research to know that not everything he’s done is bad; certainly not 93% of what he’s done is bad.

Included in their coverage over the last several months have been stories that had to be recanted. They said that Trump was under investigation by the FBI. They said Jeff Sessions perjured himself during his confirmation hearing and it turned out to be not true; neither Pelosi nor Schumer have apologized about these claims either.

They said Sessions had secret meetings with the Russians which turned out to not be meetings at all but social gatherings with over 100 people attending the same event. They said the Trump campaign was involved with Russia in trying to influence the election. They said that Russia hacked into the polls and changed the vote count.

Three employees of CNN resigned (fired?), over reporting that one of Trump’s main supporters was invested in a Russian investment fund that was controlled by the Kremlin. They were wrong and had to apologize.

An under-cover video was released where one of CNN’s producers was caught saying their coverage of Trump is bull**** and that there wasn’t anything legitimate to get him on. He stated the network’s goal was clear and that is to find dirt on President Trump. He was asked why the network is going after Trump and he said it was all about ratings. I’m not sure if he’s going to “resign” but I’d be surprised if he keeps his job after telling the truth.

Now they’ve caught CNN’s Van Jones on video saying the Russian investigation is a “nothing burger” but that CNN is obsessed with finding a story. Chris Cuomo is on video saying that Hillary’s loss wasn’t on them because they did everything they could to get her elected. Think about this statement as I find it shocking that a supposed news organization had this goal. It wasn’t fair to Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. By the way, I’ve seen all the videos I listed above so I’m not coming at you with some right-wing conspiracy.

Jeff Zucker, who is the president of CNN, and Ted Turner the owner, were major Hillary Clinton supporters so there’s absolutely no doubt they hate Trump. By the way, the head of all major news sources (i.e. Chicago Tribune, MSNBC, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, etc.), are all liberal progressives. Unfortunately this has bled in to their news coverage as the network’s liberal bias is so blatant. This is why President Trump and so many of his supporters call them “Fake News” which they get irate about but they continue to feed this thought process by their coverage.

As a reminder, and this includes more than just CNN, liberals and the mainstream media were making fun of Sarah Palin non-stop about saying: “I can see Russia from my house.” The problem is that she never said this; it was a spoof that Tina Fey did on Saturday Night Live. What she did say to Charles Gibson (ABC), during her election campaign was correct and that is there are points in Alaska where you can see Russian territory. Her statement can be seen on You Tube.

This isn’t in reference to CNN but I’ll mention it because it has just come out. Sarah Palin is suing the New York Times for making two claims that have proven to be false and there’s no doubt in my mind that she’ll win and some employees from the NYT’s will “resign.”

In a crazy effort to take heat off of Bernie Sanders for one of his campaign worker’s attempted mass murders of members from the Republican Party, they claimed Palin said some things and that her PAC did some things that led to the attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the murders of six people including a child. They were completely wrong about their claims and they had to post a retraction. This was a terrible thing to say about someone. The problem is that they put their crazy stories on the front page then bury their retractions.

The mainstream media gets so mad at Trump and his supporters for making the claim that they are fake news but they’re bringing it on themselves. They are so tunnel-versioned on bringing Trump down that it’s distorting their news coverage.

I’ve got to say that as someone who researches and writes, I’m struggling more and more to find accurate sources when it comes to politics. But I promise you that I’ll continue to pursue multiple sources to provide you with as accurate information as possible; at least I’ve never had to post a retraction.

Otto Warmbier

7/1/2017

Otto is the young man who was convicted in North Korea of stealing a poster out of a hotel, was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor, and he was returned to the U.S. just a couple of days before he died. I can’t imagine what his parents went through over the last 18 months in worrying about their son and then having him returned with a brain injury and then subsequently dying. When I watched his dad being interviewed my heart was crushed.

In case you didn’t know The Huffington Post wrote the following after Otto was convicted: “North Korea proves your white male privilege is not universal. “ The liberal media disgusts me. It could be a story about the Boy Scouts of America and in one way or another they’d attempt to put in the article the words: “white privilege” because they can’t help themselves. And they get mad when they’re accused of liberal bias in their reporting. Why anyone who wants the truth about what’s going on here and around the world would subscribe to the Huffington Post is beyond me especially considering Adrianna Huffington is a huge supporter of the Democrat Party.

I’ve heard many political pundits talk about what we’re going to do to North Korea for this terrible act. The fact is, we have no intelligent options to make them suffer for what they did. We don’t conduct trade with them so we have no economic sanctions that can be applied. Only China does enough business with North Korea to put a dent in them economically and they said in good faith, whatever that is, that they did try to get Otto and three other Americans released from North Korea and that Kim Jung-un wouldn’t do it.

The bottom line is we aren’t going to use military might to attack North Korea over this young man losing his life. If we haven’t already attacked them for attempting to arm themselves with nuclear weapons, why would we do it because of what they did to Otto? We can’t even prove for sure what they did to him unless some hidden video pops up or someone from North Korea confesses to abusing him which we know won’t happen.

It’s so easy for these pundits to sit back and talk big about us defending our citizens using various methods but then there’s reality. We won’t do anything significant because it’s not a smart move. The best thing we can do is use this as a lesson for anyone from the United States considering travelling to North Korea, to pick another travel destination.

Bernie Sanders Attack on Religion

7/1/2017

If you’re not aware of what Sanders did please go to You Tube and watch him launch a personal attack on Russell Voight during his confirmation hearing to become President Trump’s Deputy Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Instead of asking Voight about his qualifications for the job (which are impeccable), Sanders used his time to challenge him on his Christian beliefs and he did it in such a vindictive manner. None of these Senators have the right to attack a candidate verbally especially about their religious beliefs.

Could you imagine the fallout if a Republican Senator attacked a nominee about his Muslim beliefs? It would be all over the mainstream media and Democrats would launch a verbal assault on the Republican Senator and at the very least, have him kicked off the committee. It’s a horrendous double standard because they only champion a cause if it helps the Democrat Party.

Since this just occurred while writing this, I’m also going to comment on the shooting that took place on the ballfield in D.C. where Republicans were practicing for their annual charity baseball game against the Democrats.

The shooter, who is now dead, used to work for Bernie Sanders’ campaign for President. His Face Book page was filled with anti-Trump and anti-Republican rage and sentiment. He walked up to the field and asked which team was practicing and when he was told it was the Republican team he made his way to the field and began shooting. If it weren’t for two members of the Capitol Hill police taking out the shooter, it would’ve been a massacre.

If you’re a liberal and are reading this, what do you think would happen if someone who worked on Donald Trump’s campaign asked the same question about who was on the field and then began shooting Democrats? You know as well as I do that all hell would break loose. Pelosi and Schumer would hold passionate press conferences and demand an investigation. Without any proof, they would make claims that Trump caused the attack. The mainstream media would pound the airwaves and print focusing on the killer being associated with Trump.

As I’ve looked around at the media coverage, the shooter’s ties to Bernie barely got mentioned and certainly none of the media outlets have blamed Bernie for what happened. I don’t blame him it just makes me mad that Democrats have such appalling double-standards.

What about the hate speech by the Left about the Trump Administration and Republicans in general, do they have culpability? Bernie tried to make Republicans out to be evil and the shooter used some of Bernie’s claims to write hate-filled posts on Face Book. Should Republicans blame Bernie and put together a special committee to investigate his ties to the shooter?

I find it interesting that Democrat leadership so quickly went into Kumbaya mode over the shooting. Of course they’d do this as they wanted to get out front of what could happen to their Party should Republicans choose to use their same dirty tactics. I guarantee you there’d be no hand-holding if the roles were reversed in this incident, only vicious attacks by the Left.

The bottom line is that Democrats in D.C. have become more of a danger to our country than terrorists. Their non-stop demonizing of everything that has to do with Trump, including attacks on his family that are completely immoral and unjustified, are grinding our country to a halt. It also has incited violence across the country with various riots especially towards the police. They’re creating a deep divide among U.S. citizens not over issues that are real, but over hyperbole.

If you are a Democrat I deplore you to contact your representatives and tell them to prioritize your interests. What are they doing towards creating jobs? What are they doing towards coming up with an alternative plan to Obama Care since it is crashing quickly? What are they doing with their budget proposals such as investment in infrastructure and how the money will be allocated to each state?

It appears the only thing your representatives are focusing on is getting rid of Trump. Is that why you sent them to D.C.? If it is, I hope you realize that Trump being gone won’t mean his agenda will go away. As a matter of fact, someone like Vice-President Mike Pence would accomplish the objectives even faster.

Tell Me Lies

7/1/2017

Democrats began attacking Trump from the very beginning about anything he did or didn’t do. They mention some of the major things he promised and that he hasn’t gotten it done, when they’re the ones fighting tooth and nail against him.

What bothers me the most is they seem to have forgotten that Obama promised so many things that he didn’t deliver on even when he had control over the House and Senate his first 18 months in office. I can’t say for sure if Obama lied knowingly when he ran for office making various promises or if when he got in office he came to the realization he didn’t have the power and influence to get some things done as I’m sure all Presidents have experienced; but the bottom line is President Obama was terrible at delivering on his promises. As a reminder:

In 2008 he demonized President Bush for usurping Congress through the use of Executive Orders and he was going to stop this from happening. When he was asked about why he used them so often when he was originally against them, he said times had changed and he had to use them to get things done (a.k.a. usurping Congress).
He said he would get rid of earmarks and even comb through every piece of legislation to make sure there were none in them. He said he would provide a list of names on-line, of any legislators who tried to place earmarks on legislations yet there were over 1,000 earmarks in the Affordable Care Act alone and yet he didn’t share these names. As a matter of fact, he never provided us a list of names of anyone who used earmarks his entire eight years in office.
He would place any piece of legislation that was up for him to sign on-line for five days so voters could see it before he signed it.
He would require all meetings between Congress and lobbyists to be on C-Span.
He’d have all troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq in 18 months. I understand why he didn’t, but he’s the one who made the promise.
He’d close Guantanamo Bay within a year.
He promised that lobbyists would no longer set the agenda in D.C. and that he wouldn’t have any lobbyists working in his administration yet he had over 20 including Eric Holder (former lobbyist), during his eight years in office.
He said his Stimulus Bill would create five million new jobs. It was closer to two million and each job costs tax payers around $400,000 to create…a little something Democrats don’t like to talk about. To add insult to injury, for some reason a lot of people didn’t understand that “shovel ready” jobs are project oriented so when the projects were finished the jobs went away. Keep in mind that even President Obama said: “Shovel ready projects weren’t quite shovel ready.” This ended up being a huge fiasco that the mainstream media didn’t cover only because the President was a Democrat. The bottom line is that each person who got a shovel-ready job would’ve been much better off receiving $400,000 directly from the government as it would’ve kept their families clothed and fed longer.
During his 2008 campaign he said he would cut our deficit in half by his first term but instead he ended up breaking all records in increasing debt. He still got re-elected which tells me most Americans don’t understand the negative impact that debt has on our economy, which is scary.
He said we can’t keep borrowing money from China, spending money we don’t have, and printing money; once again he broke all records in increasing these things.

There’s more than the above like all the promises he made with the Affordable Care Act, but I’ll leave it at this. The fact is President Obama by far wasn’t the President of “Promise and deliver.” For Democrats to attack Trump for not getting things done is appalling.

If I were the Republican leadership I would go up to the mike every day and remind people about President Obama’s failures. They need to keep it simple and make the promise that they won’t be perfect, but they promise not to be as bad as Obama.

Trump's Mental Health

7/1/2017

Democrats are going to introduce a Bill with the intent of challenging President Trump's mental state with the goal of having him impeached. They know it won't be passed yet they're going through the process anyway so they can go around trashing him in the press.

I just don't understand why they don't get that the average voter is sick and tired of their endless attacks on Trump and just want them to do their jobs and legislate. What have Democrats accomplished this year? They've been losing seats in the House and Senate for nine years yet they just can't seem to get it through their heads that they aren't mainstream. They're losing the middle-class right and left.

If you look at a list of mental illnesses being a narcissist isn't on the list. If it were a mental illness then most of the legislators in D.C. would be kicked out of their jobs as well. Fortunately for them, the new Republican Healthcare Plan does include treatments for mental health.

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Author: John Mann

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