Keeping the Best and Brightest

The United States is an attractive place for foreign students to apply to for their higher education and because of this influx of students, the United States is uniquely placed to offer to the best and the brightest opportunities for their knowledge and skill-sets to be utilized in America upon their graduation as opposed to returning these well-educated and talented young men and women to their homeland or other foreign countries so that they can apply their knowledge in those places instead.  It is pure foolishness to take foreign students with F-1 visas and not to make it a concerted policy of America that these same, successful students are given the inside track of receiving H-1B work visas upon their successful graduation.   The United States should make it a clear policy that they desire the best minds in the world to be residents and citizens of this country and not to let slip from their hand the very people that can be a net benefit to society as a whole.

Look at it this way, what is the point of developing great minds, only to export them to other countries? The United States should be grateful that the best and the brightest throughout this entire world have a strong desire to receive their higher education here.  Once receiving these fine young students, it should be a government policy along with the coordination of University campuses to develop this young talent, to acclimate these young students to America, with the expressed purpose of soliciting them to work in America, as opposed to leaving this country.  Certainly, some students will leave America, that is their choice, but to not actively pursue them here, to not have policies in place to entice them, is a fundamental mistake in policy.

With the advancement of technology, there is a strong desire for students that excel in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in which for the most part, in those industries; the strong command of the English language is not a necessity, making it a very good fit for foreign students whose strong suit is not the English language.   There isn't any reason, though; to limit our desire for graduates to just these fields, as the best and the brightest encompasses the entire domain of human intelligence and knowledge. 

America is also unique amongst countries as the primary and best living example of a nation that is a true melting pot that embraces and assimilates all nationalities, all creeds, and all people, as Americans. While virtually every country in the world has peoples within it that are not native to that particular creed, origin, or color, these different peoples in those countries are often treated as lesser or unequal, whereas America has made many giant strides over the last fifty years to encompass all people as their own, and not limiting Americans to being just White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants (WASP) as it was once primarily known as.

There is a misconception that to be an American, you must be born here, or to legally immigrate here, but that definition is far too narrow and far too confining.  To be an American, you must be willing to work hard, to apply yourself, to embrace liberty, and to dedicate yourself to achieving something of real worth.  The United States should make it a firm policy that they desire the best and the brightest to be Americans, and to welcome them through our golden door.

The HIV/AIDS Paradox

According to mayoclinic.org, "AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) is a chronic, potentially life-threatening condition caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)," and also "there's no cure for HIV/AIDS, but there are medications that can dramatically slow disease progression."  This essentially represents the mainstream medical and media viewpoint of the AIDS/HIV crisis.  However, just because this is the established medical opinion in regards to the nature of HIV, this does not itself necessarily make it right. 

The father of those that oppose the conventional HIV theory, that HIV causes AIDS, is Dr. Peter Duesberg, of UC Berkeley.  Once highly respected by his colleagues and the recipient of numerous public funding grants and awards, he is now virtually a man alone in his lab, without any funding from government agencies because his HIV theory does not correlate with the conventional theory in regards to HIV.  This, in of itself, is a reason to want to learn and listen from this man, because "going with the flow" is the easiest thing to do in the world, as the refuse and debris of life simply go with the flow, but a man that is willing to be vilified and ostracized by his contemporaries is a man worthy of the consideration of our respect.

Dr. Duesberg is the author of the seminal book "Inventing the AIDS Crisis", in which he challenges conventional wisdom by asking if HIV really does cause AIDS, why is it that a significant portion of AIDS victims are not HIV positive?  Also, if being HIV-positive is the necessary precursor for getting AIDS, why is it that there are so many people that are HIV-positive that have not and will not ever develop AIDS despite not taking any antiretroviral drugs?  Both of these questions blow absolute holes through the prevailing theory which essentially repackages old diseases such as Kaposi's sarcoma, tuberculosis, leukemia, and pneumonia, into AIDS. In other words, if you are diagnosed as having Kaposi's sarcoma, and you are also HIV-positive, than that means by the new medical establishment rules that you are not dying from Kaposi's sarcoma, but from AIDS.

Further to Dr. Duesberg's points, HIV is by medical definition, a virus, in which the billions of dollars that have been spent throughout our medical establishment and research laboratories have been ineffective and unable to create a working vaccine for this virus.  This would strongly imply that HIV is not, in fact, a virus, and that the search for a HIV vaccine, is a search in futility, and a colossal waste of time, research, and money.  For all the critics of Dr. Duesberg, it is as simple as this, create the vaccine, which will eradicate AIDS, and you will save millions of lives and put Dr. Duesberg's theory into the trash bin of history.

Finally, why hasn't the HIV/AIDS crisis become a true global epidemic such as the "black plague" pandemic of the 14th century?  It should be, after all there isn't a cure for HIV/AIDS and according to the medical establishment HIV can be transmitted through bodily fluids, blood transfusions, sexual contact, injection drug usage, breast feeding, and occupational exposure.  Behind the scenes there are reasons for why certain theories are supported and why others are suppressed, rightly or wrongly, and every day that the vaccine for HIV is undiscovered is another day that proves the point that the medical establishment has it all so wrong.

Domestic Terrorism

Terrorism is one of those things, that gets a lot of our attention and gives us plenty of concern, but there are two types of terrorism, there is terrorism that comes from within our borders, and then there is terrorism that comes from outside our borders.  We like to believe that within our borders that we can control our own destiny that we are all one, but sadly we are not.

Domestic terrorism essentially has its roots in people that reside here who are powerless, frustrated, fearful of change, and have great and significant delusions of grandeur.  What breeds terrorism is people that feel that justice has not been served, whether correct or not, and further that there is no hope for these samepeople to effect change through our democratic process, so they turn instead to a terrible shortcut in the delusional hope that by so doing they will bring forth both change and justice.

The fatal misconception in domestic terrorism is their wrong belief that by harming innocents that they will somehow hold the higher moral ground or effect real change.   Domestic terrorists take it upon themselves that they have the right to harm or take the life of others, because in their judgment this is the punishment that need be meted out in order to bring forth the justice that they believe to have been lacking.  These delusions rest in individuals or in groups of like-minded individuals that somehow have closed their minds to the consequences of their actions and to the fairness of their same actions when it comes to other people and the harm that they will cause them. 

It is probably fair to say, that domestic terrorism effects no political change within the system, that is to say, that terrorists claim by their actions that they will make change, or bring attention to certain issues that will change, but in virtually every case, the negative consequences of said action, overwhelm the political agenda of the terrorists which seldom results in even putting forth an open dialogue about the issues that the terrorists are ostensibly so concerned about.  The fact of the matter is, by harming, killing, or wreaking havoc, you will effectively ostracized yourself from domestic society, even if elements within that society may have had some sympathy for your point of view.

Domestic terrorism is a difficult element to control, or to eliminate, without losing the essential being of what it is to be an American to begin with.  Within any society there are going to be certain people that are unstable, illogical, and poor at decision making, yet they too are Americans.  It is therefore essential and humane, to put forth the efforts and the programs to help those people to make better and more mature decisions, and thereby to not close the door on their hopes and aspirations.  A very dangerous man is a man without hope, without belief, and unloved, because when you truly believe it is you against the world, in which you are so right, and they are so wrong, bad things will invariably happen.

Divestment

Public corporations have market capitalizations that are worth billions upon billions of dollars.  One should not underestimate how much power and influence money and the access to money can provide; let alone the influence and the effectiveness of the actual products being provided by the corporations.  The largest corporations in the world are absolutely serious about their money, making more money, growing, influencing, and maintaining their corporate footprint in their particular markets and products of choice.  The stock price is of utmost concern to these organizations from the upper boardrooms to market commentators, to mutual funds and their clients, and to regular people like me and you.

These multi-billion dollar corporations care strongly about their stock price because without ready access to capital, with excessive debt that isn't being service properly, without options or restricted stock that is of value, without the ability to make secondary offerings of their stock, and without the capability to finance or acquire other corporate entities, the stock itself will lag or it will significantly lag the market, which creates a downward spiral in being able to attract new talent and to maintain the current personnel structure within the company. 

Publicly-held corporations can be held accountable by the public at large, by stockholders, by consumers, and the like, if a concerted and focused effort is directed against them.  Even just the threat of a significant mutual fund or endowment or a group of influential stockholders, stating that they will divest themselves of such and such stock, if certain contingencies are not reached or obtained, can put enormous pressure on a corporation to either adjust their behavior, their actions, or to put forth a true answer to the question or questions being asked. 

Divestment is no empty or idle threat, and yes for every seller, there will be a buyer, but if the perception is that this particular stock is controversial, under attack, or under indictment, than buyers will pay less for the stock because of the risk associated with the stock.  Having said this, divestment is an extremely hard game to play, mainly because it takes concentrated power, in which by far the best utilization of that potential power would come from mutual funds or stock brokers as opposed to individual actions by individual stock holders because it is the mutual funds and stock brokers that have the concentrated proxy voting power.

However, mutual funds and major stock brokers seldom rock the boat, or bite the hand that feeds them, which means that even though public companies are accountable to their stockholders and the public at large, they don't really pay them any real mind.  This is a grand disservice to stock holders as a whole, and to any planned divestment movement.  Still, even the hint of divestment, can effect changes, or at least open a conversation between its stockholders and the corporation itself.  In today's world in which information is so quickly and easily transmitted through hi-technology tools, there has never been a better time to use this tool to make change.  The change that so many people yearn for is available to us, but it must be thoroughly thought through, it must be pre-planned, and the effort must be both comprehensive and continual.

Uber and the Taxi-Cab Business

I seldom have a need to take a taxi, but when I have taken a taxi the overall experience has been okay.  Sure, I've been ripped off but there are devious people in any business and on the other hand I have had some pleasant conversations.  Taxi-cabs do appear overall to be fairly expensive, but that appears to be because they are heavily regulated, highly structured, and also a business that has a relatively high cost of entry.  There is money being made in this business, but most of the spoils are not going to the actual drivers of the vehicles themselves who are simply trying to make a living, in which their livelihood is most definitely under assault from a new service known as Uber.

Uber is a service that brings the "taxi" to the consumer, and empowers the consumer in the making of his choices of how he wants to get around town. Uber is as simple as using a Smartphone app in which you provide Uber with your location, the type of vehicle that you desire, and Uber will provide you with an estimated time of your pickup and the price of your ride, which varies depending on whether traffic is especially busy and whether you are thereby subject to "surge pricing".    Not too surprisingly, tech savvy people have become some of the biggest proponents of Uber.  Additionally, Uber was successful in receiving a $1.2 billion infusion of cash from an investment consortium, so within a very short time Uber has become a formidable alternative and competitor to the traditional taxi business and possibility the transportation business in general.

Although Uber has done a good job of vetting their drivers and being transparent about their service to their customers, in which by so doing, they have been able to launch successfully their service in major cities around the world, the taxi-cab business has essentially been handcuffed in being able to respond to this valid and formidable competition as their business is both heavily regulated and has significant fix costs.  Additionally, the Uber model essentially "cherry-picks" the best customers and clients from taxi-cab drivers, in which the very people that have the most money and the highest savvy have switched over to Uber.   This spells trouble for the traditional taxi-cab companies and for their drivers.

Even worse for taxi-cab companies is that their retention rate for drivers is sure to drop, to which some of those drivers will willingly work for Uber, and thereby deepening the downward spiral and quality of the traditional taxi-cab service.  While in principle, I agree with the Uber business model, that you as a consumer should be able to pay for private transportation of your own choice and volition, there is also the fact to consider that the playing field is not level, to wit that taxi-cabs are heavily regulated and burdened with those attendant costs, while Uber is not.  Therefore, since the cost of business with Uber is less than the cost of business for taxi-cab companies, Uber can charge their customers a cheaper fare.

There are two ways to deal with this dynamic change in the ride sharing business, one is to simply outlaw Uber or to mandate that they cannot operate in your particular city, as some cities have already done, and the other is to de-regulate the taxi-cab business and to allow the traditional taxi-cab businesses the ability to fight fire with fire, to have their own apps, and their own innovations.  To accomplish this will necessitate politicians and bureaucrats being foresighted and inventive, something that almost seems like an oxymoron.  

TSA Pre-check

I've heard of TSA Pre-check (TSA Pre), but never separately applied for it, because I don't feel the urgency in paying any additional money to some government agency for the privilege or flying, nor do I feel like divulging additional private information about myself, or getting all my fingers fingerprinted.  Basically, TSA Pre allows certain preapproved passengers to have the privilege of not having to taking off their shoes, belts, or laptops, and to be in a shorter and more efficient line in which essentially you walk in with what you have on and you walk out the same way, only the lines are significantly shorter, the process is significantly shorter, and your dignity is left intact.  That in itself makes it worth considering.

So since I have never applied for TSA Pre, I was surprised to see on a recent flight that I was TSA Pre certified.  Honestly, I didn't complain to myself, I was actually pretty darn happy about it.  Yes, the lines were short; in fact the whole process took easily less than 5 minutes for me to first get into the line and then to walk out with my backpack.  It would have been even faster, except the couple in front of me, didn't seem to understand exactly what they could or couldn't wear.  My overall grade for the experience would be an "A", and I would be delighted to get TSA Pre approved on future flights, still I absolutely have no intention of separating applying for this flyer designation.

I do, however, have problems with TSA Pre which I will briefly outline.  The first issue is that I really do believe that flying should be "one size fits all", I absolutely despise most TSA agents who I find too often to be non-engaging, not professional, uncaring, and asleep at the wheel, in which my feeling is that if I have to suffer, I want everyone else to suffer the exact same way.  Only if we all endure the indignity of a government bureaucracy and staffing which is essentially worthless in protecting our airplanes and passengers, will we all collectively be able to rise up to change it to something sensible.

The second issue follows closely behind the first, which is, what the government is doing in conjunction with private enterprise, is dividing airline passengers into two groups: those that are "in" and those that are "not".  If you are not part of the "in" group, which includes important business passengers that resent their time being wasted, or good citizens who feel that they have paid their dues and their taxes, than you just feel wronged to have to be treated as if you are just a commoner.  Obviously, if you keep that class of citizens happy by allowing them to circumvent the system by being TSA Pre, than they won't give a damn, how the rest of the public is treated.

So essentially TSA Pre is just another way of separating the wheat from the chaff, we all want to be that wheat, but the fact of the matter is the game is rigged, so that certain people will always be that wheat and others will always be that chaff.  They will tell you that it's fair, but it's not.

The Coming Riots in America

Many people have never heard or seen riots in America, but they have been here, as recently as 1992 in Los Angeles, after the Rodney King trial in which the white police officers were acquitted of the beating of Mr. King and riots soon broke out from the outraged public.  These riots in LA which lasted nearly a week, and as reported by cnn.com eventually entailed the usage of more than 9,800 California National Guard troops, over 1,100 Marines, and 600 Army soldiers in support of the police in Los Angeles in order to successfully curtail the violence in Los Angeles, which resulted in the deaths of more than 50 people, with over 2,000 injured, and property damages of nearly $1 billion.

Previous to this time, during the 1960s, there were the infamous Watts riots, in Los Angeles in 1965, in which there were 34 deaths, it was estimated that more than 2,000 were injured with an additional 4,000 arrested, and the National Guard had to be called in to quell the violence.  In Detroit, in 1967, there were 43 deaths, it was estimated that more than 1,200 were injured with over 2,500 businesses looted or burned, and the National Guard, state police, and Army soldiers had to be called in to quell the violence.

These riots will in retrospect appear as if walks in the park, when compared to the coming riots in America which will rock the foundations of this great country.  The problem that the United States has is fundamentally that the "great society" that LBJ hoped to create on behalf of the poor and the oppressed, has not come to fruition.  Instead, what we have is a society divided, in which a significant minority of our population today exists in virtual every American major city, by which these people survive solely from the handouts from Federal and state programs.  These handouts encompass the scope of health, shelter, food, education, benefits, and miscellaneous items to people who are either unable to work, or unwilling to work, and are often poorly educated.

Currently, all is essentially well within our American underclass in general.  That is to say, the benefits and welfare that they need is often provided to these impoverished people in such a manner as to keep them quiescent and somewhat satisfied.  The problem though is what happens when the wheels fall off of the machine, and they will fall off at some point.  In that type of situation, and please understand that our government, our police, and our military are not stupid, so that given the choice between us and them, they will protect themselves and attack us.  Not everyone, of course, but they will target everyone and anyone that is a threat to the system, to their existence, and in particular, they will target the powerless in order to control them, and if necessary, to annihilate them.

When you are the underclass you are living hand to mouth, benefit to benefit, therefore you have little or nothing stored away and when this is suddenly truncated, when your food is in short supply, and your electricity is cut off, you will take to the streets and the response from our police and military apparatus will be swift and it will be deadly. 

America is now a country in which more than one generation has lived without employment, without job skills, and without hope.  When you take away these people's sustenance, because of a "dust bowl", or some other unexpected or unexplained natural disaster, this underclass will not go down easily because they have nothing, and therefore have nothing to lose. 

The coming riots will be huge, they will be ugly, and they are inevitable.

Staking Poker Players in Tournament Play

Players love the big buy-in tournaments, so does TV, so does the media in general, and so do the fans.  Never have there been so many tournaments with such big buy-in amounts ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 and all the way up to $1 million.  What a lot of people do not know, but should know, is that a significant amount of the money being put up by tournament poker players is actually being put up by a consortium of other players, investors, or a combination thereof.  That is to say, that many players aren’t actually buying in with $100,000 of their own money, but have instead sold pieces or shares of themselves to other players and/or investors. 

The short reason why players do this is to cut down on variance, that is to say, to cut down on the inevitable ups and downs of tournament play in which the top prize money is extremely top heavy, in which if you aren’t finishing 1st , 2nd or 3rd than you aren’t making the really big money.  But just because you haven’t finished in the top three, doesn’t mean that there isn’t someone that you respect, that you know, that you play with that hasn’t accomplished that very goal in that particular tournament.  Consequently, if you imagine, that there are ten quality players, each taking 10% of each other, this will significantly cut down on each player's variance and will more easily allow these said players to participate in higher buy-in tournaments all over the world.

Having said this, this doesn’t mean that in a competitive sport such as poker, that this type of behavior, that this type of staking, or buying a piece of another player or players, doesn’t lend itself to a very valid charge that it compromises the game itself, on the basis that it follows that some players will not play as hard against other players that they have a stake in or have been staked to.  While, inevitably, these players will protest that they do not engage in such behavior, that they certainly don’t collide with each other, there isn’t any valid reason to threaten the very integrity of the game in order to accommodate this type of staking as there are a few ways to correct or ameliorate this situation.

By far the best solution, is to make it a firm rule, that players have to divulge at their buy-in, their financial backers and that each of these players must have at a minimum, at least a 50% stake in themselves, or a signed commitment from their backer or backers that these particular backer(s) are not participating in the tournament at large, in which case the player can have less than a 50% ownership in his own person.  In cases in which the player and his backer(s) are participating in the same tournament, no backer can have no more than 5% of any one player, and no player can have no less than 50% of himself.

The above would help the integrity of the sport, because it gives more of an incentive for a player to be true to himself, as opposed to psychologically being in a position in which he wants to be all things to all backers.  The integrity of the sport demands this modification, for the fairness of all involved.

Russia: Our Historic Friend

Most people would be somewhat bemused by the title of this editorial, as it seems to be wholly inaccurate but it really isn't.  While Russia is still considered to be somewhat unfriendly to the United States and to the NATO nations in general, it's important to recall that we were allies with Russia during World War II, and in recent times we have joined together with Russia in space programs, in oil, and in automobiles.   This certainly indicates at a minimum a begrudging respect between our two respective nations, but not any friendship.  For our friendship, we need to turn the clock back to earlier times.

Previous to our revolutionary war, Russia and America traded goods and services, and when the revolutionary war came to America, Russia was a neutral, in which it could easily have aligned itself with Great Britain, but chose not to.  When the war between the states occurred, our civil war, outside interests and outside countries took mainly a hands off approach, but behind the scenes, there were plenty of machinations involved which could have made this not just a civil war, but ultimately the first world war with worldwide implications.

For instance, when Great Britain's neutrality was openly challenged by the interception of the British ship the RMS Trent, in which two confederate diplomats were seized, Great Britain was within her rights to declare war against the United States for this violation of international law.  Had this occurred, the Northern states would have been fighting a two-front war, to which the end result would have been quite questionable, ranging from its total defeat, to the vanquishing of both Great Britain and the south, to the splitting of America into a Northern and Southern America, or perhaps even the annexation of Canada from Great Britain, in exchange for relinquishing the southern states, to an outright international war with all sorts of different permutations and outcomes.

While there was vacillation from Great Britain in regards to maintaining their neutrality during our civil war, it was also a fact that France at that time was sure to follow Great Britain's lead, while on the other hand Russia was always stalwart in its support of the Northern cause during our civil war, in which Great Britain and France were well aware that Russia was a formidable enemy, capable of wreaking havoc on any nefarious designs that Great Britain might have on the United States in its time of civil war.

Russia, to their credit and to the Northerners delight, in 1863, sent one naval fleet to San Francisco, and another naval fleet to New York City, in which these squadrons remained in American waters for seven months, to which at the point of their departure, the civil war clearly favored a Union victory and a confederate defeat.  How important, how critical, was Russia's influence on the outcome of our civil war, is something that is still debated today, but undoubtedly it is well worth thanking the Russians for. 

To put the icing on the cake, in 1867, Secretary Seward, from the Lincoln administration, was successful in purchasing Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million its 586,000 square land miles, which later became the state of Alaska, that borders Canada, as well as being within 50 miles of Russia.  Additionally, Alaska borders the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Beaufort Sea, the Bering Sea, and the Gulf of Alaska, and is inundated with massive natural resources.

Reincarnation

To many of us in the Western world, we believe that reincarnation is an Eastern construct that has unfortunately morphed its way into becoming a corruption of Christianity and what Christianity properly stands for.  The Western Christian belief through most mainstream churches is that we are born into sin, as fallen human beings, and that we can only be redeemed by the blood of Christ, and through the grace of God himself.  Further to this point, it is not by our good works or deeds that we get to Heaven, but again only through the redemptive spirit of Christ, who took our burdens and sins upon Himself, to redeem us from our sins.  Our admission and submission to the fact that Christ is our savior, allows our symbolic rebirth and to become a new creation, saved and redeemed by Christ's blood, and thereby Heaven bound.

One significant issue with the above thinking is that the theme of reincarnation runs quite prevalently throughout the entire Bible.  In fact, there is a multitude of Biblical passages that make it all too clear that reincarnation was no foreign agent to the people of God, that it was believed on, and acted upon.  For instance we have:

                For all the prophets and the law have prophesied until John. And if you are willing to receive it, he is Elijah who was to come.  (Matthew 11:13-14)

                And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was   born blind?( John 9:2)

                But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him                 whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them. (Matthew 17:12)

Our God is a God of both love and of justice, and the one thing that we do know for a certainty on this planet, is that we are not all born under the same circumstances and conditions.  The conditions of our birth, and of our environment, can vary from absolute destitution, poverty, and abuse, to the height of prosperity, fortune, and love, with everything in-between.  This means that in aggregate our birth situations are both unequal and unfair, which necessitates the obvious conclusion that many people, do not have the fair opportunity to appreciate, to inherit, or to adhere to mainstream Christianity and its beliefs.

There is the belief, wrongly, that we go to Heaven upon our physical death, but reincarnation states it differently, that we "grow" our way to Heaven.  Further that our lives are often a process of hit and misses; of a few steps forward, and several back; that in some lives we progress well and in other lives we sadly regress.  We have, all of us, been here before, and we will continue to come back until we achieve the growth and evolution needed to arrive back at the point that we began as spiritual beings with no need or desire to incarnate into a physical form.

Shakespeare said it all so well: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts…"  That too is our destiny, how much more meaningful for us is it to really experience over many lifetimes the incarnation of many different characters,  people of different color, religion, job, education, opportunity, family, or whether we are either male or female.  Isn't it true justice to find yourself, switched from serf to land baron, from slave to master, from ill health to good health, and the incumbent challenges that are thereby presented to you, to overcome, to conquer and to learn from?

Life hasn't been fair to you, but it is.  Do the best that you can under your circumstances, live your life fully, become the things that bring justice, light, liberty, and love to not only yourself but also to your fellow sojourners on this earthly plane and remember always, you are an eternal soul encased in a physical body for a while, made in the image of God for all eternity.

Physical Life is Finite

Most of my heroes are no longer physically here.  Men like Martin Luther King, Jr., Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, and so many others are not physically present anymore.  These men were the absolute epitome of greatness in stature, greatness in character, and greatness in devotion.  Yet, none of these great men are still here with us, amongst the living.  That knowledge in itself should signify something very profound to us.  If none of us can get out of here alive, are we all on a ship of impending doom?  

America has morphed primarily into a secular country, to which for many our country has abandoned its spiritual roots.  The press and the media, sell the same story day after day that this physical world is all that there is, and you may as well catch what you can, till the inevitable bell tolls for you.  That's actually a depressing thought, to think that the rat-race of life is preordained to end in our death.  To a certain extent, the press does have it right; we will all one day meet our physical death, despite whatever measures we take to preclude it.

However, for those that acknowledge a Higher Power, physical death, is simply a transformation from the physical world to the spiritual world, that we are indeed here on earth for a little while but death holds nothing over us, because we have overcome death.  This is a very important distinction for all of us, and its importance lies in the knowledge that we are far better served spending our time and efforts on things and activities that have eternal significance rather than on the temporal.   There is a huge chasm between contemplating our life from a strictly physical perspective,  as opposed to recognizing the eternal justice and love of a Higher Being and all the encumbers.

Earth is not our final destination, it is far better to understand it as a testing ground.  Those that understand that this is the case are significantly better at making conscientious decisions that are profoundly positive for their own life as well as for others.  To wit, our legacy can be written large in many ways, by our actions, by our teachings, by our devotion, by our honesty, and by our courage.  When we leave this world, we may leave behind a spouse, children, and their children, and their children's children, or we may not.  What we will definitely leave behind  to others is our advice, our leadership, and our example.

The true history of ourselves is written in the faces and the hearts of the people that we touch on every given day.  If that legacy is one of hatred, intolerance, dishonesty, and self-aggrandizement, we write these pages on the scrolls of life with our own trembling fingers.  If, on the other hand, we help bring honor, inspiration, knowledge, justice, love, and achievement to those that surround us, our pages sing the praises of a servant that has done well.

Physical life is finite, our achievements are not.

Interior Border Checkpoints

America borders two foreign countries, Mexico and Canada, our immigration by far is almost entirely concerned with protecting our southern border, because of the high illegal immigration of Mexican or other Latin American residents into America.  While I don't have a big issue with border checkpoints as a somewhat necessary mandate to secure the integrity of our borders, I do have a significant problem and a major concern with "interior border" checkpoints which are located in the states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas.  If you are not from those states or have never traveled by automobile through those states, I will use San Clemente in California as our example.

The San Clemente interior border checkpoint resides for traffic traveling north on I-5 and is approximately 65 miles north of the border to Mexico.  I-5 is a major artery to travel from the San Diego area to Los Angeles and having an interior border checkpoint on a freeway is a significant contributor to vehicle backups that can stretch for miles which is both an inconvenience for people traveling on the freeway but also a great inefficiency in time usage for people that are simply trying to get from point A to point B.

The ostensible reason for the checkpoint is to interdict illegal aliens, in which, by virtue that we border Mexico, they are primarily looking for people that fit that particular racial profile.  This means, almost by definition, that if you are Caucasian, and respectful looking, and/or have a nice vehicle, you won't ever be hassled, in which by a simple visual inspection that you are Caucasian the border agents will simply wave you through without you even having to come to a complete stop, or at worse, you might get the "Are you a US Citizen", and if you answer in the affirmative, you will more than likely again easily pass through.   

To a certain extent, if you are Caucasian, or a member of some other nationality that does not correlate to their profile of a Mexican, or a terrorist, you might even look upon this border stop as a joke, but it is a nuisance, it is an inconvenience, and it is a mandated slowing down or stopping, and having to deal with an armed United States Federal agent when you are already well within the United States border and simply driving your vehicle on a freeway. 

Of course, the above is mainly the perspective of someone that has nothing to fear, because you don't fit the profile, unfortunately, there are plenty of people that do have something to fear because they fit the profile and consequently they have to deal with this each and every time that the interior border checkpoint is open.  This means that they are being profiled and hassled, merely because they look or act or drive a certain way.  That isn't fair and it isn't right, but law enforcement will state again and again ad nauseam how effective it Is because they caught this guy trying to traffic drugs, or this dangerous criminal, or that illegal alien….   

But, the thing is, that statement is virtually meaningless.  If you pull everyone over, you will catch criminals, you will catch illegal aliens, you will catch the trafficking of drugs; what you won't have any more is America, you will have just another police-state.

Drone Killing Requires No Courage or Bravery

The United States of America is the premier country in the world for technology in the field of war and there isn't any country that is close to our sophistication, accomplishments, and comprehensiveness.  The United States has made it their particular mission to try to create weaponry that reduces our men and women's exposure in the field of combat.  The United States has in most jurisdictions of the world, command of the air by virtue of our great power and advancement in fighter jet technology, but fighter jets need to be flown by pilots and their associated personnel, they also cost a lot of money to build and maintain, and there is also the attendant risk of failure, crashing, being shot down, or similar.  Drones on the other hand are relative to our air force, inexpensive to buy and to operate, devoid of any personnel being in danger, and yet still highly effective in getting to their targets and delivering their payload.  For the United States, drones appear to be the perfect weapon, because the military and politicians know that as long as they can keep our men and women in uniform off the front page as casualties of war that most of Middle America won't really care what we do on foreign shores.

While there is absolutely no question that drone killing is highly effective, it also is highly controversial, and highly problematic for the following reasons.  Firstly, drone killing or drone targeting is done in such a manner that the country launching the drone is in a safe command bunker or other such area in which his or her life is simply not in danger.  Further to that point, the actual targets are given dehumanized terms such as bugs that needed to be terminated, and their termination is known as "bug splat".   Secondly, there is often peripheral damage, when drones are utilized.  For instance, if a drone targets a building, it is simply an unknown as to whom or what exactly is inside the building.  If the drone is targeting someone that is on the outside, that particular person or persons are usually not alone or encumbered with just villains, but with regular people and civilians also.  Thirdly, and finally, emotionally and psychologically drone killing and drone targeting does not viscerally feel to the operator as if they are actually taking away a human life, or destroying a building, or devastating a town or a community, because to the operator it feels more akin to a video game or to an exercise, but in actuality it is very, very real, very accurate, and very effective.

While the United States is currently the world leader in armed drone warfare, it is only a matter of time before other countries, including avowed enemies of the United States, are able to utilize drones too for military or quasi-military operations.  That certainly isn't a path to peace and prosperity for our world and for our country.  Additionally, and pointedly, armed drone killing is a coward's perfect weapon, it takes no courage, it takes no bravery, to sit safely and then to calmly, coolly, and collectively, use a drone system to wreak havoc on your enemies as you perceive them to be.  

Civil Asset Forfeiture

For many of us, it is a struggle to accumulate assets and those material assets that we do obtain; we have a strong interest in maintaining and continuing our ownership of them.  Consequently, it would not be fair to us, that under current civil laws, that those very assets, such as vehicles, money, real estate, and equipment, can be confiscated so readily by the police or federal policing agencies for virtually no reason at all, but simply a hint of a suspicion, in which our ability to retrieve said items is problematic.  The seizure of our civil assets is ostensibly done under the guise of these assets having being used in criminal activity or alleged to be proceeds from criminal activity, but because these are civil and not criminal charges the burden of proof, switches from the state having to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt, to you having to prove that your assets have been legally obtained.  While there may be a justifiable ideal behind civil asset forfeiture in which the State has the position that they should be able to seize material assets which have been created or obtained through illicit means, this leads quickly down a slippery slope, especially when those very assets often end up in the hands of police forces or applied to their budgets directly.  This gives police and their adherents a perverse incentive to seize assets from people that they perceive to be unable or ineligible to fight back effectively.

To make matters worse, police forces appear to take a certain pleasure in bragging about how they seized a certain vehicle or equipment from their civil asset forfeiture actions, which they are now utilizing on behalf of their constituency, as if this is the epitome of great police work.  In fact, civil asset forfeiture is more akin to a legal form of "bullying" in which the police take it upon themselves to determine who or what to target and then to try to maximize the benefits that they can reap from their subsequent seizures. 

It doesn't take a genius to recognize that if you allow the police or any governing agency to reap the benefits of their takings, directly, that those seizures will increase to fulfill those desires, but none of that has much to do with justice, protection, or service to the community.  Civil asset forfeiture is very bad law and isn't necessary to begin with.  The path to take assets from private citizens should never be an easy path, and it should definitely be a path that is carefully cultivated with evidence that is truly substantiated fairly in a court of law. 

Civil asset forfeiture is yet another example of government overreach, government and police intrusion, and government incentives being turned upside-down.   The police and prosecution agents should instead of selectively and prejudicially targeting individuals that aren't part of the status quo for various reasons, be far better off understanding the necessary value and recognition that good legal law needs to be equally applied to everyone without prejudice.

The World's oldest profession

I always have despised the term, "the world's oldest profession", as used in reference to the prostitution of women.  Recent times have been quite beneficial for many women in many countries for their education, their freedom of choice, their opportunities for equivalent pay and jobs, their ownership of their own body, their determination and say of a marriage partner, their own money, and their legal rights.  These significant steps have allowed women the world over, to have a firm foundation in their own decisions, their own livelihood, and have improved the world immensely by utilizing their intelligence, knowhow, and perspective in new and important ways throughout society.

It is gratifying to see that women are at a minimum given the choice of getting education, continuing their education, and then having the freedom to use that knowledge in the world at large.  Of course, and unfortunately, that isn't the case in all countries, as there are countries of notable stature and power, that treat women as chattel, or even worse, in which women still have no rights, and are no better than common servants, with little or no natural rights.

Not too surprisingly, in countries in which women have little or no rights and thereby have little or no access to money or property, ultimately their choices for advancement and for survival of their own person, or of their families are severely compromised so that in these types of trying situations, women are put to the test, in which they must seriously consider monetizing one of the few things that they can sell, and that will often have ready buyers, which is their body.

The game is hardly fair, because the women are impoverished, with no legal or real power, with little or no opportunity, but burdened with responsibilities to themselves and to their families.  It is because of that lack of opportunity, and for their needs both psychological and physical, that women are often essentially compelled into the world of prostitution.  This unfortunate state of affairs is brought about deliberately because those that are in power feel no need to relinquish said power, and prefer to exercise that power against females that are not members of their clan or clique.

The world's oldest profession, is hardly something that women grow up wanting to become members of, it's seldom a preference or a real choice, it is instead often an act of desperation in order to survive another day.  Prostitution is a fit and function and a referendum on how healthy a given society is in its respect, concern, and care for those that are less fortunate.  A society that has many women that are pressured into prostitution is often also a society of rich and poor, powerful and powerless, healthy and unhealthy, protected and unprotected, Good Samaritans and careless Levites.  It is in short a society that doesn't take the time or have the concern for those that are less-able, less advantaged, less gifted, than the elite or the fortunate that also mistakenly believe that they have some sort of God-given right to do what they do.

The world's oldest profession shouldn't exist; however it exists primarily because of the evil and selfishness in man's heart.

The White House use to be non-imperial

The White House use to be truly open to the public, in which the public could pretty much show up and gain admission into the White House without any questions being asked.  Those days are long pass, and today in order to access the White House, or specifically certain portions available to the public of the White House, one must be properly vetted and consequently apply through one's congressman and then upon approval, if you are approved, you will be allowed to be visit the White House after going through security, showing your identification, and shuffling through the eight rooms opened to the public, all under the watchful eye of the Secret Service officers.

Perhaps this is the way things should be, after all, the White House is a special place, the President and his advisors are special people, and we are just subjects to his White House.  Hold on though, that isn't what America is about, in fact, the President is not our King, he is elected by the people, for the people, and to represent the people.  The President is beholden to us and not us to him.  The White House is not the Presidents but ours, it is his for a little while, but it is ours in principle.

There was a time when the White House would be literally overrun by the public at inaugurations, with White House items becoming damaged or even taken from its premises.  On an average day, the President would be inundated with visitors trying to solicit the President for jobs, offers, and public service.  The press felt that they too had the right to inquire or question the President about this or that for the public consumption, no matter the inconvenience to the President and his tasks. 

While we can never go back to those times, it was during those days that the people felt a greater connection to the Presidency, that the President was one of them, that they, the people, were part of this great republic, with a voice and an opportunity to be heard, in which they could actually visit and possibly speak and communicate with the President of the United States.   These were times when the President understood the importance of the people having access to the President, to hear their voice, to break bread with them, and to solicit their cares and concerns.

When you are far removed from the public, in which virtually no one that visits or speaks with you is a true common man, a true representative of the people, than it is difficult to understand the public pulse, to empathize with the people, or to really relate to their concerns and cares.  At that point, you are no longer a representative of the people, you certainly are not one with the people, and you are more akin to the Kings and Queens of yesteryear whose voice is the voice, whose law is the law, who are the rulers, for better or for worse.  

The Vaccine Controversy

First, what is a vaccine and why is it important for our health?  In order to combat harmful and dangerous germs and pathogens, your body is inoculated with a serum, this vaccination will contain a defused version of the pathogen, which will mobilize your T-cells and your B-cells to respond to it as if your body was being attacked by a dangerous foreign invader, in which by so doing this will provide you with immunity against the real disease, should your body ever come into contact with it.  Because of vaccination, diseases such as smallpox, polio, measles, and diphtheria have been essentially eliminated from all those people that have been immunized from these known destructive and harmful pathogens.  This, in short, is the greatness of modern-day science, of preventative medicine, of knowledge rightly applied.

Smallpox was a deadly scourge in America during our revolutionary days, yet many American lives were saved because men such as John Adams, George Washington and his soldiers, and Benjamin Franklin, to name a few notables, made it a policy to get inoculated during these colonial times.  These fine men were part of the leadership and vanguard of their day, and their noble examples and calculated risks that they took led later to the discovery of the smallpox vaccination by Dr. Edward Jenner, which saved countless lives of children and adults then as well as now.

There is no controversy that vaccines work and are highly effective, but today in our upside-down world, there is a renewed controversy that vaccines are either not necessary, do harm, such as creating autism, and consequently should be a parent's choice or voluntary.  This is a sad state of affairs, especially when the medical information and data overwhelmingly supports the commonsense approach of receiving your regularly scheduled vaccination shots.  It is especially disturbing to note that those that do not inoculate their children put their children as well as other children in danger, in which their highest priority should be to remove known dangers from them.

While I understand and sympathize that any medical procedure has risks, and that vaccinations correctly applied can have adverse reactions, there is also an attendant risk in no action, in avoidance, and in the unnecessary belief that you are superior in your thinking for medical procedures, rather than the unison of medical doctors and medical researchers the world over.  Is it even logical to really believe, to even contemplate, that doctors mean to harm your child?  The empirical evidence is clear, immunizations save lives, and it is as straightforward as that.

Still it is certainly well worthwhile, to study, assimilate, and to make sure that our vaccinations are as safe from adverse effects as we can make them.  To this, I applaud the discussion that critics of vaccines can be bring to the table, nevertheless, this criticism should logically be led by accredited professionals, and it shouldn't be some sort of slick sideshow, with celebrities and those of that ilk, but it should instead always be aboveboard, transparent, and very, very real.  Your child's life, innocent, depends on it.

Tyranny in America

America was founded and established by essentially peoples escaping from religious persecution, which wished to worship their God in a manner in which they would not be interfered with, and would also give these same people the necessary religious freedom to pay homage to the One that created them in His image.  There were also others that came to America for the adventure, for the challenge, for a new start, for the new frontier, and to embrace this far country.  Through hard work, toil, sweat, and blood, a new nation was formed that would become the United States of America.  That nation founded as a republic in 1776, was initially a bastion of great republican virtues, a nation that respected and celebrated pluck and virtue, but now it is a land that has re-established itself as essentially a meddling tyranny and Godforsaken.

Whether you recognize it or not, life has changed within America over the last few generations.  Nowadays, you are a fool to not know or to not believe that all of your email, all of your cellular phone conversations, and all of your public activities are being monitored and ultimately stored by the State and placed into massive databases for evaluation.  The State with its sophisticated spy apparatus, voice recording equipment, data retrieval, data mining, and intensive algorithm powers are working 24/7 to monitor and to interdict enemies of the State.

The State position is straightforward, if you are not part of the operation, nor part and parcel of the enforcing or monitoring of the operation, nor a "connected" elite that has immunity from the intrusiveness and effect of the operation, than you are subject to all of the State's actions to your person, to your property, to your employment, to your family, and to your life itself.   It is to the State, and to no one else, as to whether you are allowed the luxury of continuing to live life in America as if you are still free, still free to move about, still free to think, still free to write, still free to complain, but the State holds the ultimate power as to whether your existence will continue without harassment or whether your existence will either be compromised or extinguished.

A government that has the power, authority, and the money, to provide you with health, employment, housing, and food, is a government that has the power to take those very things away from you. In return for all this beneficence bestowed upon you, the government only asks in return, that should they need to avail you of your services that you will comply with their request with no questions asked. 

Our government holds all 52 cards, they can sell you the illusion that the game is fair, but it is most certainly not.  Today's governmental tyranny is basically benign for most Americans, maybe even welcomed from those that are too lazy and too complacent to care.  However, this great domestic and well-armed police force along with our well-trained military forces, can in conjunction with intelligence either manufactured, or obtained, be easily turned against its native population, and it's only a matter of time.

Torture and the Geneva Convention

We are a nation of laws, but unfortunately, we are also a nation of lawyers, wily politicians, and an overzealous military apparatus, in which certain lawyers as instructed by certain government officials spend an inordinate amount of time, energy, and resources, to come up with ways to "legally" circumvent or to interpret laws in such a manner as to support USA tortuous actions both domestically and abroad which are, in fact, clear violations of that law.

In general, and almost without exception, the United States, feels that it is above the law in circumstances in which the law doesn't favor their actions and since the United States is not a country that can be trifled with, it is able to have its way.  America spends a lot of time justifying its actions, in a false belief, that such justification, makes their actions right or legal, when in actuality, it does neither.  Wrong is wrong, no matter how you try to dress it up, and the use of semantics to cover your actions, along with willing public speakers and writers that press your point, ultimately won't change the true colors of your actions.

To make matters worse, it is the America public and, in particular American soldiers that will suffer the blowback of America's illegal and poorly reasoned tortuous actions.  When the United States shows no respect for the Geneva treaty that it is a signatory to, in which they play fast and loose with both the letter and the spirit of the law, it takes no stretch of the imagination to recognize that other countries and principalities will also do the same at some point, at some time, somewhere, to some one.

The United States can only lead by example, and its actions or actions of its proxies in regards to its torturous behavior to detainees, to combatants, to prisoners of war, is clearly objectionable.  To make matters worse, none of it is even necessary, as torture in of itself, is highly debatable in regards to any accurate and actionable information being obtained.  Torture, is though, quite sadistic, quite painful, quite degrading, and it also has long-lasting physical as well as psychological damages inflicted to those that are tortured. 

Certain peoples within the United States, believe that it is necessary that we be the world's biggest bully, that if certain people that we detain don't obey our commands, or aren’t obedient to our desires, that it is thereby imperative that we show them who the real boss is, because any other action would show weakness and the United States can never be shown as weak. 

But in weakness, there is great strength.  Again and again, great nations have changed, or been toppled not from arm insurrection, not from violent upheaval, but have been changed because they have been shamed into right action.  These brave men, unlike their oppressors, will not give in to hate, nor to the infliction of suffering, nor to the wrongness of justice that oppresses, but they will instead resist and they will be disobedient to man's law wrong applied, to man's strong arm wrongly used, and they will instead answer only to the Higher law.

Torture is an injustice; it has no place in the American lexicon, and will only leave a great trail of tears as America decays into a wasteland of hatred, hypocrisy, and hollowness.

Tattoos on vehicles

As reported by harrisinteractive.com in 2012, one in five adults (21%) has at least one tattoo on their body, in which tattoos are considered pretty much to be permanent body art, although there are ways to remove a tattoo should you be so inclined in the future.  While there are a multitude of reasons why people get tattoos, certainly one of them is to express yourself and to establish yourself as your own person. 

Cars are considered by many to be status symbols, and that they often identify you as a certain type of person or clique.  For example, most drivers of a Toyota Prius would be seldom identified as beer-swilling rifle-toting redneck backwoods people, but perhaps if you were driving a certain Ford pickup truck that might describe you to a "T".

But when you look around at vehicles on the road today, pretty much the only vehicles that you encounter with "body art" are business vehicles for flower delivery, plumbing, trucking, or whatnot.  You do see some cars that are "tricked out" but that often cost a lot of money in regards to wheels, rims, headlights, stripes, spoilers, or certain paint jobs.  The only real "body art" that I see on some vehicles are bumper stickers which do make a statement but hardly brings status or envy about your vehicle.  So I ask, why not tattoos for cars?

The really sweet thing about tattoos for cars, is the fact that should you have a change of heart, or sell your vehicle, it isn’t all that difficult to re-paint your car to cover up or modify this art, should it come down to this.  The best thing about tattoos for cars is that it gives you the opportunity to uniquely express yourself on the road in which you can make your own statement, and put your own imprint on society.

Cars are a great canvas in which to create this art, and the shelf-life of cars are finite enough, that as you migrate from one stage to another in life, you can amend your desire for what you want to present on your automobile.  This isn't about putting together a unique paint job, or coloring scheme, which has its place, but instead creating something that means something to you and that will allow you to express your individuality or status in such a way that it brings you a certain satisfaction while contemplating it.

Like any trend, this has to start somewhere, with someone or some people taking this concept and running with it.  Out of all the material items that you purchase in life, typically the second most expensive will be your vehicle, and for people from the ages of 18-30, your car purchase is the single biggest purchase that you will probably make.  By definition, cars are driven, they are exterior status symbols.  You may have friends, business associates, that never visit you at your home, or your apartment, or your crib, but they know you by your car. If you have body tattoos they might not ever see those tattoos, but they will see your tattoo on your car, so make it count.