tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11238586948496430182024-03-18T01:46:58.067-04:00Unintended ConsequencesWe're all prisoners of what we think we know.Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.comBlogger60125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-50750487857898719112014-02-16T17:21:00.000-05:002014-02-16T17:21:59.202-05:00US Ignite: Are We Heading to the World of THX 1138?No, I'm not back. I'm still here and have never been away. There has simply been just so little to put together from the myriad of distractions thrown our way by the corporate media from things like Sandy Hook and gun control, the NSA and Edward Snowden, to the IRS scandal making people run this way or that chasing their tail.<br />
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Lately I've been listening to the Pete Santilli Show and in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZa90yUMIm8" target="_blank">episode #632</a> he enlightened me to this initiative that I hadn't heard about before which was given the green light by President Obama through executive order in June of 2012 to accelerate broadband deployment which is being implemented by something called <a href="http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/usignite/index.jsp" target="_blank">US Ignite</a>. He asks Ben Swann about it at 1:40:00 into the video, but keep listening after Ben leaves for he goes further into it.<br />
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This initiative is so important that the <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/06/13/we-can-t-wait-president-obama-signs-executive-order-make-broadband-const" target="_blank">White House proclaimed that "We can't wait"</a> for Congress to address this need. Funny, but I haven't yet found any instance of it ever being presented to Congress asking them to act. I thought it odd that a year and a half later we still hear relatively little reported about it, not even a gratuitous mention in this year's state of the union address.<br />
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Could this be the missing link, the piece that completes the puzzle? <br />
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According to the National Science Foundation, US Ignite will:<br />
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<em>"Transform public safety, healthcare, education and workforce development, energy, transportation, and manufacturing."</em></blockquote>
Sounds like Agenda 21 to me.<br />
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No kidding. Call me paranoid all you want, but just imagine a world that combines the concepts in the film "THX 1138" and "The Matrix" with those of pre-crime in "Minority Report". <br />
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I see a lot of people up in arms about the NSA today. People are rejoicing over Utah attempting to shut off water to their facility in the state like that is going to do anything beyond turning it into an eminent domain fight over water rights. This US Ignite program has all the same technology players who helped build all those NSA capabilities in the first place. These companies built the digital highway and sell it to us to use, while giving the government the full capability to monitor your use of it.<br />
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As I like to ask people, why do police officers patrol toll roads and give out speeding tickets? It's certainly not an efficient or profitable use of the officer's time when they can simply calculate average speed between toll booths and charge all the speeders accordingly. They could even use photo radar and send tickets to your home just like they do with red light cameras and let the money roll in. <br />
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At least with toll roads, if they do start doing either, you can always take alternate routes bypassing their toll (information collection) gates. But with US Ignite, if you're on it, they've got you for there's no alternate route.<br />
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If that doesn't concern you, then imagine with the rollout of electronic monitoring with programs like EZ Pass and now the black box they want to have installed in all vehicles, the potential for abuse gets even worse. They build the algorithms to track your every trip through their sensors and match them up with your electronic medical records mandated by Obamacare, your energy usage through smart meters, your spending patterns through credit cards, and so on, matching them up with profiles to determine if your an obedient little citizen or not. <br />
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Remember the TSA's rollout of <a href="http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/05/tsa-spot-program-still-going-strong.html" target="_blank">Screening Passengers by Observable Techniques (SPOT) program</a>? They even deployed vans for secondary screenings where they recorded your eye movements and gestures to guess whether you were being truthful or not.<br />
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As you're traveling on this new digital highway, you're going to be oblivious to the tollbooths where they will be monitoring your every move, your every gesture and collating everything in your electronic profile.<br />
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The future is coming.<br />
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May the benevolence of the state shine upon you, citizen.<br />
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<br />Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com77tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-25810211642264102222013-04-07T11:41:00.000-04:002013-04-07T11:41:08.091-04:00What's up with North Korea?The first questions I always ask is why is this so newsworthy today above and beyond all else that's happening in the world today and what are they not saying.<br />
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Both North and South Korea have recently undergone changes in leadership. They're both quite obviously simply just testing each other like a child tests the limits of his mother to see what he can get away with. What makes this situation so important as to capture headlines today?<br />
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How is this situation any different than what goes on daily between Washington DC, various state capitols, and the citizens of the Republic, especially in regards to the current seemingly irrational focus on gun control?<br />
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Think.Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-74300386772649235442013-03-16T19:30:00.000-04:002013-03-31T14:11:09.142-04:00Why is it so Hard to Understand Taxes?I recently read some comments on Rand Paul's speech at CPAC about his proposal to institute a 17% flat tax. One commenter raised the issue of a single mother making $7.25 an hour minimum wage just barely squeaking by getting her tax rate unfairly raised to 17%.<br />
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I've discussed this before in <a href="http://uncertainoutcomes.blogspot.com/2012/06/tax-primer.html" target="_blank">Tax Primer</a>, intending to address it further. Well after the wonderful sequester hysteria and now these comments from Rand Paul at CPAC stirring more misinformation out there, it's time to get to it.<br />
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The reality is that with this example of a single mother, her payroll taxes alone already add up to 15% (7.5% direct withholding and matching 7.5% the employer pays). So out of her $7.25, she pays approximately $1.08 in tax ($.54 from her paycheck and $.54 from her employer). Some will undoubtedly argue that her taxes are only half that and the employer pays the other half, but that still makes the $7.25 an hour of which the employee takes home $6.71 after her payroll tax is deducted cost $7.79 (rounded) an hour to the employer, possibly inhibiting him from paying her more or hiring more workers. Those taxes are part of the total labor costs that get added into the retail price of whatever she produces, so she's effectively taxed double for buying the very thing she makes at a retail outlet.<br />
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For example, say she makes 1 coffee pot in an 8 hour day @ 7.25 an hour. She gets paid $58 gross minus $4.35 (7.5%) deducted for payroll taxes for a total of $53.65 That total $58 she made before taxes were taken out is part of the retail price of that coffee pot at the store as well as the $4.35 the employer paid to match her payroll taxes. So just for her part of the production chain, the effect of the payroll tax alone, it would cost her $62.35 for the labor associated part of the retail price to buy something she made for what she only received $53.65, meaning she not only paid those payroll taxes upfront in the production chain, but will have to pay that $8.70 a second time for an "effective" tax rate of 30% just because of the payroll tax alone.<br />
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Now that doesn't mean that the government gets 2x as much revenue. That extra $8.70 just pays herself and her employer back for what the government took from them up front. It simply has the 2x the effect on her cash flow.<br />
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That's what helps make US made products that much more prohibitively expensive in that these taxes can often exceed transportation costs of importing similar products made halfway around the world with cheaper labor.<br />
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Those problems will also be a part of Paul's proposal for most income/payroll taxes have the effect of hitting you 2x, when you get it and when you spend it. It gets even worse when sales taxes are added on top, adding insult to injury that you're now paying a tax on a (hidden) tax. <br />
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That's why I do believe a single consumption or sales tax on all goods and services and getting rid of all income taxes, while certainly not perfect, may be a much better solution for it makes it that much harder for them to hide real tax rates and it would add the same imposed cost of our bloated government to the price of competing foreign products. It will also help shift some of the burden to the underground markets when untaxed income of such activities as prostitution or drugs is used to purchase goods and services in the regulated markets.<br />
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While I'm at it, let me touch upon the dreaded Mitt Romney's comments on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2gvY2wqI7M" target="_blank">the 47% who supposedly get a free ride</a>. The truth is that income taxes that are imposed on the 53% who do pay them only add up to <a href="http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/background/numbers/revenue.cfm" target="_blank">42% of federal revenues</a>. Another 40% of the federal revenues come from payroll taxes. About 9% comes in from corporate taxes, which of course, we all pay for whenever we buy any product or service from those taxed corporations. And that's only federal taxes.<br />
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Citizens for Tax Justice put out <a href="http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2012.pdf" target="_blank">this analysis</a> which IMHO is woefully short on identifying anything close to the true tax burden, but is does somewhat illustrate that <strong>everyone</strong> pays taxes. As I described above, it fails to capture hidden taxes and the fact that a portion of sales taxes amount to a tax on a tax. It also fails to consider thousands of user and license fees and other ingenious vehicles for taking money from citizens are taxes, such as those for hunting/fishing licenses, department of motor vehicle fees, tolls, fines, forfeitures, court fees, regulatory burdens, the all too rarely discussed inflation tax and, yes, even the minimum wage is effectively a tax - imagine that.<br />
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The current tax code is a ingenious trap used by the predators to divide the herd as it seeks out victims upon which to feast. They use it to divide and conquer to keep their bellies full. It will never change unless we wake up and understand it for what it is and stop pointing fingers at each other claiming we pay too much and it's everyone else who is skating.<br />
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Please add your 2¢ if you see anything I missed or disagree with any points or have questions in the comments section below. :)Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-1464710228227841532013-03-10T22:20:00.001-04:002013-03-11T12:17:39.893-04:00McCain's Bumbling BlundersWhile opening his mouth in anger without any critical thinking or forethought in an attempt to deride Sen Rand Paul's filibuster, Sen John McCain claimed Paul's actions were not only silly and worthless, but harmful to the preservation of the Senate's filibuster rules. However, in his emotional ferver, McCain actually unwittingly acknowledged Paul's performance was successful by admitting Congressional failures over the last 12 years.<br />
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Let's take a closer look, shall we?<br />
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<em>Well, Mr President, I watched some of that quote debate unquote yesterday. I saw colleagues of mine who know better come to the floor and voice this same concern, which is totally unfounded. I must say that the use of Jane Fonda's name does evoke certain memories with me. And I must say that she is not my favorite American, but I also believe as odious as it was, Ms Fonda acted within her Constitutional rights.</em></blockquote>
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Oh really? She was cavorting with the enemy, John. She wasn't just holding a sign in a protest exercising her right to speak her mind, but she was there on the battlefield, even sitting on active enemy ADA making believe she was shooting down our pilots, providing them specific aid in the form of propaganda photo ops to demoralize our troops. North Vietnam was a country, a nation state that we were in open hostilities with at the time. Within her Constitutional rights? Are you mad? And what if she did what she did <strong>with</strong> al Qaeda instead of the North Vietnamese...? Would that be similarly within her Constitutional rights? Funny, but today, that would bring a drone attack raining down on her head.<br />
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You know you wanted to kill her, John. Deep down where your heart used to be, you wanted to see her burn in napalm. But we all know to say so isn't conducive to continuing a Senate career which is well past its prime.<br />
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There is no such thing as a war against terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic. You declare war on countries or other nation/states that support terrorists, just like the war against the Taliban and their control over Afghanistan for refusing to comply with an ultimatum to turn over bin Laden. <br />
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There is no world-wide battlefield. <br />
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You went to war with the Taliban and drove them out of power and bin Laden out of Afghanistan. You drove bin Laden into Pakistan. But you would not, could not declare war on Pakistan, could you? Oh, you sure wanted to. You know you did, but you see, they have THE bomb. Is it any wonder that Iran might like to have one with all the posturing you keep doing to attack them? <br />
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The perception of a war against terrorism is no different than the war on tobacco, the war on drugs, the war on illiteracy, the war on... whatever you politicians want to declare a fictitious war on, it's only to further your agenda to exert control over the populace and whittle away citizens' rights.<br />
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And not only did he deride Sen Paul, but all those others like Sen Mitch McConnell who "know better". Pffft.<br />
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He drones on...<br />
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<em>And to somehow say anyone who disagrees with American policy and even may demonstrate against it is somehow a member of an organization who makes that individual an enemy combatant is simply false. It is simply false!</em> </blockquote>
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And how do we know that? Al Awlaki was not part of al Qaeda, at least not until you pushed him. After 9/11, he was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2Ofg2BacIM" target="_blank">preaching that terrorism was wrong</a> and the attack on the WTC and Pentagon were wrong and that Americans should NOT be targeted by Muslims. And what about his son? All we know about his assassination is a snide remark by the WH press secretary, Robert Gibbs, suggesting that he "should have a far more responsible father." <br />
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Sen McCain certainly has a lot of loiter time and more ammunition to expend. And here is where it gets good. As you will see in his own words, Sen McCain ADMITS Congressional failure to address EXACTLY what Sen Paul was, IMHO, actually trying to get them to address by asking President Obama a simple, limited scope question. <br />
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<em>Now, Mr President, I believe we need to visit this whole issue of the use of drones; who uses them; whether the CIA should become they're own Air Force; what the oversight is; what the legal and political foundations for this kind of conflict needs to be reviewed. And the foundations rest mostly on laws designed for another task, that government lawyers have interpreted without public scrutiny to meet new challenges outside the surveillance context. </em> </blockquote>
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<em>Congress, as a body, has not debated the means or ends of secret warfare. Because secret surveillance and targeted strikes rather than US military detention are central to the new warfare. We need they know viable plaintiffs to test the government's authorities in court. </em> </blockquote>
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<em>In short, executive branch decisions since 2001 have led the nation to a new type of war against new enemies on a new battlefield without enough focused national debate, deliberate Congressional approval, or real judiciary review. We probably need a new framework statute akin to the National Security Act of 1947 or the series of intelligent reforms made after Watergate or even the 2001 Authorization of Force to describe the... to define the scope of the new war, the authorities and limitations on presidential power, and forms of review of the president's actions</em>. </blockquote>
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That's exactly what Rand Paul wanted, for you to admit your failures and you fell right into the trap as many soldiers did into North Vietnamese punji stick pits. It had nothing to do with drones. The kill list could be accomplished with guns, knives, piano wire, poison, sticks, or whatever... <br />
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And no, John. Warfare hasn't changed. Terrorism hasn't changed. No matter how you try to mold and transmogrify them into something new to suit your delusions of how to best to wield such deadly power.<br />
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There is some more in there which he again derides Sen Paul, but let's cut to the chase of the REAL source of Sen McCain's ire...<br />
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<em>I'd also like to add an additional note, Mr President. About 42%, as I'm told, of the members of this Senate are here for six years or less. Everytime a majority party is in power, they become frustrated with the exercise of the minority or their rights here in the Senate. And back some years ago, there was gonna be... we were gonna eliminate... when Republicans this side of the aisle was in the majority, we were gonna eliminate the ability to call for 60 votes for judges. We... uh... confirmation of judges. We were able to put that aside.</em> </blockquote>
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<em>There was another effort, just at the beginning of this Senate to do away with 60 votes and back down to 51, which in my view would have destroyed the Senate. A lot of us work... A group of us worked very hard for a long time to come up with some compromises that would allow the Senate to move more rapidly, but at the same time..., and efficiently, but at the same time preserve the 60 vote majority requirement on some pieces of legislation. What we saw yesterday is going to give ammunition to those critics who say that the rules of the Senate are being abused. I hope my colleagues on this side of the aisle will take that into consideration.</em> </blockquote>
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That's it. A dozen years of Congress failing to do it's job to address the scope of presidential powers w/ respect to targeted killings along with the last five years of them failing to even produce a budget while starting off this new session with a full scale assault on our individual rights to bear arms to protect our lives, families, and property... Is Mr McCain worried about any of that? <br />
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Mr McCain is most worried that an upstart freshman actually had the gall to use the precious rules of the Senate to demand an answer from the President on how he percieves he can act in total absence of Congress DOING IT'S DAMN JOB. And what do you do? You come unglued.<br />
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Thank you, Sen McCain. You should be ashamed of yourself.Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-76772002597721769762013-03-06T15:29:00.000-05:002013-03-06T15:29:10.771-05:00Rand Paul's Monumental FilibusterI still see some people out there discounting this effort by bashing Paul about his actions on the Kerry and Hagel nominations. <br />
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I believe this is the turning point many of us have all been waiting for and it's going to be remembered in history as a monumental national level discussion against governmental tyranny that's long overdue.<br />
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To the naysayers on Paul's effectiveness, all I can say is - Get over what you perceive to be weakness. You can't fight a war wasting ammunition firing at everything that moves for random effect.<br />
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That's the reason to fight to our last breath all these efforts to infringe on our right to bear arms by limiting what type of weapons we can own and how much ammunition we can carry.<br />
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Whenever I see the #TheyDeserveaVote PSYOP from @BarackObama, I see images of a smiling crowd at a lynching. <br />
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Basic human rights of self-defense should NEVER be allowed to be put up to the tyranny of the majority. Minorities and individuals always lose.<br />
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It's too bad that it took fear of being attacked by drones that started waking some people up when our friends and neighbors have been executed for years by growth in use of swat team raids across the country. Perhaps after this, that's a battle for another day.<br />
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For now - <strong>Go Rand!!!</strong>Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-46372186634379454892013-03-05T09:22:00.000-05:002013-03-05T13:09:43.474-05:00Raw Milk: What's the Big Deal?In this Bloomberg <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-09-20/farmer-acquitted-in-minn-dot-raw-milk-trial" target="_blank">article about a farmer acquitted in a raw milk trial</a>, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claims raw milk products were responsible for at least 93 disease outbreaks from 1998-2009, causing 1,837 illnesses, 195 hospitalizations, and two deaths.<br />
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Ummm, ok? And where's the cost/benefit analysis? Do you think the CDC might have one? Well, I couldn't find one, but here is their <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/raw-milk-questions-and-answers.html" target="_blank">scare page</a>. <strong>//Warning:</strong> extremely graphic like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZS-vS2lmlw" target="_blank">President Obama's dire predictions of the certain armageddon of sequester</a> - Ensure you have medical emergency devices handy to treat shock or possible cardiac events and access to call 911 for emergency services before clicking either link//<br />
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Looking at the new "report" they just issued, "<a href="http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/18/3/pdfs/11-1370.pdf" target="_blank">Non-Pasteurized Dairy Products, Disease Outbreaks, and State Laws-United States, 1993-2006</a>", it claims "<em>We found 121 outbreaks for which the product’s pasteurization status was known; among these, 73 (60%) involved nonpasteurized products and resulted in 1,571 cases, 202 hospitalizations, and 2 deaths</em>." Of course the same report shows that those 60% of outbreaks attributed to non-pasteurized products caused only 36% of the total reported cases of illness, meaning that pasteurized products caused 64% of the reported cases of illness in a lower number of outbreaks. <br />
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Further on, it claims 4/48 outbreaks from pasteurized products "probably resulted" from post-pasteurization contamination by infected food handlers. <br />
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It goes on to attribute another 3/48 pasteurized outbreaks to "probable" failure of consumers to store the products at the appropriate temperature. Hmmm... WTF is that?!? That may apply to individual cases of an illness or two in a family, but for an entire outbreak traced back to a specific food batch? <br />
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Also notice that in the report, such speculations of post-farm production contaminations in the retail/food handling chain or consumer handling procedures are strangely absent for the non-pasteurized products.<br />
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Also interesting is that all 73 outbreaks from the non-pasteurized products (milk and cheese) were determined to be due to bacteria, yet 13/30 (44%) (which is kind of strange in itself, since there were 48 total outbreaks from pasteurized products, so apparently they have no idea what the cause was in 18 of them?!?) of the pasteurized product caused outbreaks were due to norovirus. Is it safe for us to now assume that norovirus infections from non-pasteurized products are non-existant? Of course not. In layman's terms, what that indicates is that the CDC has not produced a real report, but rather a piece of propaganda with crappy/limited data. <br />
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Just look at the following graph of their data:<br />
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Hmmmm.... What's with the years 93-97? Are we to believe that milk related outbreaks were practically non-existant 20 years ago and all this disease is a new phenomenon or there is only a more recent pandemic developing? Or perhaps they can convince us that the seemingly exploding number of cases may be attributable to global warming? Naaaaaaaahhh... Again, chalk it up to crappy data.</div>
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<strong>Imagine: What if?</strong></div>
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For perspective, I always like to compare dissimilar things... For if you look at just the situation like that with raw milk by itself, the effects may look like they warrant government action. However, think about government incursions into other market sectors and you'll see they're spending a lot of money acting rashly for little, if any, effect.</div>
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So imagine, if you will, the government applying this same process they are using to attack raw milk producers to something like motorcycles. I'd bet there are a lot more deaths attributable to motorcycles in a single month than in what we saw them report over 13 years of raw milk consumption. What if they attacked that industry in favor of only allowing people to drive around in four wheel cages because they are so much more safe? "But, but, but... wait a minute. Motorcycles are much more cost efficient and burn less fossil fuels", you might say. Similar to the war on raw milk producers, "Big deal, it will save on deaths, period. So suck it up" is their answer.</div>
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Let's get even more drastic and say they ban automobiles too and force you to take trains or buses without regard to inconveniences or limitations on personal mobility. Well, that's essentially what they are doing with raw milk. There is absolutely no cost/benefit analysis at all, just half-assed "studies" and "reports" that highlight scary things and downplay or even just plain hide the not-so-scary facts and the personal benefits. In effect, they're making a minor problem seem so much bigger and scarier than it really is.</div>
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Of course it will be hard for them to take on the motorcycle or automobile manufacturing giants. But it sure isn't hard for the CDC, FDA and state health agencies to gang up and destroy small family farmers living on meager sales of raw milk products. Just look at what <a href="http://uncertainoutcomes.blogspot.com/2013/02/americans-under-attack-by-own-government.html" target="_blank">they did to Joe and Denise Dixon from Morningland Dairy</a>.</div>
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<strong>So what's the bottomline here?</strong></div>
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Well, according to the data sets in that most recent report from the CDC, a total of 3 people died and a few thousand more got sick allegedly from consuming both raw and pasteurized milk products over a 13 year period. Considering the hundreds of millions of people in the US who might drink milk and eat cheese every day, those numbers prove the overall risks to be <strong>quite miniscule</strong>. </div>
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If you start looking for the number of court cases involving these small family farm raw milk producers, you'll see they're mostly farmers fighting big government, not product liability claims. The CDC and health agencies are spending considerable resources attacking the smaller raw milk producers and trying to put them out of business apparently only because they have been associated with more outbreaks (and they also have less deep pockets to fight back), but those producers also service smaller pools of consumers. So the effect of outbreaks attributable to them would be much more limited than those associated with the larger factory farm producers who do pasteurize their products. They are therefore expending scarce resources attacking those who put less people at risk of major large-scale outbreaks which could probably be better used elsewhere for real problems, not these imaginary ones.</div>
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So, as always, believe half of what you see and none of what you hear. Always question everything. Especially question it if it comes from a government agency, because their sole reason for existance is a perceived problem (whether one exists or not). So if there are no problems, you can be sure they're certainly working hard to create the appearance of one.</div>
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They came for our cigarettes. Then they came for our water wasting toilets and gave us ones you have to flush more to get rid of number 2's. Then they came for our incandescent light bulbs and gave us more toxic ones. Now they're coming for our raw milk and even our guns. When will it end? Or more importantly, how will it end?</div>
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<strong>(Update: 5 Mar 13)</strong></div>
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<a href="http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/01/01/cdc-misrepresents-raw-milk-statistics.aspx" target="_blank">This "Scary Drink" May Resolve Your Troubling Health Issues</a>, 1 Jan 12 - According to Dr Mercola the CDC may be misrepresenting those two deaths they linked to raw milk and they may be attributable to a specific type of cheese, <a href="http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2010/05/queso-fresco-cheese-with-a-reputation/" target="_blank">Queso Fresco</a>, that is illegal under FDA regulations. </div>
Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-50944360453044553102013-03-03T16:11:00.000-05:002013-03-03T16:21:46.517-05:00What do NY's Smoking Ban and NY SAFE Act Have in Common?Simply put, they are both egregious infringements on individual rights to own and use property as seen fit.<br />
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Smokers have lived with numerous assaults on their personal decisions for years, but the smoking ban rose to another level and attacked small business owners throughout the state effectively denying them use of their personal property, that they worked hard for and built, for a specific purpose as if they were nothing more than caretakers of public property.<br />
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This is certainly not a partisan party issue. The final votes in the Assembly and Senate were greatly mixed showing both parties infiltrated with control freaks.<br />
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Democrats: Assembly 84 yes - 11 no ~ Senate 20 yes - 4 no<br />
Republicans: Assembly 13 yes - 33 no ~ Senate 37 yes - 0 no<br />
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<div>
Assemblyman Daniel Hooker’s comments made on the floor of the Assembly during debate on the smoking ban, Wednesday, March 26th, 2003:</div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I am from a rural district as well, and while we don’t have any cities, we do have a lot of restaurants, taverns, and diners, and this bill will hurt their business. We also have a lot of VFW Posts, American Legion Posts, and Marine Corps League Posts. I can’t help but think of the irony of the situation where a soldier or Marine comes home from the war, goes into a local VFW for a beer and a cigarette, and the bartender says "I’m sorry, young man, while you were overseas fighting for freedom, your State Assembly was quietly legislating it away here at home."</blockquote>
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However, Mr. Speaker, I am chiefly opposed to this bill because it presumes that people are incapable of thinking and acting for themselves without the government telling them what to do.</blockquote>
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At present, people are free to choose to work in an environment that is smoke free or not. A lot of waitresses who smoke choose to work in a bar specifically because it is a smoke-friendly environment. This bill would limit that freedom.</blockquote>
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I don’t smoke but believe that others should be free to smoke if they choose to. </blockquote>
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I am not insensitive to the health hazards of smoking. My Dad smoked, and he died of lung cancer. Cause and effect? Probably, but he died a free man who made his own choices. </blockquote>
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My general philosophy is that our government spends way too much time telling people what to do and this seems like a good example of that practice. </blockquote>
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I am opposed. </blockquote>
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Even though I wasn't from his district, I had written Mr Hooker to thank him for his stand, and he replied with a hand-written and personally signed note providing me with the full text of his speech. All I got back from my own two representatives were form letters praising the great courageous stand they took standing with the majority to figuratively lynch a minority constituency.</div>
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We don't want to merely die like Dan Hooker's dad as free men, <strong>we want to live our lives as free men</strong>, unmolested by tyranny.</div>
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Why am I writing about this long dead issue now? Well, first of all, it's NOT dead, it was just a lost squirmish in the never-ending battle for liberty. And when it was a raging battle, we were severely chastized during that crusade for even insinuating that this assault on individual property rights would snowball down the slippery slope. Yet today, we have Mayor Bloomberg assaulting individual rights nearly every day with stop and frisk and even denying your right to choose how big of a soft drink you'd like to buy. Bloomberg rules NYC with an iron fist, but his crusades, especially against the 2nd Amendment are affecting people outside his jurisdiction. We also have Gov Cuomo, rushing through the ill-conceived NY SAFE Act to attack another group of citizens to deny them their 2nd Amendment rights to own certain property to defend themselves, their families, and their property.</div>
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The assaults won't ever end until enough people wake up to just say <strong>NO</strong>! We must honor the Constitution's legal framework that was set up to defend individual rights against usurpations of the collective and the tyrannical majority. And just saying no once or twice here or there isn't enough. We <strong>must demand that all such laws be reviewed and those that infringe on individual liberty must be rescinded or repealed</strong>. A single such law makes a precedent for others to follow.</div>
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There's a reason for the many levels of government and the central powers are enumerated and severely limited. Even statewide laws should be extremely limited. Where freedom of association comes in is at the local level. Don't like the colors your neighbor may paint his house, then join a local homeowners association and dictate away to attract like-minded people to your neighborhood sort of like what's going on in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiryas_Joel,_New_York" target="_blank">Kiryas Joel</a>.</div>
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I can go on and on comparing the smoking ban and the NY SAFE Act to a myriad of social issues pertaining to individual rights such as one with the Defense of Marriage Act and the individual right of a citizen to marry whomever he or she pleases that is essential to maintain your right of free association.</div>
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As I continually stress, if you petition the government to limit the rights of any other individual to do anything you personally dislike, you empower them to come after you to limit yours. Think long and hard about it and please ~ <strong>Help stop the madness!</strong>Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-51363979203499841692013-02-22T12:51:00.000-05:002013-03-25T11:52:14.589-04:00NY SAFE Act - A Crime in ItselfMy letter to my county legislator requesting support in condemning this egregious act.<br />
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Sir,<br />
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I'm writing to you, as the county legislator for the district in which I reside, to register my disapproval of the NY SAFE Act and request you please support a County resolution to condemn it. </div>
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With the fast and furious loss of so many of our rights as citizens of a free republic in the past decade under the guise of necessity in the war on terror that brought us the Patriot Act, NDAA, targeted assassinations, proliferation of swat team raids, stop and frisk, TSA gropings, and DHS immigration checkpoints and suspicionless searches miles inland from our physical borders, to mention just a few, our second amendment rights are the last defense that we can ill afford to lose. When is it going to stop?<br />
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The right to defend ourselves, our family, and our property is a natural right. The police forces cannot physically perform such a duty, for if it is even possible to contact them during a life-threatening situation, they often arrive well after the crime has been committed and the perpetrator long gone. Even if they could always arrive in time, the Supreme Court of the US has consistently ruled that police forces have no special duty to protect anyone but themselves. Mayor Bloomberg's own NYC lawyers are using such defense in a lawsuit by Joseph Lozito against the NYPD, where officers present and actively engaged in a citywide manhunt for the murderer Maksim Gelman allegedly hid behind a locked subway door to protect themselves and watched as Gelman attacked and seriously wounded Mr Lozito until after he had subdued the culprit himself.<br />
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<a href="http://gothamist.com/2013/01/27/city_argues_nypd_had_no_special_dut.php" target="_blank">http://gothamist.com/2013/01/<wbr></wbr>27/city_argues_nypd_had_no_<wbr></wbr>special_dut.php</a><br />
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I find it amazingly ironic that so many like Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg are mindlessly and emotionally engaged in trying to disarm American citizens and have succeeded here in NY in rushing through this horrendous act. Yet the NY State Constitution still clearly states "The defense and protection of the state and of the United States is an obligation of all persons within the state." So our government servants expect us to be required to help defend the state and our country even after they've disarmed us from bearing any of the most effective self-defense tools, but police departments and officers they commission to enforce the laws that they've enacted have no legally binding duty to protect us citizens from criminals while we are taxed to pay for their services. That's insane.<br />
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It's even more disturbing in light of seeing Mayor Bloomberg's own security forces made up of NYPD officers follow a reporter who was armed with nothing more than a soda for simply asking the mayor a question and attempting to harrass him, demanding he show identification while acting well outside their jurisdiction .<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCC-rEx81PE">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCC-rEx81PE</a><br />
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Again, I request you please support condemning this egregious Act and help us keep our state and country free.<br />
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Thank you,<br />
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v/r</div>
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Frank Koza</div>
Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-86213869609462829722013-02-21T04:15:00.000-05:002013-02-21T04:15:30.987-05:00There Just Ain't Enough Loot to Go Around!!!After years of egregious levels of taxation on tobacco products w/ big government spurred on by the anti-smoker cabal, a consequence of the Affordable Care Act brings a new scavenger to feast on the prey and the anti-smokers don't like it one bit. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/18/big-tobacco-and-anti-cancer-activists-agree-health-provision-goes-too-far/?wprss=rss_homepage" target="_blank">According to the Washington Post</a>, one of the anti-smoker orgs, the American Cancer Society, "worries that the high surcharges could make health insurance unaffordable to cigarette smokers, who are disproportionately low income". <br />
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They have to feign that they are at least somewhat concerned about the best interests of their prey, but what they are really saying is there just ain't enough loot to go around. <br />
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This new assault on smokers comes years after the 1998 <a href="http://oag.ca.gov/tobacco/msa" target="_blank">Master Settlement Agreement (MSA)</a> between seven of the tobacco companies and a number of states forcing big tobacco to disgorge some $206 billion over the course of some 25 years supposedly to pay them off for years of state medical payments they claim was for illnesses caused by smoking. That money didn't come from the companies themselves. No, the companies were allowed to raise prices to pull it out of their customers w/ provisions in the agreement that were designed to inhibit other companies from gaining market share which were not party to the original suit because they had no liability. <br />
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What a nifty little deal that was. The anti-smoker cartel, to include the newly empathetic American Cancer Society, set it up just that way so they could reap a large portion of the spoils for all their hard work churning out volumes of propaganda to justify the looting of smokers and blame it all on big tobacco as if that made it all morally right. Of course, they started crying they were getting shorted years ago when the states started deciding to keep more of the money for themselves that they were supposed to earmark for the other thieves in their back room dealings.<br />
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Since then, both the federal government and all the states have been busy raising taxes on tobacco products here and there whenever they could to lay claim to even more loot, even though our very own Congressional Research Service published a report on the proposed MSA before the deal was struck called, "<a href="http://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/crsreports/crsdocuments/97-1053_E.pdf" target="_blank">The Proposed Tobacco Settlement: Who Pays for the Health Costs of Smoking?</a>" That report estimated that smokers imposed no financial costs on the rest of society at the current tax rates at the time.<br />
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The funniest thing is that the anti-smokers and government agencies have claimed they've been doing all this to smokers for their health, because of the claims that smoking shortens the average lifespan by some 7 years or so. So now they're going to be force these people they 'saved' to go up against the Obamacare "Death Panels" to decide if there's enough wealth creation left in them to make them worth saving for a few more years buy providing medical care.<br />
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So they came for the smokers and after having picked our bones clean they are still coming back to get more blood out of the stone. They went after the drugs and imposed similarly egregious forfeiture laws to steal as much from drug users as they can. They're going after small farmers and driving many out of business for horrendous crimes of selling raw milk and cheese products made from raw milk <a href="http://uncertainoutcomes.blogspot.com/2013/02/americans-under-attack-by-own-government.html" target="_blank">like they did to Morningland Dairy</a> to steal their property from them. <br />
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It's one huge lawless free for all feast for the predators and scavengers alike, operating under the guise of law of a corrupt government and faux legal system to perpetrate their 'legal' plunder.<br />
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If you cannot see this blatant stealing going on right in front of your face, well... at least file it away so you can identify the process when they're done feasting on their current victims and move on to come for everything you own.<br />
<br />Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-49148560924179581302013-02-13T03:25:00.001-05:002013-02-13T17:31:26.098-05:00State of the Union - Ideological Subversion Nearly CompletePresident Obama's State of the Union (SOTU) address was business as usual. More government proposed to fix what more government broke. You just can't fix a problem with the same mindset that created it in the first place. Seriously, I was hoping Obamacare would provide him with some free contraception to slow down his procreative abilities of spawning additional government programs, but alas...<br />
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Soviet KGB defector, Yuri Besmenov, already had a better grasp of today's SOTU nearly 30 years ago than the current sitting president. Please watch his interview with with G. Edward Griffin from back in 1984 at the link below. It will give you a much better idea of where we are today than any of the political posturing you've heard tonight from President Obama or any of the mainstream media analysis of what we saw. It's like he predicted everything Obama was going to say.<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_xdBnFPqOI&list=PL4CDAB99FAB5980BA" target="_blank">Soviet Subversion of the Free World Press</a><br />
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In that interview, Besmenov described the process of ideological subversion, a simple legitimate and overt four step process consisting of: 1) Demoralization, 2) Destabilization, 3) Crisis, 4) Normalization. Interestingly, Besmenov used the terms of social justice and equality to describe the mindset behind what he called the useful idiots so demoralized to hate the ideology of their nation. For destabilization, the subverter works on the main essentials such as the economy, defense systems and foreign relations. It's purpose is to change the perception of reality, which we witnessed in the SOTU. Besmenov pretty much predicted 30 years ago that we would allow the schmuks to bring the country to crisis and promise the people all sorts of goodies in promise of a paradise on earth to destabilize the economy, eliminate the principles of free market competition (Obamacare and bailouts, as well as the <a href="http://uncertainoutcomes.blogspot.com/2013/02/americans-under-attack-by-own-government.html" target="_blank">decimation of small businesses like family farms</a>) and to put a big brother government in DC with benevolent dictators like Mondale (now Obama) who will go to Moscow to kiss the bottoms of a new generation of Soviet assassins (Obama's new after-election flexibility whispered to Putin)... <br />
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IMHO, we're well into the normalization phase with the Patriot Act, NDAA, Agenda 21, drone wars, targeted killings, checkpoints, swat raids, stop and frisk, the Fed destroying the value of our currency and many other freedom stealing actions coming at us with blinding speed or already now in standard operation across the US. Once they succeed in disarming us, it's all over...<br />
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The only solution and hope is to educate ourselves and our children to better understand what is going on around us. We're in a state of war and have been for a long time against enemies determined to destroy the remnants of what was the last free country on the face of the earth.<br />
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The interview is about an hour and a half. Also a worthy read is Besemov's <a href="http://archive.org/details/BezmenovLoveLetterToAmerica" target="_blank">Love Letter to America</a>.<br />
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Enjoy... Good luck and God Bless...Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-8572001105569740152013-02-09T04:00:00.000-05:002013-02-23T14:33:55.824-05:00Americans Under Attack by Own GovernmentMorningland Dairy was raided last month and 18 tons of cheese destroyed by bureaucrats and their minions "just following orders". <br />
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This business is not a fly-by-night operation, but a family business that operated for over 30 years with no complaints lodged against them except by government regulation makers.<br />
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This is a crime. And so many are happy when Obamacare will come between you and your doctor because it's "free". One has to wonder how wonderful they'll think this free service is when doctors start collecting personal information and becoming government informants and ordering you how to live your life rather than giving you recommendations. This is what happens when the government "health" industry comes between farmers and their customers. <br />
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We're under attack. Wake up.<br />
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<strong>(Updated below: 9 Feb 13):</strong><br />
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Another video shows questions asked of representatives of the county sheriff's department. <br />
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Now this guy doesn't know about gun confiscation during Katrina. He also doesn't know about the government's refusal to allow the business owners here to have their cheese tested before issuing a confiscate and destroy order or about the government "health nazi's" attacks on raw milk producers and other small business owners just working hard trying to make an honest living across the nation.<br />
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They aren't all just jackbooted thugs. Many of these guys in public offices are just uninformed people following orders thinking they're doing their jobs. The answer is education and to get the information out there like Sheriff Mack is doing with the <a href="http://cspoa.org/" target="_blank">Constitutional Sheriff's and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA)</a>.<br />
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This should go viral and hopefully honest, hard-working Americans will step up to demand that the government agencies responsible provide just compensation to what they stole from these family farmers. Government bails out banks and corporations who get in trouble from their own incompetence and they bail out disaster victims such as those of hurricane Sandy who lived where government officials deemed it was safe for them to build, but destroy small family businesses like this example. <br />
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Reach out, speak out, educate and overcome!<br />
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And to government officials, sheriffs, peace officers, and judges who may read this. We are patriots who helped build this country and you work for us. People like these farmers create wealth. We are NOT your enemy. Please, learn how to do your jobs and protect us from tyrannical bureaucrats.<br />
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<strong>(Update 2 - more links)</strong><br />
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1) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUoyB3b5phQ" target="_blank">Interview of Joe and Denise Dixon, owners of Morningland Dairy</a><br />
2) <a href="http://hartkeisonline.com/2010/10/11/family-farm-ordered-to-destroy-50000-pounds-of-cheese/" target="_blank">Family Farm Odered to Destroy 50,000 lbs of Cheese</a> - 11 Oct 10<br />
3) <a href="http://truthfarmer.com/2013/01/18/morningland-dairy-the-final-solution/" target="_blank">Morningland Dairy - The Final Solution</a> - 18 Jan 13<br />
4) <a href="http://healthimpactnews.com/2011/wisconsin-judge-rules-against-raw-milk-farmers/" target="_blank">Wisconsin Judge Rules Against Raw Milk Farmers</a> - 23 Feb 13Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-39654186107672140132013-02-08T01:33:00.000-05:002013-02-08T01:33:33.392-05:00Monetary PolicyI can't get this song out of my head.<br />
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Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-88754682162829783752013-01-25T16:25:00.001-05:002013-01-25T17:05:31.940-05:00War on Smokers Still SmolderingGood afternoon, Cattle.<br />
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Ann Althouse <a href="http://althouse.blogspot.com/2013/01/millions-of-smokers-could-be-priced-out.html" target="_blank">reminds us that the war on smokers hasn't ended</a>.<br />
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The latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/06-13-Smoking_Reduction.pdf" target="_blank">Raising the Excise Tax on Cigarettes: Effects on Health and the Federal Budget</a>, reminds us that the government looks at us all as cattle. They raise us for our 'milk', but only keep us around as long as it's profitable for them to do so. They've been doing this for smokers for the past two decades. The war on fat has started. After full implementation of the Affordable Care Act, they'll be monitoring all of us in a similar fashion and charging you accordingly.<br />
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May I remind you that the 1998 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, <a href="http://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/crsreports/crsdocuments/97-1053_E.pdf" target="_blank">Who Pays for the Health Costs of Smoking?</a> determined that smokers do not appear to impose net financial costs on the rest of society. They estimated that tobacco taxes have apparently resulted in net financial gain to both the federal and state governments at the prevailing tax rates at the time. Governments save on old-age medical care, social security, and nursing home care due to the estimated earlier death of smokers. And that was done at the prevailing tax rates in '98 which were much, much lower than they are today. And they still want MORE.<br />
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Wait til the full effects of Agenda 21 hit and they start moving the population to the gulags. Much more on that to come, so stay tuned. Or if you want to do a little research yourself, a good place to start is looking up Rosa Koire and her site, <a href="http://www.democratsagainstunagenda21.com/" target="_blank">Democrats Against UN Agenda 21</a>.<br />
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They've sold our children into perpetual slavery. Now they want our guns. Our liberty is under a multi-pronged attack. When do we make a stand?<br />
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<strong>Update:</strong> <br />
<br />
It appears <a href="http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2013/01/25/smoking-still-takes-a-heavy-toll-in-us-cdc-finds" target="_blank">the CDC isn't done with the shakedown</a>.Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-86677856366495909552013-01-25T04:34:00.001-05:002013-01-25T04:47:44.117-05:00The Battle of Athens, Tennessee, 1946All this crap about gun control and useful idiots like Piers Morgan, who isn't even a real American, leading the Obama deception asking why do citizens need firearms like the AR-15.<br />
<br />
How come we don't ever hear about the <a href="http://constitution.org/mil/tn/batathen.htm" target="_blank">Battle of Athens</a> which took place in 1946? Returning WWII vets, some of the first Oathkeepers, took on corrupt local officials to keep local elections fair and honest after State and Federal authorities failed them. Another account, with similar incidents in other areas, can be found <a href="http://jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/athens.htm" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<br />
I just found out about it from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV8i3dHGBKE" target="_blank">theoldmarine1 with his posting of this video on youtube</a>.<br />
<br />
Keep the faith and hold on to your arms.Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-38044264121373866212013-01-22T16:55:00.001-05:002013-01-22T16:55:13.119-05:00ARMAGEDDON - Mark SteynMark Steyn gave a particularly insightful speech (links at bottom) about the decline of America as a world power in various concepts in his book, "After America, Get Ready for Armageddon", which drills down towards the roots of what we see going on today. In it, he touches on subjects that fit neatly into the categories he has crafted into an acronym for Armageddon:<br />
<ul>
<li>A - Addiction</li>
<li>R - Redistribution</li>
<li>M - Monopoly</li>
<li>A - Arteriosclerosis</li>
<li>G - Global Retreat</li>
<li>E - Educational Social Engineering</li>
<li>D - Decay</li>
<li>D - Disintegration</li>
<li>O - Open Season</li>
<li>N - Nuke's Away</li>
</ul>
In this speech, he talks about many things that I have been highlighting some examples here, but I still fail to capture the intrinsic interrelations as well as Mark has in this speech. <br />
<br />
Take a look, for it's well worth your time. I'm not going to add anything here in this post, but if you see anything in his speech that warrants additional discussion based on what you know, feel free to leave a comment or two.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe29XRICMqE" target="_blank">Part 1</a><br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQeHSXzvM84" target="_blank">Part 2</a><br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytL0PSJPIoM" target="_blank">Part 3</a><br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKpkof-Aie4" target="_blank">Part 4</a>Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-77190529325835940992013-01-19T06:35:00.000-05:002013-01-19T06:35:22.751-05:00Oppositional Defiant Disorder<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002504/" target="_blank">Oppositional Defiant Disorder</a> is a childhood pyschological disorder that could lead to <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001917/" target="_blank">Conduct Disorder</a> and/or <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001919/" target="_blank">Antisocial Personality Disorder</a> later in life. (wink, wink)<br />
<br />
Everytime I read the <a href="http://www.psychiatry.org/practice/dsm/dsm-iv-tr" target="_blank">DSM-IV</a>, I'm totally amazed at how they classify natural human traits for the struggle to be free as diagnosable psychotic neuroses. For those who don't know what DSM-IV is, it's just similar to a diagnostic manual for your car as applied to diagnosing the horrible affliction known as human behavior.<br />
<br />
Home remedies for self-medication in adults used to include smoking tobacco and/or marijuana and imbibing alcoholic beverages. <br />
<br />
Psychiatrists and psychologists don't like self-medication for it cuts down on profits from office visits. Big Pharma doesn't like self-medication, as it cuts into their profits. Get ready for Obamacare. And after we're all diagnosed as psychotics, then they'll come for our guns.<br />
<br />
Oppositionally and Defiantly yours,<br />
Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-79278360219502069062013-01-19T06:17:00.000-05:002013-01-19T07:04:20.972-05:00Uncle Joe's ShackWe have a strange slang word , <strong><em>Uncle Tom</em></strong>, in our language that has come to be a slur to mean according to <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/uncle%20tom" target="_blank">on-line Merriam-Webster</a>: <br />
<br />
<ol>
<li><div class="scnt">
<span class="ssens"><strong>:</strong> a black who is overeager to win the approval of whites (as by obsequious behavior or uncritical acceptance of white values and goals) </span></div>
</li>
<li><div class="snum">
<span class="ssens"><strong>:</strong> a member of a low-status group who is overly subservient to or cooperative with authority <span class="vi"><the worst floor managers and supervisors by far are women … Some of them are regular <em>Uncle Toms</em>— Jane Fonda></span> </span></div>
</li>
</ol>
That certainly was not Harriet Beecher Stowe's intent, but that is lost on the prevailing attitudes of the heavily indoctrinated minds of today. Joan Hedrick <a href="http://www.loa.org/images/pdf/LOA_Hedrick_on_Stowe.pdf" target="_blank">discusses a little of how it has come about</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em><span style="font-family: Cheltenham-Book;"></span></em><br />
<em><span style="font-family: Cheltenham-Book;"></span></em><br />
<em><span style="font-family: Cheltenham-Book;"><div align="LEFT">
Grafted onto the minstrel tradition, the stage versions of Stowe’s novel often portrayed Stowe’s hero as a shuffling, humorous Sambo. </div>
</span><div align="LEFT">
The Christ-like pacifism that ennobled Stowe’s Tom appeared to many in the increasingly confrontational racial politics of the twentieth century as subservience, or as James Weldon Johnson wrote in 1912, “foolishly good”—behavior that became branded as “like Uncle Tom.”<span style="font-family: Cheltenham-Book;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Cheltenham-Book;"><div align="LEFT">
Stowe’s literary reputation, very high in the nineteenth century, was also declining as modernist critics viewed the work of Stowe and other politically motivated women writers as “melodramatic” and "sentimental.”<br />
</div>
</span></em><br /></blockquote>
Such critic's views and the slur that gained acceptance are pure poppycock. Uncle Tom's overt subservience was simply a survival technique in the face of an unbearable situation. It's no different than people today swallowing their pride, integrity, and opinions to please their masters and keep their job.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Even though Uncle Tom appeared overly subservient, he continued to perform other overt acts of resistance to the evils of slavery in testiment to the power of his faith. Specifically, he stood his ground refusing to beat other slaves when ordered to do so at a high cost of being severely beaten himself and he refused to give up information on runaways, Cassy and Emmeline, telling his evil master, Legree, that he would rather die than speak. He stood stoically defiant, refusing to capitulate or run away, always displaying great integrity, courage and faith in the face of adversity. Though he refuse to run away to seek freedom for himself, he encouraged others to do so and he was neither a snitch or a sell-out. <br />
<br />
As George Shelby spoke about the death of Uncle Tom upon setting his slaves free:<br />
<br />
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“<em>It was on his grave, my friends, that I resolved, before God, that I would never own another slave, while it is possible to free him; that nobody, through me, should ever run the risk of being parted from home and friends, and dying on a lonely plantation, as he died. So, when you rejoice in your freedom, think that you owe it to that good old soul, and pay it back in kindness to his wife and children. Think of your freedom, every time you see <span class="small-caps">uncle tom’s cabin; </span>and let it be a memorial to put you all in mind to follow in his steps, and be as honest and faithful and Christian as he was</em>.”</blockquote>
</div>
<br />
He built a cabin of faith which became a light for liberty. Though a fictional creation of Ms Stowe, he was a real man. He was a leader.<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>What Makes a Leader?</strong><br />
<br />
Uncle Tom's character reminds me of my favorite scene from "Scent of a Woman" where Col Frank Slade defends Charlie with an empassioned speech to the disciplinary board which was addressing a recommendation for his expulsion for similarly refusing to rat-out fellow classmates as Uncle Tom refused to divulge the whereabouts of fellow fugitive slaves:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/TKAxnB6Ap4o?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"As I came in here, I heard those words, cradle of leadership. Well, when the bough breaks the cradle will fall. And it has fallen here. It has <strong>fallen</strong>. Makers of men. Creaters of leaders. Be very careful what kind of leaders you're producing here." </blockquote>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I couldn't explain that any better.</div>
<br />
<br />
<strong>What We Have Today - The Building Uncle Joe's Shack</strong><br />
<br />
Today, we have people heading the government who call themselves leaders. They are representatives chosen to uphold the Constitutional basis for law, which unfortunately, all but a precious few totally disregard. Many graduated from the schools of indoctrination of false ideas where public service is code word for grab all you can for your own self interest.<br />
<br />
Now we have Uncle Joe Biden's committee making recommendations to please Dear Leader that resulted in <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/01/16/here-are-the-23-executive-orders-on-gun-safety-signed-today-by-the-president/" target="_blank">23 executive orders</a> that sell out our honest law-abiding citizens while doing little more than compel an already bankrupt government to spend even more money on mostly ineffective 'fixes'. Well, those fixes aren't exactly benign as <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/18/tax-dollars-for-gun-control/" target="_blank">this article in the Washington Post</a> informs us. I won't go into all of them here for there are plenty of observations out there like <a href="http://spellchek.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/obama-executive-actions-on-gun-control-already-a-success-as-the-first-gun-traffickers-identified/" target="_blank">this beauty from Spellchek</a> that hightlight problems with a few of them.<br />
<br />
This current crusade is following exactly the same process used by the anti-smokers aligned with government to run their campaign to dehumanize, demonize, and demoralize smokers through the medical community funded by money taken from smokers themselves. Those anti-smoking campaigns spilled over into property rights issues which resulted in bans in privately owned businesses, thus a taking of private property with no compensation. They laughed at us fighting those battles that it will spill over into other areas of our lives. The battles rage on over fatty foods and size of soft drinks, and now the right to bear arms. The slippery slope is indeed real. <br />
<br />
We have people like Mayor Corey Booker of Newark, NJ, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JKS1930kS4" target="_blank">calling for snitches</a> and offering taxpayer cash to the rats.<br />
<br />
A simple Google search will show <a href="https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp=les%3Bepsugrerhigh&gs_rn=1&gs_ri=hp&gs_mss=cops%20raid%20w&tok=WzwcgTI4Zzv0WM9kHOAgyQ&cp=32&gs_id=3i&xhr=t&q=cops+raid+wrong+house+informants&es_nrs=true&pf=p&tbo=d&sclient=psy-ab&oq=cops+raid+wrong+house+informants&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.41248874,d.dmQ&fp=faea9cf7a79d8859&biw=1097&bih=885" target="_blank">some examples</a> of the increasing frequency of wrong house raids, many based on unreliable informants working for authorities and getting paid by mitigating their own troubles with the law.<br />
<br />
The examples go on and on and on and on....<br />
<br />
Have we built that rat ship where we're asked constantly to sell out our neighbors and subject them to the disciplinary whims of our slave masters used to increase their power over us? The current class of politicians acting only for their own self-interest do that quite well. Uncle Joe is merely one of the DC elite helping to build a <strong>shack of bondage</strong>, which among other things commandeers the medical community to collect information to rat out their patients.<br />
<br />
<strong>Where We Need to Go for a Better Tomorrow</strong><br />
<br />
Again, there are no such things as "inalienable rights", even those certain rights enshrined in the Constitution's Bill of Rights as I tried to convey with "<a href="http://uncertainoutcomes.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-hell-are-rights-anyway.html" target="_blank">What the Hell Are Rights Anyway?</a>" Those rights are indeed fragile as butterfly wings. There is only struggle to maintain what rights we do have, so struggle we must. <br />
<br />
<div>
Let us remember the lessons from Uncle Tom and look upon the shack that Uncle Joe is building to strengthen the tyrannical bonds which enslave us with disdain to give us strength to maintain liberty.<br />
<br />
We must not capitulate. We must not sell out our neighbors into the bonds of tyranny. The path chosen, if the right path, will not be easy as Col Slade reminded us is always "<em>too damn hard</em>." It never will be easy to do the right thing and though the political elite keep complaining about how hard their job is, they never seem to ever go down the right path. Speak out and give them directions. Most importantly, we need to follow that path ourselves and fight for the freedom of others as well as for our own.<br />
<br />
<br />
</div>
Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-19701685499027881732013-01-19T05:09:00.000-05:002013-01-19T05:09:15.918-05:00Unequal JusticeDavid Gregory, a TV news anchorman, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/guns/2013/jan/11/miller-david-gregory-gets-scott-free/" target="_blank">is not prosecuted</a> for displaying a prohibited ammunition magazine on a nation-wide broadcast conducted in Washington DC. <br />
<br />
Not so for at least five military veterans who were mercilessly prosecuted to include <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/guns/2013/jan/4/miller-if-youre-not-david-gregory-extended-version/" target="_blank">James Brinkley, an Army veteran and federal employee</a>. <br />
<br />
Others include <a href="http://forums.officer.com/t116110/" target="_blank">Marine Cpl Melroy Cort</a>, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/guns/2012/jul/1/miller-dc-arrests-vet-arrested-unregistered-ammuni/" target="_blank">former Army Specialist Adam Meckler</a>, Sgt Matthew Corrigan, and Lt Augustine Kim (links to stories of Corrigan and Kim are in the story on Meckler).<br />
<br />
I'm sure those are only the tip of the iceberg. These cases indicate there is something very seriously wrong with the convoluted legal system in the US. That's what it is, <em>a legal system</em>, for there is no justice.<br />
<br />
Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-52195813922075564862013-01-17T02:19:00.000-05:002013-01-17T02:19:09.431-05:00Fun With Numbers - Sexual Psychobabble BullshitEvery once in a while psychologists come out with another groundbreaking study on human sexual behavior and they generally claim men are more promiscuous than women for such and such a reason with various mating hypotheses trying to relate them to Darwinian theories of evolution. A <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/opinion/sunday/darwin-was-wrong-about-dating.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" target="_blank">recent article in the New York Times</a> attempts to dispel the three most generally held assumptions:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>"men are less selective about whom they’ll sleep with; men like casual sex more than women; and men have more sexual partners over a lifetime."</em></blockquote>
<br />
<br />
I always considered those assumptions to be pure bunk. Consider which sex is more likely to have a greater number of partners on average in a population with an equal amount of men to women in mated pairs. In any such a scenario, for one of the men to be promiscuous with more than one woman then one of the women would also have to be similarly as promiscuous with more than one man. And for each new partner a man acquires, one more of the women will have to take on a new partner. <br />
<br />
Let's look at a scenario where there's a population of five men and five women where four of the women are totally monogamous with one partner each and the fifth is a hooker who had intercourse with all five of the males for figuring out which sex would have more partners over a lifetime. You would have four of the five men having two partners each and one of the five with only one partner for a total of nine different partners and divide by five for an average of 1.8 partners each over a lifetime. The women would be the one with five partners and four with just one partner each for the exact same average of 1.8 partners over a lifetime. So it's a wash and it always will be. It is impossible to conclude that men have more partners over a lifetime in a society with an equal population of each sex according to the math. Of course I'm limiting this strictly to heterosexual relationships or encounters because these studies deal with assumptions to support Darwinian theories of evolution affects our choices in mating and procreation. <br />
<br />
Now where the assumption that men have more sexual partners holds true is that there are no populations in geographically defined areas where the populations of men to women are exactly equal. The real reason why women tend to have fewer partners on average than men in most modern societies has less to do with women being more selective or that men like casual sex more, but that there are generally more women than men at any given time because women live longer on average and despite that would give them more time to take on additional partners over a longer lifetime, they simply have less opportunity because there is a smaller pool for them to choose from for either prospective mates or casual sex partners. Thus women on average would by necessity have to be less selective or risk being left out of the mating game. It has more to do with numbers than the Darwinesque gene search for superior genes theories we're told it has to be. Sorry, ladies, the odds are just stacked against you. Similarly, in an isolated society where the men vastly outnumber the women, then one can expect women would on average have more sexual partners in a lifetime than the men and there they can afford to be much more selective.<br />
<br />
It's very rarely really what it seems at face value no matter what the experts tell us. Consider the implications of the pure numbers game, carefully read that article again, and consider how you form your opinions in relation to what the experts are trying to sell us.<br />
<br />Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-91327279348286069082012-12-30T16:22:00.000-05:002013-01-01T13:14:20.781-05:00Monkeys and IndoctrinationI heard an analogy once using monkeys and it goes something like this:<br />
<br />
Take 5 monkeys and put them in a small room with a stepladder bolted to the floor and a bunch of bananas hanging from the ceiling over the stepladder. Every time any of the monkeys attempt to climb the stepladder, spray them all up against the wall with a firehose. After a time, they will all come to associate touching the ladder with being sprayed and will give up trying to obtain the bananas. <br />
<br />
Then take one of the original monkeys out and replace it with a new one. As soon as the new monkey attempts to climb the ladder, the other four, not wanting to get sprayed with the firehose will beat him mercilessly every time he reaches for the ladder. Once he finally associates touching the ladder with getting beat up, remove another one of the original monkeys to repeat the process until all the original monkeys were replaced and what you have left are a bunch of monkeys programmed to not ever go near the ladder, but none of them know the original reason why, only associating it with the beatings.<br />
<br />
Pretty much how Congress got to be the way it is, isn't it?<br />
<br />
But more importantly, that's how many of us have come to hold many of the opinions we do - getting beat up by the masses. Think about why you believe what you do.Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-3240404100438718422012-12-25T22:19:00.001-05:002012-12-25T22:28:56.192-05:00Fiscal Cliff? ...or Three Card Monte?Fiscal Cliff, my butt. <br />
<br />
Yea, we're all fools. Government has perfected the three card monte scam. It's called '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matching_funds" target="_blank">matching funds</a>' and this whole fiasco of a debt crisis is just a show. Taxes always go up, because they all keep creating new programs that need funds. It's all just a show of them deciding from which vehicle do they get their loot, but it still comes from <strong>your</strong> pockets. Just take a look at how states abuse the <a href="http://taxfoundation.org/article/trend-9-state-abuse-medicaid-matching-funds" target="_blank">matching funds of the Medicaid program</a>. That's only the tip of the iceberg as there are literally hundreds of matching funds projects going on.<br />
<br />
It's not rocket science. We hear about it all the time with things like this article, "<a href="http://www.governing.com/columns/public-finance/effect-federal-budget-cuts-states-localities.html" target="_blank">The Effect of Federal Budget Cuts on States and Localities</a>", yet no one seems to grasp the concept. It's a pretty good illustration of the dilemma, but there is one minor thing in the article disturbs me. He wrote:<br />
<em> </em><br />
<em></em><br />
<em></em><br />
<em><blockquote class="tr_bq">
Finally, there are indirect cost-cutting or tax-increasing measures. Under federal tax laws, homeowners now write off their mortgage interest costs. Over the years, this favoritism has driven up housing prices. Real estate values, now in very bad shape, serve as the foundation for local property taxes. But the feds lose $100 billion or so from the interest deduction. That makes it an attractive target for reducing the federal deficit. But such a step might permanently bend down future growth in housing prices and accordingly, the property tax base.</blockquote>
</em><br />
<br />
They don't give a rat's patootey about how much your home is 'worth' on the market. Market value has absolutely nothing to do with tax assessments and their property tax base. All they care about is how much of your money they need to extract to enact their delusions of grandeur. The tax 'base' is simply the total number of taxable properties located within their jurisdiction from which they can plunder the loot. For example, I used to live in a town with a considerable number of government facilities, courthouses, and religious exempted properties for it was the county seat. Anyone who owned a similar property in a town without all those exempted properties paid much, much less in taxes. Two similar properties on the same road could have vastly different tax levies simply depending on a township property line being between them. Nothing drives away homeowners of average means more than unbalanced giveaways in tax-exempt properties. They have their operating budget full of promises to people to vote for them, and they will extract it from you one way or another. The rich tend to settle in those locations, for it's another giveaway they use to simply write off the taxes.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
We all know this. Your real estate agent will tell you when you're looking at houses on the market and if they don't, it's usually the first question we ask, "What are the taxes?" We all tend to make the decision with the local tax structure as part of the equation. So why do we lose our sense of reality when watching them go through deliberations on capitol hill in discussing their plans on how to best rape us?<br />
<br />
Bush gave you a 'tax break' so the federal government has less money to match funds for schools and other public works projects concocted by our geniuses in state governments. So it's practically guaranteed they will raise your taxes somehow, somewhere locally. During the Bush years, my property taxes doubled over the time he was in office. My salary didn't double, the schools didn't magically have 2x as many kids to buy that many more teachers for. Bush gave us back a little on the income tax, and the state took it away and then some. But no one ever, ever, and I mean ever talks about that. Well, my dad used to talk about it in the 60's. He'd say, "<strong><em>Whenever the government gives you a dollar, they reach around into your other pocket to take out two to give the one to you and keep one for themselves for the trouble.</em></strong>" You can bet on it.<br />
<br />
I remember perusing through the grants once on the National Endowment for the Arts website some years ago. I was horrified to see them handing out $5000 grants to hosts for a monthly literary club reading session to buy refreshments! It wasn't even to buy the actual books, it was for boosting their energy with some fat pills during their exhausting sessions, probably for them to maintain enough stamina to break out the poker chips after they were done reading. If that doesn't disgust you or you start asking yourself how you can get your hands on some of that loot, then it's too late for America. Just turn out the lights. And it's not only there. That crap is throughout the federal budget, as the TV commercial guy says, "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPC3mLNL3B0" target="_blank">free money from the government</a>". Why do we continue to let them do this? The problem is, the government gets it from us, it's a multi-pronged attack between the federal, state, and local governments and this is why we're broke.<br />
<br />
Maria Bartiromo was right when she blew off steam during her recent <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5YWr75pSY0" target="_blank">interview of Senator Cardin (D) from Maryland</a>. Unless they get rid of all the loopholes and deductions and make the tax codes transparent and fair, the scammers can always hide where they're stealing from you and how much. This will only happen if we all collectively stop chasing the 'free' money and force them. Yea, she was a wee bit over the top, but I loved it for he had it coming. When he said he wouldn't "<em>vote today on changing a tax code provision without knowing the impact of it</em>", he was lying through his teeth. They know full well all the impacts over every tax provision, for each and every one was enacted for two things, steal your money and influence your behavior.<br />
<br />
There is no fiscal cliff. It's simply a fiction created to allow them to raise taxes and take more from you so they can keep doing things that they are not specifically authorized under the enumerated powers of the Constitution in order to grow their power. <br />
<br />
As with three card monte, the only way to truly win is not to play.Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-19764377132132524932012-12-19T13:12:00.000-05:002012-12-31T10:23:45.226-05:00People ControlHere we go again. Another deranged psychopath and all things important are dropped to start attacking the second amendment.<br />
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The interpretations of the second amendment that a bunch of rebels who just fought a bloody war to overthrow control of a tyrannical government would so carelessly cast their fortunes under the creation of a similar one while adamantly preserving their right to keep a hunting rifle always amaze me. The second amendment has nothing to do with hunting rifles for game or guns to defend property against common criminals, it's the right to bare arms, period. <br />
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One of the arguments that anti-gun people use is for that sure, a few may be allowed for personal self-defense, presumably citizen against criminal. However, using that same argument against our founders' thoughts, the King's army was protecting them so no need for those pesky rebellious colonists to have armories and military grade weapons of their own. That first shot heard around the world was against the British march to seize their armories at Lexington and Concord to disarm the colonists. They would take them, but they didn't care about their hunting rifles, they wanted their cannons. Those patriots who founded this country and wrote that Constitution were traitorous rebels. Representatives from several of the original colonies had very serious reservations over handing power over to a central government to maintain a standing army and giving up their arms as that would have meant they risked their lives overthrowing one tyrannical government for another. No, I don't think preserving their right to keep a hunting rifle handy to get dinner was the top thing on their mind at the moment.<br />
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If all this fuss is over so-called "assault" weapons (which they're not, they're only semi-automatic firing), perhaps you can explain the rationale behind the police, national guard and even regular army troops being used to go door to door and confiscate small caliber handguns from little old ladies in their own homes after hurricane Katrina and leaving them defenseless? Also, why does our government go around the world arming rebels in other countries, as they continually try every method they can to disarm our own citizens? Don't they trust us as much as they trust all the potential terrorists they're arming around the world? And with all the misnamed 'assault' weapons in circulation out there, where are all the huge gun battles and big shootouts that we see in hollywood movies like between the old gangsters and the feds during prohibition even though swat team raids are escalating across the country over little things like food co-ops, farmers selling raw milk, and even delinqency or fraud on student loans? <br />
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And it's almost always a lone, deranged gunman we hear about firing up these gun (people) control debates. You don't control guns, you control people - by taking away their defenses. I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I sure wouldn't rule out false flags to achieve exactly that. Mentally unstable people can be coached or coaxed to do just about anything.Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-50544345999551926872012-12-19T08:42:00.000-05:002012-12-19T08:42:14.413-05:00Benghazi Attacks = Systematic Failure?Well surprise, surprise... The accountability review board Secretary of State Hillary convened to look into the Benghazi attacks has issued <a href="http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/202446.pdf" target="_blank">its report</a> to have found: <strong>no one accountable</strong>. Imagine that?!? Well, not entirely. According to the report, the board "<em>remains fully convinced that responsibility for the tragic loss of life, injuries, and damage to U.S. facilities and property rests solely and completely with the terrorists who perpetrated the attack</em>." So there you have it, it's the terrorists' fault.<br />
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They also blame "<em>systematic failure"</em> and "<em>management deficiencies at senior levels" </em>and, quite expectedly, the usual obligatory reference from their government report writing template which points to a lack of funds for them to accomplish their mission in stating, "<em>For many years the State Department has been engaged in a struggle to obtain the resources necessary to carry out its work, with varying degrees of success</em>", "<em>a few State Department managers to favor restricting the use of resources as a general orientation</em>" and "<em>budgetary austerity looms large ahead</em>". It simply means, we haven't been able to squeeze more cash out of the slaves to buy everything we want and then some, so we tried to do more with less and, therefore, failure isn't our fault.<br />
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Well, there's another 1000 manhours worth of taxpayer funds wasted (extremely gross estimate of the board claiming to have interviewed "<em>over 100 individuals, reviewed thousands of pages of documents, and viewed hours of video footage</em>") to pay a monkey court with a predetermined outcome.<br />
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I don't know why I continue to read these things. I used to laugh at them, but after years of reading the same crap over and over covering up ineptitude with claims doing the best they can with resource shortfalls, they're just not funny anymore. <br />
<br />Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-82543205570032954652012-11-30T23:52:00.003-05:002012-11-30T23:52:52.046-05:00Utterly Disgusting and EvilI used to think that people, all people, were basically good inside. I believed it was basically circumstances that often drove them to do horrible things. I easily explained away the atrocities reported from war as being due to the extreme stresses of combat, people reaching their breaking point. However, I'm at a loss of rationalizations or words to explain the things I've just read in the following two posts:<br />
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The republican Mother - <a href="http://therepublicanmother.blogspot.com/2012/11/conspiracy-of-silence.html" target="_blank">Conspiracy of Silence</a><br />
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Mind-Numbed Robot - <a href="http://mindnumbedrobot.com/2012/11/26/obamas-sexual-issues-theyre-think/5626" target="_blank">Obama's sexual issues (They're not what you think)</a><br />
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This has been just sitting here for a few days, as I was too disgusted to even work on it. At least The republican Mother came through today with a <a href="http://therepublicanmother.blogspot.com/2012/11/real-manly-american-police-stories.html" target="_blank">little hope for humanity</a>.<br />
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Perhaps....Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1123858694849643018.post-82044774852958008582012-11-24T14:34:00.002-05:002012-12-19T08:42:49.326-05:00Intelligence Bounded by Diminishing ReturnsGovernment managers generally do not understand the basic economic principles behind the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns" target="_blank">Law of Diminishing Returns</a>. For most, the best solutions to government failures they can think up with their indoctrinated brain functions are more money to buy more equipment and add more manpower, but in reality that will not inevitably result in better intelligence without proper management of the overall system.<br />
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The NY Times just <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/us/politics/explanation-for-benghazi-attack-under-scrutiny.html" target="_blank">reported a story</a> a month ago that bolsters the administration's defense that the confusion of their initial announcements as to whether the debacle in Benghazi was the result of 'peaceful' demonstrations turned violent or not was due to and inept intelligence assessment system. Claims were that the original assessment and thus public announcements blaming the Benghazi attacks on peaceful demonstrations turned violent came from CIA 'talking points'. Yet weeks later they were still sifting through new field reports that seemed to contradict this initial assessment. Excuse me, but that is the most idiotic claim I've ever heard. Everyone knew exactly what was going on as the event was unfolding from direct contact with personnel in the US mission in Benghazi which was under attack.<br />
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But that's beside the point. This event will inevitably lead to investigation of yet another so called 'intelligence failure' and the prognosis will most likely be to increase or at least slow down decreases to the national intelligence budget. That's simply the way things work in Washington.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>After 9/11, President Bush's attention was fixated on our dysfunctional intelligence systems and the plethora of misleading, inaccurate, disjointed information coming from the separate, competing intelligence agencies. He ordered the establishment of a national intelligence fusion center under the Dept of Homeland Security to address the issues. How well is that working?<br />
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The <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/28/AR2010102807284.html" target="_blank">Washington Post reported</a> that the national intelligence budget hit a record $80 billion in 2010, more than double what was spent in 2001. According to fas.org, intelligence spending increased from $63 billion in '07 to $80 billion in '10. <br />
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Then we have Businessweek bemoaning a programmed $25 billion cut to intelligence spending over the next 10 years. Of course, that's seriously misleading. That only equates to a $2.5 billion cut to the programmed budget each year. Whenever the budget goes up, they immediately buy capital goods or tools to perform their required tasks and it <strong>should</strong> cost less in future years to maintain those systems than the initial procurements. Many of those 'tools' are nice to have, but not necessary to getting the minimum required tasks of the job done. Some of them are redundant with other tools they already have. <br />
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Now we have another alleged 'intel failure' in the attack at Benghazi, Libya, but was it? Certainly, no one in the intelligence community can predict everything everywhere. However, there were numerous indicators, not only that something <em>could</em> happen at the lightly defended mission, but that something <strong>would</strong> happen that appears to have been ignored, not by the intelligence community, but by the decision makers spending the money.<br />
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<strong>So what is the problem?</strong> <br />
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First, there is still a considerable shortfall of capability in what is known as open source intelligence. I've seen estimates over the years that open source comprises anywhere from 70% to 90% of actionable intelligence. Intelligence isn't really simply a spy vs spy game. Most information needed to make informed decisions is out there in the public domain, but part of the difficulty is that much is in languages other than English, and we have shortfalls in abilities to translate it for analysis to put it together to obtain a 'big picture'. Bad guys such as terrorists trying to influence public opinion just don't act without telling what type of behaviours they are trying to influence. As Ron Paul has been saying for years, just listen to the terrorists, they are telling us exactly what they want. It's not to appease them. It just doesn't do any good to constantly lie about it, like our dear leaders do with the "they hate us for our freedom" meme.<br />
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The US is involved in so many regions of the world, yet our reliance on English to communicate is a detriment. During the Balkan crisis in the early '90's, the US military found itself seriously short on Serbo-Croatian linguists. We had former linguists who had progressed from officer training programs to different jobs who were pulled back to put rusty skills to work sitting racks. It's not a capability that can be easily reconstituted overnight.<br />
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Sibel Edmonds is a famous whistleblower who was recruited by the FBI as contract support in the scramble just after 9/11 to fill a need for a variety of linguists. Her job was to translate information primarily from Turkish and some Farsi. They fired her after she discovered information from an informant had indicated bin Laden was planning 9/11 as early as April of that year, vital intelligence that wasn't acted upon and she wouldn't let it go. She also alleges that she had uncovered a lot of information from foreign sources that compromised the integrity of many high ranking US officials. Her analysis indicated that sex, drugs, bribery, overall corruption and blackmail was used by foreign agents to influence some of our top government officials. For that she was labeled as disruptive for pushing against the system. Better to keep that kind of stuff quiet her higher ups advised. You see, they don't eat the game players, only when they're making waves or need to be set up as the fall guy, like the FBI investigating Gen Patraeus.<br />
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Anyway, there are just no easy answers to fixing the intelligence collection and analysis process. And after that, just how can they accurately assess and vet literally hundreds or thousands of raw reports from things like intercepted communications, informants’ tips, and open source local or world-wide and local press reports? For example, the administration still won't reveal why Ambassador Stevens was even in the lightly defended mission in Benghazi rather than back in the consulate in Tripoli that evening, even though <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/13/libya-us-consulate-benghazi-damage" target="_blank">the Guardian reported</a> as early as Sep 13th:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"<em>Staff there </em>(at Benghazi Medical Centre)<em> had been expecting the ambassador at 11am on Wednesday as he had come to Benghazi to inaugurate a landmark medical exchange project between the centre and Harvard Medical School, the centre's director, Dr Fathi al-Jehani, said. Instead, Stevens' body arrived at the emergency ramp at 2am, together with a Libyan embassy translator who had been shot in the leg.</em>" </blockquote>
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I had read it that day it was published and haven't yet found that little tidbit of information anywhere else, however, I still had a hard time finding the link to put here out of the dozens of other stories the Guardian has published on this incident. The questions are if that was indeed the reason why he was there instead of back in Tripoli, "Was Stevens the primary target and did that scheduled event allow for pre-planning by the attackers to get access to him?" More importantly to me is that the State Dept had to have known that if it was true, but <strong>why aren't they telling us</strong>? Hell, that was the perfect cover story, even if he was there for more nefarious reasons, such as brokering arms deals for Syrian rebels.<br />
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<strong>The fix</strong><br />
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There certainly are no easy answers and it won't be a quick fix. It will always be a juggling act relying on competent managers to direct information flows. Relying on native foreign language speakers to assess information will always leave the door open to competing loyalties. Can translations be double-checked for accuracy? Obviously all cannot, but there has to be some bar set on verifying sources of specific information to be acted upon. <br />
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The NDAA with indefinite detention and the ability of the executive branch to assassinate American citizens along with the accompanying secrecy behind such actions is certainly not the answer. Anyone know or want to know <a href="http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/18/first-on-cnn-civil-rights-groups-sue-u-s-for-killing-of-americans-tied-to-al-qaeda/" target="_blank">why they killed Al-Awlaki's 16 year old son</a>? Was he the primary target on the 'kill list' or just collateral damage? Awlaki himself may not have always been the big bad bogeyman US officials want us to believe he was. Before 9/11, he was publicly preaching as an Islamic spiritual leader. Afterwards, <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/09/0927_imampart1.html" target="_blank">he condemned the act</a> and he was even invited to <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-6978200.html" target="_blank">visit the Pentagon</a>. He had given speeches that terrorism against America wasn't the answer and innocent Americans weren't the enemies of Muslims. Was he always a radical 'combatant' or had he been changed by the subsequent chain of events? It appears that escalating US actions in the war on terror assisted in pushing him further to 'the dark side', but even with all the information out there, we'll never know the intimate details of the timeline of the real man and if or how he changed.<br />
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Anyway, the fix isn't within the intelligence architecture itself. It's in the American people. It's with our youth. It's certainly not in current contradicting philosophies of 'diversity training' and inhibiting free speech to not offend on our campuses that are ubiquitous in our institutions of higher learning. We need to fix the public school system, changing it from the school of indoctrination it is to a vehicle to inspire <strong>critical thinking</strong>, not merely reflexive prejudice. As Steve Pieczenik described Ambassador Stevens being an 'Arabist' in an interview with Alex Jones, we need more scholars to learn and understand history and interactions with other cultures, not just in the Middle East, but around the globe. That's where our future good intelligence gatherers and analysts will come from, and it takes a long, long time to build.<br />
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Our current system of war-mongering is more isolationist than indictments of Ron Paul being so. As America continues to impose a doctrine of world-wide intervention and nation-building after the storm, other countries, such as China move in with trade agreements after not having fired a shot in anger. They get the trade, we get the blood on our hands of young Americans in coffins.<br />
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Wake UP!!! Get yer head out of yer collective asses, Congress and stop throwing good money after bad.Frank Kozahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05642206308922657591noreply@blogger.com0