What Has America Become? (from JSumm)

Shamelessly stolen from my buddy, former Guest Blogger Jim, who has been operating his own site for quite a while now....Drop by & give him some love.

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Have you seen this? A friend put this on the bulletin board at work this week, and another guy took it down before I could copy it. He said it was discriminatory and incendiary. Whatever; you can judge for yourselves.

It was written by KEN HUBER to the editor of the IOSCO COUNTY (MI) NEWS on June 9th of this year. KEN, truer words have rarely ever been spoken. thanks for pointing out what should be obvious.

WHAT HAS AMERICA BECOME?

Editor,

Has AMERICA become the land of the special interest and home of the double standard?

Let’s see: if we lie to the Congress, it's a felony and if the Congress lies to us it’s just politics; if we dislike a black person, we're a racist and if a black dislikes whites, it's their 1st Amendment right; the government spends millions to rehabilitate criminals and they do almost nothing for the victims; in public schools you can teach that homosexuality is OK, but you better not use the word GOD in the process; you can kill an unborn child, but it’s wrong to execute a mass murderer; we don't burn books in AMERICA, we now rewrite them; we got rid of the Communist and Socialist threat by renaming them Progressives; we are unable to close our border with Mexico, but have no problem protecting the 38th parallel in Korea; if you protest against President Obama's policies you're a terrorist, but if you burned an AMERICAN flag or George Bush in effigy it was your 1st Amendment right.

You can have pornography on TV or the Internet, but you better not put a nativity scene in a public park during Christmas; we have eliminated all criminals in AMERICA and they are now called sick people; we can use a human fetus for medical research, but it's wrong to use an animal.

We take money from those who work hard for it and give it to those who don't want to work; we all support the Constitution, but only when is supports our political ideology; we still have freedom of speech, but only if we are being politically correct; parenting has been replaced with Ritalin and video games; the Land of Opportunity is now the Land of Hand Outs; the similarity between Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf oil spill is that neither President did anything to help.

And how do we handle a major crisis today? The government appoints a committee to determine who's at fault, then threatens them, passes a law, raises our taxes; and tells us the problem is solved so they can get back to their reelection campaign. What has happened to the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave?

KEN HUBER
TAWAS CITY, MI

Man, if that doesn't capture the essence of what is currently happening in AMERICA, nothing does. Fresh back from vacation in Michigan, I was almost completely crestfallen by all the whiners that have inhabited my state. If I only had a dollar for every time I heard “The government isn't doing anything for me/us.”…' KEN shows there are still life forms capable of intelligent thought on the Pleasant Peninsula.

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Further input from me:

Jim, old buddy, your home state of Michigan is a wreck. Massive unemployment, union corruption, riddled with Liberal Democrats, and infested with the largest Muslim population in North America, a population burgeoning with radical Islamists and home-grown terrorists. Michigan has become America's England; a former powerhouse and industrial giant hit with industrial shutdowns and liberal socialism screaming for handouts and bigger government, and letting their Islamic minority take over by fiat. I almost said Michigan was becoming the American France, but California has that dubious distinction, so liberal and fucked up that we may as well sell it back to Mexico and let them worry about it......except the broke corrupt Mexicans don't have any fucking money to buy it.

Throwing a few bricks through a few windows

Let me preface this post by stating that it will be chock full of four-letter words, most of them beginning with the sixth letter of the alphabet. I’m not just angry, but verily seething with acrimonious rage at what this country is becoming and how the very fabric of our society has unraveled.

I swore that I would not post anything mean-spirited on 9-11, so as not to tarnish the solemnity of the day of remembrance(not day of service to the gubmint). However, I am starting this at about 1AM on the 12th, so everyone and everything is fair game again. I ground my molars to dust today waiting to get at the keyboard after listening to the news for the past couple days. This post is probably gonna be a LONG one.

I am exceptionally angry. I love this nation. I have defended this nation. And I will not give this nation away.

Where to even start? How about by saying that Jim Clyburn can go fuck himself, and take the NAACP and Lonnie Randolph with him? I’ll follow that up with a swift kick in the balls to Bobby Harrell.


If I lived just a few miles farther southwest, Joe Wilson would be my representative to Congress. Lamentably, I am allegedly represented by Jim Clyburn, currently the House Majority Whip and one of Obama’s chief bootlickers.

Not happy with Wilson’s apology to President Obama after for having shouted "You lie!" at Obama during a speech the other night, Clyburn wants to humiliate Wilson for having the audacity to truthfully proclaim Obama’s true colors. Clyburn says Wilson should go to the floor of the House and give a public apology there.

"That's a cowardly way to do it," Clyburn said of the written statement. "He ought to man up and go down to the well of the House and say, I acted with a lack of decorum the last evening, and I apologize to the President of the United States, and I apologize to my colleagues in both bodies, and I apologize to the people of South Carolina for having done so… I don't think there's ever been this kind of venom or insult directed at the chief executive of the United States of America when he's standing in a joint session," Clyburn said.

Oh, bullshit, Clyburn. Screw decorum. You’re just pissed that someone had the balls to call Obama out as a liar on national TV in the middle of his mental masturbation session. This country is falling apart with an economy that’s in the shitter, we have American troops coming home in bags from some piss-ant Third World dung heap whose chief exports are heroin poppies and terrorists, you stupid bastards on Capitol Hill are bankrupting children who won’t be born for a hundred fucking years yet, you’ve turned us into a neo-Socialist joke by nationalizing the auto industry, the banking industry, the housing industry, and now healthcare, and all you can worry about is fucking decorum and Roger’s Rules of Fucking Order because someone didn’t kiss the President’s ass? Listening to the tapes of it, with all you morons going “Oooooooohhh” after Joe said it, you sounded like a bunch of damned third-graders after someone sneezed “Bullshit!” into their hand during the principal’s assembly in the cafeteria.

Eat me.

Was it the wrong place to lose control? Probably. Should he have held his tongue? In retrospect, looks like it. But he was immediately Judased by his own Republican “leadership” and forced to immediately apologize to The Holy Dear Leader, and The Annointed One graciously accepted the apology. That should have been the end of it, but you want to break it off in Wilson’s ass for calling out your boy.


Have you ever watched BBC coverage of British Parliament, Jim? The British are supposed to be the pinnacled zenith of decorum, the gold standard everyone strives for, and yet in their House of Lords they actually hiss at each other, and in the House of Commons they stop just short of fisticuffs over differing views. Captain Teleprompter wouldn’t last five minutes in London. They’d eat him like bangers & mash.

And then there’s the NAACP. Fuck you, too, for turning everything into a racial issue and for playing the race card and the victim card any time someone says “boo” to a black man anymore. The head of the SC chapter of the NAACP, Lonnie Randolph, is calling for action, because interrupting Obama’s healthcare shitfest is racist. Randolph says health care is a civil rights issue, something the NAACP fights to protect.

That's right, Lonnie. Play that race card to the fullest...

Wilson's outburst also serves to continue the tone of town hall meetings on health care that in many cases have been more like brawls, Randolph said, which turns attention away from this human rights issue. Civil rights? Where in the United States Constitution did Thomas Jefferson say we had the right to free healthcare at taxpayer expense? Where in the Constitution does it say we have to provide a single solitary iota of anything to illegal immigrants who should by all rights be deported instead of being shot as invaders?

Anyone who disagrees with Obama is a racist. Poor Joe Wilson, he publicly disagreed with your Lord and Master, and he’s white, and a southerner, so he must obviously be a racist, right? Joe Wilson said “You lie”, not “You lie, you (insert racial epithet here)”. Stop playing the race card and stop playing the victim. You’ll get a lot farther.

So now they’re saying Wilson better apologize or the House will punish him….with a strongly worded rebuke. Woopty shit. That and five bucks gets you a cup of coffee.


By the way, why was it okay for the Democrats to boo President Bush during the 2005 State of the Union address? Was that racist? Of course not; Dubya was white, and therefore it’s okay to bash him and call him everything from a war-mongering babykiller to a borderline mongoloid.


And now that I’m riled up and throwing stones, Speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives Bobby Harrell can kiss my ass too, after he quits kissing the ass of Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer.

Harrell and his posse are baying at the moon, pissing and moaning for the resignation of Governor Mark Sanford. Sure, I gave Sanford a huge ration of shit on this blog when the news of his affair first broke, but after I vented my disappointment, I’m back in Mark’s corner for not wanting to meekly step aside for political expediency. We have all these SC Republicans calling fir Sanford’s ouster, claiming that,” The issues we have facing our state and the work that needs to be accomplished is too important for us to spend this next year bogged down with the distractions Gov. Sanford’s actions have created.”

Huh? What kind of bullshittery is this? Are you people that easily distracted? Do you have adult-onset ADD? Take a couple of Ritalin, shut the hell up, and get your asses back to work solving our double-digit unemployment problem.

Almost half the people I know, and I am NOT exaggerating, have been out of work at one time or another during the past 12 months because of this shitty economy, and all you care about is your own political asses.

What do I mean? I mean that Mark Sanford is a lame duck. His term as Governor is up about 12 months after the Legislature reconvenes in January. You people are off work till after Christmas and still getting paid, no? Well, there’s a hell of a lot of my fellow Carolinians who aren’t getting paid and who really want to go back to work. But see, most of you guys ARE up for re-election soon, and you’re shit-scared that being associated with letting Mark Sanford stay in office will hurt you come election time. You want to distance yourself from him and the supposed taint of being supportive of a guy you were all supporting two months ago. Yeah, he cheated on his wife, and that’s a very bad thing, but that’s a private matter now between the man & his wife.


The reason it’s a distracting bog-down is because you people won’t shut the fuck up about it. It could have quietly been his own private disaster after the initial public furor calmed, which was about 2 weeks later, but when sharks smell blood in the water they swarm and now there’s a feeding frenzy.

And if you Democrats out there want to keep bashing Sanford over his adultery, ya’ll best step back & check yo’self before you wreck yo’self. Last I saw, there’s been a line of Democrats cheating on wives even longer. Need I pull names out of a hat? John Edwards. John Kennedy. Bobby Kennedy. Teddy Kennedy. Gary Condit. Elliot Spitzer. David Patterson. Henry Hyde. Jesse Jackson. Gary Hart. Even FDR had a chippy on the side. And that most famous of adulterers, Bill Clinton.

I’m not saying that no Republicans have ever cheated on their spouses either (Gingrich, Livingston, Watts, etc and I’m pretty sure even Dwight Eisenhower had a mistress.). Even Thomas Jefferson couldn’t keep it in his breeches. Corrupted sexual morals abound in politics but Dems seem to have it down to something between art and science.

For once, I really gotta agree with a Democrat though. Years ago, the scariest looking human alive, James Carville, coined the immortal phrase “It’s the economy, stupid.”


Look, America, we gotta get our shit together. It is the economy, stupid. We’re so distracted by who’s banging who, and distracted by health care (only a small portion of our economy) that we’re missing the big picture. The picture of our entire economy being in the shitter while people in Washington do their damndest to distract the rest of the nation while they rapidly take over the private sector and nationalize it. In 9 months,like I aid above, the government has bankrupted children who won’t be born yet for a hundred years, taken over the banking industry, taken over the auto industry, started firing private citizens, started hiring czars to circumvent vetting and oversight, taken over the mortgage and housing industry, tried and failed to steal the Census, and now wants to start a citizens army to fight off the revolts I predict are coming.


America, I beseech thee: TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY.

Teen Suicide and the Power of Positive Thinking (With Guest Blogger Jim)

Today we get another insightful post from my old Army buddy, Guest Blogger Jim, who is originally from Michigan.




Jeff and Laura Edwards lost their son Chase, top, in 2003 to suicide when he was 12. Since then they’ve become suicide education advocates, and helped create the Chase Edwards Act, which encourages schools to hold suicide prevention programs.


I was looking at the Detroit Free Press earlier in the week, when I saw a headline for an article about teen suicides. The reporter was wondering about high teen suicide rates in the state, and went on to talk about a law Michigan passed encouraging early intervention or counseling in the schools.

Just by reading the headline, and having lived there, I was able to come up with the correct answer to the higher-than-national suicide rate. A doctor of psychiatry at a Michigan children's hospital blames it on homelessness, a lack of jobs, depression and hopelessness.

I knew that was going to be the answer before I ever read the article. How, you ask? Because as a kid growing up all I ever heard was negativity. The economy is bad, the schools are bad, the roads are bad, the hunting is bad. You name it; if it was shitty Michigan had it, twice. Back then we called the Red Wings the Dead Wings. The Lions are actually worse now than when I was growing up.

While there is no denying that Michigan has hit a shitty spot on the trail, I still believe it's possible to grow roses there. You don't have to stay there to make a living; move. I did and 17 years later I’m still holding the same job, with no layoffs. If you work for a car company or one of their satellite suppliers, sooner or later you will be out of a job. You stay, hoping it won't happen to you, but everyone gets bit eventually. You people stay ‘cause you like the 3 weeks paid vacation every year as the factories retool for the next model year. That shit is over with Obama running the show, no matter how much money and votes the UAW throws his way.


Teach the kids to be independent thinkers, not followers (Since Dad and Uncle Joe worked for GM, so will I). That starts in school, too. Everything is team-oriented, which is okay for tug-o-war, but not so hot for the rest of your life. Yeah, you have to be able to work with others, but the coach is going to put the best linebacker on the field or center on the ice. Do you get to take anyone else with you on job interviews?

I’d love to know just what the homeless rate is in Michigan. I feel this is just another liberal attempt to make people think things are worse than what they truly are.

The kid the story was about hung himself in an upstairs closet as his dad prepared dinner. While sad, I gotta say the pictures sure don't lead me to believe they have ever been homeless or anything. There was nothing, they said, that made anyone in the boy’s circle of family and friends to lead anyone to believe he was depressed. Not to speak ill of the dead, or pour salt into wounds, but sometimes things happen in life that we just can't control. The article says nothing about if the kid was taking anti-depressants, which we know are linked to higher incidents of suicide in teens. Funny; the doctor of psychiatry, who probably prescribes lots of that stuff, never mentioned it as a cause.

Hopelessness? Is that like teen angst? No one cares, nothing matters, and no one understands me, on and on. Just a guess, but kids: get interested in something or several somethings. Stop veggin' out, alone, in your room, and go do something. Hunt, fish, bike, canoe. Go to church, go out for the team, GET A JOB, and buy a car.

You know, during survival training you are taught to accomplish something, however small, everyday. You know why? To keep you from dwelling on your situation. People who have a purpose don't usually just curl up and die. Stop waiting for something to happen to give your life meaning; go make your life meaningful. Sometimes depression is a chemical imbalance in the body, but sometimes you're just bored.

I guess the big message here is, we’ve got to stop babying our kids and tell them to man up, in my opinion. Don’t push it on the schools; they are our kids, so let’s fix 'em ourselves. Teach them to be self-reliant, self-starters, independent thinkers, and tell them it's okay to be the best. Not assholes, but hard workers. A dose of that might bring down the suicide rate.

I'll leave you with two of my favorite quotes, although I don't know who exactly they are attributed to.

Tough times don't last; tough people do, remember? and
Every time you fall, pick something up.

What are your thoughts on this? I’d love to get some feedback.
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Allow MojoSteve to provide the opening feedback.

Your first quote is from Gregory Peck. It was also paraphrased as the title of a book by Reverend Robert H. Shuller. Your second quote is from Oswald T. Avery. He was one of the first molecular biologists and was a pioneer in immunochemistry, but he is best known for his discovery in 1944 with his co-workers Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty that DNA is the material of which genes and chromosomes are made.

According to a 2007 report by the Michigan Statewide Homeless Management
Information System (MSHMIS) and mihomeless.org, there are 79,940 homeless people in Michigan. That's less than 1% of the 10.1 million population. The May 2009 unemployment rate in Michigan was 14.1%, according to Michigan Labor Market Information.

And, dude, the suicide rate is kinda weirdly high not just for teens on antidepressants, but adults too…and they can cause homicidal rages in oversexed pet chimps in the Connecticut suburbs. The snap-rate is high with those drugs. How many people on Zoloft, Prozac, Ritalin, Luvox, Paxil or other tasty treats have snapped and gone on rampages, or just sunk deeper and ended it? (By the by, Ritalin is an SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) in the same category as Prozac, Luvox, Zoloft, and Paxil.) If I recall, kids like Eric Harris (who along with Dylan Klebold killed 13 and wounded 23 at Columbine), Kip Kinkel (who killed 4 and wounded 23 at his school in Oregon), and Jeff Weise (who killed nine and then himself at his school in Red Lake, MN) were on SSRI drugs, and Brynn Hartman was on Zoloft when she killed her husband, actor Phil Hartman, and then herself.

Sure, we all wanna worry when our kids start doing things out of the ordinary beyond normal teen moodiness. But you need to openly communicate with your kid to know when they're just being a whiny Emo kid in Hot Topic eyeliner listening to sad music and reading Twilight to being a serious risk for harm to themselves and others. I spent hours being a moody shit in my room, listening to The Cure, The Smiths, and Depeche Mode, and I was fascinated with military history, but I also had a great relationship with my mom and my friends and I turned out pretty damned chipper. I channeled my moodiness into my writing and turned my interests into a great 4 years in the Army, getting focused and getting a head start on being in the Real World.


Over 600 people took a ticket to wait for up to five hours to make an unemployment claim on a Tuesday afternoon at the Michigan Unemployment Office in January 2009.