tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9818556934802315822024-03-21T00:19:47.587-07:00Jim SaysThis will be an eclectic stream of consciousness covering conservative politics, history, economics, faith, sports, relationships, real estate, sales training and more.morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.comBlogger227125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-67780072953669831702020-05-26T20:56:00.000-07:002020-05-26T20:56:17.759-07:00My COVID-19 Experience When people learn about my bout with COVID-19 I am often asked to describe my experience. I am always happy to do so, but I find that normally it involves me trying to type a long detailed story on my phone, and inevitably I leave out what I believe might be pertinent information for them. So I have decided to do my best to describe it in detail on this blog post so I can share it whenever, I am asked, and if someone wants a friend or family member to read it they can forward. <br />
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For me it began the day the nation was put on stay at home requests, March 16th. The week before my 90 year old uncle was ill with the flu, I took him to the ER to be seen, knowing that driving him in the car with me would put me at risk for the flu, but he needed to go. The following weekend my wife was at his apartment doing his laundry, he was still ill. She caught it a few days later, both of them had a stomach flu. On March 14th I was mentioning to her that I must have dodged a bullet because more than a week had gone by and I didn't get it. However, I spoke too soon. Over the weekend I noticed that my cough had gotten worse. I have had a chronic cough for the last three years, I have been tested and retested and it is caused by my body not liking a lot of possible allergens. When the cough increased I knew something was coming on, assuming it was my every spring sinus infection. So I cancelled all my meetings for Monday the 16th and worked from home. By that evening my fever started and from that time for two weeks I had a fever plus or minus of 102. <br />
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I had made an appointment with my doctor on my phone app for that coming Wednesday on Sunday evening, and also requested a prescription of the antibiotics I normally get for the sinus infection. I hadn't heard back so I wasn't aware that the prescription as ordered and waiting for me. I went to doctor on Wednesday and tested positive for the flu, influenza B. Not the stomach one that my uncle and wife seemed to have. So from there on it was next to impossible to get a COVID test because I was diagnosed with the flu. <br />
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That following Saturday, my wife was concerned because I kept getting worse, and my fever stayed about 102 all day and night even though I was taking Tylenol every three hours. She called the Nurse on Call number and after she spoke with me she wanted me to get to see a doctor within the next 24 hours. I went to St. Vincent's ER because it was close to my house. I explained it was unlike any flu I had ever had, how I couldn't eat because everything tasted absolutely awful, everything tasted like pure salt or a metallic chemical taste. The only thing I could bring myself to eat was a banana each day. I ended up losing 18 pounds in two weeks. Unfortunately have put about half of it back on. When I was with ER doctor she told me that it wasn't uncommon for the flu to last two or three weeks. I had never heard that before. I told her about how my wife and uncle had Influenza A but I somehow missed that one and got B, she told me she believed I had both, she told me to quit taking the antibiotics because it won't help the flu. She then sent me home. <br />
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That next week, I kept feeling worse. I simply couldn't think, my brain felt like it was mud. Every waking moment, which were the smallest part of the day, I was confused, trying to figure out if something I saw, heard, or believed I had experienced was real or some sort of fever dream or hallucination. By back was killing me, as an old wrestler who used to cut very unhealthy amounts of weight, I recognized the pain was kidneys. I was dizzy and found walking difficult to navigate without worrying about falling. When I stared coughing up blood, I called my doctor again and said that this is unlike any flu I have seen, and something isn't right. I waited on a return call. By that Wednesday night, I still hadn't heard back from them, but right before I was going to bed a major coughing fit happened, and I simply could not breathe. It felt like my ribcage was collapsing on itself and I couldn't get any air. It took me about an hour to calm down enough that, with effort, real determined effort, I was able to breathe at least shallowly. My wife was holding me up until she could get me into a chair. <br />
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The next day, the doctor office called back and told me to go to the ER for a chest x-ray. They asked me to take a deep breath and it wasn't something that was possible for me to do. The tech told me I would be hearing from my doctor because my lungs were a mess. This would have been day 10 of COVID-19, days 10-11 are the two worst because that is when your lungs fill completely. He sent me home to wait for my doctor's call. The doctor called the next afternoon, he wanted me to go to a respiratory clinic. I drove there, it was actually in my doctor's normal office, but the hospital system had moved them all around. He was now in a different facility doing video doctoring so he couldn't see me. I drove to the door where I normally go in, but there was a sign that no entry was allowed to that door, that I had to go around to door 7. I wasn't sure where that was so I tried walking around to it, I ended up having to lay down on the side walk when I got about 3/4 of the way there because I simply couldn't get a breathe. It was almost impossible to talk with the staff when I got in after my little walk. The doctor there was very concerned about my lungs and my very low blood oxygen levels. She wanted me admitted to the hospital right then, put on oxygen and an IV. So she sent me to the only door open at the hospital, the ER, she called ahead and told them she wanted them to admit me. When I got there they did another chest x-ray, blood tests, and a COVID-19 test. Three hours later they came back in where I was, I assumed they were going to take me to my room. However the ER doctor said, she was 100% sure I had COVID-19 even though the test hadn't come back yet. She then sent me home and said come back to the ER if I couldn't breath. I was thinking, I came here today and yesterday because I couldn't breathe and both times you sent me home. I didn't have the energy to argue. <br />
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The next day, I got two calls, one from hospital and one from my doctor both said I had COVID-19, my doctor said I was the only one he knew who had both the flu and COVID-19 at the same time. He ordered me a Z-pack antibiotic and told me to start taking the other one he had given me again. This would have been day 12, two more days and three days without a fever and I was off quarantine. However, that wasn't an issue, it was another week before I felt remotely human again. In fact, it was the Friday of the third week before my brain felt like it was actually functioning again. I recall asking my wife about a "device" I believe she had made that I was using every night to prop me up so I could breath, but I couldn't find it. There never was any such thing but in my mind, and it was something I believed I was using almost for three weeks. <br />
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I have a friend, who is a doctor and research scientist, who has been studying COVID-19, he has been a God-send to me, educating me and assuring me when needed. He taught me that the media has this all wrong, that it isn't a respiratory disease but a blood disease. That it attacks the red blood cells capacity to distribute oxygen to the body. This caused the organs to fail for lack of oxygen, the brain, kidneys, liver, etc. This explained a lot. That is also why they are seeing so many patients with blood clots from it. <br />
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For me I was down for three weeks, then it took almost three weeks to get strong enough to actually feel normal. I wouldn't wish this on anyone. However, as my doctor and my doctor friend have explained to me, I am now 100% immune and can now pay it forward by donating plasma. I am in the process of working through that system now. But today, really great news, my wife, who was with me every day and didn't get it, her antibodies test came back and she has had it. So we don't know if that was the three days she was sick that I thought I avoided, or if she was totally asymptomatic. But she too is now immune. morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-7319839150110465492020-02-16T20:59:00.001-08:002020-02-16T20:59:15.947-08:00Why Keynesian Economics Always Fails. In 1965 Time Magazine cover was the title "The Economy: We Are All Keynesian Now." It really didn't matter if you were a Democrat or a Republican, they both ascribed to the Keynesian theories of economics. Our Universities have for decades nearly taught these exclusively, with some Marx thrown in, in later years more and more Marx thrown in. What is Keynesian economics we hear so much about? <br />
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In the 1930's, Lord John Maynard Keynes predicted that someday everyone would have a four-bedroom house, at which point, the American Dream having been fulfilled, people would lose their incentive to work. Keynes believed that peoples' affluence would eventually outstrip their appetites - that their demand for goods and services would reach a plateau, beyond which the amount of money they spent would represent a smaller and smaller percentage of their incomes. Therefore, he argued, the government would have to adopt fiscal policies designed to keep people from hoarding too much of their incomes. `This can be found in Keynes "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money." This was why our government developed a progressive income tax, to keep you having to work harder. <br />
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It is hard to believe that was a theory anyone every believed, no less that even today, we are still finding the bulk of politicians, academia and the media that are pushing it. It seems so much of what we as a society do is more based on tradition than any thought through idea. Today, it is clear that nothing could be further from the truth of people stop wanting more after basic needs are satisfied. Indeed, we know it to be the exact opposite of what Keynes predicted. Just look at the spending habits of American consumers, they are insatiable. The more we earn, the more we spend; the more we spend, the more we get; the more we get, the more we want, and the more we want, the harder we seem to work to earn more money to get it. If any segment of society has lost the incentive to work, it is the poor, not the upwardly mobile and middle class. <br />
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What happened to confound Keynes's prediction that increasing affluence will lead to decreasing consumption? In part, Keynes got tripped up by a basic misunderstanding of human psychology. Improving prospects breed rising expectations, not complacency. Thus, as John Kenneth Galbraith noted in 1958 in his book "The Affluent Society," "In the affluent society, no sharp distinction can be made between luxuries and necessaries." Galbraith was talking mainly about consumer psychology as used by advertisers to play on consumers' insecurities, envy, and self-esteem to make them want things they don't really need: or as imposed by consumers upon themselves. Consider, for example, how buying a luxurious new suit makes a consumer feel he must have an equally luxurious silk tie, a fine linen shirt, and pair of Italian leather shoes to match. And once he has added this to his wardrobe, his less expensive suits, shirts, ties, and shoes look dreary and he wants to replace them with the better quality as well. If she was driving a Toyota then she wants his and hers, then they want to trade up to a Lexus, then two, and so on. <br />
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Add to that what technology advancements do by providing an ever expanding array of astonishing new products, the use of which changes our behavior to an extent that before long what was once a great luxury is now an everyday necessity. So the very economic system that our Establishment politicians, our academics and our business media keep pushing, the one they were all raised to believe is built on a false premise that has never ever worked. What has worked is a more Alchemic approach to economics, where the money is left in private hands, both in business and consumer hands to spend and invest as they like. That is the power that fires the engines of the economy. As John F. Kennedy said, "A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced Federal budget...as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues. Prosperity is the real way to balance our budget. By lowering tax rates, by increasing jobs and income, we can expand tax revenues and finally bring our budget into balance." <br />
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Throughout history, every time we reduce tax rates significantly we increase the economy and that increased economy actually creates record revenue into the national government in taxes. The reverse is also true, whenever we raise tax rates the economy slows, business people and individuals start spending more time and resources to shelter their existing income rather than try to grow more and the tax revenues to the government actually shrinks. <br />
morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-54816411157693528932020-02-16T09:50:00.001-08:002020-02-16T09:50:57.225-08:00Corporate Taxes Most Hurt Lower and Middle Earner Families. We are bombarded by the arguments that those greedy corporations are not paying their fair share, that we must raise taxes on them. That this huge company paid no taxes and we need to do something about that. It is one of the most popular arguments by politicians playing their favorite card of class envy and jealousy of one group of people against another. They promise if you vote for them that they will stick it to these big rich companies who aren't paying their fair share. It plays to our most base and dark human emotions so it is very effective. Furthermore, very few people in this country have had more than a semester of economics or civics in their lives, if that much, so really have very little understanding of either. This makes it even easier for politicians and their friends in the media to play to our emotions not our minds. <br />
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What are the realities of Corporate Taxes? First of all, corporations don't actually pay taxes, small businesses do, but not the large corporations the politicians sell you they are going to get them to pay their fair share. Corporations only collect taxes for the government from their consumers through their price of the products and services. They must make a net profit to sustain their company, their stockholders, etc. They figure in the taxes they will pay into the pricing structure, so you actually pay it. This has a disparate impact on the lower and middle income earners in this country, because they spend a much higher percentage of their incomes on consumer goods and services than do the highest income or wealthy. Thus any Corporate tax has the biggest tax increase on the lower and middle income earners in America, conversely lowering it benefits them the most. Maybe not immediately, why would a company lower its pricing if people are willing to pay it, until forced to by their competition? However, that money becomes a larger profit for the company, is reinvested in future growth, lower pricing on products, and more labor. The more demand on labor the upward demand on wages. So the people who vote to tax companies are voting to tax themselves and to reduce their wages. <br />
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We are seeing those results right now, if we but look for them. Under President Trump, the reduction of corporate taxes from 35%, the highest in the developed world, to 21%, This has caused a tsunami of billions if not trillions that companies were storing off shore back to being repatriated into our economy at home. We are seeing companies moving manufacturing back like we haven't seen in any of our lifetimes. What we were told could never happen seems to be happening monthly as manufacturing is coming back, investment in America is coming back. We have the best economy for any and all demographic group in decades if not historically. And keep in mind it's VERY early in the process, it has only been in place not yet two years. Those factories, those expansions of existing facilities are yet under construction and haven't started hiring to fill them yet. This is the beginning of an economic juggernaut like we have never seen. However, we can look to the not too distant past to see the science behind such an expansion. <br />
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The Media, the political left, and frankly the Establishment Republicans all tout Keynesian economic models in their view of the world. Unfortunately, the Keynesian model has yet to actually work anywhere in the world. For centuries economists from Adam Smith, to Karl Marx to John Keynes, while their methodologies differed, shared some things in common. They all based their views on how society uses and distributes "scarce" resources. Ronald Reagan and his supply side economic model, showed us that those long standing theories were flawed by the long-term economic growth during the use of supply side until it was cast aside for the old models once again and the drying up of the economy. In 1981, pushed by newly elected President Reagan Congress passed ERTA, The Economic Recovery Tax Act, which dramatically lowered tax rates and provided incentives to businesses that purchased new equipment. The idea behind this was that the increased work incentive resulting from lower tax rates would lead to increased economic activity, which in turn would more than offset the reduction of federal revenue that tax cuts might normally be expected to produce. All the traditional economists predicted disaster and economic collapse. They were all wrong. <br />
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Late in 1982 the GNP began a meteoric rise that initially outstripped even the most optimistic projections by the supply-siders. Many began predicting that unless the spiraling budget deficit could somehow be checked, the nation would face severe inflation, escalating interest rates, and economic stagnation. The economy however, paid no attention to such warnings. From 1985 to 1988, the budget deficit continued to increase. Yet despite dire predictions to the contrary, GNP continued to grow unabated. By 1989 most economists, ignoring their earlier concerns, were expecting the economy to continue its climb well into the 1990's, although they were unable to support their projections with a specific explanation or theory. Clearly something was going on that no one was able to explain. It was, in fact Alchemy at work. <br />
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The expansion of the past decade had its genesis in 1946, when the first electronic computer, known as ENIAC, was developed at the University of Pennsylvania. Over the next thirty-five years, even though computers became smaller, faster, more powerful, and easier to use, their use remained generally restricted to the sterile carefully guarded data-processing centers of universities, government agencies and large corporations. By 1981, the computer had evolved to the point where it was ready to burst out into the wider world, onto the factory floor, inside the automobile, and onto the supermarket checkout counter. Serendipitously the Reagan Economic Recovery Tax Act came to be at that moment. <br />
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The tax incentives that ERTA gave businesses in 1981 - in effect, a government subsidy amounting to 58 percent of the cost of new equipment - virtually forced corporate America to retool. This greatly accelerated the integration of the computer throughout the economy, dramatically increasing productivity and growth in implemented technology, on a scale not seen since the dawn of the industrial revolution. The impact of these massive productivity increases were both immediate and profound. By significantly lowering the production cost of virtually all goods and services, they reduced inflation. In addition, by swelling corporate profits, they effectively expanded the supply of capital, which in turn kept interest rates down. As well as they gave the United States eight years of unprecedented economic growth. In fact, the effect of this technological change on inflation, interest rates, and GNP has been so significant that it has compensated for the continuing growth of the federal budget deficit. <br />
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The reason for this impressive growth had to do with the technology gap. When traditional economists talk about a technology gap, they are generally referring to the disparity of technological sophistication between one country and another, or the industrialized nations and the Third World. However an Alchemic view of the technology gap is not between countries, but between technology currently available and any less-advanced technology actually in use. The size of that technology gap, that amount between what is available and what is being used, is the greatest determinant of economic growth. Our current technology gap is as wide as ever in history, so the future is very bright the more we reduce that gap. <br />
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As we reduce the burden on American businesses, we increase their incentive to grow and increase their profits, not find ways to shelter those they already have. This causes them to reinvest in ways to continue to make them more and more competitive. So that money that would have been taken out of the private sector into the public where no growth of wealth every has or can happen, it lights a fire on the economy in the private sector. This is where capital comes from, where wealth is built, were jobs are created, where wages grow as companies trying to grow must compete for the labor force. This is how the wealth of a nation and all of its people come from.<br />
morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-89624099013628352092019-07-05T12:42:00.000-07:002019-07-20T10:47:33.885-07:00A Life Mirrored By Songs<br />
There is a book that was recommended to me that has some things I find very sad for the writer and those who follow his suggestions. He is all about finding your true self, your inner voice and your higher consciousness, your highest self. While I am all for personal growth and self-discovery, he suggests that it is that quest that supersedes all else. I suppose if you want to end up living in an ashram that may work. However, I believe as John Donne did, "that no man is an island." Others must come into the equation when you are making your choices. The author tries to persuade you that you must find your own values and beliefs and shed those that were passed on to you from others speaking into your life. This is something I don't believe is an either or thing, the values that are passed down from one generation to the next are what make a history, what gives roots and substance. The key, to me, is choosing those that serve a higher purpose and discarding those that had parasitically attached without truth and value. <br />
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For me, there were many times that those instilled values may have given me short term pain, but long term benefit. When it came to my ex-wife, our relationship started actually by my wanting to protect her and lift her out of a dangerous and dysfunctional situation with her abusive father and addicted mother. The relationship was tumultuous at best, I learned that you can take someone out of the abuse but might not be able to take the long-term effects out of their psyche. I once had a business mentor, a man I greatly respected and followed, tell me to divorce her because she was holding me back. That was totally unacceptable to me, he may have been correct, but to me there was a higher purpose than discarding for business success. She eventually left me, and I allowed her to take all our assets and I kept all our liabilities to avoid the only thing I refused of paying her 15% of my income for life. She was the one that was doing the things that were cause for divorce, but I didn't fight her. This was short term damage to me, but I have always felt good about the decision. I believe in "you make your bed your lay in it." She had, and has, no one in her life to really be there for her, granted she has painted herself into that corner, but I wanted nothing to do with adding to her challenges.<br />
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There is no one who could convince me that I wasn't rewarded for that when I met my wife a few weeks later. It was when I was in to buy the cheapest possible waterbed to no longer have to sleep on the floor. It was her managing the store. I asked her out when she called later to schedule the delivery. The funny thing was our state of minds when this date happened. She had decided that all men were jerks so she was going to get a free meal and that was it, I was in a phase where I was dating a different woman every night. My theory was if I never saw someone more than once a week, I couldn't fall into a rebound situation. When we went out there was something magical, unexplainable, everything that could go wrong did, horrible bands at night clubs, running into a friend who was cheating on his wife, just one thing after another. However, I canceled every date I had scheduled for the week and she and I were together every night. The one night when we didn't plan to see each other, I was at a company outing where a co-worker fell off the wagon and was spiraling out of control. I called her and she came with me to babysit him to keep him from hurting himself. I really saw her heart that night. Within two weeks we were engaged. We weren't married for two years, because I got cold feet, starting wondering when the other shoe would drop and she might act like my ex. I thank God she was willing to allow me that time. <br />
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The concept of finding your highest self, to me, was finding the one who self was blended and intertwined together. The song, "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" by Brian Adams, when I first heard it years later so captured that feeling that I now feel it is part of my soul. It was like, "That's it, that is what I have been trying so say for so long!" Early in our marriage she was on a fast track with corporate America moving up and with a bright future, when our first son was born, sleep was something he had no interest in. So we made a choice, for self-preservation short term, but for what we believed was best for our children long-term for her to come home and be a full-time mom. To us, there was no higher calling, no higher priority. <br />
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To accommodate that choice I worked a lot of hours, and often in more than one venture at a time. I cannot count the nights that meant I was racing the sunrise to get home while it was still "tonight." I am sure that she often felt like a single mom during those times. When the song "Beth" by Kiss it would cut to my soul, especially if I was driving home from wherever late at night. The song, "Cat's in the Cradle" was just as much for me when it came to looking at my sons, as was "Butterfly Kisses" with my daughter. It is uncanny how some songs can say what you feel to you so clearly that they feel to be a part of you. Recently, for the first time, I heard the song by Lady Gaga, "I'll Never Love Again," has there ever been a better description of how two souls joined together actually feel? For me, a life lived loving others more than yourself, of course loving yourself you can't give love if you don't, but being part of something much bigger than just you is truly finding your highest self. When you live your life intertwined with others, choices must be made. There have been several times opportunities have presented themselves that I chose no because it is about more than me. I recall one in particular where I was offered to work for a sales and motivational company, they wanted me to travel and speak 200 times a year for a thousand dollars a day. I always wanted to be Zig Ziglar, this was so exciting for a couple minutes. I told the one making the offer "let me talk this over with my wife." However, I wasn't ten steps away before I turned around and declined the offer. In those ten steps I saw the faces of my wife and three children and knew that if I was traveling that much, they either wouldn't be there physically, or at least emotionally. What seemed to be my life's dream was very easy to say no to, it didn't come close to what I had. <br />
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When the author speaks of letting go of your values, habits and beliefs passed down to you, I agree if they are destructive, but isn't that who we are? Isn't that what makes us a part of something more, something bigger, something lasting, something worth passing along? I treasure the values passed down to me by those I loved, and want to honor them by passing them down to continue beyond my own time. I say to sift through and separate the wheat from the chaff, but don't throw out that wheat.<br />
morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-28714916419825221922018-12-21T12:21:00.000-08:002018-12-21T12:21:16.007-08:00Should We Panic Like The Media and Washington D.C. Suggests? Over the last few days, several people have reached out to me for my thoughts on all the turmoil churning in the news media and throughout official Washington. This made me decide to try to put forth those thoughts in context in this blog. By doing so I realize it puts me in a position that if wrong, it's on record, but then again, if right as well. So in no special order I will try to cover the chaos. <br />
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The resignation of General James "Mad Dog" Mattis. May I first ask why does everyone on both sides of the aisle automatically believe that General Mattis was blindsided by President Trump deciding to pull troops out of Syria? Why isn't the assumption that they have been in debate behind closed doors and simply disagree? Personally, I have twice resigned from leadership positions in different organizations when I was in disagreement with the leader's ultimate decision. There were other times where I was able to take a step back and decide if I could truly support the decision or not and decided I could after working my head around to see it their way. This would be my first belief how this went down, it only makes sense to me, maybe because I have been in those situations. Second, this was part of what Donald Trump ran his campaign on, that he wouldn't keep us entangled in conflicts that don't have a clear American direct interest. That he would not commit the blood of our service men and women and our treasure to such things. This is simply one more promise kept. With the addition of reduction if not outright removal of our troops in Afghanistan, this has been the single longest running war in the history of America as a sovereign nation. It has been going on nonstop for the last 17 years, two years longer than Vietnam. Today's high school seniors have lived their entire lives with America at war. There is a great deal being made over Mattis's resignation letter, and that it doesn't endorse President Trump, but does say he deserves a Secretary of War who shares his vision. How can anyone argue with that? For me, I will be in a wait and see stance on how this plays out, but I am not overly concerned at present. <br />
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The Government Shut Down and the Battle over the Wall. First of all, the government shut down is a lot of fuss over very little impact overall. In fact, I would suggest that the Establishment in both parties are the only ones who can be really hurt by and actual government shut down, because the last thing they want is for people to realize how little impact it would have on their lives. Who knows, people might then ask, "why are we paying for all this?" When it comes to the Wall, I may be one of the few Trump supporters who is not a fan of a Wall. I am a big fan of the idea of the wall, and the goals of that wall, but not of the structure itself. Why? Because I understand that people I support will not always be in power, and that there is no guarantee that a Totalitarian Oligarchic Progressive Regime won't take power and use it to keep people in rather than out. I would prefer the Wall be made up of laws where there are real punishments for those who hire illegal's, for those who forge papers, and who create an underground economy. I would support the death penalty for those who human traffic people into sweat shops or the sex trade. However, I understand the ideas of the Wall because laws have so long not been followed. I hope that the President holds his line and forces the Establishment to blink. <br />
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The Stock Market. The stock market is always susceptible to any level of uncertainty. The FED, who didn't raise interest rates for more than a decade, but held them artificially low to protect the Establishment's economic policies of stagnation and a shrinking America are now raising them to "Slow down inflation" which simply doesn't exist. It feels pretty much like the Swamp trying to put a plug in the drain. This too shall pass. Why would you expect those who are invested in status quo not to fight change. Trump is, in fact, making America strong again and that goes against their plan of globalization and making America to be on par, not ahead of the rest of the world. <br />
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The thing that really cracks me up is the assertions that Trump is leading a partisan divide in this country. There is nothing remotely partisan about Trump. He is not an ideologue for either party. He is not a Progressive or a Conservative, even though he has been the most successful in advancing Conservative agendas in history. He is a pragmatist who really doesn't care who's ideas work. In fact, historically we have no had a less partisan President since Washington and Adams. <br />
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The battle will continue, this will get uglier before it gets better. We are at the front line of a civil war, the civil war is being fought at Trump's front door. It is a battle of will we be a nation of Laws, of Individual rights, with truly equal opportunities for everyone to start, or will we be a nation of collectivists making decisions for all? I pray that Donald Trump and those who support him stay strong and prevail, it is this nation's last greatest hope to pass along a Free and Independent Republic to our kids. morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-56838627058999624332016-08-07T14:43:00.001-07:002016-08-07T14:43:52.336-07:002016 Election Is Nothing New. It's a popular premise that this election cycle and the division is at unpecidented levels. That is only because we use our own life experiences as if they are the entire scope of history. What we are seeing today is remarkably like we have seen several times before. Those who actually were involved in the campaign cycle in 1976 and 1980, the political establishment was in full war mode against Ronald Reagan and his supporters. As such we were castigated as troglodytes who the party needed to purge from their ranks. In fact in many cases it's exactly the same people saying exactly the same things about Trump and his supporters today. <br />
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However it goes back further, if you look at the 1860 election the political professionals were appalled at this classless backwoods rube who emerged as the candidate. The Ameeican people were so divided that almost half left the country and a full fledged war ensued. In the 1860 Republican Convention the favorites were Senator Henry Seward, Ohio Governor Salmon P. Chase, or St. Louis judge, Edward Bates, and Simon Cameron from Pennsylvania were all the ones being watched to emerge as the nominee when an abscure Abraham Lincoln got the nod. Lincoln brilliantly brought all the competitors into his cabinet, even though they all thought he was a fool. After some very bumpy and disloyal, even insubordinate acts by them, they eventually came to understand the merit of his leadership and together successfully steered the ship of state during our nation's most dangerous times.<br />
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If you go back to our first time where we saw duplicitous actions by party leaders against their own candidates and outright lies pushed by the opposition against a candidate was our very first contested election with John Adams seeking reelection against his Vice President Thomas Jefferson. It was one of the dirtiest elections in history. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton formed and led the two political parties while serving as Washington's cabinet until the infighting became so severe that Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson resigned and moved back to Monticello. When Secretary of Treasury, Alexander Hamilton stepped down he stacked Washington's Cabinet with his lackies who did his and his Federalist Party's bidding. <br />
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John Adams, with hopes of unity, kept Washington's Cabinet which kept Hamilton's voice loud in the chamber. Adams wouldn't give in to Hamilton and eventually fired his left over Cabinet. Hamilton set out to destroy his own Party's candidate to get back at Adams. Hamilton, long the prolific writer, he would be considered a blogger today, wrote the campaign pamphlet against his own Federalist President "Letter from Alexander Hamilton Cconcerning The Public Character Of John Adams, Esq. President Of The United States." 24th of October 1800, the first October Surprise. <br />
Hamilton called ro question Adam's sanity, temperament his judgement his morals and his loyalty to his country. <br />
Thomas Jefferson, who Adams and his wife Abigail had considered their best friend until they learned how politics was more dear to Jefferson than personal attachments. Jefferson hired James Callendar, who was what would be considered a yellow journalist today, to write articles to destroy the political careers of John Adams and also his political enemy Alexander Hamilton. The funniest story to go with this is that after Jefferson won, Callendar expected a job in his administration as a reward. When Jefferson cut off access to Callendar, he got his revenge by exposing the world to the story about Jefferson's sexual relationship and children with his slave Sally Hemming. <br />
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So you can see that this is nothing new in 2016. However it is much like some of the most turmultuous four election cycles in our history. We have seen that never does the current establishment power structure give in quietly. morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-5327064186463487422016-07-30T13:46:00.000-07:002016-07-30T13:46:16.915-07:00Okay Not Why Not Hillary But Why Trump? Today I was asked by an old high school friend who holds opposite political views than myself, "Why should I vote for Donald Trump? Not why I should vote against Hillary, but for Trump." <br />
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Let me attempt to answer that in a way that is relevant to those who may not agree with a lot of my own political beliefs. There are going to be those things that I hold dear that she would not. So allow me some space to try to answer her question for her. I chose this forum to record it because it is highly likely that I will be asked this again. <br />
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From a position stand point I agree with most of them, but not all. There has yet to be a president in our history from Washington forward that I've agreed with all they did or believed, with the possible exception of Calvin Coolidge. <br />
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Trump plans to build the Wall and make Mexico pay for it. Of course people scoff at this but he's outlined his thoughts and plans well on his website so I won't repeat them here. This will be long enough as it is. When it comes to the wall, I am not a fan of an actual wall, I find history too often found them eventually used to hold people in rather than others out. But with that said, I agree completely with the reason for the wall and what it represents for America. A nation is not a sovereign nation without borders and means of screening those coming in and going out. <br />
Our economy is bleeding billions upon billions of dollars supporting those who are here illegally, clogging the health services for citizens and draining the resources to educate our own citizens and more. The safety of the nation in the world of today is all the more critical to assure those coming in are not intent on destruction. <br />
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While here, the Muslim ban, is anything but what the media and the Democrats are painting it. It's simply common sense. If we are at war with Radical Islam, and we are, then it makes sense to be highly careful before allowing someone in who could be on a mission of Jihad. Many of three counties have long been primitive and corrupt but today there is near anarchy where there is no means of finding records on people who want to come in. We MUST find a way to be assured those we allow in don't kill American citizens. <br />
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U.S. Trade, while the media paints a picture of isolationist that is anything but what he is actually saying. He is saying it's time to create trade deals that are win-win or not at all. For decades our deals have been done by politicians who are clueless about world economies and business and are being undressed by other nations in these deals. We need someone who understands how to trade internationally to renegotiate these deals and we have never had a better candidate to do that than Trumo who runs a highly successful global business. <br />
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Those who claim he is a bad businessman due to four of his LLC's filing Chapter 11. Keep in mind two things, that is part of our laws to protect the overt risk of business and capital. Second that those were four strategic bankruptcies out of 550 different LLC's he owns. That is a staggering success rate. <br />
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For decades, especially over the last eight years, it has become an absolute disgrace what we have done to our military and veterans. The VA is a place of nightmares where they have even been caught delaying service until the veteran died to avoid spending the money to treat them. Our active military has been engaged in war since 2002 without relief. All the while we have cut funding, reduced force numbers and ask those in service to keep going back on tours over and over again. It has caused the highest suicide rates in history in our armed forces. Trump promises to fix it or change it. If after analysis of the VA if he believes it not fixable then he will push to allow the money we promise to care for them to be used at any hospital to get the vets the care we owe them. <br />
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Tax reform he understands why American companies are moving their jobs overseas and hoarding now about 10 trillion dollars off shore. America has the highest business tax rates in the world making them less competitive in this, the global market place. Reducing these rates will cause businesses to grow in America bring back jobs and prosperity. <br />
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Trump has promised to repeal the 29,000 new regulations on businesses imposed since Obama took office that have been the cause of the lost decade in our economy. It has crushed small businesses in favor of Wall Street, large companies don't mind because it crushes their competition who cannot afford the floors of employees who do nothing but keep them compliant. <br />
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Trump has shown clearly that he is committed to protecting the Constitution with the list of Supreme Court Justice candidates he is proposing. <br />
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Beyond all the above he is uniquely fitted for the time we find ourselves. First he is the first politician in my lifetime who will lose net worth by becoming president because his time value of money is massively better in business. He is a businessman who actually understands how to create a dollar, the only one of all that ran who have. <br />
He is the only one who has actually created a job in his life and he has tens of thousands working for him. <br />
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Politics has long been a breeding ground for corruption and this election has shown that even more clearly. Ask those who were "Feeling the Bern" about their wake up call. This may in fact be our only chance to actually send someone who isn't bought and paid for on either side of the aisle to actually give the power back to the people instead of some sort of ongoing Hunger Games immitation where we currently find ourselves. morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-80805672633431247892016-05-29T14:40:00.000-07:002016-05-30T10:39:49.052-07:00What Is At Stake In November The 2016 election is likely the single most important election since 1860 to the direction of These United States. <br />
Two roads diverged in this race and we must take the one less traveled if we want to truly make a difference. <br />
We have the patron saint of the establishment crony political class against someone who has never been a politician before. There are many who want to paint Trump as "the same" as Hillary due to him knowing how to navigate his business through the political elites pay to play system. But in business you must adapt to the playing field and adjust to it as it changes or you won't have a business to navigate. To me this just means he knows how the system is corrupt and it's has cost him millions to negotiate through it, who better to ferret out the mess than someone who knows it from the outside not making wealth from the inside. <br />
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This is the bottom-line. If Hillary is elected she has promised in her first 100 days to give all 20 million illegal immigrants full legal citizenship status as well as all their families not yet here effectively adding 20-50 million New Democrat voters. She has promised to double down on the Dodd-Frank and CFPB. She has promised to double down on Obamacare. She has promised to do away with the 2nd Amendment. Donald Trump has promised the exact opposite of each. <br />
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Donald Trump has released the names of eleven possible Supreme Court Justices to replace Scalia who were all recommended by The Heritage Foundation and are a wish list of Constitutional Conservatives and pro-life believers. <br />
Hillary would appoint more of the caliber that Obama has. The next president will likely appoint 4-5 justices. If they are in that eleven we will all be rejoicing, if they are Hillary's the Constitution will be no more.<br />
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With Hillary's 20-50 million more dependent voters there will never be another Republican or conservative ever elected president again. There will never be a Constitution again, there will never be an opportunity to roll back or end abortion. If any of those things mean anything to you, then you have to pray that Donald Trump is the next president or really nothing else matters. For me, I'm fighting to save this Free Constitutional Republic by working to elect Donald Trump, then plan to use equal vigor to hold his feet to the fire to do as he has said. <br />
If Hillary wins, my thirty seven year fight for conservative political movement will come to an end because it's over, we can never even hope to win again in the lifetimes of anyone currently breathing. I will do what I can to protect my family as best as I can in what will become The People's Republic of America. <br />
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We have one last chance. Please put down our differences and save this nation. If you have emotional issues against Trump then do as I did with Dole, McCain and Romney and hold your nose and vote against Hillary. You, your family and your county are depending upon it. morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-41113539174619142922016-05-26T13:32:00.003-07:002016-05-26T13:32:58.524-07:00No Matter Your Favorite We Are Watching History When this election season began I was 100% for Scott Walker, and had been since 2012. My second choice was Bobby Jindal. For me the only intelligent choices would be someone with solid successful experience at a "C" level position either in business or with governorships. That meant that Walker, Jindal, Fiorina, Trump, Christy, Bush, Kasich were the ONLY ones qualified regardless of ideology and politics. While I align closer to Ted Cruz than any in belief systems and would vote for him over any of them as a Senator, I see him wholly unqualified and ill equipped for President at this time in his life. The same goes for Marco Rubio. They have never shown any evidence of having the required leadership skills to be President.<br />
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As to Trump, the day he threw his hat into the ring I knew, if he was serious, no one could beat him in either party due to our society's celebrity culture. He has a 98% name recognition and mostly positive in that he's a tough smart rich guy who fires people, and everyone hates politicians especially now. Further when you add that the results of a study done in 2006 where one of the questions was "Name Your State's Governor," and only 9% on average by state could do so. <br />
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I wasn't sure what I thought of Trump as president. But as I watched him being attacked financially by having one deal after another cancelled due to his involvement thus costing him hundreds of millions to his bottom-line and yet he didn't blink. I've never seen this before in my lifetime. Every other time any politician was attacked financially they bailed.<br />
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Was I actually seeing for the first time or at most the second time in my life someone who was actually following the model our founders had imagined? They never imagined career politicians who would go into politics for life as a career and to make their wealth. They envisioned that men would go into business, become wealthy, and then in the later part of their lives go do as a public service by bringing their expertise to elected position for a period without needing to be reelected to feed their families. We saw this with Reagan who made his wealth in Hollywood who late in life gave 8 years to his state and then 8 more to the nation. <br />
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If you look at our founders they more resembled Reagan and Trump than any other candidate. Washington was the wealthiest man in America. He was not always with the best cash-flow but was hugely wealthy in land. He also was the largest whisky distiller in America producing 11,000 gallons a year, one of the largest commercial fishing operations and an innovative agriculture enterprise. In fact his land speculation company was one of the main reasons that drove him to war when the King took away his company's claims to millions of acres of land he held in the Ohio territories. He was also upset with the usury charges that the English banks and merchants charged to the colonies with the blessings of the King.<br />
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John Hancock who was the wealthiest man in Massachusetts in the shipping business. He was a Tory because he had business relations where he paid off the King's men to look the other way on what came and went on his ships. Then when the King cracked down and cost him business and money he started moving away from the English, but when they took over Hancock's home to use as the English General's home and base of operations it was the final straw. <br />
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We are seeing a peaceful revolution and a one time ever chance of the people taking power back from the back room deals of the establishment political elites who are in collusion no matter what label they carry.morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-13324586372021429532016-04-11T15:02:00.000-07:002016-04-11T15:04:06.293-07:00We Are Watching A Case Study Of Hoizontal Hostility Every day in today's news we see the battles between Trump vs Cruz vs The Establishment Republicans playing out in front of our eyes. Likely most reading this have picked sides and are passionately defending our turf, and possibly pointing out all the monsters in the other camps. Have you ever asked yourself why is it that the two most radically opposed to business as usual in D.C. are the most passionately fighting each other? Personally I took one of those "Who's the candidate for you?" Quizzes and predictably I was 94% aligned with Ted Cruz and 91% aligned with Donald Trump and significantly less with all others down to 11% with Hillary Clinton and 8% with Bernie Sanders. I am personally in favor of Trump but it's a coin flip on policies, I hold leadership skills and experience high on my decision process, if I was voting for a Senator where ideology is my primary measure I would vote for Cruz over any who ran. To me President is a bigger more broad thought process. <br />
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What we are seeing is what Dartmouth Psycologist, Judith White calls Horizonantal Hostility, that even though they share a fundamental objective, radical groups often disparage more mainstream groups as impostors or sell outs. Sigmund Freud wrote, "It's precisely the minor differences in people who are otherwise alike that forM the basis of feeling of strangeness and hostility between them." <br />
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We notice Horizontal Hostilty everywhere. When a deaf woman won Miss America, rather than cheering her on as a trailblazer, deaf activists protested because she spoke orally rather than using sign language and "wasn't deaf enough." In a study in Greek politics it was found the members of the most Conservative party judged most harshly the most similar party even more than the most Progressive. Also the most liberal party most criticized the next most Progressive. <br />
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There is an excellent case study with the Women's Suffrage Movement started by Lucy Stanton who created the nationwide organization and was making remarkable progress until two of her lieutenants, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cade Staton broke away and went to war with Stone for not being radical enough. Stone was aghast that Anthony attached her own movement with a racist organization led by George Frances that was working to block the black community from the right to vote. Biographers of Anthony said her radical ties set back the movement at least twenty years. <br />
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Hopefully, we who want to see change can come together rather than follow basic human nature and fight among ourselves. To me, I still see the smartest, if not most difficult path would be an alliance of Trump and Cruz. Can we focus on the real enemy is the question. morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-10058721581591000572013-03-28T17:10:00.000-07:002013-03-28T17:10:13.495-07:00What Might Be Your Butterfly Effect? Every day of our lives we could be impacting those around us and maybe even the world at large in ways we may never know. Who knows where an act of kindness might end, or something we teach another, or words of encouragement for someone at a critical time could be the catalyst, the butterfly wing, that changes the direction of someone's life. Who knows the ripples that will flow from such tiny events that can change the world. <br />
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Consider the story of Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Prize winner who is credited for saving at least two billion lives from starvation from his research and development of drought resistant grain hybrids. I knew I liked him when I learned that he was a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame who is credited with being the catalyst to start high school wrestling in Minnesota. <br />
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"Wrestling taught me some valuable lessons ... I always figured I could hold my own against the best in the world. It made me tough. Many times, I drew on that strength. It's an inappropriate crutch perhaps, but that's the way I'm made". Norman Borlaug. <br />
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Okay, so he saved two billion lives, was it him, or should we actually give some of that credit to Vice President Henry Wallace, FDR's second VP? Wallace was previously the Secretary of Agriculture, who through his influence as VP persuaded the Rockefeller Foundation to invest in Borlaug’s research making his discoveries possible. Wallace had a lifelong passion for experimenting with crops to help feed more of the worlds people. Without this passion of Wallace, Borlaug's research was floundering away in Mexico.<br />
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So, then should we share the credit with both Borlaug and Wallace, but maybe we should look back further. There was a young college student who was studying and experimenting with crops who a college president had allowed to live with them while he was in school. Part of how he paid his room and board was he helped look out for their young son and often took him with him on nature walks studying the crops and let him watch and participate with him in his experiments. That young boy was Henry Wallace, that student was George Washington Carver. So should the credit then go to Carver as well?<br />
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Okay, now we have Borlaug, Wallace, and George Washington Carver who had an impact on saving those two billion lives. However, should we look just a bit further?<br />
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In the mid 1800s there was a raid on a community of Free African Americans in Missouri. The village was destroyed and the people captured to be taken to Arkansas to sell back into slavery. One of the youngest was a very small baby. A local farmer and his wife were heartbroken by this attack and Susan Carver was able to find a way to get a message to those raiders and negotiate a price to return that baby. She sent her husband Moses to ride to a meeting place near the Arkansas line where he traded their last horse for that stolen baby. The raiders threw a sack toward Moses and he caught that nearly frozen child inside. He took him and put him under his shirt and coat to try to warm him and rushed back home to Susan who nursed this baby back to health. Moses and Susan a white farmer couple adopted this child as their own and gave him their last name and raised George Washington Carver. <br />
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It could easily be said if not for Moses and Susan Carver those two billion people would have starved. <br />
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You never know what you may do or say that might make a difference to someone who might make a difference to millions. I know that helps me to keep a bit of perspective and try to leave people lifted. <br />
morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-10798827768974821602013-01-01T22:18:00.003-08:002013-01-01T22:18:45.063-08:00The Fiscal Cliff Poison Pill Okay, the Republicans capitulated and gave in on most of Obama's demands to stave off the "Fiscal Cliff" so we should hang them and vote a third party right? I truly understand the emotions behind feeling like that. However, right now we need thinking not feeling. No matter what is passed this next two to four years anyone who has any sense, who understands even basic economics or civics will hate it. However, elections have consequences and we are in for a very rough ride. The final verdict is not yet in as to any chance of saving any semblance of our once great nation from the hands of those in power bent on destroying it. One thing is sure, if we stand fast and draw a line in the sand, we won't save her at all.<br />
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Let's take a look at what we are up against in this "Fiscal Cliff" debate. Obama controls the White House, the Senate, the Media, and through that the American people who 56% approve of his job performance. I understand that is difficult to grasp if you have ever used your brain for anything but a garbage can. However that is where we are. Most Americans have bought the class envy politics where they want the top earners to get punished, they don't understand they are talking about their boss who may lay them off when his income is diminished. Too many do not understand cause and effect in economics.<br />
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So here is what the Republicans have had to deal with, a truly no win situation against an opponent who cannot lose. Negotiating against someone who really wants the "worst case" situation to happen, the only threat you can hold against them being their own best case scenario makes it an uphill climb. Obama and the Democrats truly wanted the Fiscal Cliff to happen, it is their political wet dream, with it they get to raise taxes massively on EVERY working American to where Bill Clinton left them, and get to gut the military as well, even better they would be able to blame the Republicans for it happening. <br />
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There are so few who understand what is happening the Republicans couldn't win a dog catcher race in 2014 after EVERY American family sees 300-500.00/month disappear from their monthly paychecks. We would see a recession that would make 2008-2009 look like a Bull Market, jobs disappearing, massive foreclosures both in residential and commercial markets. It would be Grapes of Wrath kind of things. Thousands of military and defense industry personnel would be cut loose and unemployed all at once as well.<br />
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Last month Boehner tried something that even the Republicans didn't understand, he took a bill that Nancy Pelosi was pushing last summer and rewrote it verbatim to prove that the Democrats had no intention of accepting ANY bill from the House Republicans. Obama promised to veto it, Reid said it would never be voted on in the Senate. This proved that nothing the House did would ever see the light of day in the Senate, and only a Senate bill would have any chance to be passed. <br />
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The Senate Republicans hashed out a terrible bill with the Senate Democrats, but it does limit the damage marginally from no bill at all that the Democrats would actually prefer. It protects the military short term, it gives permanent tax relief to everyone under 400k individually, and 450k as a family, but there is bad news for those making 250k and up with loss of deductions, (read tax increases) just not increased tax rates which Obama wanted both, just got one. <br />
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These are the key victories if we want to call them that, maybe better said, the areas we didn't lose as much:<br />
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•Raises taxes on incomes over $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for households instead of everyone.<br />
•Raises taxes on investment income for those taxpayers as well<br />
•Limits tax deductions for incomes over $250,000—raising their taxes, too<br />
•Increases the death tax rate for estates over $5 million<br />
•Extends long-term unemployment benefits for one year<br />
•Postpones sequestration’s automatic spending cuts (including those to defense) by two months<br />
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Elections have consequences, and we are all going to feel them for a long time. This is going to be ugly, but we MUST learn how to play politics on our side. The Democrats are masters at it, we as a party suck, mostly because our voting base doesn't understand the game. It is like my Daddy always taught me, it is better to get a little of something than a lot of nothing. We will have to fight for scraps and try to save as much as we can, but when we lost the White House and the Senate we guaranteed that we and our country was going to pay deeply and dearly. It is survival mode now.<br />
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As to third parties, who knows, but if we don't play this game very well and very smart getting the little things we can, there won't be anything left to save after a third party would come about. morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-7495512364760389382012-12-26T13:00:00.001-08:002012-12-26T13:02:17.366-08:00We Speak Our World Into Existence. What Are You Saying About Yours? We are told in three times in the Bible that We are Created in God's Own Image. Shouldn't that make us question, what that image might be? What does that make us? God, is the great Creator, if we are created in His image wouldn't that also make us creators? How did God Create? He spoke the world into existence, couldn't that mean that we are too creating our own world by the words we speak?<br />
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If that is true, and I believe it is, shouldn't we be very careful what we say? Yet, we seem to be so cavalier with what we say about ourselves and others. It makes me cringe when I hear people speak about themselves in negative terms, when they speak of "Their depression," "their cancer," even "their overwhelming debts," quit owning those things. What you speak of you will get more of. <br />
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Remember you are creating your world by the words of your mouth, make sure that words you are using creates a world that you want. Speak of where you want to be, where you want to go. If you are struggling financially, speak of where you want to be, speak of being debt free, secure, independent. If you are fighting illness speak of health, speak of where you want to be. Speak of overcoming a disease if you want, but NEVER claim the disease, never call it yours.<br />
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Never accept anyone else's label for you or your life, unless it is the same vision you have of where you want to be. You do not need anyone else's permission for you to reach your goals and dreams, only your own. Les Brown tells a story of when he was in school, he had been labled "Educable Mentally Retarded," once when a coach/teacher saw him hanging out near a class room he told Les to go to the board and work out a problem, Les explained why he couldn't by using his label he had been given. This coach threw a fit, "Never accept someone else's label, go do the problem." It was one of the key turning points of Les Brown's successful life journey. Do not allow someone else's opinion of you rob you of yours.<br />
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God didn't make any junk, you are a miracle of birth, you have unlimited potential but that is up to you to turn into reality. Watch you words, speak the world you want, and if you must be Hung by the Tongue makes sure it is a masterpiece. <br />
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A good book on this topic is "Hung By The Tongue," by Francis P. Martin.<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hung-Tongue-What-You-Say/dp/0965243303"></a><br />
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morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-70270767594235215262012-11-15T14:44:00.000-08:002012-11-15T14:44:51.861-08:00Mass Transit in Indy? Now? Today Mayor Ballard has come out saying that "Now is the time" we put forth a mass transit plan in Indianapolis. There are a small group of people pushing for this, politicians, politicians in REALTOR clothing, and politicians in downtown development clothing. They all want to rush something through during their election cycle so they can be the ones who "gave" Indianapolis this great "gift." Or better said, give them the gift that just keeps on taking.<br />
<a href="http://http://www.indystar.com/article/20121115/NEWS/121115018/Mayor-Ballard-mass-transit-Now-time-?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|IndyStar.com"></a><br />
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Indianapolis does not need an enhanced mass transit system right now, in fact it is likely at least twenty years from that need. Our current one is anything but well utilized, or self-sustaining. We would be spending 1.3 billion dollars shared between us and the Federal Government, who by the way is also us, to purchase something we don't yet need, and likely will barely use. Then we will be given the opportunity to pay millions more per year in operating losses over the next twenty years hoping that it will be mostly covering its own costs by then. After twenty years, how much of that initial infrastructure purchase will be required to replace? How much will that be?<br />
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After a brutal fight to cut our property taxes, we are being asked to allow them to be raised so we can see a train running through town several times a day. Has any thought been given to the traffic jams that it will cause at every intersection from the North side to Downtown to allow the trains to go by all day? Has any thought been given to the cost in human lives and property damage to the danger of these trains running all day in a densely populated area? What consideration has been given to the property values and quality of life issues, such as noise, dirt, and danger that will be a result of the trains running up and down along homes along the way?<br />
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I agree we should be looking into long-term solutions, but by taking a long-term approach. We have the benefit of time, let's use it, rather than jumping in as if we are backed into a corner, let's take our time, and explore options. If we feel we have a good solution, if we feel we are well served to start procuring land and property, then start that process.<br />
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However, right now it seems more that a group of politicians in all walks of life, are just wanting to have their pictures taken cutting the ribbon with no thought of the massive losses of dollars and frankly quality of life for the city in the near term. morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-65844355655920736882012-11-10T12:14:00.000-08:002012-11-10T12:14:06.861-08:00Post Election 2012, Where Are We, Where Are We Going?"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated." Thomas Payne<br />
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I just thought all of us could benefit from reading those words written in December of 1776 when all looked lost in our countries Revolution for Independence. With that said, if you think I am going to get Pollyanna with rose-colored glasses and blow smoke up your skirt you are going to be disappointed. <br />
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We just went through a very hard fought election and ended up in figuratively the same place we were going in. We went in with an either incompetent or intentionally destructive president, a Senate Leader who has decided to put that chamber in a total deep freeze with nothing ever coming to the floor, and a House that is opposed to both. We went to bed Tuesday night/Wednesday morning exactly the same, at least on the surface.<br />
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What actually changed is the likely end of The United States of America as a Free Market Capitalist based economy in a Representative Constitutional Republic under the Rule of Law. At least for as long as most of us will be living, and that is optimistic, it is likely gone forever.<br />
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What are we up against? <br />
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1. Obamacare will be fully implemented, in so doing it will enslave ALL Americans to owe their very lives to the whims of the government bureaucracy. This is slavery as much as any shackles and chains could ever reach. For this reason government healthcare is always the first thing any Totalitarian Regime puts into place.<br />
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2. Dodd-Frank will stay the law and will be more and more rolled out. This essentially ends any semblance of the free market system, now government has total control over any financial transaction. <br />
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3. Obama will choose the next three Supreme Court Justices who will stack the court with a 6-3 lead assuring a Marxist Constitutional Revisionist view for the next 20-30 years. One could argue right now that the game is over, fulfilling Nikita Khrushchev’s prophecy. That we would not be defeated from outside but would vote for Communism from within. <br />
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It appears that the One Party Rule that is tied to a dependent voter base who relies on government for their lives is complete. It was started under Woodrow Wilson, put on steroids under FDR, another shot of steroids by LBJ, and maybe harvested by BHO. The goal was to get enough people who abdicated their very lives to government largess who would always vote to keep Democrats in office to protect their goodie bag.<br />
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So what's next? Do we just give up? Do we figure out how to best take care of ourselves and our families in the "new" world and let the rest go? Do we fight back? What's Next?<br />
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First of all I would strongly recommend no matter what you do about the country that you first and foremost figure out the best way to take care of yourself and your family in our new reality. <br />
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What can we do to try to save our Republic? Of course America will go on, look at Europe, we will survive just not the way we could or should unless we can figure out a strategy to take it back. There is not going to be any easy path. The last best chance we had ended Tuesday night. It is now a series of long-shots. We have a chance to help a bit in 2014 if we can figure out a path to take the Senate and stop Obama from doing further damage in the last two years of his second term. Who knows, maybe those three judges will hang in for two more years. That would be HUGE!<br />
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As expected after a loss, especially one where we were so blindsided, a lot of finger pointing is going on. The old school blames the tea party, the tea party blames the "RINOs", our candidate was too moderate, too conservative, too negative, not negative enough, whatever. There is likely some blame to spread around, but I don't think it is really anyone who is to blame, it is more than that. We just had more people choose freebies than freedom, and that is a problem. I have heard we need to "reach out to the single women, minorities, immigrants, and those who want a bigger and bigger social net to take care of them. In my opinion if that is our approach, why bother, why be copies of the Democrats? Holding offices with an R instead of a D but doing the same things is not a win in any way.<br />
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My thoughts are we need to go all out to take the shot at the Senate in 2014. Then if we win the Senate we try to start dialing things back, but make sure that nothing of the Obama ideology is pushed forward. Win or lose that race we need to start looking long term. If we are to make a come back to our Constitutional and Free Market principles we have to educate our electorate. We have for far too many decades allowed the left to indoctrinate and not educate our children. Beginning in the 1950s we were taught revisionist history, in what history we were taught. Each decade became significantly worse, today our kids are getting out of school with virtually no understanding of our country's history and how it came to be, or what makes it work. They have been instead taught that all of those things were evil if taught at all. They have been indoctrinated on television, in the movies, in their music, and schools, and now we are shocked they don't love our country and what it stands for.<br />
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We need to find a way to get our hands back into the schools, but short term, I have an idea. Instead of running a billion dollars of ads bashing our opponents, we MUST educate our electorate. We could take advantage of those ad buys to start doing so. What if we picked five keys to our platform and had ads teaching the advantages of that issue, do so with clever visuals and catchy jingles that will get stuck in people's head. We all can sing along to the jingles of commercials from decades before if we can "get into the voter's heads" we might start getting through to them. Run the ads on the shows that young voters watch and start reprogramming them. If we do not win the Senate and House in 2014, this will be starting the program to hope to turn this country back by our grandchildren's time. If we can win the Senate, we might be able to take it back sooner. <br />
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I know this isn't all kittens and sunshine, but this is how I see it today.<br />
morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-74104757682084962412012-09-27T20:37:00.000-07:002012-09-27T20:38:21.658-07:00Home Energy Report The Indianapolis Energy Report arrived yesterday in my mailbox. Did you get yours? The last one that came drove my curiosity about what it was they were trying to tell me because their numbers made no sense to me what-so-ever.<br />
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The report tells me that I use more energy than 100% of my neighbors, costing me 88% more or 161.16 more a month than my average neighbor pays. That would be pretty impressive dropping my total electric bill for my heat, air conditioning, water heater, lights for a family of 3 including a teenage girl, to less than 40.00/month on average! My neighbors must be amazing.<br />
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When I talked to a few neighbors they too were all the worst energy hogs as well. So I talked to others from work and friends and guess what? Everyone I know is an over achieving energy hog! This made me more curious and I checked into it further and learned that IPL was just one client of the company that does these energy reports in the utilities name. The company making the report is OPower a company that formed in 2007. So, utility companies all across America "hire" OPower to try to convince their customers to use less of the product the utility is selling. <br />
<a href="http://opower.com/"></a><br />
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Opower is one of the true success stories during this economy, they are skyrocketing in growth. It is pretty impressive that a small start up can line up dozens of huge utility companies in just a handful of years, it makes me wonder if the Government EPA requires these services, how about you?<br />
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The more I read on the company, their founders, the more questions I had about this report showing up in all our mailboxes. However when I learned about their Chief Scientist things started to clear up. What would you assume that Dr. Robert Cialdini would be an expert in? Since this is about energy savings and energy efficiency, wouldn't you guess that it would be involved somewhere in the energy, or heating or cooling specialities? You would guess wrong, Dr. Cialdini, is a leading expert on group manipulation and compliance psychology? Did you get that? I have to admit I missed it on my first guess. Why would their top scientist be someone to create mass compliance? Does this creep you out?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh583Gew7VI3fCkh8TS3z4EJ_YwABc914hc13VeRy9CHjrRbjBZQKrjLyaW8QIE_pqNl0PzgZK4of0GCSf-Sv2puiJVUihtKNfKNcXExt39tundDs4NL4buHjvnR2CLus3o_4_wTltQAw4/s1600/Dr._Robert_Cialdini%252C_Chief_Scientist_.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="146" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh583Gew7VI3fCkh8TS3z4EJ_YwABc914hc13VeRy9CHjrRbjBZQKrjLyaW8QIE_pqNl0PzgZK4of0GCSf-Sv2puiJVUihtKNfKNcXExt39tundDs4NL4buHjvnR2CLus3o_4_wTltQAw4/s320/Dr._Robe
rt_Cialdini%252C_Chief_Scientist_.png" /></a></div><br />
Would it be a stretch to believe that we are being manipulated? Does it seem a stretch to believe that you and I are paying extra in our utility bills to pay for this "service?" If it is all nonsense and everyone is being told we are the worst to guilt us into using less energy, what value is this service. One of my neighbors was rated the worst, but their house was sitting empty for three months with all utilities turned off and it was still an energy hog, hmmm?<br />
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Check yours.<br />
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morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-1150983813551915682012-09-08T18:05:00.000-07:002012-09-08T18:05:14.312-07:00Come Join The Second Revolution! We are living at a time that is very similar to our nation's founding. The political animosity between different factions is nearly as ugly today as it was then, not quite as violent yet, not too many tar and feathings or house ram sackings going on today.<br />
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Our Founding Fathers, it could be said, were our first political bloggers. They were not people in position of political power, in fact for most the opposite. Yet they spoke out, but mostly they wrote out. They were pamphleteers, filled the letters to the editor's pages of the newspapers mostly writing under pseudonyms. Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, Benjamin Rush, and many more were prodigious writers, writing copious writings, helping us today understand their time and quest so much more clearly. <br />
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No one was more important in getting things started than Samuel Adams, who not only as a writer, but more so as a "community agitator" and Thomas Payne's booklet "Common Sense" as the driving force to start our quest for independence. It was also Thomas Payne's "Crisis" where he admonished the soldiers who were planning on leaving the fight during that cold hungry winter with "THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."<br />
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<a href="http://http://www.ushistory.org/paine/crisis/c-01.htm"></a><br />
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Even then, those who were the Patriots who were clamoring for freedom and independence were in the minority. Most Americans at the time were either Tories, who supported the King, or were independent and really didn't care that much, they were more interested in their own day by day existence. John Adams told us about this when he said that Americans in any conflict would be 1/3 passionately for it, 1/3 passionately against it, and 1/3 in the middle. It was that middle third what must be won. Today is no different than at his time.<br />
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Today's bloggers are fighting the very same fight, today the battle is not so much in the newspapers but on the computer screen, the Founders would have loved Social Media, it was exactly what they were doing without the power to reach so many so quickly. <br />
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I am proud to try to play a part today, we are at a crossroads today in this country. This election will determine what kind of country we will live in, one that is what our Founders gave us, or one that they tried to free us from. If you have a voice, be it in type, or speaking out, come join the 1/3 who are trying to save this nation!morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-14413423902675147652012-09-02T17:35:00.001-07:002012-09-02T17:46:14.494-07:00Dinesh D'Souza's "2016" One of the top selling movies this summer is a surprise hit by Dinesh D'Souza, the president of King's College in New York. This movie "2016" is a detailed look at Barack Obama, where he came from, who influenced his life, and an analysis of where those beliefs likely will materialize. <br />
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What I found was a very well researched documentary, one with an outstanding group of interviews with those who can help shine a light on who Obama, and his family were, and those who can enlighten what consequences his policies and ideologies will create in America and the world. I truly cannot say that I learned anything that I didn't already know. But then again, I have been obsessively studying Obama and all those around him since mid-year 2008. What I did see was a very fair view, not sensationalized, but simply documented. <br />
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Last week a friend of mine who idolizes Obama, posted that he went to see "2016" and walked out since it was the biggest propaganda film ever. I can see why he may not like it, he cannot stand hearing anything but praise to his god. However, I have to question if he actually saw the film, and didn't just post a review of what he believed it would be. From what I saw, I can understand why the Obama Administration has been as quiet about it as they have, frankly, I think D'Souza owes Obama royalties. Most of the movie is straight from Obama's own books. It is Obama's own words that D'Souza shares with the world. <br />
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There is a reason that I and so many others have spent inordinate time researching, preaching, filling up every one's Social Media walls with information. Like Dinesh D'Souza, we believe Obama to be living out his Dreams From His Father at all of America's, and ultimately the world's expense.<br />
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As the movie ended, we sat quietly and listened to the others exit conversations. I am not sure that there were many votes changed, but nearly everyone there was taken aback by all they did not know about their current president, and were not happy with what they learned. <br />
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If you have not seen it, do. If you have any friends who might be on the fence, buy them a ticket and take them with you. morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-57755704250428149272012-05-20T18:18:00.002-07:002012-05-20T18:45:26.593-07:00We Have Met The Enemy.As November approaches it is becoming very evident that Obama is in the fight of his life. It looks like his hard ceiling for support will be somewhere between 48 and 51 percent of the vote under ideal conditions for him. The election will likely come down to a Romney landslide or a very narrow win by Obama. Obama's best chance for reelection will be what happens with many of the conservative voters. We are, once again, proving to be our own worst enemies.<br /><br /> There are several things that are popping up on Social Media from some conservatives that could be used against us to give Obama a chance. Have you seen the calls for Impeachment, or for proving Obama's ineligibility to hold office due to his own press release that he was born in Kenya? At this point neither are beneficial to our quest of taking back the White House. Another thing that is prevalent is attacks against Romney for not being conservative enough. Really? Compared to Obama, Castro, Putin, and Hu Jintao, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party are all to the right of Obama, and all have criticized him for his overreaching push to make America Socialist. They know that the world's economy is tied to the economic engine of the American economy.<br /><br /> When you hear these comments please try to educate those saying them. Consider the Impeachment, and the attacks against the GOP controlled House for not impeaching Obama. Explain to them some basic civics, the House can indict the President, but then it goes to the Senate where they would either find him guilty or acquit him. It takes 3/4ths of the Senators to vote to Impeach and remove or he stays in power and survives. Remind them that the Senate contains 53 Senators who caucus as Democrats and only 47 Republicans. Do you really think Harry Reid and his buddies are going to show Obama the door? All we would accomplish is Impeach Obama in the House just as we did Bill Clinton. Let's not lose focus, We The People will "impeach" him on November 6th.<br /><br /> We all know that Obama wasn't vetted before 2008 and the Main Stream Media will not do it again this year. However, pursuing making Obama ineligible to run this year due to his press release that he was born in Kenya actually is a gift to the Democrats. This would be the greatest thing to happen to them, they could rid themselves of Obama and could run Hilary who, while being as far left as Obama, is well received by the public. I would love to see this explored after the elections to see if we can remove some of the things his signature put forth, hopefully a couple radical Supreme Court Justices, but let's wait until after the election.<br /><br /> As to Romney not being conservative "enough," granted he isn't the dream ideologue, but he is extremely competent, very qualified, and we can't compare him to our wish list of conservatives, he isn't running against them. We must compare him honestly with Obama who he is running against. In doing that he looks like Ronald Reagan.<br /><br /> Ultimately we must all come together and support Romney in defeating Obama. We are facing one of the three most critical elections in this nation's history, the 1800, 1860, and the 2012 all did, or will, determine if America survives as a Free Republic. We can argue about semantics again after the election, but now is the time for all Free men and women to come together to throw Obama to the trash bin of history.morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-6586821990023344602012-02-12T11:13:00.000-08:002012-02-12T12:25:06.401-08:00What Was The Three-Fifths Compromise?There are few things that are less understood than the 3/5th of a human that our Founders put into our Constitution. There are few things that have been so misrepresented to Americans throughout history. Why did they do this? Was it purely a racist issue? Did they believe that you couldn't count slaves as full human beings because of their race? Of course some did, but is that why it was in the Constitution? No.<br /><br /> The arguments over how to count representatives to the Congressional House Districts seemed to be at the top of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention agenda that hot summer of 1787. The disagreements often only masked an even more important but unspoken, difference over slavery between members from the Northern and the Southern sections. Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas had enough population, at the time, to block antislavery legislation under the new proposed House of Representatives structure, but already ominous trends seemed to put the South on a path of permanent minority status. First the precedents being set that summer in the Northwest Ordinance suggested that slavery would never cross the Ohio River. More important, the competition posed by slave labor to free labor, combined with the large plantations guaranteed by the custom of the eldest son inheriting the land pushing the younger sons out to find their own way, made a surety that immigration to Southern states would consistently fall behind that of the North. Fewer immigrants meant fewer Congressional Representatives, so the House was in jeopardy in the foreseeable future. To ensure a continued strong presence in the House, Southern delegates proposed to count slaves for the purpose of representation -a suggestion that outraged antislavery New Englanders, who wanted only to count slaves toward national taxes levied on the states by the new government. Indians would not count toward representation or taxation.<br /><br /> On June 11, 1787, Pennsylvanian James Wilson who personally opposed slavery, introduced a compromise in which, for purposes of establishing apportionment and for taxation, a slave would be counted as three fifths of a free inhabitant. The taxation aspect was never invoked; the new Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, had a different plan in place, so it became a moot point of the compromise, essentially giving the South an inflated count in the House at no cost. Wilson's phrase referred to "free inhabitants" and all other person's not comprehended in the foregoing description, and therefore "slavery" does not appear in this founding document.<br /><br /> The disturbing designation of a human as only three-fifths of the value of another aside, the South gained a substantial advantage through the agreement. Based on the percentage of voting power by the five major slave states, Georgia, Maryland, Virginia, and the two Carolinas, the differential appeared as follows: 1. under the one state on vote proposal, 38%. 2. Counting all inhabitants, except Indians, 50%. <br />3. Counting only free inhabitants, 41%. 4. Using the eventual 3/5th compromise numbers 47%. <br /><br /> Delegates to the Constitutional Convention thus arrived at the point they all knew would come. Americans had twice before skirted with the issue of slavery or avoided dealing with it. In 1619, when black slaves were first unloaded off ships, colonialists had the opportunity and responsibly to insist on their emancipation, immediately and unconditionally, yet they did not. Then again, in 1776, when Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence and included the indictment of Great Britain's imposition of slavery on the colonies, pressure from South Carolina and other Southern States forced him to strike it from the final version. Now, in 1787, the young Republic had a third opportunity, perhaps the last without bloodshed, to deal with slavery. Yet, its delegates did not.<br /><br /> Several examples can be cited to suggest that many of the delegates thought that slavery was already headed for extinction. In 1776 the Continental Congress had reiterated a prohibition in the non importation agreement against the importation of African slaves, despite repealing the rest. During the war, various proposals were submitted to the Congress to offer freedom after the conflict to slaves who fought for the Revolution. Southern colonies blocked these. After the war, several Northern states, including New Hampshire (1779), Pennsylvania (1780), Massachusetts (1783), Rhode Island (1784), all expressly forbade slavery in their Constitutions, adopted immediate or gradual emancipation plans, or had courts declare slavery unconstitutional. Most encouraging to anti-slave forces, however, in 1782 Virginia passed a law allowing slave owners discretion on freeing their slaves.<br /><br /> Jefferson's own "Notes on the State of Virginia" imagined a time after 1800 when all slaves would be free, and Madison labeled proslavery arguments in 1790 "shamefully indecent," calling slavery a "deep-rooted abuse." Founders such as Hamilton, who helped start the New York Manumission society, and had established their antislavery credentials. Perhaps the most radical, and surprising, was Washington, who, alone among the southern Founders, projected an America that included both Indians and freed slaves as citizens in a condition of relative equality. He even established funds to support the children of his wife's slaves after her death and , in his last will and testament, freed his own slaves.<br /><br /> Slavery was also an economic drain on the South, the main crop of tobacco was stripping the land of it's fertility. Slavery would have died out for purely economic reasons if not for the invention of the Cotton Gin by Eli Whitney later on creating a huge economic boom in the South and global demand for their cotton, energizing slavery and putting us on a collision course for the Civil War.<br /><br /> The compromise over slavery did not come without a fight. Gouverneur Morris, one of the most outspoken critics of slavery at the convention, attacked Wilson's fractional formula and asked of the slaves counted under the three-fifths rule, "Are they admitted as Citizens? Then why are they not admitted on an equality with White Citizens? Are they admitted property? Then why is not other property admitted to the computation?" Massachusetts' Elbridge Gerry echoed this line of thinking, sarcastically asking why New Englanders would not be allowed to count their cattle if Georgians could count their slaves.<br /><br /> Morris and others, including Jefferson, recognized that slavery promised to inject itself into every aspect of American life. Consider "comity," the principle that one state accepts the privileges and immunities of other states to encourage free travel and commerce between them. Article IV required states to give "full faith and credit" to laws and judicial decision of other states. Fugitives from justice were to returned for trail to the state of the crime, for example. Almost immediately, conflicts arose when slaves escaped to northern states, which then refused to oblige southern requests for their return. Northern free blacks working in the merchant marine found themselves unable to disembark from their ships in southern ports for fear of enslavement, regardless of their legal status. Seven Southern coastal states actually imprisoned free black sailors upon their arrival in port. At the time, however, the likelihood that the southerners would cause the convention to collapse meant that the delegates had to adopt the three-fifths provision and deal with the consequences later. Realistically, it was the best they could do, although it would take seventy-eight years, a civil war, and three constitutional amendments to reverse the three-fifths compromise.<br /><br /> Modern historians have leaped to criticize the convention's decision, and one could certainly apply the colloquial definition of a compromise as; doing less than what you know is right. Historian Joseph Ellis noted that "the distinguishing feature of the Constitution when it came to slavery was its evasiveness." But let's be blunt: to have pressed the slavery issue in 1776 would have killed the Revolution, and to have pressed it in 1787 would have aborted the nation. When the ink dried on the final drafts, the participants had managed to agree on most of the important issues, and where they disagreed, they had kept those divisions from distracting them from the task at hand. More important, the final document indeed represented all: "In 560 roll-calls, no state was always on the losing side, and each at times was part of the winning coalition." The framers were highly focused only on Republic building, acting on the assumption that the Union was the highest good, and that ultimately all problems, including slavery, would be resolved if they could only keep the country together long enough.<br /><br /> From the onset, the proceedings had perched perilously on the verge of collapse, making the final document truly a miracle. When the convention ended, a woman buttonholed Benjamin Franklin and asked him what kind of government the nation had. "A Republic, madam, If you can keep it." Franklin replied.morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-5527309120277897642012-01-14T22:15:00.000-08:002012-01-14T22:49:35.954-08:00If Passion Is Possible Why Settle For Less?The secret ingredient in any venture in life is passion. Passion is a game changer, if the Dream is Big enough the facts don't matter. If you have a passion for something then you will see magic happen, not only will you find a way to see your dreams come true, others will follow. People follow passion. We see so little of it around us, it is a natural attraction. It draws positive people to you like moths to flame.<br /><br /> We only are given one chance to live our lives, what are you doing with yours? Are you going through the motions in autopilot where you go to work, go home, go to work, go work, home, work, home without any real punctuation marks to make it something other than a rut? Have you ever driven through a traffic light and wondered if it was red or not? Does one day run into another in seamless sameness?<br /><br /> Mark Twain once said, "Most men die at 27, we just bury them at 72."<br /><br /> Henry David Thoreau said, "Most men live lives of quite desperation and go to their graves with their song still in them."<br /><br /> How sad is that,we know instinctively that those comments are true, don't we?<br /><br /> Why is this? What happens to the dreams inside we bring out of childhood? How do we start going through the motions of our lives and quit actually living them? I think it starts when we decide to start settling for safety and security instead of chasing our dreams. I believe that is why we see so many people taking anti-depressants and encumbered with addictions of all sorts. We are built to dream. God created us with dreams inside and we only function correctly when we are chasing them. God said, "Without a vision, my people perish." The sad thing is when you give up passion for security you have traded for a mirage.<br /><br /> Life is far too short to live it without a passion in your life. For me, I want to have a passion in everything I do. If it deserves my time and attention, doesn't it deserve my passion? I don't care if it is my marriage, my children, career related, spiritual faith, patriotism, hobbies, whatever, if it is worth your time, it is worth passion. If passion is one of the options, it should be the only acceptable one. I refuse to go through life timid or bored. <br /><br /> A friend and mentor of mine, Rick Setzer, taught a question we should always ask ourselves, especially if we are starting to get stale in our vision. "Are you working your business or are you chasing your dream?" There is magic in the latter.<br /><br /> If you have a true passion, your are contagious. I once had a wonderful lesson in passion and its effect on others. My wife had read about a orchid nursery in Indianapolis that was one of the largest in America. She wanted to go buy orchids for all the ladies in our family for Christmas. I went with her and we were blessed with this amazing older gentleman as our guide and salesman. He looked like he had just been found on some deserted island, long gray hair and beard, skinny and gaunt, probably in his 70s, but had a twinkle in his eyes that captured you. He was a scientist who had traveled the world's jungles searching for new species of orchids most of his life. This was his collection of over 5,000 species he had found. He taught us all about them with a passion that sucked you into his world, so much so that I ended up raising orchids for the next ten years. I had never had a thought of them before walking in, but his passion was contagious. I will never forget that powerful lesson.<br /><br /> So, are you building your business, or our you chasing your dreams? Are you making a living or our you making a life? It is up to you, it is simply finding your passion and never working another day in your life!morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-21880528464960439572011-12-28T21:17:00.000-08:002011-12-28T21:33:08.061-08:00The LamplighterIn days of yore there were men who were employed as Lamplighters in their cities. The street lamps of the day were either candles, oil lamps, or some other wick based lights. Each night the lamplighter would walk into the night and light the way for others. Everyone would be able to see their way due to that lamplighter's illumination.<br /><br /> In the late seventies I attended a convention where one of the speakers challenged each attendee to live their lives as lamplighters showing the way for others to follow. To be the person who didn't hide their light under a basket, who didn't live in the light, but hide it for your own purposes. The challenge was to light the way for others who you saw following, and for others who you may never know you lit their way as well. <br /><br /> This imagery burned into my mind, I knew that I wanted to always live as a lamplighter for those who I could reach out to assist in lighting their ways, and hopefully for many more than I may never know. Through the years I have learned that I am most happy when I am doing just that. If it is trying to show the light for others politically, showing people how to improve their professional situations, or most importantly to see the true Light of the World. It is lighting those lamps that warms the heart. <br /><br /> May I challenge you to light the lamps as you go through life to show the way for others to follow? To be a Lamplighter.morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-57079521967349678352011-11-24T01:54:00.000-08:002011-11-24T01:54:00.539-08:00Why It Is So Hard To Have A Reasonable Diaologue Have you noticed how difficult it is to have a discussion politically today that actually has any depth? What is normally found is nothing more than people throwing talking points back and forth. Frankly, if you turn on the television so called experts, that is what they do as well. Little substance ever comes to the surface. Why? I have found in debating that I will put forth a blog that I had written from a deep dive study reading several books by several authors on the topic, but it is dismissed out of hand since I wrote it. Yet they counter it with an opinion piece from the media, not even an investigative article, or with a Wikipedia post. People Wiki is fine if you know nothing about a topic and want a quick overview, but please do not take it as a factual account because you never know how accurate it might be.<br /><br /> I believe it is caused by several things, but nothing more so than the lack of quality education in our school systems going back into the 50s when we as a nation quit teaching our children history, economics, philosophy, and civics well. There was, starting then an assault on our history revising what those Progressives who took over our education system wanted us to learn. It truly began with the five volume American History written by President Woodrow Wilson in 1902. Wilson, a devoted racist, erased the stories of all the African American heroes of the Revolutionary and Civil War, as well as those who were early Congressmen after Reconstruction. It wasn't until recently some have been reinstated. <br /><br /> One of the most quoted books about American History by historians is Alexis de Tocqueville "Democracy In America," written during the Andrew Jackson administration. This book was reedited in 1956 and this "new" edition was reduced from the 804 pages plus another 166 pages of Appendix and became only 317 pages, removing every mention of the vital importance faith in God and religion had in the American system of government and every day life. One of the most important books, and if you read it published after 1956 you only read 35% of what Tocqueville wrote.<br /><br /> Our history has been taught in the most boring, irrelevant, and most forgettable way possible. History is rife with stories of daring adventure, bravery, selflessness, good and evil, men and women who did extraordinary things against all odds. It is edge of your seat compelling stories, that our schools make as dry as dust, where dates are more important than what happened and why. Could this be on purpose so people will not "like" history and never learn it? If it was done intentionally it couldn't have been more effective and destroying a nation of its heritage. I am not sure it wasn't intentional.<br /><br /> Our news media has been bought and paid for by political parties starting in the early 1800s. By 1840 partisan concerns linked the post office branches and the party-controlled newspapers by reducing the cost of distribution through the mails. From 1800 to 1840, the number of newspapers transmitted through the mails rose from 2 million to almost 140 million at far cheaper rates than other printed matter. Postal historian Richard John estimated that if newspapers had paid the same rate as other mails, the transmission costs would have been 700 times higher. <br /><br /> "The new party system with its media partnerships, by 1840, had compromised the independence of the mails and a large part of the print media with no small consequences. Among other defects, the subsidies created incentives to read newspapers, rather than books. This democratization of the news produced a population of people who thought they knew a great deal about current events, but who lacked the theoretical grounding in history, philosophy, or politics to properly ground their opinions." Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen.<br /><br /> If that was true in 1840, how much more so today with the 24/7 news cycle. We are bombarded nonstop with news on the Internet, Television networks, cable, radio, and print. However, without the depth of understanding of history, economics, civics, and philosophy people are tossed too and fro like a bobber on the never ending waves of the news reports.<br /><br /> We need to embrace our history, we need to learn it, understand who we are by understanding where we came from. Our schools won't teach it, so it is up to you to learn it and then to make sure that you kids learn it from you. Better yet, learn it together with your kids. Your Republic depends on it.<br /><br /> <br /><br />morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-31348159538210064522011-11-20T08:14:00.000-08:002011-11-20T08:23:00.414-08:00James Madison Had A Dream The summer of 1787 changed the world when a group of men came to Philadelphia to take a look at the weaknesses that had been exposed in the Articles of Confederation. Uprisings such as Shay's Rebellion, a group of farmers who were threatening to overthrow the local governments,and courts to stop foreclosure proceedings on their farms. <br /><br /> The Convention was called, and it carried enough weight to actually see the states to assemble their representatives, probably due to learning that George Washington himself endorsed it and would himself attend. Obviously the General by his very presence and reputation made him a key player without saying hardly a word in session. Washington was a strong believer in throwing the Articles of Confederation out and creating a more robust document that gave much more power to a central government. He believed that the Union hung in the balance of just that. In his own experience of fighting the Revolutionary War he knew the destructive flaws in the Articles of Confederation and it's weakness to override the states by the central government when needed. His army starved and froze and was often understaffed due to states not contributing their promised provisions and recruits unless the battle was near them and threatening their own interests.<br /><br /> Another attendee whose very name and reputation was key to the eventual outcome and to the seriousness of the Convention was Philadelphia's own Dr. Benjamin Franklin. Franklin had spent twenty five of the previous thirty years before the Convention overseas. His experience during the decade following independence had convinced him of the need for a central government with the requisite "energy." He had learned that American diplomats abroad operated in a world of fierce rivalries and struggles for dominance. France and Spain, though nominally America's allies in the struggle for independence, were ultimately guided by their sense of national self-interest. Franklin came to realize that the new American nation would have to present a united front if it were to hold its own in the treacherous world of European diplomacy. <br /><br /> The youngest delegate, at 28, James Madison was the scholar. He had been working in the Congress under the Articles of Confederation and knew of its weaknesses and was the major driving force for throwing it out and starting all over with a new Constitution. He believed that those weaknesses posed at least an equal threat to liberty and, equally important, American unity. He watched frustrated as many of the independent state governments thwarted efforts to give the Confederation government the power to levy taxes or regulate commerce. In the spring of 1786, he began making extensive notes on the history of "ancient and modern confederacies," a project that led him across more than three thousand years of history, from ancient Greece to the cantons of Switzerland. In April 1787, he composed a private memorandum - thought one he obviously intended to circulate to others, which he titled,"The Vices of the Political System of the United States." It laid out in systematic fashion both his assessment of the weaknesses of the existing American governments, state and confederated, and his thoughts on the best remedies for those weaknesses. It was this writing that moved Washington to attend the convention after Madison had mailed him a copy. Washington wasn't interested in attending a convention of half-measures of trying to "fix" the current government, he wanted an entirely new one as did Madison.<br /><br /> Madison identified a dozen "vices" he believed to be fatal to the health of the republic. Several of those vices lay in the ways the newly independent states had overreacted to prior abuses of power by British royal governors. It wasn't surprising that state constitution makers deprived their new governors of the power to dissolve assemblies or to exercise and absolute veto over legislation, but Madison believed they had gone too far. Most of the new state constitutions vested the legislatures with the power to elect governors and most denied the chief executive even a limited veto. The result, in Madison's view, was that states frequently enacted "vicious legislation," too often prompted by the whims of public opinion rather than sober reflection. He was horrified by the irresponsible actions of the Rhode Island legislature, which allowed its citizens to pay off their debts in depreciated state currency. <br /><br /> The problem didn't lie with irresponsibility of state legislatures alone. Much of Madison's analysis focused on weaknesses in the Confederation government that allowed the self-interests of any one state to overwhelm the public interest of the nation. He chronicled the instances to which states had ignored their obligations to the union. He spoke of the many times that states wouldn't support their financial obligations to the war effort. "This evil, has been so fully experienced both during the war and since the peace," that he believed it could well be "fatal" to the very existence of the union. Equally upsetting to him were frequent instances in which the states encroached on the authority of the continental government,as in the case of Georgia's brutal war against the Creek Indians, waged without the Confederation government's consent. There were routine cases of individual states violating the terms of the Treaty of Peace with England, as in continued persecution of Loyalists, when it suited their interests.<br /><br /> Madison was also troubled by the tendency of "courtiers of popularity" - men like Patrick Henry, who possessed all the oratory skills that Madison lacked, to please their local constituencies while at the same time pursuing policies harmful to the broader interests of the Confederacy. Madison accepted the inevitability that citizens would work to promote their interests at the expense of others. However, contrary to the widely accepted view that liberty could best be protected in republics of limited geographic size, Madison argued that only in a large republic, where "society becomes broken into a greater variety of interests, of pursuit of passions, which check each other," could one prevent the provincialism and attendant injustice that afflicted states like Rhode Island, where Madison believed, a small faction of self-interested politicians had gained control of the legislator and subverted the public good. Only a shift in power from smaller state governments to a larger and stronger federal government would "render {government} sufficiently neutral between the different interests and factions, to controul on part of society from invading the rights of another, and at the same time {remain} sufficiently controuled itself, from setting up an interest adverse to that of the whole society." He believed that this shift of power was essential if America was to become a unified nation rather than a chaotic assemblage of quarrelsome states.<br /><br /> Madison's acknowledgement of the existence of "interests" in society and his desire to create a large, energetic government designed to neutralize - but not eliminate - those interests pointed in an entirely new direction. In Madison's conception, governments were designed not to embody virtue and the public good, but, rather, to mediate among the various interests in society and, in the process, allow the public good to be served. However, in other ways his vision of the virtues of an extended republic was distinctly traditional, reflecting classical republican attitudes about the importance of selecting virtuous political leaders. Voters who selected their leaders from larger districts would be choosing from a much wider pool of talent, a circumstance that would encourage the voters to select only "the purest and noblest characters," thereby ensuring that their representatives would be more likely to rise above purely provincial concerns and petty self-interest, and to represent the concerns of all the people.<br /><br /> Madison's "Vices of the Political System" ended on that conservative note. Never an optimist about human nature, he nonetheless hoped that he could persuade the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention, who, after all, were more likely to resemble to the pure and noble characters he hoped would govern the extended American republic, that it was time to transform a weak confederation into a strong unified nation.<br /><br /> Wouldn't you love to see those values come back again? Wouldn't be nice to have men and women of "the purest and noblest characters?"morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-981855693480231582.post-46454414713877749832011-11-01T18:17:00.000-07:002011-11-01T18:42:25.186-07:00What Cost PerfectionAs we watch the ongoing debates and campaign cycle for the 2012 GOP nomination the standard so many set for their candidate makes it impossible for a human to attain without either being the single most boring person to live, or a liar.<br /><br />The "conservative" voters are the most guilty of having no political savvy. They eat their own, the candidate has to be perfect, has to have 100% purity on conservative values throughout the entirety of their lives. No room for any indiscretions or change in thinking, once a flaw is found, scorched earth is used.<br /><br />With these standards far too many of the political neophytes who populate the Tea Party movement and make up nearly all of the Libertarian population, would not support Ronald Reagan today even as they hold him us as a marble statue. I loved Ronald Reagan, worked on his campaign barnstorming from Indiana through Oklahoma and Texas for his campaign in 1980. However, Ronald Reagan wasn't perfect. For today's "conservative" voter, the fact that he was a lifelong Liberal Democrat voting for FDR four times would disqualify him for suspicion of RINOism. His being a president of a labor union, in Hollywood no less would be sure of it. If that wasn't enough, he was divorced and remarried Heaven forbid.<br /><br />For that matter I am not sure which one of he Founding Fathers would pass today's standards. George Washington, married for money, was involved in some very shady land deals, was single handed responsible for the French Indian War. As a General he lost every battle but two Trenton on a surprise attack on Christmas 1776, and the final battle in Yorktown. Rumors ran rampant of his potential womanizing, including his favorite General Nathan Green's wife Kitty. Who always seem to show up in camp at the same time Washington would send the General on the road. Did they or didn't they, who knows? Is that why Martha burned all Washington's letters and papers at his death?<br /><br />John Adams was known for his violent temper, and many feared he was a monarchist wanting to bring back hereditary royalty to America. <br /><br />Thomas Jefferson, ran for the hills abandoning his role as Governor of Virginia for fear of the British. He likely fathered children out of wedlock with his slave, was thought to have had an affair with the wife of a friend in Paris. He paid James Cavander to write yellow journalism to destroy the political careers of one of Jefferson's best friends, John Adams, and of Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton was able to side step the accusations of Cavander by confessing he was not paying bribes to his post as Secretary of the Treasury, but in fact was paying bribes to the husband of a woman he was having an affair with. When Jefferson didn't pay off Cavander with a job in his administration it was Cavander who broke the story of Sally Hemmings.<br /><br />James Madison, the father of the Constitution, partnered with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay to write the Federalist Papers to sell the Constitution ratification. He then turned on them and was the pen to attack them for his mentor Jefferson. Was he the first flip flopper, or was it Jefferson who has the uncanny ability of holding passionate beliefs for and against almost any subject of the day at the same time.<br /><br />We can go on, Benjamin Franklin and his opiate habit, all night forays with women married and single. His son born out of wedlock and more. <br /><br />I am not bashing any of the founders, I adore them one and all. However, they were men, not granite or marble. As men, they were not perfect. All of their decisions were not perfect, but their collaboration was miraculous. <br /><br />So when I hear that Newt Gingrich is the most brilliant, most experienced, BUT, he has flaws, I want to scream.morganj428http://www.blogger.com/profile/05369468503082928237noreply@blogger.com1