Friday, December 21, 2012

Armed Guards In Schools Won't Fix Anything

Apparently Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association has yielded to the “WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING TO KEEP THE CHILDREN SAFE” shouters in the media and has thrown them the bone of calling for the presence of an armed guard in every school in the country. I hate to be the drunken uncle pissing in the coy pond at the backyard party of life, but it simply isn’t a practicable suggestion. Yes, yes, there are LOTS of retired police, firemen, and military who could step into that role, but let’s examine it for just a minute.

What IS the role, and what are the responsibilities. The role is to be the armed guard at the school. Now what does he or she do? I suppose primarily they would stand by the main entrance before and after school being watchful. Are they also responsible for assisting with day to day discipline issues or are they like Paladin…. just the hired gun?

Many of the schools are large and quite strung out with several floors and many outside doors. Which door does the guard choose to protect, because someone bent on mayhem will not follow the rules and wait to be “buzzed in” at the front door. They also won’t wait to be cleared through a metal detector. In a large school the perpetrator could smash through the over head door in a shop or maintenance area with an automobile and a guard in the upper hallway would never know and might not find out until much damage had been done.

Outside of being procedurally impractical lets examine the cost. According to The Center For Education Reform there are over 132,000 K-12 schools in the U.S.. Each school would require at least two guards to cover for absences. additionally, many are secondary schools with after school activities. Recently I was at a school sporting event where the last students didn’t leave the school until 10:00 pm. Perhaps the school districts can just take the function over and take care of scheduling like they do for substitute teachers. Each school district would have a new Administrative Director Of School Security and would handle normal daily assignments as well as requests for personnel to cover after school activities. Perhaps school clubs …. like the French Club could be asked to pay for security for their weekly meetings…. provided there wasn’t already staff on duty covering basketball practice.

And now for the cold blooded part: conservatively, it is reasonable to estimate that at least 300,000 armed guards with an annual benefit load of $50,000 would be necessary to accomplish the task. It comes to $15 Billion….. with a B. $15 Billon Dollars to protect our children against the unpredictable and random acts of madmen. $15 Billion Dollars wasted, because there IS NO protecting yourself against the random acts of the insane among us.

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.



http://www.edreform.com/2012/04/k-12-facts/ The center for education reform

According to The Center For Education Reform there are over 132,000 K-12 schools in the U.S.

Monday, December 10, 2012

Europe Claims the Nobel

Today the European Union has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for lifting the continent out of the wars of the 20th century. Never mind that the EU or the idea of it didn’t even exist at the time.

In his speech, Thorbjørn Jagland, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee patted backs all around. Mikhail Gorbachev was even sited for creating “the external conditions for the emancipation of Eastern Europe”.

Absent from the presentation was ANY mention of the role the United States of America played in the pacification of Europe. No mention of the 183,000 war dead spent on achieving peace in Europe. No mention of the two hundred and fifty billion ($250,000,000,000) 2011 dollars spent rebuilding the cities, economies and European society. No mention of the many tens of billions of dollars spent on defending Western Europe from Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Union for half a century.

For the Nobel Committee to award a Peace Prize to Europe for lifting itself out of a century of war is like giving a patient who nearly died in the hospital after attempting suicide the Nobel Prize for Medicine for simply getting better while failing to mention the doctor who saved its life in even the slightest terms.

To say that it insults me would be an understatement.

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Compromise

This average guy is on the record as opposing ANY compromise with progressives on fiscal matters that apply to additional government spending and tax increases. I worry about the nation’s $1.x Trillion deficit which is of course is the amount of money we spend as a nation each year in excess of what is collected in tax revenue. Each year it gets added to the national debt which now stands above $22 Trillion, which is in turn dwarfed by our unfunded liabilities (promises we have made to pay in the future) which now are approaching or exceed $124 Trillion ( I can’t keep up). Additional government spending and taxes simply takes money out of the private sector where it could find its most efficient use and puts it in the hands of government bureaucrats who first take out the government cut and then spend it where THEY think would be best. The list of benefactors always seems to be topped by the “Friends Of The Bureaucrat Benevolent Association”. It’s funny how that seems to work. But back to fiscal compromise.

Fiscal compromise is one reason why the world economy is in the shape it’s in. For many decades the path to success in the U.S. congress was to “go along and get along”. You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. The secret to a long career was to bring home the bacon for your constituents so that when election time rolled around there would be no room for an opponent to criticize, or to promise to do more. This was done by agreeing to help your colleagues take home their own bacon. We’ve all seen “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington”. We all know how it works, but we also know that there isn’t really a crooked politician out there with the sense of decency to put a gun to his or her head in shame.

But what’s the harm. A Billion dollars here a Billion dollars there. The government spends a Billion dollars every two hours and fifteen minutes. Who’s going to miss another Billion? Only they don’t get spent a single billion at a time generally. Generally they get spent by the hundreds of billions and not for one time purchases….. but ongoing, and constantly growing programs require a continuing, and ever increasing source of revenue to fund.

So the spending and debt go up and up and everything’s cool. Everyone seems to be having a good time, and then something unexpected happens: Unexpected, but predictable, AND predicted. A policy of increasingly easy home mortgage financing promoted and then aggressively pushed by the federal government creates the “housing bubble” which finally bursts and crashes the economy of the entire Western world.

And so here we are, trying to put out a fire by throwing buckets of ethanol on it.

One “compromise” and a way to help reduce spending put forward has been to trade four dollars of spending cuts for a measly one dollar of tax increases. How can THAT be a bad deal? Well, here’s how: It’s a charade to start with, because they’re not really going to “cut” anything, they’re just going to reduce the amount that spending would normally increase. And, if you don’t spend four dollars (a spending cut) then you don’t have to take it from someone, or borrow it. In our current situation where we borrow forty cents of every dollar the government spends it means that two dollars and forty cents would be left in the private sector where it could be used to buy capital equipment and produce jobs. But a one dollar tax increase is like a cancer. It’s like a cancer because it never goes away. Once you have a tax there’s no taking it back. There’s no taking it back because once the congress has assured access to it they spend it, not just one time, this year, but far into the future, every year from now on. The government doesn’t buy “things” with fixed costs. No. The government buys programs, and every year those programs grow and require increased funding. So…. over the popular ten year window, a one dollar tax increase will net the government ten dollars and all they had to give up to get it was a measly two dollars and forty cents. That’s over a 400% return on their “compromise”.

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.

Friday, November 30, 2012

Only In America

1) Only in America could politicians talk about the greed of the rich at a $35,000 a plate campaign fund raising event.

2) Only in America could people claim that the government still discriminates against black Americans when we have a black President, a black Attorney General, and roughly 18% of the federal workforce is black. 12% of the population is black.

3) Only in America could we have had the two people most responsible for our tax code, Timothy Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department and Charles Rangel who once ran the Ways and Means Committee, BOTH turn out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.

4) Only in America can we have terrorists kill people in the name of Allah and have the media primarily react by fretting that Muslims might be harmed by the backlash.

5) Only in America would we make people who want to legally become American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege while we discuss letting anyone who sneaks into the country illegally just become American citizens by waiting it out.

6) Only in America could the people who believe in balancing the budget and sticking by the country's Constitution be thought of as "extremists."

7) Only in America could you need to present a driver's license to cash a check or buy alcohol, but not to vote.

8) Only in America could people demand the government investigate whether oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas went up when the return on equity invested in a major U.S. oil company (Marathon Oil) is less than half that of a company making tennis shoes (Nike).

9) Only in America could the government collect more tax dollars from the people than any nation in recorded history, still spend a trillion dollars more than it has per year for total spending of $7 million PER MINUTE, and complain that it doesn't have nearly enough money.

10) Only in America could the “rich” people (top 10%) who pay 70% of all income taxes be accused of not paying their "fair share" by people who don't pay any income taxes at all.

But that's just what an average guy thinks.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Taxes

We all pay taxes and fees. It has to be that way. Except for a very few self sufficient individuals living in rural or near wilderness areas we all use government services. Just by living in the country you benefit from the funding of the armed services. Water, sewer, roads, schools, law enforcement, education are things that we all use, or derive benefit from and they’re paid for by a slew of local, state, and federal taxes. We have to buy tax stickers for our car windows, and plates for the bumpers. We pay an excise tax for the gasoline and other petroleum products that we use. We pay taxes to put tags on our pets. We just pay a lot of money in taxes, or at least that’s the way it seems.

The federal tax system was supposed to be simple (the more you make, the more you pay) but if it ever was, it’s far from that now. It’s been shot full of holes and tied in loops to reflect the desires of our elected officials and their “special” friends. The full code is over 17,000 pages long and so complex that federal monetary and tax officials seem incapable of following all of the rules. It’s been common knowledge that the federal tax code is FUBAR for as many years as I can remember. The instructions for the 1040EZ, the simplest form, are forty pages long, for the 1040, one hundred and five.

You won’t find a single elected official that will defend the tax system and yet it remains unchanged and the tax code grows in length and complexity every single year. How can it be that a system without defenders or a supporting constituency can continue to exist in a representative democracy?

I don’t have anything near an answer for that question, but I do think the question itself speaks to the dangerous nature of government programs. No one ever envisioned the mess that the current tax system is. It started out simple enough but then at some point turned Meta stable. For many decades it has grown as it careens about with politicians using it for their own benefit, completely indifferent to the original purpose, and without any thought as to what the purpose should even be.

And this brings me to The Affordable Healthcare Act. ObamaCare if you will. The danger is perhaps not easy to see, but if something as simple as a graduated income tax can become complex beyond comprehension and more resistant to change than the hardest metal what will come of a health care system that at its inception created no fewer than 160 new agencies and boards. One requiring many thousands of pages of cross connected regulation that no one has even the most remote chance of understanding. What defense can we possibly have from an entity like that?

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.

Friday, November 9, 2012

Price Gouging.

I have the solution to the gasoline shortage in the storm ravaged. NE: It's simple really. I'm not the first person to think of it, or to know it, but I have absolutely nothing to lose by saying it. That's the difference between me and the PhD economists who's income derives, in part at least, from not saying the unpopular. I'm already so unpopular that I can't get porn spam delivered daily to my inbox even if I request it. So here it is:

The way to get all the gasoline needed to storm ravaged areas is to simply allow suppliers to charge whatever price the market will bear. $10/gal. $15/gal. $20/gal in some cases I'm sure.

Oh, but that would be unfair averageguy. How would the poor and hard hit afford gas? Of course that's different than now..... where they can afford it but there is non

e. This is much more fair now in a situation where EVERYONE does without.

But look. If prices and profits are high.... sellers have a big incentive to move heaven and earth to try to restore supply links. The restoration of those links stimulates the restoration of OTHER links. As fuel supplies increase toward the center of the "zone" so do they increase at the outskirts...... suppliers are willing to accept less profit in exchange for less effort and prices begin to fall again.... from the outside in. It's as magical as watching someone pull a coin from behind your ear.

So think about this for just a moment. If you had a kerosene heater..... and your family was shivering in the damp cold which would you rather have: 1) Two gallons of kerosene that you had to pay $30 for, or 2) The satisfaction of knowing that you could buy that kerosene for $10 if they had any to sell?

But hey.... that just what an average guy thinks.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Trickle

Sshhhh. Come closer. Listen. Did you hear it?

Well I heard it. It’s the same old talk about growing the economy and the middle class from the middle out. This works for my waist line, but I’m afraid that the very idea of its working on the economy defies what we call the laws of science.

People want to think that economics isn’t a “real” science because you can’t put it in a test tube, but in fact economic principles have been observed in the laboratory of society for many centuries, and the results are well documented.

In the trickle down scenario the physical analogies are so plentiful and simple as to delight even the youngest student. EVERYONE has experience with this concept:

Let’s say you want a glass of water. You have lots of water, but it’s in the pipes. You want it in your glass. You can’t just blink your eyes and wiggle your nose and “poof” it’s in your glass. There are steps that must be taken. I won’t go into them all here, but ultimately, if you get up from your chair, walk into the kitchen, get a glass and go to the faucet in the sink, and turn the tap, the water will trickle, or flow into your glass. If you try to put it in too fast you get a mess. EVERYONE has experience with this.

Want to put air in a tire? Same deal. Things will naturally flow from an area of high concentration to a lower level all on their own if you properly prepare a path. Once the path is prepared the gates can be opened and flow will commence. It’s the same principle used in irrigation and hydro power. It’s wonderful. It’s natural. It’s (dare I say) organic. But there is no step skipping. You can't move directly to lush crops from a dry level plain. First you have to do the preparation, first you have to dig the canals and ditches, and then you have to be willing to allow the FLOW to do its work.

In job creation it’s exactly the same. No job was ever created by two middle class guys each wanting to work for one another. Wealth flows, or can flow, from an area of higher concentration to an area of lower. Every job I’ve ever had was offered to me by someone that had more money than I did. I was grateful to have them. The preparations were made, the work was done, the gates opened and some of their wealth flowed to me. I, in my turn, passed that wealth along to others. People in the government today are claiming that they want to grow the economy from the middle out, but the claim makes no sense. The government can’t create jobs out of thin air, and it most certainly can’t create wealth. Now it CAN confiscate wealth from those that have it and transfer it to those that do not. But when all the wealth is gone, what then? Then we will have removed the incentive to achieve wealth and there will simply be no more produced. The Soviets tried this and the Chinese. Tens of millions of people died as the result of this experiment in “social justice” in the 20th Century and yet somehow there are people who say “just one more time”. “I just need more time”.

Politicians can not do what has been proven to be physically impossible.

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.

Friday, October 19, 2012

CRAP

I need some help from the people of America. I’ve got this thing with dog crap. I can’t stand it. Can’t stand the look. Can’t stand the smell. Can’t stand the IDEA of it. The mere suspicion that a dog may crap in my house or the thought of stepping in a pile of the stuff, and permanently ruining a pair of sneakers is almost enough to make me a shut in like that guy on October Road. It’s true, he’s pale, but in his house there is no dog shit, just a quirky, perky pizza girl. I could do that. Actually, it isn’t just dogs. Don’t care much for cat crap either, but cats are at least deranged enough to hide it in a box in the closet where you can’t see it for the most part. Suburban geese are another offender; grazing (and shitting) peacefully there on the golf courses and soccer fields that are our favorite places to go these days. If geese can learn how to get from Texas to Wisconsin they had ought to be able to find a patch of bushes or a pond to crap in. Nice quiet place to crap, a pond, and if no one’s watching your face, or listening, no one’s the wiser. But I digress.

Now I’ve been sort of a blue collar guy most of my life. I’ve worked as a plumber where I developed a crack habit. Ahahahahahahahahahaha. Sorry. What I meant to say is that I’m no stranger to human waste. It isn’t my favorite thing, but I can cope. I’ve worked in the livestock sector…… animal husbandry you know, and I don’t mind being ankle deep in bullshit. It can be really bad, but hey… they’re cows for crying out loud. We’re going to kill and eat them. They get some slack for that. And, I’ve worked in beef slaughter. I’ve waded in blood over my boot tops and entrails so deep that I couldn’t touch the floor. Didn’t like it, but babies have to eat and you DO get used to it. So WHAT is this thing with dog crap?

Also, I failed to mention that I either am, or have been the father of four children who, at one time or other, pooped their breeches, requiring someone (usually me) to clean them up. Perhaps it was more than once. I suppose I have PPTD. (Post Poop Trauma Disorder) I‘ve always suspected that they could’ve used the toilet YEARS sooner but just resisted so they could watch my face as I de-pooped them. They’ll get theirs though. In a couple of years they’ll be changing me. “But honey, Daddy LIKES the hot chili and the pea nuts”. I’ve got it all planned out.

So in the end, I guess that’s what it is: a delayed reaction to babies. It’s horrible. I can barely sleep. All night long I keep hearing the voices. I can’t really be sure what they say, but it seems like “it’s YOUR turn” and “daddy? Can we have a puppy?”

And that’s what an average guy thinks

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Ds & Rs

The other day my boy asked me what the difference was between Democrats and Republicans. I had to stop and think for a moment and then it became clear what my political science professor had meant when he told us that as a practical matter, there isn’t a nickels worth of difference between the two major parties. But I felt like I owed the boy an answer, so I tried to distill it down to generalities. What I came up with sounded something like this: In general, Democrats are in favor of more government services and benefits which have to be paid for by more and higher taxes and incremental forfeiture of individual rights. On the other hand Republicans have always claimed to be the party of smaller government and lower taxes.

Republicans assume that people want to be able to provide for themselves and try to enact policy to make that possible; Democrats assume that people are incapable of taking care of themselves and therefore create programs to take the place of their self-sufficiency. Republicans support individual efforts; Democrats assume that individuals are weak, and in need of government assistance. Republicans believe in liberty; Democrats believe in government. What all this means, then, is that Democratic philosophy thus demands more programs and higher taxes and takes from those who’ve worked hard and made good decisions, and gives to those who have not. GOP philosophy then, ideally, encourages individual efforts, creates an environment that supports hard work and achievement, and then gets out of the way.
[OK, so I’m editing my own stuff. Sue me]

I think it’s safe to say that Democrats do favor more government services, and benefits, as well as higher taxes to pay for them, but the Republican Party has lost its way. The problem may have been the success of our economy. There seems to have always been enough money for the Congress to throw around and no one seemed to be getting hurt too badly so it was normal for Democrats and Republicans to “reach across the aisle”, and to display the comity that everyone says they miss so much. But while this made for a nice peaceful picture there was something quite troubling taking place.

Democrats want a larger, more powerful government, and over the years they’ve been very successful at getting what they want. A small entitlement program here, a government guarantee there, an executive order here and there, and hundreds of key judicial appointments over the decades have brought us to where we are today. Even Republican administrations have been guilty of pandering to voters in order to win elections. It’s hard to make yourself attractive as a candidate or party when your opponents are offering FREE stuff, and all you have to offer is the opportunity to earn stuff. If it hadn’t been for the collapse of the housing market as a result of the government involvement in the home mortgage markets we may never have become aware of our predicament until it was too late.

So what I’m seeing now is that ANY compromise that Republicans make on a Democratic agenda is a step down the path to larger government, higher taxes, and reduced personal freedom. I oppose that step and I will support candidates who oppose that step.

Of course by this time the kid had the same look on his face that the local squirrels get when my dog goes into the back yard: they don’t know or care how, they just know they have to get out of there while the getting’s good. But I had the door blocked so he was stuck in his chair. I paused for a moment hoping he’d have a follow up question and when it became clear that he did I don’t know that I’d ever been so pleased. And then he said: “Yeah, yeah. I got that. Which one is the elephant?”

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Fear

Right now, in these past few months I have felt something that I never would have imagined that I could. I am afraid for my country. I was born during the Korean “police action” and grew up during the cold war. I watched the Kennedy / Nixon debates and remember not liking the Vice President. We never did duck and cover drills. We listened to, and were uplifted by the Presidents inaugural, and I never felt threatened during the Cuban missile crisis. I watched on Television as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Nikita Khrushchev) pounded his shoe on the podium at the United Nations and swore that the Soviet Union would “bury” us. I read my first article about advisers in Viet Nam in a Weekly Reader. I learned about Japanese aggression and surprise, and about European entanglements and a world gone mad. And then there seemed to be a glimmer of light with the unofficial end of the cold war, but now it’s gone. I have always believed that the Federal Republic of states that IS the United States of America would stand as it was founded against every storm, every opposing force. Our “instruction manual”, our “founding documents” are intact and I have always believed in their sanctity, their primacy, and that followed faithfully they would protect us from every enemy. But now I am afraid. What I fear is not an opposing force, not an external enemy which is easily enough identified and defeated. What I fear now is an enemy within.

When I was a teen (during the 60s) I wanted to be a pacifist. I wanted to believe as the rest of my generation seemed to that my country was bad, that capitalism was bad. I just couldn’t. My parents weren’t political and I was surprised to find out after I was in my 20s that they hadn’t voted for Kennedy. I just couldn’t make any sense out of the alternative to capitalism. I read the news and listened to Walter Kronkite. I read Animal Farm. I knew that you could be killed for trying to escape from the East to the West. What was the rational behind that reality if it wasn’t that what we had, and have still wasn’t and isn’t better than what “they” had?

And so in the 60s and 70s there were bombings and violent protests and they were put down. The organizers then watched as their fellow students chose to join society in stead of changing it. And you began to see Dead Head stickers on Cadillacs. But the domestic enemies of the United States weren’t stupid. They could see that there was no future in directly opposing the government. And so they went underground and legit. They became educators and organizers but their goal never changed. They still want to bring down capitalism and the United States of America. And their methods are insidious. They’re using the very freedoms that our systems provide the very compassion that we feel, and the openness that we live under to stab at our heart. Just like the World Trade Center highjackers, they plan to start uncontrollable fires in our system with the knowledge that, at some point, it simply won’t bear the weight anymore and will collapse in on itself. Then, they believe, that they will be able to come in and say “See what this horrible thing has caused?” “See what strife this Republic has wrought?” And then put forth the failed Marxist policies of the former Soviet Union as the solution.

I have seen much in my short life, but I have never been afraid till now.

You should be too.

But that's just what an average guy thinks.

Monday, October 1, 2012

He Got Osama

I heard someone say today that if you’re wondering if Barack Obama is soft on national defense, just ask Osama Bin Laden. It got me to thinking back to that evening in April, during the aftermath and someone from the Whitehouse made the comment that the decision to “terminate” bin Laden was “the gutsiest call I have ever seen anyone make”. It might not surprise you to learn that I beg to differ.

Barack Obama was merely an observer of the operation which had been set in motion during the administration of his predecessor. Oh, he may have been asked “the” question: “Mr. President?”, but the question was merely a courtesy. Moot. The answer was “yes”. The answer had always been yes.

Think of it. The United States’ military and intelligence apparatus tracks bin Laden for 11 years since Clinton passed the opportunity to drop a Hellfire missile on his head in the fall of 2000. The US Air Force drops thousands of tons of bombs and expends huge sums of money flying B-52 sorties trying to kill him as he slips away at Tora Bora. Now they come to the president and say “we’ve found him”. What can Barack Obama do? He had no choice. If he says “no” when it leaked (and it would have leaked) there would be a public firestorm. If he calls the Pakistanis and they whisk him away (as they surely would have) and it gets leaked (as it surely would have) there would have been a public firestorm.

No, there was only one way for Barack Obama to have lost on this deal, and that was for him to say “no”. Even if it had gone horribly wrong he would have come out looking the part of the strong military leader.

So when someone says “he got bin Laden”, please feel free to disagree and ask “what were his options?”

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Barbary Pirates

The 1st amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the very first paragraph in what has been known as the Bill of Rights is under attack in the United Nations. This in itself is not new. What IS new is that the president and secretary of state of the United States have joined with Egypt’s President Morsi in the attack.

At the heart of the matter is President Barack Obama’s specious claim that the attack on the U.S. mission in Libya was not really planned at all and that it was only a spontaneous uprising in response to some obscure amateurish video that was released ten weeks previous that just happened to boil up on the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11.

The president of Egypt claims that the film was all to blame and that there must be new U.S. laws to prevent such expression of opinion. The president of the U.S. and his secretary of state condemn the violence as if the assertion were true and seem to agree that civilized people can not be allowed to offend one another. These are dangerous times in the world for freedom and perhaps more shockingly so in the United States as well. One Muslim group in Kansas City, Missouri (in the very heart of the country) has petitioned the federal government to rescind the freedom of speech clause of the first amendment. No one seems to have batted an eye. You can’t yell fire in a theater, why should you be able to say something, or express yourself in such a way as to make people (not around you, but anywhere in the world) so mad that they can not help but erupt in murderous violence? The president seeming to support this notion concerns me a great deal. I have not, and don’t care to waste my time viewing the video so that I can “understand”. Sure it was amateurish, but some of the work of Salman Rushdie would certainly fall into the same category of materials offensive to Islam. This discussion needs to be terminated quickly and in no uncertain terms.

The president of the United States has sworn to “preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the United States”. He is not allowed to change it at will, and even his siding with its critics comes very close to a violation of his solemn oath. But let’s think a bit more about this. The beef seems to be that the “causal” film was blasphemous because it demeaned the “prophet” Muhammad. Just for arguments sake let’s say that the president and his minions were able to ban such speech by executive action. Now what? What of the church bells “singing” to a Christian God on Sunday mornings. Would THAT not be equally demeaning to the prophet? And isn’t the very act of practicing any religion save Islam tantamount to calling Muhammad a false prophet? Isn’t THAT insulting?

So what are we to do to appease Islam? to calm the anger?

The 1st amendment reads like this:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Perhaps we can just let the administration strike the parts they don’t like and we will perhaps be able to live with this in its place:
“Congress shall make no law respecting the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Yes, that’s about right. We will STILL have the right to petition. “Please sir, may I have some more?”

Thomas Jefferson refused to pay tribute and sent warships and Marines to North Africa because the Barbary States were threatening freedom of the seas. North African states are once again threatening our freedom, only this time it’s much more fundamental and this time they have an advocate.

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.