The saga of the Sacramento tent city continues. Today, our governator opened up the state Fairground known as Cal-Expo for temporary use of the homeless. The real problem is that this is not more than a band-aide fix that gets people out of sight for three months but does not solve the economic problem. Even if Obama’s policies have fixed the world economy, three months will not be enough to take everything back to where it was before Reaganomics decapitated the Capitalist economy.
An end to the suicidal experiment of Reaganonimcs, one can only hope. Laissez-faire capitalism is like a red tide, it is so successful that it inevitably poisons itself and everything else with its own crap. Of course conservative Republicans will continue to cling to the idea of “deregulation” like an addict clings to heroin. But it is a failed idea and if Capitalism is to survive it must be regulated.
I’ve never been a member of the NRA. I’ve never owned a weapon, though I trained with and used a weapon while in the military service. After years of listening to guns rights advocates I have seen the light. With the force of a fifty caliber HEI round striking me between the eyes, I’ve realized that within the text of the second amendment can be found the answer to most of our national problems. The answer lies within a full implementation of the intent of the second amendment which reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Cleary, our founding fathers did not grant American citizens the inherent right to bear arms out of a the goodness of their creator. The opening clause “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” explicitly reveals that the right to bear arms hinges on the need of the nation for a “A well regulated Militia.” But there is nothing in the modern United States that corresponds to a citizens militia, well regulated or not. So I propose that President Obama and the Congress of the United States create a Citizens Militia consisting of every adult US citizen between the ages of 18 and 65.
Of course, there are naysayers out there who will, no doubt, be driven to apoplexy with the very idea. A Citizens Militia would save vast sums from military spending, serve as a boon to health by requiring certain minimum physical requirements for all citizens, implement a national health care system to keep citizen militia members in good health, provide a cheap labor pool that will end Americas addiction to illegal labor, and many other benefits. The Citizens Militia would work in the following way:
Upon a citizens 18th birthday, all American citizens would report for 1 year mandatory training. During their year of training, citizen militia members would train in the use of weapons, small unit combat tactics, threat identification, and use of force. No waivers for conscientious objection, wealth, marriage, pilonidal cyst, or other minor excuse are allowed, though objectors would serve with the medical corps or within an entertainment/stress relief unit to fulfill the fantasies of those bearing arms. After completion of the year of service all citizen militia members will be issued a state of the art combat weapons system to be maintain at the citizens own expense. Medical and entertainment/stress relief unit members will be require to carry maintain their own gear. For three months of every year until the age of 65, all citizen militia members will train with a unit. Only a verifiable medical emergency will exempt a Citizens Militia member from training, though training must be completed upon the first induction date after a complete bill of health is obtained from the National Militia Health Care System.
A benefit of a citizen militia would be the abolition of the US Army, US Marine Corps, and National Guard. The existence of a National Citizen Militia would make such organizations redundant and unnecessary. The Navy and Air Force would be reorganized. Militia members, after their initial year of training, would be allowed to volunteer for service in these organizations. While maintaining the required standards of weapons training, they would serve for three months on naval craft and operating Air Force assets. Considerable savings would be achieved through the use of a unified command structure and bureaucracy and by standardization across the Citizen Militia.
The necessity of maintaining one quarter of all adults in the military at any time would require an efficient national health care system. The current maze of competing insurance companies with different plans is simply too inefficient and costly and would leave millions of Citizens Militia members without adequate health care. Health care would also be required to ensure that a minimum level of conditioning be met by all members of the Citizen Militia. Grossly overweight Citizens Militiamen would not be able to carry 75 pounds of equipment to the top of Mount Rushmore to defend the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. Maintaining an overall high level of diet and exercise would keep Americans in fighting trim and lead to happier, healthier, and longer lives.
Other benefits accrue form the establishment of a Citizen Militia. Members in training cannot perform calisthenics or target practice 16 hours a day. They would form a gigantic cheap work force that can be utilized to build and maintain infrastructure, harvest crops, or fill any other task that illegal aliens perform today. What Citizen Militia Member would not be willing to perform back breaking labor at minimum wage for three months of every year as a duty to country. Use of Citizen Militia assets to perform necessary work could be contracted out to the highest bidder at a considerable savings to the US treasury. For their work, an additional benefit for the Citizen Militiamember would be found by providing the minimum wage to all serving Citizen Militia members tax free for their three months of service each year in addition to three hots and a cot every day and 16 hours of healthy recreational back breaking labor.
Lest prisoners serving time for crimes against the people of the United states be considered to be getting a free ride, prisoners would not be exempt from their required service. They would be required to take moral and ethics training classes while serving in the Citizens Militia to address the deficiency in their upbringing or personality. As with America’s prison population, elected members of the government would also be required to fulfill their service each year, though they would be required to serve in the entertainment/stress relief because citizens would enjoy screwing their representatives for at least three months of the year.
There are those who will complain that requiring a quarter of the adult population of the United States of America to complete military training and public service for three months of the year is too harsh a sacrifice. But with great power comes great responsibility, and the privilege of being an armed and dangerous US citizen should not come cheap.
Desperation is goad of success, or at least the elect cattle prod. The continuing collapse of the economy makes my work toward my degree in English and a teaching credential an ineffective way of making a living. California, you see, is laying off another 26,000 teachers. So I will be going back to looking for technical writing, and pushing very hard to complete write full time.
Think of this as my year of writing dangerously. Red Tears is close, and another novel in the works, Oubliette, will bend the fantasy and Science Fiction Genre in ways that, I hope, will resonate with agents and readers. But I really haven’t a choice.
High blood pressure, nasty stuff, make you late for dinner. Hell, high blood pressure will make you late for life, as in “the late _________.” I’ve never had a problem with it before, but I put on a little weight, quit exercising, and now it a little high and the Doctor prescribed Lisinopril.
I’ve nothing against low blood pressure, but there is a problem. Depression is one of the very rare side effects of Lisinopril, and after beginning to take this med, something about my normal cheerful and outgoing personality has changed. I’ve become moody, unhappy, and more than a bit of a bitch with others. I can not say for sure whether my new funk is caused by concerns over the sour nosedive the world has taken or if it is chemical. But the chemical is the cause du jour.
So, having diagnosed myself with a case of the Lisinopril Funk, I took myself off the medicine and sent a quick email to my doctor. Hopefully, over the next few days, I will get back to my normal happy self.
It appears that you just can’t go off medicine willy nilly, and I have to wait until Thursday to talk to my doctor. It would be a bummer if they persribe some other medicine to fix the side effect of the first. Getting older is a bitch.
Sudeep Reddy of the Wall Street Journal finally published a Unemployment Number that appears to be close to reality.
Broader Unemployment Rate Hits 14.8%
If a half-percentage-point increase in unemployment rate isn’t ugly enough for you, there’s more from your government statisticians: almost a full percentage point jump in a broader measure of unemployment.
The Labor Department reported today that its most comprehensive measure of joblessness hit 14.8% in February, from 13.9% in January. That’s just about 1 out of 7 Americans who are either unemployed and looking for a job, want a job but stopped looking, or part-timers who want full-time jobs.
We’ve already blown through the prior high point of the data series, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics started in 1994. An even broader (since discontinued) series hit 15% in late 1982, and we’re likely to fly right through that one next month.
The 8.1% official unemployment rate, up from 7.6% in January, only counts people who are available for work and actively looked for a job in the prior four weeks. The 14.8% figure (known as the “U-6” by the BLS) includes everyone in the 8.1% figure, plus people who say they want a job and looked for work recently, along with people working part-time because they couldn’t get a full-time schedule.
This is grim news indeed. During the Great Depression, unemployment reached as high as 25%, though it began to decline in 1933 and continued to do so, except for one period, until WWII.
It appears that we have not yet reach the depths to which an economy can plumb, though the fact that we figure unemployment differently now makes the relative numbers a little iffy. But here it is in all its ugliness.
Since the election of President Obama there has been a new and disturbing development on the right among conservatives specifically and the GOP in general. This development has been their growing use of the language of violent revolution. I’ve watched this development with concern that slowly expands to horror. After 232+ years are we on the verge of ending our grand experiment with violent bloodshed because one party can not accept the will of the people.
The most recent event, an the one that prompted this post, is column by Chuck Norris.
That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not me, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state.
From the East Coast to the “Left Coast,” America seems to be moving further and further from its founders’ vision and government.
Of course, Mr. Norris may simply be descending to hyperbole. But the difference between treason and patriotism are in the eye opinion of the person. Certainly, Conservatives and Republicans would have considered any liberal that openly discussed destroying the United States over a difference in policy treasonous scum. Those who openly consider destroying the United States because they lost the elections are not patriots.
Not all stories out there make it to the big time, and you have to wonder why. One such story about a person who was found to be putting together a dirty bomb never escaped the regional news.
Report: Slain US Nazi hated Obama, had parts for ‘dirty bomb’ Claim: Depleted uranium purchased over the Internet from an American company
Trust fund millionaire James G. Cummings, an American Nazi sympathizer from Maine who was slain by his wife Amber in December, allegedly had the radioactive components necessary to construct a “dirty bomb,” a newly released threat analysis report states.
The man, allegedly furious over the election of President Obama, purchased depleted uranium over the Internet from an American company.
“According to an FBI field intelligence report from the Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center posted on line by WikiLeaks, an organization that posts leaked documents, an investigation into the case revealed that radioactive materials were removed from Cummings’ home after his shooting death on Dec. 9,” reported the Bangor Daily News.
“Amber (Cummings) indicated James was very upset with Barack Obama being elected President,” reported the Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center (PDF link). “She indicated James had been in contact with ‘white supremacist group(s).’ Amber also indicated James mixed chemicals in the kitchen sink at their residence and had mentioned ‘dirty bombs.’”
Imagine if a Muslim had been found with this type of evidence. It would have been 24/7 news. But if a plain old Nazi sympathizer who is offended that a black man becomes president does it, crickets. Does an American have to do a McVeigh before we notice. And extreme right wing ideology is involved here.
Then, of course, there is the whole tenth amendment movement with the goal of secession.
Southern conservative Republican red states are moving to assert their tenth amendment rights, documented by the , incidentally following a similar trail of Tenth Amendment Center the southern states before the civil war. With secession in the air, how long will it before before a Conservative fires the first shot?
Glenn Beck advocates violent secession and revolution.
