The window to my world

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona has a new thing going, a “Mug Shot of the Day” website. I have no issue with doing a little public shaming of convicted criminals, but these people have not been convicted of anything, just merely charged. What happens if an innocent person ends up as the “Mug Shot of the Day”?

Lets look at a situation. Deputies arrive at a scene one Saturday night and see one guy is laying down in the street, covered in blood” and another guy is standing against a truck, also bloody. The deputies start questioning the guy standing and because of the adrenaline rush and catching a blow to the side of the side, he isn’t too coherent. The best deputies can make out at that time is something about “decking the guy”.  The other guys plays the innocent victim (once the deputies wake him up) and says the guy jumped him and started beating him for no reason.  Given this information and no other witnesses being present the deputies arrest the guy that was standing up and charge him with assault. The blood, cuts, and bruises make for a pretty site and he ends up as the “winner” for the “Mug Shot of the Day”. And now, the rest of the story.

A bank across the street has video cameras in their parking lot and a bank employee looking at some of the film from the weekend catches what happens and calls the sheriff’s department to turn over the film as evidence. What the film shows was the person charged with assault walking done the street and being confronted by the other man. He tries to back away, hands up in a submissive posture, when the man confronting him launches the big overhand haymaker at him, followed up with a blitz of punches.  The film shows the man at first being startled by what happens and then defending himself. He manages to land a clean punch to the other guy’s head, dropping him, with the deputies on patrol showing up right after that. With this evidence the assault charges are dropped as it was determined it was self-defense, as the man claimed once he re0vered his senses.

Maybe this could happen, maybe it won’t, but an innocent person could see his picture plastered all over the internet. Friends and family members could be calling him about it. His employer could call him into the office for a discussion. Should he be able to sue for damages? Going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

Recently President Obama did a town-hall meeting and one of the comments from the audience was around gas at close to $3.70 a gallon. To which the president responded:

“If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know,” Obama said laughingly. “You might want to think about a trade-in.”

It should be noted that at no time did the person that made this comment state what type of vehicle they were driving, nor how many miles to the gallon they were getting. The president, in his finite wisdom (yes I meant finite instead of infinite) just assumed what type of vehicle the per person was driving. And showing his elitist attitude that this person should just trade in for a different vehicle. I guess perhaps the president has infinite wisdom and thus knows the economic situation of this person.

Welcome to change America.

This topic comes up from time to time in the US, and it is making the rounds again: Should women be allowed to serve in combat positions? Good question and here are my thoughts.

If no changes are made to the physical requirements to serve in a combat position, then I don’t have any issues. If a decision is made to lower the standards for women, or for everyone so that more women can pass the standards, then I have huge issues. On the battle field it won’t matter if it is a man or women but only that you can do the job. This may require hauling a heavy load over a long distance on foot. If a recruit can’t handle things like this then I don’t want them in a combat position where they could place their comrades at risk.

One thing the American public will need to prepare itself for if women are allowed to serve in combat positions is the pictures that could come out. Seeing dead women on the battlefield, possible sexual abuse of women POW’s. If you want women to serve in combat roles be prepared for things like this.

A topic going around concerns earmarks, those little spending things members of Congress enjoy tacking onto bills to funnel money into their home states. I hate earmarks, just bad in my opinion.

That said, be realistic about them. Earmarks amount to about 1% or less of government spending. When talking about ways to save money earmarks get a lot of attention but they amount to beans in balancing the budget. Balancing the budget means hitting those items that people enjoy getting, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, etc.

Sure do away with earmarks but that is just a distraction in the scheme of things.

Terrorism, especially terrorism launched by followers of Islam. President Obama tends to think it is “suspicion and mistrust” that is the problem. If we all just got together in a big group hug and talked about our feelings all would be well. President Obama, followers of Islam want to do one of two things: Have us all follow Islam or kill us. For them, the choice is ours.

Or so claim many Muslims that follow Islam. No doubt they believe in peace as long as you follow their rules and beliefs. Failure to do that, well they might kill you.

Take for example Molly Norris, a cartoonist in Seattle, Washington. That is she used to be Molly Norris and used to live in Seattle, but since she started a satirical  “Everybody Draw Mohammed Page” page on Facebook (since removed by Facebook, cowards), she has had to go into hiding. The religion of peace doesn’t take kindly to people drawing pictures of Mohammed, violates their religious beliefs. For doing this, Norris had to move and change her name because Anwar al-Awlaki called for her assassination.

As I’ve said before, there are moderates Muslims, there is no moderation in Islam. Imagine if a priest in the Catholic Church called for the assassination of someone that made a satirical page on Facebook about Jesus. People would be in an uproar, liberals would be having a major fit. Not so with Islam, don’t want to offend them.

Think about that.

9 Years ago today, the world changed when planes slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the passengers flight United 93 fought back. I still get a swelling of emotions when watching the replays of the day, the towers coming down, listening to the names of those who died recited. Close to 3000 people died that day, innocent lives killed by those who didn’t lose sleep over this for in their eyes none of us are innocent.

One thing to remember is the type of people that launched this attacked, the believers in Islam and the destruction of those that refuse to bow to them, are still out there and would do something like this again if given the chance. There are moderated Muslims, there is no moderation in Islam, remember that.

One thing that irks me today is the conspiracy theory idiots, yes idiots, seem to think this is a great time to remind us all that our government was behind this event. As I said one word describes them, idiots. Take this from Dan Thompson on his Facebook status update today:

“would like to remind everyone to remember 9/11/01. Remember Building 7, remember the black boxes that “disappeared”, remember the lack of Air Force response. Question the “Official Story”, for it is riddled with inconsistencies and outright falsehoods. Remember. We must ask, always: Cui bono? Who benefitted? Remember. And ACT.”

The main thing riddled with holes and inconsistencies is the “evidence” put forth by these people. I could go point by point and show how people like these are off in their statements, with actual evidence, but it would fall on their deaf ears. For those of you that want to take the time to read up on this then check out the article Popular Mechanics did a few years ago on the myths surrounding 9/11. If you are really interested, Popular Mechanics expanded their original article into a book. The Learning Channel also put out a DVD on the collapse of The World Trade Center that is worth watching.

The biggest error the conspiracy idiots, err theorists make is the cherry picking of information. They’ll take 10,000 pages of documentation, hours upon hours of video and audio transcripts, and pick out that one paragraph or 10 seconds of videos that “proof” their case while ignoring the other 99.99999% of the data that doesn’t.

Funny how they don’t say that about President Obama, If you been following President Obama there should be no doubt in the unbiased mind that he is in way over his head.

Now this isn’t saying he is stupid, a common line liberals would toss at President Bush, but rather his lack of experience is exposed for the world to see. And trust me, the world sees it. One just has to look at the actions of many governments, both allies and enemies to see this.

Peggy Noonan has an article out called He Was Supposed to Be Competent. Give it a read. Many people, myself included would have said He Was Supposed to Be Competent? We would have been surprised if he had shown competence.

Much is being made of President’ Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. Why would the President pick someone like this; no judicial background, has argued case very few case, most notably Citizens United v, Federal Election Commission, and really no paper trail allowing people to get an idea as to what type of justice she would be? The answer can be found in the Citizens United case.

President Obama has criticized the Supreme Court for their ruling in this case. He saw it as the Court overturning not only the will of the people (which is debatable in this case) but also the will of Congress. Pretty amazing statement if you think about it and if you have any knowledge as to how the three branches of government are suppose to function.

The Supreme Court should not be looking at the “will” of anyone, especially Congress, to decide if a law is constitutional or not. Their main job is to look at the law, look at the Constitution, and decide if the two mesh together. If they do, the law is considered to have passed constitutional muster. Otherwise the law is struck done as being unconstitutional. Little more complicated then this, but in a nutshell this is how things are suppose to work.

Obama in this case wants Justices that will kowtow to a Congress currently being ran by Democrats and an agenda being pushed by a liberal President. Much like Franklin Roosevelt wanted with his attempt to pack the court. The downside of this is that the Constitution, the document dictates how our form of government should function, becomes meaningless.

President Obama and people like him want the supreme power of deciding what laws are right or wrong to reside in the other branches of government with the Supreme Court rubber stamping their approval. This is why Obama wants Kagan on the Supreme Court, she’ll be exacting the type of Justice that ignores the Constitution and will decide cases on what she thinks is best, not what is right.

Read this blog from the L.A. Times then remember this, there are moderate Muslims but there is no moderate in Islam.