Thursday, January 17, 2013

Sandy Hook "Conspiracies" - The Crazy People Are At It Again

And it's not just who you think...
(c) by Tom King

In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, the paranoid schizo-phrenics are hitting the Internet with increasingly bizarre government conspiracy theories.  But they aren't the only mentally unstable folk who are hovering around this story like so many pirahna.

The conspiracy guys will tell you that the story of Sandy Hook was inconsistent.  It kept changing throughout the day.  They pluck "facts" out of thin air and present them as evidence. They spin speculation and present it as solid reasoning. They harass witnesses, call them liars and even threaten them.  Sadly, it's one of the hazards that goes along with free speech.  Free speech applies to the mentally unstable as well as rational folks. I remember sitting in a Wendy's in Cleburne, Texas listening to a guy talking to himself about government conspiracies and Waco.  This was during the Branch Davidian hostage crisis and he was on his way to Waco to join the Davidians apparently.  I think he was the guy that tried to climb through the window to join them. And he wasn't the only mentally unstable individual drawn to the scene of that tragedy.  They came from everywhere like flies to crap.

The fact that the news reports at Sandy Hook changed throughout the day of the tragedy is better proof than anything that the story was developing just like a thousand instant news stories throughout the history of television.  The TV reporter's need to get in front of the camera earliest with any scrap of information works against them in the accuracy department.  I'd doubt the story more if the stories were consistent from network to network, from reporter to reporter or from moment to moment.  Reporters grab any confused report and throw it up on the chance it might be true.  A fabricated story would be more consistent.  I'm not saying the media wasn't trying to use the incident to tell a story. They obviously were, but they were making up that storyline as they went. You can bet, for instance, that virtually every reporter had a producer checking the NRA roles looking for Adam Lanza's name. They would have dearly loved to portray him as a card-carrying gun nut. They practically drooled over his mother's being a gun enthusiast. 

But don't the confuse mutual shared interest between media and the administration (in this case to promote gun control) with a conspiracy.  The 9/11 truthers did that and looked stupid for it  The birthers did and discredited other conservatives in the process and the, shall we call them, "Hookers?" are doing it as well.  I suppose there's a place for articulate paranoid schizophrenics on the web.  I remember well how they flocked to Waco, trying to get into the middle of that mess and prattled on for years about conspiracies there.  The Oklahoma City bombing was timed to "commemorate" the Waco disaster which should give you some clue as to the mental stability of conspiracy theorists.

Waco was a badly botched government operation, no doubt.  It was driven by the need to look good for the media and run by people who did not understand what a deranged person would do when they came after David Koresh and his people.  David, (aka Vernon Howell III) went to my church.  The church recognized him as a dangerous, deranged person and we booted him before he could damage the kind of emotionally fragile and mentally disturbed he burned alive in that compound along with him. Anyone who knew him, at least anyone who wasn't twisted all out of shape by his shared delusions, would have recognized that.

The problem is that the Government does a poor job of "handling" people with mental illness. For the same reason that people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder should never become psycho-therapists, government does a poor job of dealing with mental illness.  It either boxes them all up, destroys them or turns the all loose.  This is because government service attracts people with OCD; people who like to put stuff in little boxes (including people). Not everybody in government is OCD, but I'd be willing to bet it's the most common mental illness among government workers. I maintain this tendency toward compulsivity is the reason government has virtually no ability to prevent things like Sandy Hook from happening however many laws they decide to pass. People look to an institution that waltzes on the edge of insanity to fix the problem of people with mental disorders.

I've observed at close range how government agencies run. There are good people there trying to do the right thing, but the government, because of its very nature, has become so obsessed with control and data collection that the system itself has confused order with compassion; control with freedom.  It's not merely a case of the blind leading the blind or the lunatics running the asylum.  It's worse.

It's asylum itself that's deranged.

I'm just saying,

Tom

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

I've Met God. And Trust Me, You Guys Aren't Him!

More Wrong-Headed Propaganda From the Left
(c) by Tom King

A friend posted a picture with a map that claimed that New York wants it's citizens to have health care and not assault rifles and that Texas wants its citizens to have assault rifles and not health care.  I pointed out in my response that New York is almost bankrupt and that Texas has a balanced budget and a surplus. Look, the idea that Texas doesn't want its citizens to have health care is preposterous. It wants it's citizens to have jobs so they can have healthcare. And if you are sick you can walk into any hospital and get treatment in Texas.

Also, you can walk into a shopping mall in Texas with the intent to shoot a lot of people and there's a damned good chance somebody's going to shoot back at you. It happened in San Antonio two days after Newtown. You didn't hear about it because he didn't kill 30 or 40 unarmed people.


I was immediately told that what I said was untrue.  I asked, "What part?"
 
Was it that Texas has a balanced budget?  I know that's correct. It's one of the few states that does.


Was it that New York state is in financial trouble? It has one of the highest per capita debts of any state in the country.


Was it the story I included about the shopping mall shooting?  Here's the story.  The officer followed the shooter into the mall and put four bullets into him.  Death toll - 1 shooter.  One person was wounded.  Handy to have armed folk around. And the off duty officer was a woman, rather deflating some recent claims by the left that women can't handle firearms well enough to defend themselves. Being armed is a Texas tradition. We like to be able to hold off a bad guy for the 20 minutes to an hour that it takes the deputies to get there.

Was it that you can get medical treatment in Texas if you can't afford it?  I can tell you from personal experience.  I've had three major surgeries on the public dime in the past five years because I was in trouble and couldn't afford it. My fellow citizens generously helped me.  My credit is wrecked because I couldn't pay my part, but then that's because I'm taking care of a disabled wife and trying to make a living freelancing in this horrific economy that the government keeps meddling with and making worse. 


I should be the poster child for Obama supporters in Texas or anywhere else because I'm well and truly below the poverty line right now. I should welcome him as a saviour. So why don't I?

It's because I am trying to dig myself out on my own. I'm not asking the government to give me a handout. I don't want food stamps or to be on welfare. I want the government to do what it is supposed to - defend this country from external threats, enforce the laws that are supposed to insure a level playing field for everyone trying to make a living and to support themselves.  I want them to protect my liberties.

I want them to leave their hands off my first amendment rights. I want them to keep their hands out of my pockets and everyone elses. I don't need them to rob from the rich to support me. They take an obscene "cut" off the top when they do. I don't want them to interfere with freedom of speech, the press, assembly or religion or the right to bear arms, all of which seem to have been placed on the table lately. 


I don't want the IRS to tell my pastor what he can and cannot say in the pulpit. I want them to quit selling themselves to the highest bidder and protect small business in America and provide a place for it to grow. I want them to leave powers to the states that are not enumerated by the constitution and quit meddling. I have no guns in my house because I have family members with mental health issues. It would be stupid for me to keep guns here. But why should my neighbor lose his means of protecting his property?  Even though I don't have a dog in the hunt, his right to keep and bear arms is part of the package. If this government decides it can arbitrarily take away one of my neighbor's rights, even though it won't directly affect me,  I must stand with him, for my other rights and his will soon be in danger too. The government has never shown any inclination to stop taking anything once it has it's hand in your pocket (or holster).

I've lobbied in the Austin state house. I know members of the legislature and senate. The idea that the Texas legislature doesn't "give a damned" about poor people is absolutely preposterous. Most conservatives in the state legislature believe that if you keep the engine of business running, that communities are better off, more people have a job and fewer people suffer poverty. I know from experience that this is true.  When business does well, it spreads the wealth to the less fortunate. We got a food stamp budget cut from Washington of $800,000 in Texas because the food banks were doing such a good job of feeding the poor, we didn't need it anymore.  The bureaucrats nearly had a stroke.

Having been in the nonprofit sector working with poor, disabled, homeless, people with disabilities and even ex-convicts, I have received a world of help from local business, corporations and wealthy individuals and helped create programs that provided real help to struggling families and individuals without chaining them to the "system" and making welfare slaves of them.

I've been 'in the system' once and had a hellish time getting back out. The welfare system taught that you have to be careful not to take certain jobs, not to make too much money and not to deviate from the program or you'd lose your benefits. The system is pernicious in the way it treats you like a second class citizen, systematically humiliates you and makes you beholden to the government.

Food Stamps can provide help, but it's way better from the poor guy's end to get a couple of bags of food from a local food bank to tide him over till he gets a job. It's better to hook up with a community based nonprofit that knows your town and knows what resources can get you real help - that can think outside the box to solve your problems.

My friend's characterization of the Texas government and the legislature in particular is wrong and colored by an ideology that trusts government in a way our forefathers never did. They wrote the constitution to limit government for that very reason. They say power corrupts. Well, that's simplistic. Absolute power doesn't necessarily corrupt, but it draws corruptible people to it like flies to poop. The only ones who can be trusted with power are those who drop it like a hot potato once they've done what they had to with it.

I admit it. I'm a conservative. I trust people to manage their own affairs. I do not trust an arrogant elite who believes they can sit around a table in Washington, DC and plan the affairs of 350 million of their fellow citizens and something as complex as our economy and do so effectively. It would take God to do that and I've met God in my travels.  The US Government and all of the bureaucrats in it, put together aren't nearly as smart as Him.

I'm just sayin'.

Tom King

Thursday, January 10, 2013

File This One Under "Out of the Frying Pan; Into the Fire!"

(c) 2012 by Tom King

(c) Yahoo News

Yahoo News reports that portly French actor Gerard Depardieu has fled France because of it's confiscatory 75% tax rate on wealthy French citizens - a rate that made Obama supporter Will Smith almost fall off his chair.  When a French interviewer asked him if he approved of higher tax rates for the wealthy. When he said yes, the interviewer asked if he approved of tax rates for the wealthy like France's, Will asked what the rate was and was told 75%, Will had a one word responce.....

"Damn!"

Depardieu has publicly fled France to avoid its brutal tax rate drawing ire from progressives everywhere who call him a traitor to his country and demand that he stand and take it in the wallet (for his love of France, of course).  Depardieu, meanwhile has approached Russia's Vladimir Putin asking for Russian citizenship. He's flown to Sochi where he's planning to meet Putin and apparently will recieve his Russian passport.

He may be out of the fat and into the fire, though.  Putin is fighting a battle with the Russian legislature over a 75% tax on the wealthy of their own. Putin may see bringing Depardieu to Russia as an "I told you so." move to bolster his argument against kicking up the tax rate.  Unfortunately, the Russian legislature has its share of communists and labor representatives who would like nothing better than to engage in some Soviet-style wealth redistribution.

Depardieu would do well to come up with a get-outta-Dodge plan just in case he needs to move again before the Russkies put the barbed wire back up along the borders.

It's interesting that Depardieu hasn't considered moving to the US.  Perhaps he's seen the handwriting on the American wall.  Now would be a good time to start an independent tax haven on some lovely island somewhere.  Think of all the actors that would soon be living in your new country. Legalize pot and cocaine and you'd have a thriving economy.

Tom King

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

The Rich People We Hate Avoid a Tax Increase

Obama's Tax Raid on the Rich Only Impacts the Working Rich
(c) 2012 by Tom King

Did anyone notice that the only "rich" people that got a tax increase were the working wealthy - the ones that actually draw a paycheck or make a profit.

The already rich, the hereditary rich and those who have already made their pile (all of whom heavily support President Obama) didn't get any kind of meaningful tax increase because capital gains only went up 5% and manipulating and hiding capital gains earnings is really the easiest kind of income to avoid paying taxes on when you have teams of tax accountants and lawyers.

So Warren Buffet didn't get a tax increase even though he asked for one.  George Soros didn't get a tax increase even though he asked for one. The Kennedys, the Rockefellers, the Chases, the Morgans and the Astors didn't get a tax increase.  Most of the rich people who supported President Obama's campaign heavily didn't get a tax increase.

Oh, what a surprise!

I'm just sayin'

Tom

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

It’s Like the Pot Chamber of Commerce….

Hemp grower "inspects" the product.
(c) 2013 by Tom King
Okay, I just don't get it. I have got so many people who have my email or are friends on Facebook, Linked-In and other places that keep sending me stuff about what a great plant cannabis is and 1000 reasons it should be legal…….and how it could restore our faltering economy, cure mental diseases, heart conditions, liver ailments and hemorrhoids not to mention solve the housing crisis, end hunger and bring on world peace. Oddly enough most of these guys used to send me stuff about how I just had to vote for Ron Paul in the last election.
What I don’t get is why these dear people are so worried about why I don’t support the legalization of marijuana.  What’s their interest in promoting marijuana agriculture?  Are these guys frustrated Ag school graduates with degrees in agriculture who can’t make a living farming soybeans and corn and who envision starting a commercial pot farm and making a ton of money?  They tell me legalizing hemp would end the economic crisis almost overnight.
Let me see if I’ve got this right.  Marijuana (or hemp – that seems to be the term they prefer in this context) is capable of being used for all sorts of wonderful products like:
1.      Rope
2.      Paper
3.      Textiles
4.      Engine grease
5.      Building materials
6.      Paints resins and shellac
7.      Cures mental illness, heart disease, ringworm, gout, pleurisy and hemorrhoids
8.      Fuel for cars
9.      High fiber food products
10.   And 25,000 other products
Industrial hemp is bred for oil and fiber content, unlike marijuana which is bred for high THC content, so industrial hemp won’t make you high unless you smoke six joints or so or refine the THC out of the industrial hemp and concentrate it which, who’s going to do that since hemp is so useful for other things.
So what I want to know is why all these people are promoting the legalization of industrial hemp. They assure me it has nothing to do with its smoke-ability or that it is virtually identical to the kind that makes you high so that you can’t tell a few pot plants from the hemp ones if you salted the high THC variety around the industrial hemp fields.  Besides, pot, they tell me, isn’t a hallucinogen and doesn’t impair your ability to drive, work at your job or get your butt off your Mom’s sofa and find a job.  The police and all those government scientists are just making that stuff up because they are protecting the evil corporations.
So these guys, many of whom who used to be serious slackers back when we went to school together, have, for the good of society and our economy, decided to devote their free time (when they are not drinking Red Bull and playing Nintendo or Xbox) to community economic development by sending out links to youtube videos about what a great thing it would be if we could grow lots and lots of hemp and even better if we could grow regular pot because psychology is wrong about what causes mental illness and if we'd just legalize pot and we could put evil Big Pharma out of business.
What unselfish civic-minded citizens they all are.  Really.  Like a little Pot Chamber of Commerce.
I know!  I could grow a couple of hundred plants in my backyard and make all the rope I need! 
How cool would that be?
Tom