Tuesday, May 25, 2010

I've Changed my Opinion About Something

And anybody who knows me will tell you that’s a rare occasion, indeed. I’m usually pretty set in my opinions, because before I settle on one I research it, think about it, see both the pros and cons of it, and only then will I settle on it. Such was the case about the opinion I just recently changed; I did all of this a very long time ago when I formed this opinion, but I heard something – a different something I’d never really considered before – that caused me to re-evaluate my opinion, and then change it.

So what is it that I’ve changed my opinion on, you ask? Simple.

The death penalty, also known as capital punishment.

Up until a few days ago my life-long opinion on this was that I supported it, period. I fully believed that anyone who was convicted of an offense for which the death penalty was warranted absolutely deserved it. Hanging, firing squad, electric chair, lethal injection, whatever – if you were convicted you deserved to swing, get shot, be fried, or get dosed. End of story.

And then, about a week ago, I heard something which I’m sure I’d heard before, but for some unknown reason this time it struck a chord with me and got me to thinking. And I thought about it – hard. And I thought about it for several days, and the more I thought about it the more I thought what I was thinking was right, and the more I felt like that the more I knew I was about to change my opinion on the death penalty. And when I found myself saying to myself that of course this is right, how could I have NOT seen that, I knew then that I had changed my opinion about the death penalty.

I no longer support it or believe it should be applied.

Not because I don’t consider it constitutional. I see absolutely nothing in the Constitution, including the part about “cruel and unusual punishment, which indicates to me that the death penalty is unconstitutional.

Not because it’s against my religion. I was raised Episcopalian, and nowhere in my religious teaching do I recall anybody telling me that the death penalty was wrong. Sure, I know one of the Ten Commandments is “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” but I also know that soldiers kill in warfare all the time and that no religion says anything bad about it.

Not because I’m “pro life” or anything like that, and think that killing is wrong under any circumstances. (I’m still pro-choice, and that’s that.)

And not because I don’t think people who murder other people don’t deserve to die. I believe they do.

It’s not for any of those reasons. The reason I changed my mind is simple, when you get right down to it. It goes like this:

What if someone is wrongly convicted? What if the jury gets it wrong, and sends an innocent man to Death Row? Once the penalty is carried out, that’s it. It’s final. No chance for a reprieve, no chance for a “do-over;” an innocent man is dead, and that’s final. If you make a mistake, if the jury gets it wrong, if they execute an innocent man, you can’t take it back.

You can’t fix it. You can’t make it right. Ever.

I just don’t think you can take that chance. Sure, I know that 99% of the juries in America get it right when it comes to the death penalty, but I also know that more and more you’re hearing in the news where someone convicted of rape or some other violent crime has been found innocent through DNA or other evidence that wasn’t available when they were convicted.

Such is true with the death penalty. If you get convicted of murder and are sent to prison for life, and if it’s found out later that the jury made a boo-boo and sent an innocent man up the river, you can set him free. Sure, he’s lost some years out of his life, but at least he’s still around to make the best of the rest of his life.

You can’t do that if you execute someone. If you wrongly execute an innocent man, he’s dead – and there’s NOTHING you can do to change or fix it.

Period.

And trust me, juries don’t always get it right. You have to keep in mind that most juries are made up of average citizens whose sum total of legal knowledge is what they’ve seen on reruns of “Law and Order,” and that scares the crap out of me. That’s the last group of people I’d want to put in charge of deciding whether I live or die.

So I just don’t think it’s worth it. I just don’t think I’d be willing to take the chance of getting it wrong and having an innocent man get executed. Life in prison with no chance of parole, absolutely. That way an innocent man has a chance of getting out if he’s later found to be innocent, and the guilty will spend the rest of their lives behind bars. But to take away any opportunity to right a wrong? Nah, I don’t think so.

Like I said, I’m all for life without parole. Sure, I know some of you will say that’s no punishment, that the guilty is still alive and the dead person is still dead, and you’re not wrong. But a life in prison is no life; having someone else tell you when to sleep, when to wake up, when to eat, when to shower, controlling every single facet of your life, is not the way I’d like to live. And on top of that, there is NO privacy in prison. None. Zip. Nada. From all that I’ve read, the one single thing that most convicts miss the most while in prison is their privacy.

So life in prison without possibility of parole, absolutely. Lock ‘em away for life, no matter how much it costs to house, clothe and feed them. As long as they’re alive and suffering through a miserable existence every single day of their life, I’m fine with that. Bu take a chance on executing an innocent man?

Nope, sorry. Not anymore.

IHC

Saturday, May 22, 2010

The Illigal Immigrant Issue, Greatly Simplified

With the passage of the immigration enforcement law in Arizona, the issue of illegal immigrants in America has once again come to the forefront of the news. Of course, The Great Pretender allowing the Mexican president to bad-mouth Arizona from the floor of the Capitol without so much as a stern look from our own president has helped as well. But more on that topic later.

Anyhow, this little ditty has been be-bopping around the e-mail circuit for some time now, and it be-bopped its way back into my "inbox" a few days ago courtesy of a friend of mine. After reading it again, I decided to clean it up a bit and expound on it some, and then post it here. I think it's very relevant, and as the title of the e-mail which brought it back to me proclaims, I don't understand how ANY liberal CANNOT understand the logic behind this.

Having said that, heeeeeeeere we go!

One day, you come home from work and discover that I have broken into your house. You don't know me, you've never met me before, you certainly didn't ask me to come into your house, but here I am. And since you never asked me to come into your house, you demand that I leave.

But I tell you that I like it in your house, that it's much better than my house. I tell you that I'm a hard worker and an honest man (except for the part where I broke into your house). I've cut the grass, raked the lawn, and tended your flowerbed while you were gone. I've done all the things you don't like to do, so you have to let me stay. We argue about it all day long, when you finally give up and go to bed in the hopes that when you get up the next day I'll be gone.

But the next day comes, and I'm still here. So you go to work, again hoping that when you come home I'll be gone. But when you come home from work again, you find that my wife has also broken into your home and has joined me. You tell both of us that you didn't ask us to come into your house, we're in your house illegally, and you demand that we leave.

But my wife tells you that she has cleaned the house from top to bottom, made the beds, cleaned the bathrooms, washed the clothes, and washed all the dishes. She'll even go to the store and replace the food we've eaten - after you give her the money to buy it with, that is. She tells you that she's a hard worker and an honest person (except for the part where she broke into your house). And on top of everything else, you can't expect us to leave now because my wife is pregnant and wants to have the baby in your house.

I then tell you that we're both hard-working, honest people (except for the part where we broke into your house) who are just trying to better ourselves by leaving our house and coming to live in yours. And if you try to force us out or call the police, I will call all my friends who will then come over and picket your house, all carrying signs which proclaim my right to be here.

Then I tell you that since I'm doing all this work in your house (the one I broke into, remember) that you must pay me for my work. You must also provide me with medical care for myself, my wife, and my child once it's born, for which we will not pay since we're living in your house and it's your responsibility. And since I'm living in your house, you must also feed me and clothe me without expectation of my contributing anything towards it except my work - for which you will pay me, of course.

When my child is born and grows up while living in your house (the one we broke into), he will attend your schools and get an education for which we will pay nothing since we won't be paying taxes. You will pay for his education with your taxes - after all, it's your house, isn't it? (The one we broke into, that is.)

We argue about this all day and far into the night, when you finally give up and go to bed, exhausted. When you leave for work the next day, you do so in the hopes that me and my pregnant wife will be gone when you get back that evening.

But when you return home, you discover that my brother, his wife, and their six kids have joined me...


To some, what I have just posted here is ridiculous in its simplicity, and it can't honestly be taken seriously as a representation of what's going on in America. It can't simply be that bad, can it?

Just ask the people of Arizona.

So I say again - what part of this is so hard for the liberals to understand?

IHC

Monday, May 17, 2010

"We Hear the Grievances; Where Is the Gratitude?"

I received this letter in an e-mail from a friend of mine a few days ago. It was a forward from another e-mail he had received, and it was supposedly the text of a letter written to NObama by an American religious figure. I won't name who it was supposed to be written by because I have some serious doubts as to whether the person who was supposed to have written it really did write it. I have these doubts because in the original text as I received it, the letter was too full of grammatical and punctual mistakes and context errors to have been written by the educated man the supposed author really is. So I have cleaned it up grammatically and am posting it here without naming the alleged author, and I'm posting it because it hits the nail square on the head on a few points that I happen to agree with 100%. But while I agree with the content, I cannot and will not vouch for the accuracy of the percentages cited in the letter simply because I don't have the time to research them, and the point is well-made even if the numbers are not 100% accurate.

Having said all that, here's the letter.

"Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America. Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to. This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. [Reverend] Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the black community into the mainstream. Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks -- with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to advance black applicants over white applicants. Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated their time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances.

Where is the gratitude??

Barack talks about new 'ladders of opportunity' for blacks. Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for 'deserving' white kids.

Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for black Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America's fault that illegitimacy in the black community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Reverend Al Sharpton about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago."


Exactly.

IHC

Saturday, May 15, 2010

What if the Tea Party...

I was browsing through one of the other blogs I read from time to time when I came across an interesting link that the author had posted along with his entry. The link was to a video that had aired a few days ago on one of those political debate programs like “Face the Nation” or something like that. What caught my attention was something that had been noted as having been said by Bill Maher, and after watching the video I got to thinking about what he had said. I mean, the comment itself was small and didn’t get much attention paid to it, but the more and more I got to thinking about it, the more I started asking myself why it didn’t get more attention than it did. It didn’t take me long to figure out why, but still, it’s been rambling around in my head for the past few days, and by now you should all know what happens when I get things rambling around inside my noggin for a few days. They end up here, so here it is.

Basically, what Bill Maher said was this: What if the Tea Party was black?

What if, instead of a bunch of white people demonstrating peacefully and demanding their rights and equal treatment, decrying violence directed towards them and political candidates, it was a bunch of black people instead? Would everyone be in such an uproar about it? Would the Democrats be decrying the Tea Party as a bunch of looney tunes or delinquents, and would the press be vilifying them the way they are? Would they automatically be labeled as “racists” who were out to do nothing but destroy the nation?

You and I both know the answer to that. The answer is a big, fat, NO.

The logical comparison here is to compare the Tea Party movement to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Both movements share the same basic core qualities: a concern about their individual and collective rights, a concern over the way they were being treated by the Federal government, a peaceful agenda to implement needed changes, and peaceful demonstrations to make themselves heard. Yet the big difference is the way people are perceiving them and the way they’re being made out in the media, and the reason for that can be summed up in one word: RACE.

The black population in America stood up in the 1960s and brought world attention to their plight and the way they were being mistreated in their own country, and due to the media coverage the world sat up and took notice. The Federal government took notice too, and over the course of time the necessary actions were taken and the necessary (at the time) legislation was passed to put an end to the unequal treatment of blacks in America.

Fast forward to 2009 and the emergence of the Tea Party. Once again, you have a group of citizens who are standing up and, through the use of peaceful demonstrations, are making people take notice of their plight, only this time it’s different. Because of the way the Tea Party is being portrayed in the media and because of the “political correct” attitude that permeates America these days which states that only a white man can be a racist, the Tea Party members are being labeled as lunatics, domestic terrorists, and racists.

All because they’re mostly white and are standing up for their rights.

Note I said “mostly white.” True, friends and neighbors, there are black members of the Tea Party, just as there were white members of the Freedom Marchers and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. But of course, there are people in our society that will choose to ignore that little factoid just as they will choose to ignore the fact that NObama is half-white. And the fact that the majority of America believes that only a white man can be a racist is nothing but total bullshit. That attitude is a leftover from the media brainwashing and social “attitude cleansing” that has taken place as a sour, nasty by-product of the efforts of the Federal government to end racial discrimination. The plain truth is that anyone regardless of color can be a racist, no matter what Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, the NAACP, the ACLU, and the New York Times says. All you have to do is look up the definition of the word to see just how full of crap these people are.

So back to the original question: What if the Tea Party was black?

Well, here’s my answer: it shouldn’t make one damned bit of difference.

And it thoroughly disgusts me that it does.

IHC

Friday, May 14, 2010

How NOT to Treat Your Customers, by The Home Depot

This is a ver batim copy of a letter I sent to the CEO of The Home Depot, Frank Blake. It pretty much speaks for itself.

Frank Blake
CEO, Home Depot
2455 Paces Ferry Road Southeast
Atlanta, GA 30339

May 12, 2010

Dear Mr. Blake,

I am writing this letter to inform you that effective immediately, you have lost a customer for life. The reason for my decision to never again do any shopping of any kind with your company is simple: you told me you didn’t want or need my business, so I’m giving you what you want.

A week ago I received a letter from your company informing me that a “routine” credit check had been conducted on my credit account with your company, and that I had been found to be a “substantial risk” and my account was therefore closed. The decision, the letter said, had been based on information received from one of the three credit reporting agencies, and because of that information the decision had been made to close my account without warning.

Sounds like I was in to your company for a ton of money, doesn’t it? And that the payments were way overdue, huh? One would think so, judging by the tone and the language of the letter. So just how long overdue was my payment, you ask?

It wasn’t. Not by so much as an hour. And that’s because the balance on my account at the time it was closed was ZERO.

That’s right – ZERO. I owed Home Depot nothing. Not a dime, not a cent. NOTHING.

So you don’t want my business? Okay, fine by me. I know of a company that does, one that I have an account with and that will be more than happy to have me shop in their stores. You’ve heard of them – they’re called LOWE’S.

So the next time I need fertilizer for my yard, I’m going to Lowe’s. And the next time I need some new flowers to spruce up my yard, I’m going to Lowe’s. And the next time I decide to repaint the entire inside of my house, all 2,200 square feet of it, I’m going to Lowe’s.

If you want to know why Lowe’s has been steadily chipping away at the market share and taking more and more of it away from Home Depot over the past few years, this should give you a clue. Your company treats its customers like dirt, like they’re unimportant and mean nothing to the company, so no wonder you’re losing your place in the market.

And you have no one to blame but yourself.

A very disgruntled former customer,



Raymond Craig


IHC

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Love Ain't the Only Thing That's Blind

You know the old saying, "love is blind?" Well, I'm here to tell you, friends and neighbors, that love ain't the only thing that's blind. Loyalty is blind as well, and even more so than love, I think. When you're blinded by love you're blinded by your heart, and you're reacting to what your heart wants you to. Not many of us have much control over that, and I think we all have experienced that at one time or another - or more - in our lives.

But being blinded by loyalty is another thing entirely. When you're blinded by loyalty you're blinded by your beliefs, and your beliefs are formed by what you've seen, read, been told or have heard. Out of all that information - or misinformation, as the case may be - you form your beliefs and your loyalty takes shape out of that. In short, you're being blinded by your mind, and unlike your heart you have near TOTAL control over that. You believe something because you choose to believe it.

Blind loyalty can be a powerful and frightening thing, and it can also be a dangerous and self-destructive thing as well. Blind loyalty prohibits you from seeing the facts for what they really are, and prohibits you from being able to see what's gonna happen to you and your loved ones down the road based on your support of a person, idea, or party based on your blind loyalty. Blind loyalty also makes you react in ways that you may or may not normally react, and in most cases that's not a good thing. It makes you say and do things that you most likely will regret later on, but by then it'll be too late for you to do anything except hang your head in shame and ask yourself, "What the hell was I thinking?"

Such is the case with the legions of Obamabots out there, as I have had proven to me yet again on Facebook. No matter how hard you try to have an intelligent conversation with these people, it always turns out one of three ways: either you get blasted for being a racist (the most prevalent ending since the majority of people who voted for him are black), you get blasted for citing your sources if it's any source that is even remotely critical of NObama (they HATE Fox news, for obvious reasons), or they blame Bush. And it has been my sad experience that most of the time, you're gonna have all three thrown at you, with the race card being thrown first.

A note about that. I have yet to have a conversation with someone I knew to be black that voted for NObama that has NOT accused me of either being a racist or just not liking him because he's black. (News flash, genius - he's only half black. The other half is white, and I don't like that half either.) It doesn't matter that during the course of the discussion I'll list all of the reasons I don't like him and NONE of them will be because he's "black;" eventually during the conversation the other person will pop up and say, "All that's bullshit, you just don't like him BECAUSE HE'S BLACK, and I know it!" And my reaction is the same to that every time - I end the conversation, because I'm not going to waste my time trying to convince someone who is as narrow-minded and downright stupid as that that they're wrong.

But the thing that concerns me the most is that the number of people who have that "in your face" attitude and will throw the race card at your right away vastly outnumber the ones who will at least try and have a discussion with you and NOT say anything like that - before they blast Fox News or blame Bush, that is. I run into more and more of those kinds of "in your face" black people online every time I try to discuss the President and how badly he's screwing things up, and it's to the point now where I've just given up. I refuse to debate NObama with ANYONE who is a supporter of his, because my personal experience has proven to me that the Obamabots cannot be reasoned with, they cannot see reality for what it is because they don't want to, and cannot even entertain the thought that they may just be wrong about their savior and messiah. And they can't entertain even the slightest thought like that for two reasons: it means they're gonna have to admit they're wrong, and they're gonna have to admit that THEY are the racists. They voted for a man based solely on the color of his skin, and in my line of thinking that's just as racist as NOT voting for someone based solely on the color of his skin.

Sooner or later these people are gonna get a wake-up call, and it ain't gonna be pretty. Some of them are getting the call now because I have talked to several people, white and black, who voted for him and now regret the decision they made. But the dyed-in-the-wool fanatical Obamabots aren't gonna believe anything until the BFO (that's Blinding Flash of the Obvious) hits them right square between the eyes.

And even then, I have a feeling they're gonna blame it on the white man.

Tell me I'm wrong, I dare ya.

I'm willing to be that there's at least one or two people who will read what I have just written and label me as a racist, and all that will accomplish is to prove what I've been saying all along. I've done nothing but relate actual events that happened to me and I've related them with as much accuracy as my memory will allow, and if you think I'm a racist because I "talked bad" about or criticized black people, then you go right ahead and think that. Personally, I could care less what you think.

There's a wake-up call comin' for all the Obamabots out there, and Stage 1 will happen this November when the Demoncrats lose control of the Congress. In case you're not paying attention to current events, the Tea Party - of which I am a proud member - just kicked out an incumbent REPUBLICAN in Utah that wasn't conservative enough for them, so just what do you think they're gonna do to all of the liberal Demoncrats out there?

Can you say, "fricasee?"

Stage 2 of the wake-up call comes two years after that in November of 2012, when we kick The Great Pretender out of the White House and relegate him back to obscurity where he belongs.

And THAT, friends and neighbors is "CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN!"

IHC

Friday, May 7, 2010

"Political Correctness" Reaches a New Low

I’ve been irritated more over events on the evening news in the past 15 months than I can ever remember, but I can’t remember when anything I’ve heard about or read about has irritated, infuriated, and disgusted me more than the news story out of California I read yesterday. Coming out of California I shouldn’t be surprised, but even this one took me by surprise.

An assistant high school principal approached five white students who were wearing bandanas and t-shirts with the American flag on them and asked them to remove the bandanas and turn the shirts inside-out so the flag wasn’t visible. Seems that it was May 5th, also known as Cinco de Mayo (a holiday in Mexico), and the assistant principle didn’t want to “irritate” the Hispanic students in the school. So he gave the white American students a choice: remove the garments to keep from “irritating” the Hispanic immigrant students, or get sent home. Some of the students complied, but most of them refused and chose to go home.

And the assistant principle’s name? Rodriguez, of course.

Now I’ve heard some stupid things done and said in the name of “political correctness” before, NONE of which I’ve agreed with because I absolutely DESPISE being “politically correct,” but THIS one absolutely takes the cake! The day when an AMERICAN student in an AMERICAN high school gets told to take off a shirt which displays the AMERICAN flag so it won’t piss off the HISPANIC students is the day when being “politically correct” has reached new levels of lunacy, irrationality, and stupidity!

And of course, anyone who is talking bad about the assistant principle or what happened is automatically being label a “racist,” which of course is total bullshit. But then again, in THIS day and age in America, any white man who dares say anything bad about any minority – even if the minority deserves the criticism, as in this case – is automatically labeled a “racist.” This is an issue I’ll be addressing in a post next week, so I’ll leave that topic alone – for now.

One cannot help but wonder what would have happened if the school administrator had been white and had approached five Hispanic students who were wearing t-shirts with Mexican flags on them and gave them the same ultimatum, only this time it was so the American students wouldn’t get pissed off.

Well, I’ll tell you what would have happened – it would still be front-page news, the ACLU, the SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center), Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and CNN would all be clamoring for the spotlight, all demanding the head of the “racist” administrator on a platter for his “racist” actions.

Tell me I’m wrong, I dare ya.

But since this incident involved WHITE students and not MINORITIES, the story has already dropped off the front page and is quickly fading away. FOX News is still covering it, and according to them the assistant principle is being investigated – as well he should be. And after he’s been investigated, his ass needs to be FIRED!

What this man did is reprehensible, disgusting, infuriating, and insulting. I don’t give a damn about the feelings of ANY immigrant group when it comes to an AMERICAN citizen displaying the flag of his nation, that flag being the AMERICAN flag. Every single American citizen, be he/she a natural-born American or a legal immigrant who has obtained citizenship, has the right to fly or display the American flag any damned time he/she chooses, and if there’s another immigrant out there who doesn’t like that, then my suggestion is simple.

GO THE FUCK HOME! Nobody asked you to come here, and nobody is gonna ask you to stay, that’s for damned sure!

I’m just wondering why our President is keeping silent on this. After all, he IS the President of the United States (as much as I hate to admit it), and if he can weigh in on a law passed in Arizona designed to protect the citizens of that state and a law that he doesn’t like, then he can damn sure say something about this.

But then again, maybe it’s a good thing he’s keeping his mouth shut. After all, he’s proven himself to be a minority President and not just a President, so maybe his not voicing an opinion is a good thing.

In any event, I think as soon as I finish posting this on my blog I’m gonna sit down and write me a couple of letters, all of which I’ll post here for your enjoyement.

The first one is gonna be to the school district in California where Assistant Principal Rodriguez works.

And it ain’t gonna be pretty.

IHC