“See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly…”
I am the Walrus by John Lennon & Paul McCartney
Good Day World!
What happens when you declare war against Iraq? They run.
What happens when Iraqis are called upon to defend their own cities? They run.
See the Iraqis run.
Ramadi, which was captured by militants a week earlier, is the latest example of Iraqi fighting efficiency.
They were not outnumbered.
In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force, and yet they failed to fight and ran like frightened rabbits. Which has to make an observer wonder if the Iraqis have the will to fight ISIL (ISIS) and defend themselves.
No amount of training and materials of war from America seems to make a difference.
The Iraqi Army leaves behind tons of weapons, tanks, you name it, every time they decide to lift their skirts and run from an enemy.
ISIS should be sending thank you letters to Congress for keeping them well-supplied with the latest in weapon technology.
If Iraq is conquered they’ll deserve it.
My heart goes out to all the American soldiers who served – and died – there. They should have never been put in that hell hole of a country. America failed them, they didn’t fail America.
It’s time to let Iraq do it’s own fighting. If they have the will to win, they’ll prevail. So far, they’ve had the advantage in man power and weaponry – but that’s rapidly changing.
As a combat Vietnam veteran, I can tell you the South Vietnamese DID NOT have the will to fight North Vietnam. We often referred to South Vietnamese soldiers as rabbits because of their propensity to run like hell if enemy fire broke out.
I saw that clearly while I was there. I see it clearly now with Iraq. If only Congress would get it’s head out of it’s ass, they’d see it too!
Time for me to walk on down the road…
Half God, half man…Tom Brady
Good Day World!
Sports fans can be a little nutty at times.
As a Laker fan, I can attest to that. Some fans go to great lengths to support their team, or favorite player, regardless of any allegations made against them.
The most recent case of fans ignoring what’s right or wrong with a sports figure features GQ pretty boy Tom Brady. He was caught cheating, along with a couple of assistants.
The evidence was clear. Deflated footballs designed to give Brady an advantage.
But that doesn’t bother his rabid fans who’d forgive him if he beat up a girl scout! In a recent nationwide poll people were asked if Tom Brady was railroaded by the NFL?
Every state in the country, but one, agreed with Brady’s sentence of a four-game suspension.
The holdout? No surprise. Massachusetts had a majority of people who thought Brady got a bad deal and shouldn’t have been fined.
Some hardcore fans gathered yesterday outside of Gillette Stadium and held a “Free Tom Brady rally.” They protested “the unjust football arrest” of half God and half man Tom Brady.
This undying fan support, regardless of reality, is what I’m talking about. Brady was caught cheating. Get over it!
Time for me to walk on down the road…
Good Day World!
After the tremendous viewership of Handling Sharks for Christ (see 5/21 post) I’ve decided to share a series of new reality shows for your continued entertainment.
Today’s entry (#2) is – Wrecking Rehabs in America
Are you tired of watching all those TV shows about people fixing up decrepit houses and then selling them? Seems like there’s no end of them. Ready for a change of pace?
Here you go:
A couple (any combination) goes to recently refurbished houses that are for sale. Posing as prospective buyers, the couple have to see how much destruction they can cause without alerting the realtor showing the house.
The contestants get to go to three houses during the hour show.
After an evaluation of the damage, the house with the most destruction becomes the couple’s entry for the final show – where they could win a house of their own to destroy!
The panel of judges will consist of hardened criminals from a different maximum security prison every week. They’ll be looking for creativity and quantity of mayhem.
The host for the show will be Arizona’s infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Stay tuned.
Time for me to walk on down the road…
Good Day World!
This country needs a president with a sense of humor and humanity. Therefore, I nominate Will Ferrell for President (Independent Party).
Before you laugh and write Will off, you should know he’s no worse than anyone the Republican, or Democratic Party, is putting out there for your vote. Consider his worldly backround:
He first established himself in the mid-1990s as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, and has subsequently starred in comedy films such as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Talladega Nights, Blades of Glory, and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.
During his time on Saturday Night Live, Ferrell appeared in several movies: Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, A Night at the Roxbury, Superstar, The Ladies Man, Dick, Drowning Mona, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and Zoolander.
His SNL impersonation of President George W. Bush was his first foray into politics, and he was hilarious. Will wouldn’t have a problem debating any of the presidential contenders.
His quick wit, and sharp humor would skewer his opponents on any public stage. Just think of the fun he could have with Jeb Bush, or Hillary Clinton! And the rest of the gang. He’d expose them all for corporate puppets.
Will Ferrell supported Barack Obama in the 2012 election and look what happened... Obama won! That isn’t all he brings to the table. He’s generous (supports numerous charities), and is NOT a professional politician.
That practically cinches it for me.
So what do you say, how about Will Ferrell for our next president?
Time for me to walk on down the road…
Good Day World!
Reality show addicts rejoice.
I know many of you are really disappointed by the news that National Geographic Channel’s “Snake Salvation” is not coming back next season.
There’s a good reason.
Pastor Gregory Jamie Coots — the star of the show – got bit by a snake and died. Coots was bitten at church but died at his home two hours later, after refusing medical treatment “because of religious beliefs.”
Here’s a One-Hour Special Presentation from National Geographic on Pastor Jamie Coot’s life and times.
Handling snakes is practiced by a handful of fundamentalist crazy churches, based on an interpretation of certain Bible verses that say true Christians should be able to handle serpents without being harmed.
Okay then.
How do you top people playing with deadly snakes every week? The producers are faced with a real challenge here. Fortunately, there’s no end to the possibilities. Nothing is too stupid, or dangerous, to get good television ratings.
Snakes are scary, but compared to sharks they look cuddly!
NEW REALITY SHOW
Handling Sharks for Christ.
Simple concept.
Two true Christian contestants wade out into shark infested beaches. When a shark is found, one of the contestants has to pet it while reciting baptism rites for the other contestant bobbing up and down nearby.
To win, both contestants must be able to swim back to land on their own power. In the case of a tie, the contestants who found the biggest shark and had the fastest baptism times wins.
This new National Geographic Channel reality show will feature dolphin, and human, judges. The producers are hoping it lasts more than one season like Snake Salvation. I wouldn’t bet on it, but who knows?
Stay tuned.
Time for me to walk on down the road…
Who would of guessed?
Jeb Bush sounded a lot like bubba Dubya yesterday. Jeb said that those who insist that the science of climate change is completely definitive are exhibiting "intellectual arrogance."
Really? How about exhibiting no intelligence at all with that response!
Factoid: Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that human activity has led to climate change.
If that’s not definitive, then what is?
Jeb keeps telling people he’s his own man, but the more you listen to him the more he sounds like Dubya (stupider than a stone).
Bush #3 in 2016? I don’t think so.
Good Day World!
In this highly stressful society finding happiness can be a real challenge. The pressure of daily life – just making a living – has a way of harshing many people’s attitudes.
There’s a lot of good reasons to seek happiness. Sometimes people think happiness can be bought like any other commodity.
If your rich enough you can buy anything and not have to worry about where your next meal is coming from. It’s easier than the alternative.
Most of us struggle to make ends meet. But does that mean we can’t be happy.
In short, the latest research suggests wealth alone doesn’t provide any guarantee of a good life. What matters a lot more than a big income is how people spend it.
For instance, giving money away makes people a lot happier than lavishing it on themselves. And when they do spend money on themselves, people are a lot happier when they use it for experiences like travel than for material goods.
Life experiences give us more lasting pleasure than material things, and yet people still often deny themselves experiences and prioritize buying material goods.
Extremely wealthy people have their own set of concerns: anxiety about their children, uncertainty over their relationships and fears of isolation, according to research by Robert Kenny, a developmental psychologist and senior advisor at the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College.
His research shows the rest of the world, who often think that if they just made one more bonus or sold one more item or got one more promotion, then their world and their family's world would be so much better, that this isn't necessarily true.
There's another whole level of concerns that parents are going to have about their kids. One of those concerns is this feeling of isolation. That's actually a No. 1 concern for families with a high net worth — this sense of isolation — and the higher the wealth, the worse it gets.
Yes, it’s easier being rich than poor. No one can deny that. But money isn’t necessary if you can enjoy the simple things in life, like going for a walk, laughing at a friends joke, or writing a poem.
Happiness has many sources if we allow ourselves to seek them out. I’m speaking from the experiences of over six decades in the quest to be happy. Your greatest happiness can come from living in a close family, and having lots of friends.
It’s an almost unbeatable combination when you boil everything down to the basics. Watching your daughter take her first step, or your son say his first words, can be more precious than all of the money in Ft. Knox.
What makes you happy?
Time for me to walk on down the road…
Editor’s Note: Every now and then I like to run guest op-eds. Today’s candidate writes for the Cavalier Daily
Guest Post
by Ben Rudgley | Feb 20 2015 | 02/20/15 2:40am | Updated 02/19/15 11:21pm
As traditional arguments for voting Republican — like believing it will bring about limited, efficient and pragmatic government — have collapsed, the GOP has relied on a politics of fear to win elections amidst low turnout and an increasingly apathetic public.
In 2016, the politics of fear will fall short of the historic nature of Hillary Clinton’s inevitable candidacy. The potential for the first female president and her impeccable qualifications — Secretary of State, a senator and First Lady — mean that the eventual Republican candidate will have to adopt a more positive, moderate form of messaging.
In order to chart a compelling path for the GOP to the White House, it is first necessary, however, to deconstruct how the politics of fear manifests itself and how it fails.
Congressional Republicans have been desperately trying to prove they can govern as well as obstruct, though their recent actions have done little to change their perception.
Republicans’ rabid opposition to President Barack Obama’s recent executive action on immigration has led to their latest exercise in brinkmanship: failing to fund the Department of Homeland Security while at the same time bemoaning the national security threats of ISIL and terrorist plots in Europe.
This is an exemplar of how GOP politics are guided by fear and xenophobia. The aging, white conservative base, to which “executive amnesty” is anathema, reflexively oppose comprehensive immigration reform — in spite of its widely documented potential to grow the economy — because of their fear of those that are different from them.
In 2012, former Gov. Mitt Romney deposited into the bottomless bank of conservative fear by famously promising economic catastrophe if Obama won reelection.
Predictably his predictions of “crippling unemployment” and “another recession” have proved at best delusional or at worst knowingly demagogic as unemployment has plummeted to 5.6 percent, gas prices have fallen and home values have surged.
Furthermore, conservative opposition to Obamacare has also been predicated on fear-mongering rhetoric that claimed the market-based health care law wouldcause historic destruction to the economy. This is a claim that now looks as off the mark and anachronistic as conservative opposition to gay marriage.
Even attempts to define the GOP as the party of limited, fiscally responsible government seem in vain. The myth that Republicans will bring about lower taxes for all has pervaded for decades but cannot long defy political realities across the nation.
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s tax cuts, which were heralded by conservatives everywhere, have resulted in fiscal turmoil and likely deep cuts to state education. Furthermore, a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities study showed “Most of the benefits went to high-income households” and “Kansas even raised taxes for low-income families to offset a portion of the revenue loss.”
This exposes how Republicans’ rhetoric of lower taxes for all actually translates to benefits for special interests, corporations and the wealthy but even greater tax burdens on the working and middle classes. (read the rest here)
Time for me to walk on down the road…
Good Day World!
If there’s one thing I hate it’s con artists/scammers.
You hear about them all the time. There’s phone cons, identity-theft cons, and cons that target charities. The real scum bags go with the last one.
I lost a sister to breast cancer, and feel strongly about supporting the cause for a cure. There’s millions of other Americans that feel the same way.
The American Cancer Society’s estimates for breast cancer in women in the United States for 2015 are:
As these figures suggest, the fight to end breast cancer continues.
But some low-lives take the money that people donate towards a cure, and use it for their own personal gain. The following article is a disturbing example of how charitable funds can be misused:
“A federal lawsuit alleges four cancer charities have scammed consumers out of more than $187 million.
The Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general in all 50 states and the District of Columbia announced Tuesday they have filed a lawsuit against the Cancer Fund of America, Children's Cancer Fund of America, Cancer Support Services and the Breast Cancer Society alleging they violated federal and state regulations.
All four charities are run by members of the same family or their close business associates, as detailed in the 2013 "America's Worst Charities" joint report from theTampa Bay Times and the Center for Investigative Reporting.
The lawsuit serves as a reminder to consumers to vet nonprofits carefully before donating. Americans gave $335.17 billion to charity in 2013, according to the Giving USA 2014 report, put out by the Giving USA Foundation and the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. Health charities received $31.86 billion of that, up 4.5 percent from 2012.” (source)
I don’t want to discourage you from donating to the charity of your choice, but I am cautioning you to check the charity out before giving your hard-earned money to them.
Here’s a good site that rates ALL charities: Charity Watch. Better safe than sorry.
Time for me to walk on down the road…
Good Day World!
Waco Texas is where the wackos go to die. It should be the city’s motto.
I don’t know what it is about Waco that attracts the crazies and criminals, but it’s reputation is common knowledge.
Who can forget David Koresh that madman who seized control of a group of breakaway Seventh Day Adventist Church members and led them to their deaths?
He told his followers that God wanted him to procreate with the women in the group to establish a "House of David" of his "special people."
The Waco massacre in 1993 was the end result of a 50-day siege in which 76 men, women and children lost their lives after federal officials set fire to an isolated compound.
SHADES OF YESTERYEAR
On May 17, 2015, in Waco, Texas, a shootout erupted between as many as five rival outlaw motorcycle clubs, including the Bandidos, the Cossacks, Victoria's Angels, and the Scimitars.
The shootout occurred at the local Twin Peaks restaurant and left nine people dead, with eighteen others injured
MORE INFORMATION
Twin Peaks Revokes Waco Restaurant's Franchise After Shootout
Time for me to walk on down the road…
Good Day World!
You can’t judge a book by it’s cover.
No more than you can judge a #hash tag by several words. Oh, wait a moment! Yes, you can. Let me explain.
If you’re a non-techie type and don’t know what a hash tag is, the following information will set you straight.
ORIGIN of HASHTAGS
The number sign was often used in information technology to highlight a special meaning. In 1970 for example, the number sign was used to denote immediate address mode in the assembly language of the PDP-11 when placed next to a symbol or a number.
In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie used # in the C programming language for special keywords that had to be processed first by the C preprocessor.
Since before the invention of the hash tag, the number sign has been called the "hash symbol" in some countries outside of North America.
The number sign then appeared and was used within IRC networks to label groups and topics. Channels or topics that are available across an entire IRC network are prefixed with a hash symbol # (as opposed to those local to a server, which use an ampersand '&').
The use of the number sign in IRC inspired Chris Messina to propose a similar system to be used on Twitter to tag topics of interest on the micro blogging network. He posted the first hash tag on Twitter:
how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?
—Chris Messina, ("factoryjoe"), August 23, 2007
Internationally, the hash tag became a practice of writing style for Twitter posts during the 2009–2010 Iranian election protests, as both English- and Persian-language hash tags became useful for Twitter users inside and outside Iran.
The first use of the term "hash tag" was in a blog post by Stowe Boyd, "Hash Tags = Twitter Groupings,"on 26 August 2007, according to lexicographer Ben Zimmer, chair of the American Dialect Society's New Words Committee.
Beginning July 2, 2009, Twitter began to hyperlink all hash tags in tweets to Twitter search results for the hash tagged word (and for the standard spelling of commonly misspelled words).
In 2010, Twitter introduced "Trending Topics" on the Twitter front page, displaying hash tags that are rapidly becoming popular. Twitter has an algorithm to tackle attempts to spam the trending list and ensure that hash tags trend naturally. (via Wikipedia)
Time for me to walk on down the road…
Good Day World!
We all get angry at one time or another in our life. The negative outburst that usually follows can be good, or bad. Just depends.
Have you ever heard about anger being a positive thing?
There are all sorts of good sensible, civilized reasons to avoid getting angry.
Not only does it make you feel bad, it makes you do stupid things without noticing the risks and it can be self-destructive.
As a result civilized people do their best to suppress, redirect and mask their anger. Most of us treat our anger as though it’s unreasonable, and unmentionable.
But like all emotions anger has its purposes, which can be used to good effect.
Here’s six upsides to getting angry.
Anger can reduce violence, benefit relationships, promote optimism and be a useful motivating force, but it can just as easily be destructive.
That’s the wonder of human emotions: happy isn’t always good and angry isn’t always bad (although it may feel that way).
An unhappy person is also more likely to spot mistakes and an angry person is highly motivated to act. We need reminding that even scary and dangerous emotions have their upsides, as long as they are used for the correct purpose.
Used right, anger can be a handy tool. But use with caution as people find anger the most difficult of all the emotions to control.
Time for me to walk on down the road…
Good Day World!
How do you fix the laws and policies governing the American economy that are rigged to benefit the wealthiest individuals and largest corporations?
Good question. Read this report, “Rewriting The Rules Of The American Economy: An Agenda For Growth and Shared Prosperity.
You want details? These folks came up with 37 specific laws and policy changes to restore fairness and balance to the economy without undermining American capitalism.
“Skyrocketing incomes for the 1 percent and stagnating wages for everyone else are not independent phenomena, but rather two symptoms of an impaired economy that rewards gaming the system more than it does hard work and investment," according to the report.
The report concluded:
"The roots of this dysfunction lie deep in the rules and power dynamics that have prioritized corporate power and short-term gains at the expense of long-term innovation and growth. The outcomes shaped by these rules and power dynamics do not make the economy stronger; indeed, many make it weaker.”
Time for me to walk on down the road…
Don’t bother House Speaker John Boehner with facts.
He’s liable to call you stupid.
If there’s one thing Boehner can’t stand it’s the truth. You can slap him in the face with it, and he’d just blink stupidly.
When he claimed that the fatal Amtrak crash wasn't caused by a lack of federal funds, and mocked a reporter for even asking about it, reality was tossed out the window.
FACT: the Republican-run House Appropriations Committee voted to cut Amtrak's budget for next year to $1.1 billion, a $251 million reduction.
FACT: the panel also voted down a Democratic effort to boost federal funds for the railroad by more than $1 billion, including extra money for the busy Northeast corridor, where the derailment occurred.
FACT: Insufficient funding had delayed installation of an advanced electronic system for keeping trains from speeding, called positive train control, on the track where the accident occurred.
FACT: The Amtrak tragedy could have been avoided if the advanced electronic system had been in effect.
When you’re a partisan boob like Boehner reality is a toy to play with and to manipulate. This latest example proves it.
Time for me to walk on down the road… ,
Good Day World!
Jeb Bush is his own man.
At least that’s what he’s been telling the press lately.
He’s also easily confused.
While the Republican Party is moving away from supporting the Iraq war, Jeb is wandering around in a daze on the subject.
When asked if he would have gone to war in Iraq – knowing what we know now – he just couldn’t make up his mind and finally declared he’s not into hypothetical questions.
Oh, really?
That assertion is asinine and reflective of the chaos in his thought process.
In three days, Jeb gave three different answers on Iraq:
REALITY ALERT
“The ENTIRE premise behind a presidential candidacy is a hypothetical exercise -- it's imagining the candidate making policy decisions about past, present, and future matters.
It's an unacceptable answer for a candidate to say he/she won't engage in hypotheticals, because the whole game is a hypothetical. Any candidate that uses the word "hypothetical" to duck answering a question should be reminded of this.
The collective political class has somehow accepted the hypothetical excuse from candidates as standard practice. It should stop if we want to have any hope of finding out how these men and women would conduct themselves as president.” source
Enough said.
Time for me to walk on down the road…
Good Day World!
Westerners like tans.
They consider a tanned body sexy. That “brown look” is sought after by millions of Americans every year.
According to the Tanning Salons Market Research Report the Tanning Industry revenue will grow despite mounting cynicism toward UV tanning services. Tanning is a $3 billion dollar industry and growing – 3.2 percent per year.
In direct contrast, Asians have – in recent years – taken to lightening their skin to get that “white look.”
Asia’s skin-whitening industrial complex never stops innovating.
The latest product? A chemical goop for women (and men) unhappy with the color of their limbs. Simply slather it all over your arms and legs. Wait a week. Then peel back your skin to reveal the milky white you are hiding beneath all that pigment.
Asia’s supermarket shelves are filled with a dizzying variety of skin-whitening agents. Many in Asia are as obsessed with lightening their skin as westerners are about tanning it.
The product lines go far beyond lotions and pills. There are skin-whitening injections. Armpit-whitening deodorants sold at 7-Eleven outlets. A heavily advertised “whitening feminine wash” for female genitals.
This isn’t a fringe market. One research firm predicts that the “global skin lightener” industry — powered by transnational conglomerates such as Unilever and Procter & Gamble — will be worth $23 billion by 2020.
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Welcome to Indonesia's Michael Jackson Whitening house
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As for goops that cause skin peeling?
Most don’t really work, according to Sumali Pongjibrasan, an expert with Thailand’s Food and Drug Administration, who was interviewed by a Thai TV channel when the fad emerged last year.
For a lengthy analysis of Asia’s skin-whitening obsession, written by a Thai female author, check out this article: “Thailand’s skin whitening craze: How far will it go?”
Time for me to walk on down the road…
Good Day World!
If you were to leave a personal time capsule behind what would be in it?
Just for fun, name seven items you’d include so that future generations would know about your life. Your time. Your world. Your beliefs.
You can pick any size for your time capsule. I’ll take the lead - mine will be the size depicted in the photo above. My selections are:
The Life and Times of Dave Stancliff
1) My favorite photo of my wife, Shirley, and I. It’ll be dated and located.
2) My favorite photo of Shirley and our three sons, and I. It’ll be dated and located.
3) A photo of me in the Army at 19, standing next to a hooch in Vietnam. It’ll be dated and located.
4) A documentary video of the 1960’s – flower power, hippies, LSD, marijuana, and free love. It would include a brief introduction by myself about my teenage years, circa 1963 – 1969.
5) An audio chip crammed with all of my favorite music.
6) A big box filled with examples of all of my newspaper articles and columns, short stories, poems, and books.
7) A big box filled with my Los Angeles Laker’s memorabilia collection.
So there you have it. What would your seven picks be?
Time for me to walk on down the road…
The door to the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is open and we've all walked through it. Some grudgingly, some eagerly. Most of us unknowin...
