Know When to Fold 'Em

Kenny Rogers sung it best when he said, "You gotta' know when to hold 'em... You gotta' know when to fold 'em..." It amazes me the number of celebs who never really seem to know when it is time to "fold 'em" and just stop the insanity. Of course, at the moment, I am speaking of our two-woman conservative wrecking crew, Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean.

Personally, I loved Sarah Palin as a candidate for the Vice Presidency and I am a bit ashamed of the way the Republican party treated her during and after the election. She is truly a great woman, was a terrific governor, and from all I can tell is an excellent mom... However, rather than let a dead horse rot on its own, she continues to seek out her own personal kind of revenge on those that hurt her.

In general, it isn't a bad thing to want to damage the folks that hurt you... But in this case, I think she likes the republican party and is unintentionally hurting it at the same time. Her tell-all book is one thing... Bad enough in itself to hurt the right people. But, she seems hell bent on pushing her way back into the political ring by making public statements leading folks to believe she is in the running for the Presidency.

Personally, I think she'd make a great president. However, with all the bad press she's gotten, I don't think she realizes what her candidacy will cost the party if she does indeed run. We need people to run who provide the party with a positive image, who draw in people who would not otherwise vote conservative. Can Mrs Palin deliver on that? Not likely... and the negative that would likely result from it is bad for the party overall.

Carrie Prejean, after her bad bad conduct on the Larry King show recently continues to damage the conservative effort. She loves God, of that I am pretty certain. She preaches a good line as well... Keep the faith... Keep the values of good clean christian life... But she looks like a real idiot when she acts the victim in a world where her saucy photos are easily available. And now, of all things, she has her OWN sex tape now finding its way into the news. I seem to remember a statement not so long ago from her about nothing worse than 'saucy photos' existing anywhere, and how she has always led a strong moral life... Oh boy...

What she probably doesn't realize is, in a world where Christians have taken a beating from public figures appearing to be hypocritical, her own values are very much judged by the public as representing another. Christians are strongly associated to the Republican party (although they shouldn't be the only group whose values are represented by that party). By extension, Miss Prejean is now associating yet another negative view with conservatives. Hypocrisy of leaders and public figures is the number one reason for people to either leave the faith (any faith) or to become inactive. That kind of negativity is something the conservatives do NOT need right now...

Can't these two just settle down and join the rest of us mundane types, sitting on the sidelines, promoting our views through somewhat quieter means? Am I being too harsh?

Let me know... Drop me a comment.

Veterans Day - Public School Has Failed

Last night, at a scout troop meeting, I witnessed a very sad thing... The scoutmaster took over the meeting about half-way through to talk about the reason, meaning and origin of Veterans Day.

His first question, "do you know where Veterans Day comes from?" was met with very slow, shy answers from the few scouts in the room. One finally said it was to remember the members of the armed forces who died in service. Not quite right... That is Memorial Day, but it was the closest answer we heard.

So, the scoutmaster asked the boys to just list the names of the various wars America has taken part in... "What was the first war in our history as a nation?"

One boy proudly piped out "the Revolution!"

"Ok," said the scoutmaster, "what was the next war?"

From there, the answers were incredibly depressing for me, a veteran. The next war after the Revolution, for some of the boys was World War I. What the heck is the public school system teaching our children? How can they teach anything about the way our government works, and not have taught the way we got here?

So, we talked our way through each of the wars from the Revolution, to the the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, Civil War, and so on... No one in the room but me remembered the Mexican-American or the later Spanish-American wars, even though there were 3 other Veterans in the room.

But Veterans Day is not about remembering only our military people who served during wars. Between the wars there was usually plenty of skirmishes and activity for everyone to have played a MAJOR role in the forming and sustaining or our country. But we are really needing to remember and show gratitude even for those military folks that supported our country in the most peaceful of times. Those are often just as difficult on a soldier, sailor, marine and airman as well as his/her family.

Can you name all the wars? That is just the beginning of Veterans Day... If you can't name all of the wars, don't feel too ashamed. I'd be willing to bet the vast majority of the people you know also can't. In the last 100 years, public school has truly failed our country. If you can't tell, I strongly support either home schooling or private schooling for anyone that can manage it... For those who can't, for whatever reason, you need to demand better schooling for your kids...

If you are interested in learning about Veterans Day, or the wars we've taken part in, follow a few of these links.

National Geographic - Veterans Day: Why It's Today, How It's Changed & More

History Central - America's Wars: A Complete History

20 Years Since The Fall of the Berlin Wall

Lots of news articles out there this week celebrating 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Many of my friends do not remember what the wall was, or if they do, not what it meant to the rest of the world.

Many of my other friends were with me, in Germany, that month. October 1999 we started to see signs the wall was going to crumble, and by November people were taking sledge hammers to it. Euphoria swept through the guys in my unit as we realized our mission was a success, and our unit would likely be closed.

Why euphoria? Why the excitement on the west side of the border from Lubeck to Trieste? It was the end of an era of oppression the likes of which the world has thankfully not seen since. The Soviet Union would soon not be a union at all, and that "evil empire" would crumble to dust in much the same way the wall symbolically foretold of it's fall.

From my early years in the 1960's practicing nuclear air raid drills until 1989, still more than half of my life, I knew the Soviets as the enemy and their communism as evil oppression. People here in today's time know very little of real oppression... The oppression of the Soviet Empire on its own people are very well documented, so I am not going to catalog them here. I would, however, like to enter a discussion with anyone who feels communism or socialism is a better system than the one we have now.

Niether Socialism or Communism are simply economic -isms. They are deeply felt systems of forced equality in a not so equal world. There are differences among people. People who work hard should be paid better than those that do not, based on supply and demand... People who have skills that others don't should be paid better, based on supply and demand. If everyone was a doctor, would doctor's be paid so well? If everyone was a lawyer, would lawyers be paid so well? How many people have the skills to do lawnwork, or dump the garbage, or type on a keyboard? Should those people be paid as well as everyone else and have all the same amenities?

I was talking with a very knowledgeable Doctor on an airplane the other day, and he made a very valid point to me. If you paid ever person in the world the same amount of money, regardless of their job... If you gave everyone the same size of living space, and the same color TV set... If you gave them the same clothing, and the same car... People would still find a way to divide themselves into the betters and the lessers.

What do you think?

Swine Flu Deaths After Vaccination

A small New England town reports that several people have fallen sick and died just 4 months after recieving some of the first swine flu vaccinations given in this country. "At this point, we find no cause for alarm," said Dr Noel Vrothman of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Ga. However, there is no mention of the cases on the government's CDC.gov website.

Illness as the result of the H1N1 vaccinations have been minor from all across the country. Indeed, in the entire world less than 10% of the people recieving the innoculation have reported any undue illness following vaccination. However, this latest report from New England is troubling because it is the first where death follows, and it was among the first to recieve the vaccine.

Mary Carpenter, Director of the Patients Have a Right to Live activist group said, "If this is the first area to experience deaths from the vaccine, we need to expect others to follow." Preparation for an epidemic of bad vaccine batches is a possibility. Labeled as a paranoid conspiracy theory mongers by the government, the Patients Have a Right to Live believes this may be a world government plot to reduce total world population by as much as 30%.

"The numbers we are seeing in New England are most shocking," said Carpenter, "roughly 72% of everyone who took the vaccine are very ill, and almost half of those, 30% of the total have died."

Dr Vrothman is less concerned. "What we have in New England is a very small number of the total who have become sick", she said. "When you look at the millions who have taken the vaccine and experienced no trouble at all, the risk appears minimal."

Everything above is completely fictitious. Niether Dr Vrothman nor Mary Carpenter exist, to the best of my knowledge. However, concern by the medical community themselves over the good or bad of the vaccines is growing mostly due to things like lack of proper testing.

But, Dr. William Moore, the director of EMS at East Texas Medical Center (a real person) disagrees according to this article from KLTV in TX. He says H1N1 vaccines are prepared responsibly, just like the seasonal flu vaccines.

"I've never seen anybody hurt by a vaccine, but how many people have been saved by a vaccine," said Moore. "That is the other side of the equation."

According to this article on WikiAnswers.com, "There were four manufacturers' products approved for use by the US FDA and CDC: Melbourne-based CSL Ltd.; Novartis AG based in Basel, Switzerland; Sanofi Pasteur of Sanofi-Aventis SA, based in Paris; and MedImmune, LLC, the Maryland US based Subsidiary of London's AstraZeneca. GlaxoSmithKline has not yet had approval for their vaccine in the US but it was approved in Europe as was a product made by Novartis. A third vaccine by Baxter did not pass the European committee's approval process but it is still being considered."

What if... ???

Hunter or Gatherer?

Are you a hunter or a gatherer? Which one is better is a very old debate...

The Hunter realizes a need can be satisfied, but he needs to take some great risk to satisfy that need. He may need to leave the confines of his home for days or weeks to find food, for instance. He weighs the risk and realizes the reward far outweighs the risk.

The Gatherer sees the same need in a far different way. The risk would never outweigh the need for security, and so, he stays very near the home and raises his food the slow way.

Both of them satisfy the needs of the family in their own way. In most cases, both of them are very happy in their methods...

A long time ago, society took a turn for the worse when it took the hunter out of most of us. Society would be much better off with an equal smattering of both, but over the centuries, the hunter has been pused aside.

I've always been a hunter... I've always gone after whatever was in my heart's desire realizing that the needs of my family far exceeded the risk. Once, I compared myself to the greatest hunter in mythology, Orion; strong willed, ethical, honorable, and good.

But a couple years ago, I realized that somehow I had allowed myself to become a gatherer... For the sake of my family, I left a very good career in the military to become a wage earner. I wasn't real happy. My earnings were fairly small, but my family life was very secure. Daily to work, nightly to home... My biggest challenge was in keeping my eyes open on the road and not falling asleep from the boredom of the whining engines stuck in traffic around me.

One day, I woke up and realized my family was stable but also not happy. I left my daily grind job looking for something with risk built in. I am once again a hunter. Now I love my job... I love my life more now than I have in a very long time.

Are you a hunter or a gatherer?