The Three Most Important Videos You Will Ever Watch

In 1991, Suzanna Gatia Hupp was dining at Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, TX with her parents when a crazed gunman smashed his truck through the front of the restaurant, entered the building and proceeded to EXECUTE 20 patrons.

Suzanna had a permit to carry a firearm, but at that time Texas law prohibited her from carrying it into a restaurant:

In (or about) 2008 a former/retired law enforcement officer (read: cop) advises an entire lecture class why you should NEVER TALK TO THE POLICE:

And the following film is a dramatization of societal/social collapse and survival following an outbreak of Avian Flu, how preparations can help, but also who you share your bounty with can ultimately turn into a nightmare:

Share these videos with everyone you know.

New York City's "Racist" Public School Entrance Qualification Exams

As if there was not already undeniable proof of the untenable nature of the "public" school system in America - the "no child left behind" canard (among others) - we witness the collision, once again, of cultures which place value on VERY DIFFERENT achievements and aspiration.  This, from an article in the New York Times:

On Saturday, more than 15,000 students are expected to file into classrooms to take a grueling 95-question test for admission to New York City’s elite public high schools.

No one will be surprised if Asian students, who make up 14 percent of the city’s public school students, once again win most of the seats, and if black and Hispanic students win few. Last school year, of the 14,415 students enrolled in the eight specialized high schools that require a test for admissions, 8,549 were Asian.

What an articulate and reasonably intelligent person might be able to glean from this article is that Asians spend a substantial amount of time - sacrificing social interaction and other extracurriculars - to improve academically and provide themselves with the kinds of opportunities which only come from applying oneself to academia.

Of course, when any one demographic excels in any activity or outperforms the others on some test, the very first to cry "Foul!" and drag out the race card are the blacks.  Never mind that the Asian child gets up at 4AM to study for two hours before going to work at his parents' shop before school, spends every spare minute poring over practice exams and study materials, comes home, has supper and then studies for four more hours before going to bed - then gets up and does it all over again.

Never mind that the parents - immigrants and entrepreneurs - send their children to private prep courses costing up to $200 per weekend session, sacrificing of themselves for the betterment of their kin.

Blacks find this dedication and commitment "racist".  They claim that the tests are unfairly biased and that because these are "public" schools (similar to the academy schools in Virginia Beach) they deserve to be more fairly represented.  Fair, of course, to any victim class, means more.  Regardless of the reasons, blacks and hispanics lament that they are unable to "afford" the advanced preparatory courses and that New York should provide tutoring to them to compensate:

Because of the disparity, some have begun calling for an end to the policy of using the test as the sole basis of admission to the schools, and last month, civil rights groups filed a complaint with the federal government, contending that the policy discriminated against students, many of whom are black or Hispanic, who cannot afford the score-raising tutoring that other students can.

Reading further along in the article we find that just a few years ago the City began offering a free preparatory course JUST FOR BLACKS AND HISPANICS.

When your priorities are in different places, you find ways to make opportunities for yourself.  Many Asians come from communities and cultures where merely finding enough food to eat was a daily struggle.  Families escaping from the killing fields of Cambodia and Communist regimes of China, North Korea, Laos... these people do not take for granted the freedom to succeed that "American" blacks do.  They do not believe they are "owed" anything.  They go out and earn it.

The argument stems from the Civil Rights movement of the '60s and the landmark Brown -v- Board of Education decision ending the "separate but equal" segregation.  People who had moved to certain communities and determined to live and function socially as they saw fit were forced to integrate and "diversify" to fit an arbitrary and abstract definition of diversity which relied solely on skin color.

And, as with anything in the purview of the "public" schools, there is absolutely no room for individual achievement.  There have been numerous Title IX lawsuits complaining that facilities for boys (baseball) and girls (softball) are not equitable.

These arguments invariably center on the conditions of the fields and the participation/support elicited by the school's faculty and/or administration.  They typically claim that boys' sports teams receive a disproportionate amount of funding and as a result enjoy better playing conditions, greater publicity and visibility.  What they overlook is that the parents/booster clubs for the boys sports inject those sports with enthusiasm and PRIVATE funds.  They (and the team members) spend their weekends and free time tidying and manicuring fields, cleaning and polishing equipment and sacrificing of themselves to make their sport more appealing to play and spectate.

And just like the entrance exam quandary, the "victim" class of individuals (girls teams), rather than take proactive steps to improve their own facilities employing the same ingenuity and commitment, demand that the schools give them more money so that they can be "equal".

It is just another of a nearly unlimited number of fallacious ploys to redistribute funds in the name of fairness, somehow confusing the prospect of equal money with equal results.  Nowhere in the history of the world has this proven true, and it's a fair bet that we will not witness it within our lifetimes or ever.

Insanity.  Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Cash For Clunkers For Idiots

Assume you drive 12,000 miles in a year in an old car that gets 12 mpg.  In an average year you will purchase 1000 gallons of gasoline which at $3.50/gallon equates to $3,500 in fuel costs.  Assuming you are a responsible driver and get your oil changed by the "pros" at Jiffy Lube every 3,000 miles ($29,95) you spend another $120 per year on minimum maintenance.

Assume your "clunker" is valued at $4,000, of which you pay about $50 in personal property tax for the "privilege" of owning a car.

Now, you decide to trade in this "clunker" which you own, free and clear, towards a brand-new, higher-mileage car.  You get Kelly Blue Book top dollar for your trade-in, having kept it in immaculate, showroom condition all these years.  You negotiate a great price on a 2013 Ford Fusion SE - $23,000.  After taxes and tags you owe $24,380, minus your trade PLUS the extra grand you brought with you to sweeten the pot = $19,380 which you agree to finance on-site at a great rate of 2.9%.

Your new car payment is $594.59/mo for 36 months (three years).  Not to worry, though, this new car gets 25 mpg around town and a staggering 37 mpg on the highway.  Well, your commute is mostly highway miles and you never get caught in traffic, so you assume you average about 32 mpg per tank.  Your driving habits don't change all that much the first three years, so you purchase 375 gallons of fuel at $3.50/gallon, totalling $1,312.50 in total fuel costs.  Your new car has a smart oil feature and only requires oil changes every 6000 miles, and they're included at no charge with your new car service program.  LUCKY YOU!

So, let's add it up.  Your old car, over 36 months would have cost you $11,010 to own.  Your shiny new car?  Well it is taxed at almost $415 annually on top of your fuel and payment, $26,587.73 for a net savings... hey, wait a doggone minute!  It costs over $15,000 MORE to own that new car !  And discounting basic maintenance (tires, filters, etc) for most vehicles as even-up, it would take EIGHT YEARS for the new car to begin to put you on the positive side of that equation.

And let's face it, by then you'll be wanting a new car again anyway.  Sucker.

(Please, by all means, verify or refute my thought process.)

Obama -vs- Romney: Misinformation Showdown

In a recent flurry of campaign advertisements by the big-two candidates it has become evident, now more than ever, that both of these moral reprobates has no interest in facts or reasonable dialog regarding the economic state of this country.

Sure, there are other facets, but I am going to concentrate on two (2) disparate television ads which I had the unpleasant experience of viewing back-to-back last night.

First, let's explore Mitt Romney's patently ridiculous attack on what he refers to as the "Obama Plan".  According to the Romney ad, Obama's defense cuts will strip Virginia of 130,000 jobs.  He doesn't mention that under Obama, military expenditures have continued right on from George Bush's administration.  What he goes on to claim is, at least in Virginia, that his administration will "create" 360,000 new jobs.

It does not require a PhD to conclude from this rhetoric that those jobs will be defense-sector jobs, jobs which do not produce wealth but rather subsidize militarism and are paid for by... tax dollars.  These jobs, in essence, create welfare queens.  Just like the public works projects of the New Deal, these jobs do not generate services or products for the private market.  They generate new layers of government bureaucracy and further financial burden (including future liabilities) to a litany of critically unfunded federal programs.

Now, to be perfectly fair and bipartisan, let's take a look at Messr Obama's ad.

Obama claims that Mitt Romney is out of touch with the middle class. This is a middle class who Obama TWICE approved TARP bailout funds to private mega-banks while hundreds of thousands of private citizens were foreclosed on.  With official unemployment stagnant near 8.3% (and real unemployment anywhere between 13 and 21%, depending on which source you quote on any given day; I prefer the BLS) this administration's M.O. has been to continuously blame George Bush and the DEMOCRAT-CONTROLLED House of Representatives for each and every failure of the past 45 months.  All Obama needs is one more term and he can put it all right.

The ad claims that Mitt Rommey's tax plan would add an average of $2,000 in taxes to every middle-class household's annual liabilities.  In the next breath the ad states that multi-millionaires would see up to $250,000 in tax breaks.

Obama claims Romney doesn't understand the middle class because of his relationship with Bain Capital, a resource and venture capital firms which buys and sells companies for profit.  Obama, who has never held a real job and who, in just this past year, sent his own wife and children on numerous multi-million dollar vacations/excursions - whose very same wife wagged her finger at the American people condescendingly and said "The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more."

Her vitriol and latent disconnect from the people of this country can only find its equal in the likes of a quote oft-times attributed (though likely exaggerated) to Marie Antoinette who said "Let them eat cake", an epithet of her royalty overshadowing good sense and common decency in a time when millions were scraping just to get by, yet the glorious leaders spared no expense for their own comfort.

At least they had an excuse - they were French.  And we all know what happened to them: they were beheaded and the monarchy overthrown in one of the most bloody and brutal revolutions/coups in all of modern(ish) history.

What I want the reader to take away from this is that NEITHER of these disgusting people deserves to be president of the country envisioned by the founding fathers.  The good news is that country was destroyed long ago...

Evolutionary "Theory"

Some people say that "evolution" has been proven by science.  I am not sure what that means, exactly.  The "theory" of evolution states that the earth formed from a molten ball of gases and that through photo- and chemical synthesis of INORGANIC components over millions (billions?) of years eventually developed into bits of organic material which in turn transmogrified into single-celled organisms, and then combined to create more and more complex lifeforms - millions of different ones which all developed and evolved independently - through a series of upward-trending mutations until eventually they produced an organism capable of reason and rational thought.

Never in any controlled experiment conducted under laboratory conditions has an upward-trending mutation been observed.

"They" say that the fossil record proves evolution.  Comparing independent samples of similar organisms which may or may not have lived simultaneously or concurrently with one another is their source of validation.

And even if this theory was true, is it to say that there wasn't a great force working as a catalyst?  Of course not.  In order for ANY evolutionary theory to be true one would still have to discount the LAW of conservation of mass.

Let us not also forget that several MILLION years ago, nearly all life was supposedly wiped off of the earth by a cataclysm that has heretofore never been repeated.  99% of all living things save a few mammalian ground-dwellers and relatives of the Palmetto Bug were completely eradicated.  Respectfully, evolution was given a clean slate about 65 million years ago.  If the earth is considered to be 4.5 billion years old, that would mean that the evolutionary chain which produced ONLY reptiles in the first 4,435,000,000 years magically ACCELERATED that process to produce humans from what amount to rats and lemurs in one tenth of the time, and on a planet which would spend the next ten million years or so recuperating itself from asteroidal devastation.

I mean, that is really miraculous if you stop to think about it.  It almost defies reason.

Oh, wait.  It does defy reason.  It absolutely and completely defies reason and continues to baffle scientists who have been unable to discover the "missing" link between our species and the one they desperately need to be our predecessor for even a fraction of their theory to begin to be viable.

Evolutionary theory is just that: theory.