Kyle Rittenhouse

I really don’t know what I can add to the Kyle Rittenhouse story that has already not been said but I will try.

I have been following the story rather closely because it is only 20 miles south of where I grew up and still reside, where everything took place, where Jacob Blake got shot by the Police, where the protests occured, and where Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17yr old boy from Antioch, Ill, came armed with an AR15 styled rifle supposedly to protect a Kenosha car lot and where he shot three men, killing two of them. I have followed as many news accounts as I could get access to. Here is my account.

Kyle Rittenhouse did not belong in Kenosha that night armed with a high powered rifle, this coming from a 50yr member of the NRA and a strong gun rights advocate. He belonged at home in bed. Neither did the other three men. Two of them were not Kenosha residents. The only Kenosha resident of the three was Joseph Rosenbaum who had been released that day from a Milwaukee hospital for an attempted suicide. So all three of the victims had to come from out of town to get to the trouble spot. Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. Why were the police not instructed to prevent out of town protesters from getting to the problem area? If none of these men had been there, none of this would have happened!

But it did happen. Since the verdict was released there have been calls for justice reform because the result was not what the protesters wanted. That is not the kind of justice reform that is needed though. The tragic case from Waukesha, WI, only 40 miles to the NW of Kenosha, where Darrell Brooks plowed into a Christmas parade with an SUV killing 5 and injuring 49 is a case in point. There were no guns involved. It was not a terrorist plot. It was committed by a man who , ”…had been free on a $1,000 bail in an earlier criminal case in which he was accused of trying to run over the mother of his child in the parking lot of a Milwaukee gas station” as reported by The NY Times, with the same car in which he committed the Waukesha tragedy. A spokesman for the Milwaukee DA described the states bail recommendation in that case as ”inappropriately low” and not consistent with office policy.

That is one type of Justice reform needed. Keep violent criminals behind bars. Darrell Brooks had a long violent criminal history. He has served two jail sentences and has spent years on probation. He has abuse allegations and paternity suits outstanding. Why was he out on the streets free to roam, free to drive his car onto a parade route killing an 81 yr old man and a 79 yr old woman along with 3 others and injuring dozens more including many children?

Kyle Rittenhouse should have been convicted of something. But the prosecution failed to present a good case. The defense on the other hand did a much better job focusing on their duty which is getting their client off. The Justice system has failed us again. And that is where the protests should focus – holding these prosecutors responsible for their poor handling of this case!

Government Theft

I recently read an article about civil asset forfeiture reprinted from Stark Realities by Brian McGlinchey at the Libertarian Institute site. As you may or may not know, civil asset forfeiture is the process whereby a government entity can take a citizens legally acquired property without even charging him with a crime. The only requirement is that the government entity must think that the property was acquired as a result of criminal activity.

When property is seized through civil asset forfeiture it can be used by the government entity for their own use. Property such as cash, cars, homes, boats, and planes have been taken for government use from totally innocent citizens that must then prove the property was not acquired as the result of criminal activity to get it returned. The traditional legal requirement that a person is innocent until proven guilty does not apply to civil asset forfeiture. Getting forfeited property returned can take months or years and usually requires legal help which consumes much of the value of the property.

There are no penalties currently to the government for mistakingly taking property of innocent citizens. At the very least a citizen should be allowed to recoup any legal costs incurred to reacquire property taken in a civil asset forfeiture case. And a hefty penalty to the taking agency might discourage abuse of these laws.

Obviously this is a practice that is ripe for abuse. Police and sheriff departments have a huge incentive to take property to pad budgets which have been cut in tight economies.

This leads me to President Biden’s original 2021 budget proposal which included a provision that would require financial institutions to track and report to the IRS inflows and outflows of any account with a balance of $600 or more at any time during the year. As of right now this proposal has been removed from consideration. But if it has been proposed once, it is possible that it will be reconsidered at a future time.

If this proposal were to get reinserted in the budget and become law, just think about the potential consequences considering civil asset forfeiture. For instance let’s assume that a certain account balance increased by $9,000 because a person sold his personal car and deposited the funds in his account. What would stop the IRS from seizing the account saying it must have been acquired in a drug deal? The citizen would have to prove that the money was acquired legally from the sale of his car to get it back. This could literally take years considering the IRS’s typical inefficiency. and during that time the innocent citizen is without his money.

What shall we do with the above information regarding civil asset forfeiture intersecting with Biden’s potential budget proposal that all financial transactions in accounts over $600 be reported to the IRS? Shall we listen to the King? Or shall we live by New Hampshire’s state motto, ”Live Free Or Die” and the Beatles cry, ”You say you want revolution?” Thomas Jefferson said, “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing.” Maybe he was right! Maybe the time is now!

Deja Vu – All Over Again

The above quote attributed to Yogi Berra is completely applicable to what the US is promising Afghanistan. You remember Afghanistan don’t you? How could you forget a 20 year war that the US just pulled out of. And what is the US promising – financial aid! For gosh sakes wasn’t 20 years of aid enough?

According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University, the Afghan war has cost the American taxpayer $2.13T dollars and over 2,000 US soldiers lives. And yet the US has offered financial aid couched in the terms of humanitarian aid to the same people we were trying to kill just 2 months ago, The Taliban leaders.

Why? Well it seems that the US is worried that the Taliban may not be able to contain the Islamic State which the US claims is the greatest threat emanating from Afghanistan says Kathy Gannon of the Associated Press.

The Taliban has just fought 20 years to eject the US from Afghanistan and 9 years before that fighting Russia. I think they can handle the Islamic State by themselves. They do not need US aid.

When will we ever learn? We rebuilt Europe and Japan after WW2. We gave Vietnam billions after that war. Each year we provide almost $50B in aid to foreign governments. And there is probably another $50B in restricted budgets we can’t see and other money in the defense budget.

Cut it all out. A lot of it ends up in the hands of petty dictators anyway like the former Shah of Iran and the current House of Saud. This aid we provide undermines the democratic process in the countries which get the aid.

If these countries need financial help, let them borrow the money at the same rate that taxpayers have to pay on their loans. Seems fair to me.

Boulder Befuddlement

In an interesting story out of Madison, WI, a giant rock was moved from its site on Obseratory Hill where it had stood for 12,000 years and moved to a new location near Lake Kegonsa. Both sites are on UW Madison property. The reason – the rock was once called a “n….r head” in a Wisconsin State Journal story. There are no other known times when that rock was referred to by that slur.

The rock, a huge boulder that was deposited on Observatory Hill as the last glaciers retreated from the state is estimated at 42 ton and 2 billion years old. It predates man by well over a billion years. and yet because someone wrongfully used a racial slur to describe it almost a hundred years ago, it had to be moved. Why?

Isn’t this racial sensitivity bs going a little far? This was not a Civil War monument after all, it is a fricking rock, a giant boulder, brought here by the glaciers 6000 years before the pyramids were built. If anything why not move the University so that no one has to look at that rock? The rock was here first!

Juliana Bennett, a UW – Madison senior serving as the campus rep on the Madison City Council, said removing the rock signaled a small step toward a more inclusive campus. Huh? How?

David Meyer, a former UW student and Madison resident, said he used to walk by the rock all the time but never knew its complicated past. He was glad to see it moved when he found out its story.

Kenneth Owens, another Madison resident, said, “It’s not the rock’s fault that it got that terrible and unfortunate nickname but the fact that it’s being moved shows that the world is getting a little better today.” Another Huh? How?

I’m sorry but this is absolute nonsense! It is racial sensitivity gone wild. Let me reiterate – this is a rock, not the Cleveland Indians or the Atlanta Braves or the Washington Redskins, IT IS A ROCK!

Can’t you see how foolish this all is? If you don’t like something, just ignore it. What does this rock have to do with racial sensitivity? Nothing. Someone one time referred to it by a racial slur. Ok. So what! Whatever happened to sticks and stones?

Transgender Entitlement

Recently the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by a Virginia School Board to reinstate its transgender bathroom ban. This ban at the time was instituted to forbid then 15 year old Gavin Gramm, who was biologically a female, from using the boys restroom.

Frankly I don’t understand the problem. I am mostly libertarian. I believe in individual rights. I will not discriminate against anyone’s race, sex, political affiliations, religion, etc etc etc. But I assume as a 15 yr old young woman, Gavin would not have been trying to pee in a urinal. She would be using an enclosed toilet. So what the hell is the difference between using an enclosed toilet in the women’s restroom or the boys restroom. Meanwhile the boys would be concerned about their rights to be peeing in an open urinal without wondering if the person coming out of the stall is a male or some perverse female pretending to be transgender.

What makes her rights any more important than the boys rights? A few years ago a similar story appeared in the local papers about a Kenosha school girl wanting to use the boys restrooms. This is probably a story appearing in many cities and towns across the country as if it is one of societies main issues of the 21st century.

What is the matter with this country? Covid has killed millions of people in the past year. Children are dying in war zones around the world and starving in famine stricken areas. Our planet is overpopulated. And our government including the Congress. Senate, President, and Supreme Court is wasting its time on bathroom issues. So silly. SSFS (stupid, stupid, fucking stupid)!

Our country was once a noble land with high ideals, admittedly not always reaching those ideals, but even today striving to be better and more humane and understanding of individual rights. But today the term “individual rights” has lost its meaning in the cries of special interest groups whose claims of protecting individuals is a foggy mist hiding their real mission of obtaining special rights only for their “special” group. What is so special?

Shame on America. Shame on these special interests. Shame on any person who puts their rights ahead of any other individual’s rights.

And if a girl wants to pee with the boys, she should first pee like the boys!

Thomas Jefferson – Slaveowner

I have been interested lately in the debate about the New York Times 1619 project and the Critical Race Theory proponents’ attempt to teach this “Theory” in our K-12 classrooms. I have re-examined my understanding of American Slavery.

In my readings and research on this subject I have come across an article in the October 2012 issue of Smithsonian magazine entitled, “The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson”. Jefferson never was my favorite founding father partly because of the paradox that the man who penned, “…all men are created equal” owned slaves his entire life and only freed a few of them at his death. The rest were sold as chattel much like a horse or a mule.

In his early years Jefferson was definitely an abolitionist. He penned the Declaration at 33 years old. In the first draft he denounced the slave traded as an “…execrable commerce …this assemblage of horrors, a cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberties.” But somewhere between then and the 1790’s he changed. He became silent on the subject as his time was more and more taken up by the management of Monticello which needed slaves to work it. His supporters became confused. I quote from the Smithsonian article, “The Virginia abolitionist Moncure Conway, noting Jefferson’s enduring reputation as a would be emancipator, embarked scornfully, ‘Never did a man achieve more fame for what he did not do.’ ”

In fact it almost seems like Jefferson later in life embraced the slave trade at one time writing to an acquaintance who had suffered financial setbacks that he, “…should have been invested in negroes.” He even added that if they had any cash left, “…every farthing of it should be laid out in land and negroes, which besides a present support bring a silent profit of from 5 to 10 per cent in this country by the increase in their value.”

And this brings me to a plantation report for Jefferson from Colonel Thomas Randolph, Jefferson’s son in law, that was written in the 1790’s and suppressed until 2005. Randolph reported to Jefferson in that report that his nail factory was running very well because the small ones were being whipped for truancy. By small ones he means boys between the ages of 10-16. Jefferson did not respond.

This report was found by historian Edwin Betts in 1953 and not published as part of Jefferson’s Farm Book. The full text was not published until 2005. This will sound like I am changing direction but what I want to know is what else has been hidden from us average every day people for 55 years or longer? What history have we been taught that is fraud? And where do we go to find the truth?

My dad who served in the Navy during WW2 believed in a supposed conspiracy that Roosevelt knew about the coming destruction of Pearl Harbor and did not notify the Pacific Command because he wanted the US involved in the war. Is that true? Many people believe that Bill and Hilary Clinton had numerous people murdered who were set to testify against them. Is that true? Does this rumor mill sometimes contain the truth that is being deliberately suppressed?

Back to Jefferson. He disappoints me. All politicians do. They speak with forked tongues. But unlike the rattler slithering in the grass, you can’t hear them coming.

God bless Jefferson. He helped form and define America. It’s too bad that he couldn’t practice what he preached.

Civilized Savagery

I had a cancer infusion today and had about 6 hours to think. OOh boy! That’s dangerous. Me thinking. Anyway during the 6 hours I read a book review of, “War Before Civilization” by Lawrence H Keeley, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I quote, “Indeed, for the last fifty years, most popular and scholarly works have agreed that prehistoric warfare was rare, harmless, unimportant, and, like smallpox, a disease of civilized societies alone. Prehistoric warfare, according to this view, was little more than a ritualized game, where casualties were limited and the effects of aggression relatively mild.” Not so says Keeley.

In one incident, Keeley introduces evidence of a massacre in S Dakota where over 500 men, women, and children’s scalped and mutilated bodies were found in a mass grave 150 years before the arrival of Columbus. (Oops! I mentioned Columbus. Is that still OK?) A ritualized game – I don’t think so. The noble savage never existed. He was always brutal, efficient, and deadly. The men he attacked rarely avoided death, the women slavery.

How is he different from today’s savage, those that ravage our big cities by night? He is pretty deadly too. This past weekend he committed violence in 6 states; Washington, Georgia, Texas, Illinois, N Carolina, and Ohio. Two people died in the Washington violence. Two others hospitalized. One killed and seven injured in Georgia. Four injured in N Carolina gun violence. Fourteen injured in Austin, Texas. Four were killed and 43 were wounded in Chicago over the weekend. And three died in Cleveland. Innocents didn’t escape the violence. One survivor was only 18 months old.

One thing I’d like to know is whether anyone in S Dakota blamed the violence on the rocks, arrows, knives, axes, and whatever else was used to kill and maim those 500 victims in the mass grave? Today we blame inanimate objects. Indeed Chicago Police Superintendent, David Brown, blamed gangs, guns and drugs for the violence in his city. As used by Brown these things are all inanimate. But the term gangs as inanimate as it is, is comprised of individuals, savage individuals who care not whether someone dies during their violent outbursts.

Lock these individuals up – FOREVER! Don’t let them out. After all that is where civilized society is different than that in prehistoric times. We have courts. And Prisons. And juries of our peers. Never doubt that this is war, war between civilization and prehistoric savagery. Do your duty. If ever serving on a trial of a violent offender, put him or her away. Whatever the maximum sentence is available for the crime committed is the one the savage among us must serve. Don’t feel sorry for these beasts. They are not civilized. They are not even equal to prehistoric Neanderthals who at least buried their dead.

If we need more prisons, build them. That is the cost of civilization I guess. Or else we just have civilized savagery – war. God help us if we let it continue.

“War! What is it good for?”

The above quote comes from a 70’s song by Edwin Star. And of course his answer is, “Absolutely Nothing.” I would agree. In the history of the world, war has destroyed societies, killed millions upon millions of innocents, and sucked resources that could have been used for the betterment of mankind.

Why war? I think the answer is lust, lust for power, lust for others riches, lust for property and resources that the warring tribe does not have, lust for slaves.

In my research for this blog I came across a book for sale on Amazon, “War. What is It Good For?: Conflict and the progress of civilization from primates to robots” by Ian Morris. I read only the online preface but the author’s premise is that “…archaeology, history, and biology show that war in fact has been good for something. Surprising as it sounds, war has made humanity safer and richer.” Really? I don’t think the mothers who lost sons and husbands thought so. I don’t think the innocent civilians that were made slaves thought so. I don’t think the people that had their legally and honestly acquired property confiscated thought so.

War is good for nothing. Millions upon millions upon millions of innocent civilians have died on the battle fields and in the ovens and gulags and concentration camps and re-education camps. Millions more have been raped and beaten and shot and burned and hanged. How can Morris say that war has made humanity safer and richer? Benjamin Franklin thought Morris was wrong when he said, “There never was a good war or a bad peace.”

In the book by Christopher Preble, “War, Peace and Liberty”, he examines the effects of war on society and individuals by the states they are citizens of. He looks at the states hunger for more power, land, and resources. He looks at how the state sows fear among its citizens to cause them to accept war.

Preble examines each of the conflicts that America has been involved in including the revolution, the war of 1812, the Spanish American war, the Indian wars, WW’s 1 and 2, Korea, Vietnam, the Falklands, and current conflicts in Afghanistan and the mid-east and around the world. Right now we have Army deployments in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and in Kuwait. We have Naval deployments in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and North Korea. We have Marine deployments in Afghanistan, in S. Sudan, and Syria. We have Air Force deployments in S Korea, Syria, Iraq and Kuwait. This list neglects to mention a whole bunch of other troops stationed around the world that are not in hot spots.

In total there are thousands of men and billions of dollars in resources invested in these conflict zones. Why are we there? Why are we everywhere? The US spends more on defense than any other country at $778 Bn in 2020. China is second at $252 Bn. Thats over one $Trillion dollars right there that could be used to build infrastructure, stop disease and poverty, and build schools, etc etc etc!

In 1953 then President Eisenhower delivered a speech on the occasion of the death of Joseph Stalin in which he hoped, “… that new leadership in the Soviet Union would reciprocate his expressions of goodwill and would welcome his stated desire for peace.” If they did not, Eisenhower warned, the consequences would be grim. “The best and worst cases can be simply stated,” he said. “The worst is atomic war.” “The best,” he went on, “would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.”

And what did the new leadership of the Soviet Union bring us? It brought us Khrushchev who once said, “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.” And hence the start of another war, the Cold War, fought with words and constant buildup of arms. Keep the citizens fearful and their purses would open up. And they did.

Eisenhower was right.

Our founders were fearful of perpetual war. They did not want the power to declare war in one individual’s hands like it was in Europe where Kings and Queens could declare war at whim. And they did. So our founders set up a system where the war purse strings were put into the hands of the Congress and not the President. But over the years Congress has shed this responsibility and handed it to the President in the form of the War Powers Act, the US Patriot Act, the Authorization for the Use Of Military Force, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, etc.

Many of these changes occurred right after the Twin Towers attack. The public demanded retribution. We went after Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden without a declaration of war. We are still fighting the War against terrorism, an undeclared war, a war which has seen the toppling of the government of Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Of course Saddam had weapons of mass destruction or so the media and the men in power exclaimed. In the end no weapons of mass destruction were ever found and Saddam was not connected to Al Qaeda or Isis. Who will we topple next in the name of stopping terrorism?

”War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!”

Covid Climax

It has been a long year. Never before do I remember the entire country closing down like it has in the past year. Small businesses have been devastated. Many have closed shop. Even big business has been hurt. Right now it is hard to find a new car because of the shortage of computer chips which as I understand was the result of Covid closures of certain businesses.

It has been a long year. The drug manufacturers have worked hard to produce vaccines in quantities that are unbelievable – hundreds of millions of doses. The vaccines are working just like previous vaccines that are accepted as safe and needed, vaccines that have saved millions of lives such as those that protect us all against polio, mumps, measles, tetanus, tuberculosis, smallpox, and shingles. But some people are afraid to take this vaccine thinking it is some kind of Orwellian 1984 plot by the government.

It has been a long year. We have not been able to get together as friends to socialize. Our churches have been closed. Even our own children are afraid to visit. We have not been able to go out to dine. Many people have rediscovered how to cook.

It has been a long year. Some of us have learned that we can work from home pretty efficiently. But we have also learned that working from home is not all it is cracked up to be, especially when our children are home because their schools are closed. Their lessons are on line but they would rather watch tv or play outside so it is difficult to work from home while trying to get our children to do their school work.

It has been a long year. Our holidays have not been the same. There were no Thanksgiving or Christmas celebrations. The 4th of July was canceled – no parades or fireworks displays.

It has been a long year. We have worn masks in public and we now wash or sanitize our hands 10 times more than we used to. When we do get together we don’t shake hands or hug. That personal touch is gone.

It has been a long year. Many friends have died. Many more have gotten so sick that they have been hospitalized in facilities that did not allow visitations by anyone, even spouses. It is a sad story of people dying all alone.

It has been a long year. We have not been able to freely travel for pleasure or business. Some of us are getting cabin fever. The result is increased anxiety, depression, tension and stress. You would expect suicides to be up. And yet suicides are down 6% according to the CDC. Why? It seems that people rally during times of crisis to support each other. Or so the “EXPERTS” say.

It has been a long year. Wish I could say it’s over. About half of the adult population has been vaccinated at the time of this writing. Thousands more are being vaccinated each day. Restaurants are opening up. Churches are resuming Sunday services. Movie theaters are showing first run movies again. Many places have discontinued mask mandates. But a threat remains – that threat that Covid will mutate into more dangerous strains. Hopefully it is an idle threat.

It has been a very, very long year!

Facebook Fatigue

I am getting tired of Facebook.

Recently I ran across a post supposedly from Bernie Sanders that said, “What would tuition-free, debt-free higher education mean for you and your family?” I responded that I had paid for my own education and that I felt students would appreciate their education more if they did the same thing. Boy oh boy did I get a backlash. And not from anonymous strangers like is common on Facebook but from two of my nieces.

The first niece said I had a backwards mindset. She said that tuition costs are so high today that she would have to spend half of her salary to pay off her student loans. She has a baby and her and her fiancé bought themselves a little house. She said she would not be able to feed the baby or pay for the house. She said she was disappointed in me.

The other niece claims that her loans today are more than $20,000 higher than when she graduated 11 years ago. I explained to her that my son and daughter and their spouses went to school about the same time as her and they have very good jobs and have paid off their student debt. She said she made the choice to postpone her education for 5 years and her loans are accordingly higher. She said that, “Your generation was raised in a different way and you all have to come to terms with that.”

I explained to the first niece that if you want to go to college you have to sacrifice. You postpone having children or getting a house. You do not take vacations. You do not go out to eat. You live at home. I said that this is the way it has always been but that todays youth have this feeling of entitlement that they deserve an education. I said that no one is entitled to anyone else’s money to pay for their education beyond high school. College has always been a privilege and not a right. I believe it still is.

She replied, “There’s SO much wrong with everything you said but I’m not going to waste my time here. Take care.” I asked what was wrong with what I said and asked her to please tell me. But she was done. She would have no more of a discussion that she started.

I said to the second niece that she may have gone into a profession that did not pay well enough to settle her tuition debt. She said this discussion was not about dragging any specific field down.

So there you have it. A simple meme on Facebook that I was stupid enough to comment on and I have offended two nieces one of which is my wife’s goddaughter.

The sad thing is these kids think it is different now. We started out poor too. We struggled to pay for school. I paid for mine. My wife paid for hers. My siblings and hers did the same. My kids mostly paid for theirs. If anything is different it is that Bernie Sanders feeling of entitlement, that mindset that someone else can afford it so let’s take their hard earned money for our benefit.Someone should tell Bernie that even his famous Social Democratic Scandinavian countries have given up many of their social programs because they cannot afford them. Margaret Thatcher was right when she said, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money.”

If you want to post photos of your grandchildren on Facebook go ahead. But do not respond to stupid memes asking for your opinion. You never know who is watching.