So Wednesday, I sliced my left thumb to the bone along the side…. 1.5 inches of slice, on a piece of very sharp metal. To the bone. A fairly bad cut, actually.

I wrapped it in a paper towel and a bit of tape and continued working.

When I got home, I cleaned the cut and aligned the edges and super glued it shut.

Thursday, I woke up with the cut throbbing to my heartbeat. All day long, I banged it into things, adding to the pain.

I was grousing about the pain, the wound, the lack of dexterity, that the bandage and the lack of mobility caused by the whole thing….

Then, at the end of the day, I met a man who was missing his left arm from just below the shoulder.

Suddenly, my wound didn’t feel so bad anymore. Nor the temporary lack of dexterity.

“I cried that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet”. 

It’s hard to win at a BZA meeting when the chairman is bought and paid for.

But we tried anyway.

The vote was 3-2 against us.

God, I hate county politics.

Really, the fix was in at the start.

There is folks claiming “new evidence” that it was an “outside explosion” that destroyed TWA Flight 800 back in 1996.

I’m no expert, but the explanation didn’t make much sense to me. Conjecture piled on improbability piled on happenstance.

And the explanation came out AWFULLY fast for such a complex chain of events.

Likely we will never know for sure.

But I wonder: was it “our” missile or someone else’s?

Then you’ll agree with this.

Sadly, few people in the education field will understand how terribly they have failed the young people that they are releasing to the world.

H/T: DaddyBear

“In every stage of these Oppressions
We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated
Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose
character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is
unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

know where those words came from? 

Know the context? 

Does it apply today? For me, more and more. 

They are keeping you safe and watching out for your privacy and Constitutional rights.

Yep, sure they are.

We can trust ’em.

Just ask them.

There are those who say that Edward Snowden is a traitor.

Perhaps he is.

I think he is not. You may disagree with me. I think he did what he could to right a wrong by “blowing the whistle”.

There are those who say he should have taken a different path to try and stop these practices.

Perhaps he should have. But what path:

Others who tried to inform and stop these practices have been hounded and charged with espionage. Even when going to the Inspector General or the Justice departement, they were ignored. And in at least one instance, the informant wad prosecuted.

For once, the Fourth Estate did it’s job. Sadly, it was not a news organization in the US that did it…that outed this program. That protected the citizens of the US by informing them of what was already suspected by many of us.

These men are Snowden’s peers. And I will take their judgement of him over that of a bureaucrat any day.

Ya gotta ask yerself:

If there was nothing wrong (or, as the NSA states, illegal) about the fact that the NSA was collecting metadata on all of our calls (or, as some folks claim, actually monitoring some of us), then what is the big deal about the fact that the program has been exposed?

I mean, really, what’s he big deal? Why be upset that the program was leaked? They weren’t do anything wrong….right?

Or is the Government angry because their actions are deemed ….wrong, by both the media and the populace once it came to light. One would wonder if they too felt that it was wrong (or would be judged as such) by everyone.

Yes, I know that their special kangaroo court has determined that the data collection and/or monitoring was legal, constitutional, and correct, but obviously SOMEONE decided that it wasn’t right, and decided to keep it secret, lest they anger the sheep populace.

of failed policies.

Detroit defaults.

In 1930, it was the fastest growing city in the country.

In 1950 it was in the top 10 fastest growing cities in the country.

in 2012, it had over 100,000 abandoned homes.

Today, it has defaulted on almost 18 Billion dollars of debt.

one can point to many sources of the city’s failure, but nearly all of them are liberal policies or liberal supported causes like unions and affirmative action.

That there is a stairway to heaven..

But a highway to hell?

Must be more traffic going down.