Monday, April 30, 2007

 

Stuff and Things

Global Warming.- It is the Sun, people, the Sun! Our contribution to warming is a paltry figure conpared to what sun flares do to us. But GW is such a politically charged subject that no one will listen to the honest scientists that nail the culprit as our friendly ole Sun.

The Liberal Mind.- After reading quite a large number of posts today from liberal sources, I sat back and tried to understand why my reaction was that I had just read the most zaney and biased collection of words I have read in a long, long time. I tried mightily to grasp the frame of reference they come from, but obvoiusly I am not able to be so bright, intelligent, informed ( all liberals write as if they know everything just when it happens), and willing to construct a story that inevitably turns on the liberal mindset against Bush ( all liberals hate Bush pasionately, and dilligently seek ways to degrade him both personally and as the leader of the nation. This is not to say that Bush is a perfect leader at all. There is a long list I have posted earlier about my beefs with Bush).

Impeachment.- A number of representatives are scheming to impeach Bush. I believe they will try, because it is so liberal to do so. Hauling out their list of accusations for a vote will be an interesting exercise in fabrication and distortion. Maybe we will have to find out what "was" was to match Clinton's "is" is.

Labels: , ,



Saturday, April 28, 2007

 

An Email to Harry Reid

Senator Reid does not receive open emails from other than his constituents.
Hence this Open Letter

I am certain your staff will ensure that you will never read this letter, but here it is anyway for what it is worth. Likewise, I am absolutely certain you will not respond to me, so I will waste no more of my time once I hit send.

A Senator is supposed to be a bulwark of our society, and a staunch defender of liberty and justice. As the leader of the majority, you have special obligations to exercise your control in a fair manner.

Since you have seen fit to politicize the Iraq and Afghanistan military funding, and to attach pork spending amendments to it, and since you have declared that the war in Iraq is lost, it is my judgement that you have betrayed your trust as a Senator, and aided the enemy in his fight to overrun Iraq, if not more, such as Israel and the US. Your actions have increased the threat to our country, in my opinion.

The public did not give you the mandate you seem to think it did. Americans want to win this war, and if anything, they are unhappy that we haven't pressed much, much harder in Iraq to defeat the insurgency. They are frustrated that our tactics until now did not produce a higher level of security for the Iraqi people and ourselves. Americans do not like surrender and defeat.

Your actions have made the current effort to stabilize Baghdad and the Anwar Province less effective, since all the insurgents may have to do is wait out the US a little longer, and then take over. You have made it clear that with the ascendancy of the Democrats, we have begun to raise the white flag of surrender to Islam.

Just as in Vietnam, the pacifists in the US are using every means possible to hamper our honorable efforts to bring peace and stability to Iraq. The cost in lives, casualties and funds we have spent until now will be down the drain in such a surrender. This surrender is applauded heartedly by the Jihadist enemy, as are you and your adherents for helping their cause.


Mannning


Thursday, April 26, 2007

 

What If?


What if some arrogant, hostile and totalitarian crowd tried to take over the US in a year or so?

There are groups of people in the US that could muster perhaps 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 fighters, men and women, throughout the nation. Suppose that they have a plan to bring in or buy enough arms and ammo for such a force, and on a certain date they plan to rise up in a surprise attack and take over. Our borders are currently no hard barrier to their aims.

One of their first targets would be military bases and National Guard armories to neutralize our defensive power and to further arm themselves with all of the high tech weapons in our arsenals. They would slaughter every man on the bases they could find. Sleeper cells at the Pentagon, in the Army and the Air Force would garble messages or lose them, transmit false orders to units, and wreck chaos in the early response time. Bombs would be planted to disrupt military communications.

Their cells in all major cities would seize control of the local government offices, police headquarters, communications centers, and commercial broadcast facilities. Their units would appear at all principal intersections and public transportation facilities. The public would be told via radio and TV to remain calm and offer no resistance on penalty of death. A few horrid examples would be made to show that they are not bluffing at all. Roving squads would search out police vehicles and resistance groups and neutralize them. Any citizens found with a weapon would be shot on the spot.

In Washington, the Capitol building would be assaulted and all found inside would be killed. The White House would be bombed after the Air Force rapid response fighters are taken out by RPG’s or heat-seeking missiles. The assault on the White House would be designed to prevent the President from being able to flee to an alternate site. The President would be forced to become holed up in his bunker with significantly reduced capability to communicate with the rest of the world.

At this point, the invaders would announce that they had planted nuclear weapons in ten or more principal cities, and if resistance to their takeover began, we would lose the cities one by one. All military personnel would be ordered to lay down their arms, and to report to a stadium nearby, where they would be imprisoned. (Many would be killed).

To prove their ability to make good on the threat, Norfolk, Virginia, and the nearby base at Langley would be flattened by two megaton bombs. The spectacle would be televised to the public. Scattered resistance would most likely cease, and our units would probably seek to disappear into mountainous regions to regroup.

Our units at the huge bases in the South and West would break out their weapons and munitions, form up in a defensive posture, and then await orders from above. Their orders would be difficult to interpret, conflicting, and hard to execute. Precious days would be lost sorting out what we had left to fight with, where they were, and what to do about the situation. The ultimatum and the destruction of Norfolk would freeze our forces in place.

Fearing further nuclear devastation of our big cities with loss of life in the multimillions, the President would be compelled to order surrender. At the same time, panic and chaos would strike every big city as residents tried to flee, only to be turned back or shot. Our people would fight back to escape death, and millions would overrun the attackers and head for the hills—as far away from the cities as they could reach. Many of these people would eventually starve.

There would be no retaliation for the loss of the entire Norfolk area. We would not know who to strike, or if we did blast away every major city known to be connected with the attackers, we lose our cities too, and the world is beset by nuclear winter. Not a good idea.

Many well-equipped foreign troops arrive by ship and plane to reinforce the attackers, take over the ports, and all transport networks, as well as to guard the millions of prisoners held in keeping pens. Our forces are then faced with attacker units of comparable strength, reequipped or augmented with much of our captured arsenal.

We have been conquered.

Note five things about this scenario:

1. The attackers are utterly ruthless, and have no qualms about killing our people;

2. The attackers have been allowed to come into the country in the millions and millions without being truly assimilated, thus providing the needed internal insurgent forces. With financing, these insurgents could buy many weapons on the open market over a few years.

3. The attackers have access to nuclear weapons sneaked into in the US, which cancels out our national forces;

4. The attack comes as a surprise, and our Homeland Security, Armed Forces, and Police become neutralized early on.

5. Our insecure borders are used to set this scenario up.

Is this a possibility? How could it be prevented? The only way I can think of is to deport this group now! What group is this? You figure it out.

Labels:



Sunday, April 22, 2007

 

Cho and Liberalism

Is Liberalism a Significant Factor in the VT Disaster? I Wonder.

The Liberalism of the parents and elders is transmitted to the children. The Liberalism of the society surrounding them confirms what the children have been taught to believe. The Liberalism of their teachers confirms again what they should believe. This Liberal cult teaches moral relativism to all who listen, and it is at least subtly transmitted to the growing and impressionable lads. They want to believe in the goodness of man, and in justice for themselves. They want to be a part of the brotherhood of man. They hear all the time from Liberals that the government is corrupt, the police are corrupt, and the global war on terror is a constant symphony of violence. with no justification.

By means of horror and violent books, TV and movies, the lads are again vicariously absorbing yet another form of laissez faire social morality, which “takes” in a few of them, such that they see, almost subliminally, the solution to some of their problems in guns for justice, backed up by their moral relativity teachings, but twisted in their minds to mean that their solution is as good as any. They have a right to their solution for justice!

Then comes the dash in the face of cold and cruel rejection they receive at school, on the playground, and in non assimilation into the social scene. What happened to brotherly love and equality of all people? What happened to the ending of discrimination that would ensure his place in the world around him? Why isn’t he as good as everyone else? That is what Cho was taught. But it hasn’t worked out that way for him. He is an outcast, a pariah, someone to make fun of daily. He is a Liberal too, so why hasn’t that helped him? It is hopeless.

Out of this grows hatred of fellow students for the humiliation and rejection that has been heaped on him, and the terrible lack of companionship and romance with the opposite sex he has incurred. There seems to be no cure for this rejection. Over a number of years, such total social and romantic rejection builds up a hatred of immense proportions.

Even the school partakes in his humiliation and rejection, his loss of face, by interviewing him, sending him to a psychiatrist, and involving the police several times. He is, after all, an adult now, and face is an important aspect of life. The difference between the fairy-tale society governed by Liberalism he had been absorbing and hoping for all his life, and the harsh reality of life as he had to live it, left him with nothing but frustration, anger, and humiliation.

Then comes a point where some event causes the crystallization of an idea--revenge. He will show them! He will get back on all of people that have been hateful to him in one big event, including the school itself. His life is not worth living if it goes on the way it has, so neither should those others that taunt him and refuse to be nice and kind to him, as he had been taught by his Liberal elders that they should be. They deserve to die. He will kill them and then kill himself.

What he needs to do this is guns and ammo, which turns out to be easy to buy. He knows how to use a gun from his time playing video games and watching crime movies, and there may have been a particular story that fit closely with his idea of revenge--Columbine, perhaps?

He is ready and committed...

Maybe it is a factor after all!

Labels: ,



 

Those That I Hate

Freedom for Me but not Thee, Oh Hated Ones!

Yes, the only word that says it correctly is hate. Because other words simply do not convey an adequate feeling of disgust, anger, frustration, loathing, nausea, and total rejection, and further, these other words do not signal strong willingness to act in self-defense. One who hates is passionate about hatreds and will act forcefully on them. At the same time this person can be passionate about love of life and freedom, passionate about family and country, and passionate about defending them all.

You may say that this is wrong. One should accept diversity of opinion and belief, multiculturalism, and perform a live-and-let-live mental masturbation act, in this world we all live in. We should be respectful of other’s positions, and respectful of their humanity. We should forgive their trespasses--turn the other cheek--they are human beings too, love thine enemy, etc, etc, etc.

Who are we trying to fool here?

My response to this sort of standard, evasive, dangerous, puerile, and anti-survivalist, false-freedom thinking is that when a person or a group of people have thoroughly proven themselves to be a direct threat to the welfare and survival of my family, my fellow citizens and my country, and they figuratively or literally have a gun at my head, they have condemned themselves of their own volition to be the hated enemy. They have signed up to be reviled, ignored, humiliated, laughed at, shouted down, shunned and rendered absolutely impotent by whatever means necessary.

Survival is a prime directive for man.

Perhaps I should be surprised at the number of groups that I consider to be hateful, but I am not, really. They are all well-known for their direct threats to our people and our way of life. We have grown up with the knowledge that these groups are poisonous and deadly enemies.

Who are they?

Collectivists: Progressives (Socialists and Communists) are the first. The thought of living as the East Germans or even the Russians themselves did for 60-70 years under the yoke of the USSR leviathan is crushing. No one, least of all the Leftists in our country, seems to realize that Utopias cannot be made stable; the very process of trying to build one is itself fatally flawed because of human nature. Of course, a true communist thinks he is infinitely smarter than those who came before him, and that he can avoid the terrible pitfalls that befell prior attempts to set up and run a communist state. That is the measure of his delusion about human nature!

The process creates a revolution from which comes a Stalin, a dictatorship, and a totalitarian apparatus that, besides reducing the people to penury through the imperfect centralized planning of a complex economy, also unjustly imprisons or deliberately kills off dissenters en masse. They promise a future Utopia for the present agonies and deaths, but never deliver. The dictatorship remains in place. I do not recall that any dictator has willingly given up his power.

The total number of people that were killed or allowed to starve by the Communists in Russia, China, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam to ensure their control of the government is an unbelievable 100 million, or more. How anyone could support the introduction of a governing system that guarantees wholesale slaughter of its citizens in the millions is incomprehensible to me.

It is for the good of which people?

Of course, that is what our dear friend Marx advocated: the destruction of current society by way of revolution, the total eradication of opposition, and the nurturing of the New Social Man to rise in the stead of the current population in a few generations. Madness! We fought a just Cold War against the Evil Empire to prevent such destruction of the West. This war is not really over so long as there are advocates for collectivism and totalitarianism banding together, which seems to be the direction of the Democratic Party today.

People that promote and support any form of collectivism, and cynically promote the wedge ideas of multiculturalism, diversity, and “brotherly love” to mask their real intent, are therefore diabolically evil, and a serious threat to our lives.

They are to be hated, and never given any benefit of the doubt.

The second group that I hate is Muslims--those who worship under Islam. As anyone that has studied both the founding and the current documents of Islam are aware, every Muslim must perform jihad against the infidels, for the glory of God and Islam--without exception--else they are not Muslims at all. There are no moderate Muslims where this is concerned. They have permission to adapt to the society they are in, but only until the call to insurrection comes from their holy land.

We witness daily the barbarisms committed around the world by terrorists in the name of Allah. Our society is directly threatened by Islam, as is Israel and all of Europe. We will probably not react until it is too late to prevent the undermining of our country, as is happening in Europe, but some of us will die trying.

We are engaged in a Holy War, a Just War against Islam to prevent our total subjugation over a period of time, whether our government acknowledges it or not.

By their own actions and hate words they have condemned themselves to be hated by all infidels (you and me) that have any common sense. Muslims have forfeited their right to protection under the law by advocating overthrow of the nation, the introduction of Sharia law, and the dhimmitude of all infidels.

Apologists for Islam in this nation do us a terrible disservice. They know not what they say. Or, perhaps they do! How evil can you get?

We must eradicate Islam in our nation one way or another, as quickly as possible, and keep it out!

Criminals, are as a group dangerous to life and limb, and are a much more direct threat to our daily lives than are other groups. They operate around the clock in our neighborhoods to rob, assault, batter, rape, and kill our citizens, or to bamboozle the unaware out of their savings. I am in favor of three-times-you’re-out laws that put away repeat felons for life, and I am for the death penalty for murderers.

It has become far less likely that we will execute the wrong man today because of DNA and other forensic tests that have come on line. The current legal procedures that allow a convicted murderer to sit in prison while appeal after appeal is tried over an average of 20 years are ridiculous.

It is a rare criminal that breaks with his past and becomes a reliable, law-abiding citizen, especially after a career of crime for which he was only caught three times. Long “rap sheets” are a glaring indictment of our laxity in keeping hardened criminals off the streets. They should not have gotten to the second page of their rap sheet! We need more prisons to handle this hated group. Criminal gangs are at the apex of this nefarious group, and they are growing stronger and more widespread every year, especially with the advent of tens of thousands of criminally-inclined illegal immigrants.

This must be stopped dead cold.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: I have included this discussion of hate from Wikipedia because it puts the word in its proper perspective, and fully recognizes the sense I use--that of the survival value of hate.

“Hatred is an emotion of intense revulsion, distaste, enmity, or antipathy for a person, thing, or phenomenon, generally attributed to a desire to avoid, restrict, remove, or destroy the hated object. Hatred is also among the most common emotions that humans experience. It can be based on fear of an object or past negative consequences of dealing with that object. Hatred is often described as the opposite of love or friendship; others, such as Elie Wiesel, consider the opposite of love to be indifference. People may feel conflicting and complicated emotions or thoughts involving hate, as in a love-hate relationship.

Often the verb "to hate" is used casually to describe things one merely dislikes, such as a particular style of architecture, a certain climate, one's job, some particular food, or people who claim to hate something when they in fact merely dislike it.

"Hatred" is also used to describe feelings of prejudice, bigotry or condemnation (see shunning) against a person, or a group of people, such as racism, and intense religious or political prejudice. The term hate crime is used to designate crimes committed out of hatred in this sense.

According to evolutionary psychologists, hate is a rational reaction to people whose interests consistently conflict with one's own. Hate is an emotion; hence it serves the protective mode of a person. People whose behavior threatens one's own survival interests are to be hated, while people whose behavior enhances one's survival prospects are to be liked or even loved (as in the case of offspring and other genetic kin).

The passions of hate arise from several features of our thinking process. These include wanting to assign blame to others for our misfortune, protecting our self-esteem, a desire to strengthen our community, alleviating our fears (by destroying the evil others), and several types of errors in reasoning, including cognitive bias. The ability to quickly separate friend from foe is essential to self-defense and safety and provides the origins of hate.”

Labels: , , ,



Friday, April 20, 2007

 

Save Us From the Dems!

The score is getting far too high. Taxes are going to be raised, really trying to raise the white flag in Iraq, ERA reintroduced, Pelosi wandering into foreign policy, impeachment proceedings being introduced, they have made a wreck of things for 6 years, and now they are compounding it! I am really sick of the Dems and the Leftwing.

For that matter, I am not very happy with the Republicans in the Congress, either. They haven't exactly shined lately. If amnesty for illegals passes, I have no idea what I will do. Get over it, I guess, but I do not have to like it one bit. Next will be bans on guns, or something worse. In a way, I am glad these things are coming out of the woodwork. Might make it easier for the Republicans in 08.

Labels:



 

Today in America

Comments on the 20th

Virginia is in mourning over the loss of VT students to a crazed man. That man should have been in an institution years ago, not roaming free.

The weather has turned warm and sunny again, just in time for planting and sprucing up for spring shows.

Reid has declared the war in Iraq to be lost. Reid is a joke. He, too, should be in an institution where the sun don't shine.

There are good signs from Iraq that the surge is having a positive effect, while the Democrats are waging war against it all. What happened to grit and determination? Lost too!

I hope the Hate Crimes bill never sees the floor. It is an abomination, and a violation of the Constitution, in my opinion. Besides, I will still have my hates and I will act on them where possible. When a hateful look is prosecuted you will know just how far we have drifted away from American values of privacy, free speech, and individualism.

It was heartening to see that Hillary has dived in the current polls, but that may help even worse choices to be selected. Such as Gore, the great internet inventor and global warming dictator-to-be. Just how many Leftwing nuts are running now? Six or Seven? Oh, let’s have a former madras kid in office! Just the ticket!

Does anyone doubt that quite a number of Muslims in America would respond with alacrity and dispatch to a call from Iran to blow things up here? Perhaps they are waiting for the Democrats to disarm the public so we cannot defend ourselves! Won’t happen; I will hide my weapons and to hell with them.

Labels:



Wednesday, April 18, 2007

 

Gun Control Up Again




Virginia Tech Killings Will Spark New Bills


The killing of 32 students and wounding 17 more by a Nutcase from South Korea had obviously been planned for some time. So now the gun control lobby will go into high gear to champion anti-gun legislation up to and including disarming the public. This legislation will not be constitutional, of course, but that has a way of not stopping Liberals. They read into words what they want.

Let us play a mental game though. Suppose that the Nutcase could not go to a gun store and purchase guns or ammunition. He still has a rage to kill many people in classrooms, so he casts about for a different tool with which to execute the students. What can he use?

1) He can make a bomb or several bombs from readily available chemicals, and if he doesn’t know how, he can look it up on the internet.

2) He can make a noxious, deadly gas bomb from available chemicals also, the instructions for which are on the internet.

3) He can make a spray mixture that would cause terrible disfigurement or death to all hit by the stream from a pressure garden sprayer. Yes, the instructions for this are on the internet too.

4) He can also rob explosives such as dynamite, fuses and caps, from any of a number of construction sites in the area.

5) If he needs the intimidation factor of a gun, he can buy a replica of a gun from a number of places. These guns look extremely real; they even have clips and slide actions; they just cannot be fired. Or, he could simply steal a gun.


The scenario plays out rather closely to the real thing, with the Nutcase chaining the doors and then lobbing explosive bombs or gas bombs or sprays into the classrooms. In fact, these deadly weapons are cheaper to make, and far more injurious and death-dealing in a crowd than the 9mm autos the real nut used. Thus Nutcase will make his statement, and it may well be a much more deadly one using one or more of the methods pointed out earlier.

Conversely, had any professor or older student been carrying a concealed weapon, in either scenario, real or mental, much of the carnage if not all could have been prevented by killing the Nut.

So now if we ban guns everywhere, especially on campus as has been done already, we will have closed off the most likely preventative--a gun--from being available, and at the same time ensured that the Nut would have to use even more potent killing tools. Tools that would wipe out perhaps three or four classrooms full of students, and leave many more disfigured and crippled for life.

What this says is that we must also ban all potential weapons from public use, including many commercial chemicals and explosives that are essential to the economy, else the Nut will succeed!

Oh, just guns, you say? Why just guns? Maybe it isn’t the weapons we should be concentrating on at all, but the people that are living Nutcase lives and invariably leave tip offs to that fact lying around, if only some bright people picked up on them in a timely manner.

(I am carefully not identifying here the specific chemicals that may be employed, but any first-year chemistry student knows them well.)










Labels:



Tuesday, April 17, 2007

 

Conservatism--Addendum

Some Further Thoughts on Conservatism

It seems that there are a plethora of conservative groups, each having a certain shading of the fundamental belief system of conservatism. It is all very confusing.

I see the term social conservative used, which leaves openings for other belief systems by the same person or group. Perhaps they are also economic liberals.

Financial or economic conservatives are also identified, implying that they too can hold other beliefs in parallel, such as social liberalism.

Paleo conservatism is the term for “old school” conservatives that apply a conservative approach to their every endeavor, but especially their belief in isolationism, and their rejection of the welfare state. Paleocons are often allied with the nostalgic Southern conservatives of the Agrarian school.

Then we have neo conservatism, which originally applied to Liberals that switched their beliefs to the conservative camp. It has been morphed by Liberals into a derogatory term for those who support the GWOT and the invasion of Iraq, and included the switchers as well because they are considered to be traitors to the Liberal cause. Irving Kristol comes to mind here.

Then along comes compassionate conservatism, which seems to be an attempt to show the heart behind the pragmatism of the conservative, and a leavening of the coldness of staunch conservative fundamentalists. It is hard to simply reject the concept of compassion, for that is indeed one of the basic tenets of conservatism. However, the term is not sufficiently broad enough to satisfy many conservatives, and it has been a term of derision for those who take a hard line on anything.

Some few conservatives have been labeled ultra-conservative for their hard line insistence on matters of principle, and their outspoken championship of true conservatism. Bill Buckley was given this title.

Just to compound the name game, I call myself a common sense conservative, which signifies some yet to be definitive amalgam of all the above isms, where the ideological glue is applied common sense to today’s world. For example, it is only common sense to be very careful when addressing possible changes of our fundamental institutions.

If you cannot restrict the scope of the change and assure us definitively that it will have great benefits for the citizens, and will not have unexpected and harmful consequences, the change should not be rushed into willy-nilly. Further, it is sensible that we cannot be isolationist in today’s world. Far from it! We must be proactive internationally or we will suffer untold consequences.

An example of this unexpected change from a single decision by the Supreme Court is abortion. Who would have imagined that a million and a half abortions per year would result? But then, there is the other factor, a loosening of the moral fiber in our society, which permits gross, morally degrading sexual shifts in all directions, including greatly increased sex by teenagers, and an inevitable increase in pregnancies outside of marriage. So now we have what amounts to no-fault, promiscuous sex. I wonder who it is that thinks this is a fine, morally beneficial, and uplifting thing?

Another set of wonderful trends has been the proliferation of pornography, smutty lyrics as in rap, and a new teen slang talk that appears to emanate from black culture by reverse osmosis, thus infecting white teens inordinately. We have received truly stupendous gifts from diversity and multiculturalism, even on TV, although they are totally beyond any form of common sense, moral, social development.

This is a result of allowing all forms of speech to be free, including those that have a proven negative effect on our citizens. The only cure for this invasion of the sex fiends, potty mouths and porn freaks appears to be moral and economic suasion, neither of which will be sufficient to stem the tide.

We have thus spawned a morally degenerate sewer in our midst and an attractive trap for our children. I hope decency and good taste eventually prevails in our society, but I am not at all sure it will, so long as Liberals push for relaxation of our morals.


Labels: ,



Thursday, April 12, 2007

 

Corporations Then and Now



Some thoughts looking backward

In my 43-year career, I worked for very large corporations, among them: IBM, RCA, Raytheon, Philips, and SAIC, all of which were multibillion dollar per year outfits with hundreds of thousands of employees. These employers had a range of corporate mindsets about their employees.

In IBM at the time, it was “full employment,” which meant that if you were surplus to the needs of the company at one location, you would be offered a job elsewhere. You either took that offer, or left the company. But, there were many managers that had never in their long careers fired an employee or made one truly surplus. They might be on the “Available List,” but I knew many on that list that had been there for years and years.

There was substantial downward loyalty as well, almost too much in some ways. A lot of deadwood accumulated over the years that would only be shaken out when the company sold an entire division, as they did for their Federal Systems Division.

In RCA, at least where I was, it was a cutthroat attitude, where your job strictly depended on your manager’s whim and success in the slice of business in his charge. “What have you done for me lately” was a monthly question that rapidly put behind you all the good things you had done for the organization in the past.

Good people tended to work until they dropped from exhaustion, or burned out from the pressures of their jobs. When the general manager died from a heart attack, the message became clear to all of us: you are now replaceable, highly expendable, and you’d better be on top of your job or the new manager will sweep you out in a microsecond. Loyalty downward was true, but only for long-term employees. When a layoff was forced on the company by a slump in business, it was logically the newbies that were sent out of the door first.

Raytheon was very similar in these respects to RCA, so I won’t repeat the story again.

Philips was entirely different. The Dutch system forced companies to hire with the expectation of a lifetime career for the individual. The subsidiary I was in was extremely successful, and carried a backlog of four to five years worth of business for most of the ten years I was there.

I was fortunate to work for a very progressive and energetic Sr. VP, and the research, analysis, and development division I headed up was alive and crackling with dozens of ideas and projects, most of which I had seen in the US before.

There was superior downward loyalty to all employees, backed up by the cradle-to-grave social system the Dutch government was very proud to have. I had six weeks of vacation plus nine holidays per year, and a nine-to-five job for most of the year.

The subsidiary, however, became overextended by their successes in the world market, and was suddenly faced with technical and production challenges they could not cope with in a timely manner. They were falling ever further behind in deliveries, while struggling with some intractable difficulties with their new primary radar systems.

Furthermore, they could not hire and train competent staff fast enough to work out of their difficulties, and they could not guarantee new employees ten years of work, since major customers were threatening to cancel their contracts. All attention and funding was placed on digging out of the mess, which left R&D with less and less resources. Time to move on: I had a hard time with the Dutch language anyway! So I retired from Philips.

SAIC was another, far more difficult company to work for, since it was “employee owned” and had an intense strategy of winning contracts, and growing them, or letting the people go. After a year or so with not much to show for it in proposals to the military, I transferred to a long-term project as the System Engineer, and spent the next seven years on it, before retiring once again.

There was virtually no downward loyalty from the company that I could discern. You earned your keep or you were out. Luckily, SAIC was on a very steep growth path in both personnel and revenue during my years there, and the stock options I had earned as an employee/owner provided me with a very nice addition to my other income.

So what can I say about today’s corporate world? From what I have gathered from friends and from reading, the SAIC business model seems to be the pattern of the future. High-tech, high intensity, no downward loyalty ( hence no upward loyalty either!), and practically a guarantee that you will face changing jobs to another company of the same ilk inside of five to seven years. Benefits are becoming far less generous, too.

In previous eras, a young engineer changed companies three times on the average before settling down in one company for the rest of his career. Today, it is more like the aircraft industry used to be. You find yourself following the contracts from one aerospace company to the next, doing essentially the same job over and over for years and years, until you manage to snare a higher level job and stay with a company for a longer period. You will never have the level of job security we were used to in the latter part of the 20th century, in my opinion. Even so, it was my practice to keep my lines of communication open for other positions, and to have standing offers for a job for periods of time.

Another model is that of the job shop, the personnel-for-hire crowd, where benefits, and decent retirements are problematical, but your net pay is somewhat higher. If you are disciplined, you invest the differential and govern your own future. That was very hard to do...for me, anyway.

Finally, starting your own business somewhere along the path is something to consider. I was too comfortable in my situations to strike out on my own, but at least seven of my fellow workers did over the years with huge financial and company successes. Three of them are retired and live in Potomac, Maryland, on horse farms now.

With your own company, you can institute the policies you think best for your employees and your business. You can foster upward and downward loyalty, and security for your employees, as well as giving them room to grow and succeed. I believe strongly that such policies will make a comeback in the next decade as people become totally disenchanted with the current cutthroat trends.

( Just to steer away speculation, I was sought after and hired away from each of my jobs, but one, by companies that thought I could help them. I was laid off once, because of a total downward reorganization of the divisions of the company. Nothing personal, you see...just business. Still, it was a very trying time for a month or so! The lesson was clear: always keep a job offer in your pocket, if you can.)








Labels:



Tuesday, April 10, 2007

 

Muslims in our Midst



How fortunate we are!

(But, what about the Muslims in our Midst?)

It was a simple victory indeed! All that was required was to ban the phrase GWOT from the Defense bill! Why didn’t I think of that? Now the troops can come home, and Iraq will be peaceful and free. The Philippines can simmer down, Thailand can go back to dancing, and our boys in Afghanistan can stand down too! Unbridled genius has struck.

Somewhere, the phrase Global War On Islamofascism (GWOI) is being readied as a replacement, although it might take a terrorist attack or two to cement this into our Democratic conscious minds. If we have a Democratic President, it will take the erasure of a million citizens or more to wake that group up to the threat. All they can try out is diplomacy-without-portfolio as Pelosi did last week, or, even with a portfolio later on, they will not succeed in making us safer from the Islamic terrorists. In particular, they will not even try to protect us from Muslims in our midst, with more arriving.

Why, there is no threat; it is all in Bush’s mind. All we have to do is be nice! They are good people. Aren’t they? Aren’t they?

Labels: ,



Monday, April 09, 2007

 

Bush—Vastly Disappointing



This Administration Has Failed in Many Ways

Much to my surprise, regret, and great disappointment, I feel that George W. Bush and his Administration has let me down and let the public at large down in serious ways. While no President can score in the high 90’s with everyone, I thought he would with me. My list of his failures is by no means complete, most likely because I haven’t the visibility or recall into all of the machinations that have gone on for six or so years. My complaints are stark and simple:

1. We are not winning in Iraq. In the end, this is Bush’s fault, not the military’s fault. I supported Bush in the invasion, but I wrote many posts criticizing the direction the war in Iraq was taking; notably too few troops to do all that was necessary, too namby-pamby a set of rules of engagement, too much emphasis on winning hearts and minds, and refusal to act as the occupiers we really should have been.

2. We have overspent our domestic budgets every year by enormous amounts, and with large pork add-ons.

3. We did not fix Social Security.

4. We did not fix Medicare and the Health System generally.

5. We did not fix the illegal immigrant problem, or even obtain a good start. Amnesty seems to be the Bush cure, which is a non-winner in my book. The fence is being steadily downgraded to irrelevancy.

6. We did not build up the military far enough to have reserves that could be deployed readily. Bush did not push hard for an augmented force structure from day one, thus restoring the 33% cuts of the Clinton era. War on the cheap is stupid.

7. Homeland Security has not been a solid success, despite the lack of attacks on the US. I credit the Islamic terrorists for perceiving that if they did attack us at home, it would only strengthen our resolve to win in Iraq, so they have lain off.

8. We have made virtually zero progress in educating the public on the threat of Islam to our security and to the world’s security. The Administration has not seemed to be willing to escalate the war of ideas to where it should be by now.

9. Both Iran and North Korea are still in the process of making nuclear weapons. It seems that Bush has caved in to the idea of talk-talk at every turn. Iran, especially, is still at the center of Islamic Jihad, followed closely by Saudi Arabia, our so-called friend.

10. I fail to see that we are making rapid strides towards relative oil independence, hydrogen propulsion, and other large sources of energy. Is this because Bush is an oil man, and is defending the oil industry?

11. Although it is a two-way sword, we did not eliminate the 60% rule in the Senate, thus allowing the Democrats to continue to block vital legislation and appointments to the courts.

12. Bush himself has made some horrific faux pas, including rubbing the shoulders of the German Prime Minister from behind at a state dinner, and selecting Harriet Meyers for the Supreme Court, to name two.

It seems that Bush lost his way a year or so ago, and never found the way back. Or, perhaps, he simply cannot find the handle for convincing the public of his directions. He hasn’t convinced me.

This is not to say that any Democrat could or would have done better. I am convinced we would have been terribly worse off with either Kerry, or Gore in the Presidency, but this is pure speculation on my part— though accurate, I believe. We will be even worse off in 09, if the Democrats win big. They are the party of Leftwing Devil’s Advocates, and everyone knows that constant DA’s have no solutions for their criticisms, except feel-good, catastrophically bad legislation.

Labels:



Thursday, April 05, 2007

 

To Be American

Positive directions (version 2, 4/5/07)

Adults in America must come to terms with what they stand for sooner or later: a people that are proud of their national heritage, their accomplishments and their directions, or something far lesser and meaner, as some would have it. Americans by birth or naturalization are asked to take the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag and to the Constitution. Any higher allegiances such as to God are reserved for the spiritual beliefs of the people, and not to the secular side of life, beyond that of the moral guidance of faith.

So what do I stand for? What decisions have I made regarding my birth heritage? I decided to record some of the more important decisions I have made or positions I have taken, while leaving the record open for additions and modifications later on. Here is my list:

First of all (in addition to Mom, the Flag, and Apple Pie):

Be an American:

Support the Constitution of the US and its derivatives in law (US Code, lower court rulings, etc.).

Maintain the integrity of the Constitution against “progressive” changes, such as denial of possession and use of guns.

Be true to the principles of our Republican form of Government,

Be true to the principles of a tripartite government: Executive, Legislative, and Judicial,

Defend the boundaries of each member of the tripartite,

Work to restore the tripartite boundaries where discovered to be wrong,

Restore fiscal sanity to government,

Obey the laws of the land, the states, counties, and cities,

Maintain state’s rights, and the Electoral College,

Respect the constitutional and legal rights of all citizens, unless they abrogate those rights by advocating overthrow of the US,

Be a patriot, and an upstanding and honest citizen,

Be aware of our national shortcomings, and work to fix them.

Some American Shortcomings:

There are very many problems that vex our nation, all the way from daily life quarrels to truly world-shaking conflicts. The few I call out here are significant to the survival of our nation and our people, but it is by no means a complete list.

Education of our children is woefully lacking, the school system is broken, and money is not the cure, per se, nor are fashionable experiments on our children. It is also true, however, that we do not pay our teachers as well as we should, despite massive infusions of money from the federal government, which appears to be absorbed by the bureaucratic superstructure of education, not by benefits for the teachers and pupils. You can thank John Dewey for starting this mess.

Voter education suffers from lack of political, social, economic, scientific and historical education, and from a lack of how to think through and around the propaganda that is used by politicians to cloud minds. A campaign promise is no more than a wish list in the hands of hypocrites and liars, as we found out in the Clinton years. His favorite tactic was to say one thing and do the exact opposite.

Voter turnout is likewise too low for a true participatory republic, and it has been creeping lower every year. This must be reversed.

Life values are skewed in the direction of materialism, comfort, an overarching political correctness born of excessive fear of offending anyone at all, and a general shunning of the duties and responsibilities of a citizen of this republic. We will lose our republic to indifference or to fruitcakes if we cannot correct these things.

Our news media is heavily biased toward the positions of the Left, and gives the public a willfully distorted and brief sound-bite view of the real situation around the world. What does not fit the ideology does not get reported. This is a treasonable act in a democracy. Have you ever realized that over 3 million times a year a citizen owning a gun has thwarted a criminal in his attempt to commit a crime? It is not reported because it does not fit the ideology of gun control saves (a few) lives, where, in fact, guns save millions from perpetrators yearly.

Politically oriented people acting as spokesmen for their party likewise lie, fabricate, and promote falsities to further their party’s ambitions for power. This most definitely promotes cynicism and disrespect for our political and governmental institutions.

When these two factors--the media and the politicos-- operate together to suppress the truth and further the Leftist message, our nation is in grave danger. That is the current situation.

Elitism appears to be the rising ambition for countless citizens who believe their wealth; social position, brains, education, connections and right thinking; make them defacto, unheralded and unelected leaders of the nation. These people must face the white glare of publicity, and the scorn of true patriots. (Some of these so-called elites should simply “Shut Up and Sing” as Laura Ingraham aptly stated, or simply “Act” as the case may be.)

We are a litigious nation, and it is only getting worse. We must work to bring sanity back to justice under the law. Since many, if not most, legislators are also lawyers; one might ask whether tort reform is ever possible by means of legislation.

The Legislative Branch of the government needs to be overhauled to break up cabals, pork, busted budgets, excessive time and money spent electioneering, and tenures into dotage. Term limits is an answer to the 20 and 30 year residents of the House and Senate. This would require a constitutional amendment.

The Judicial Branch must be constrained from performing legislation from the bench, thus usurping the functions of the other branches. Capricious decisions by Leftist judges have done terrible damage to the public in the past twenty years, by letting hardened criminals back out onto the street far too soon. Limiting the terms of the judges either by a fixed number of years or by an age limit is a way to avoid a self-perpetuating bias on the part of politically oriented judges acting singly or in concert.

The Administrative Branch needs a careful, objective study to find out where it has exceeded its powers, and what must be done to restore the balance, if anything.

I have no idea who I would trust fully and appoint to such a study commission. There are seemingly ever fewer trusty, wise old hands to set to work in the business of America, instead of the business of moral relativism. Then, too, many, many (well, most!) of the professors in our universities are themselves leaning left by a 10 to 1 margin. How about former Presidents: Carter, Clinton, Bush Sr., and Bush, Jr.? I can cite many reasons against each one of these men having any primary responsibility for the task. But the task needs doing.

We must have a new approach to taxes that is both simple and fair. I support the Flat Tax idea.

Americans as a group are fat, sloppy fat, even disgustingly jelly-fat. The cure is a proper diet, avoiding burgers, french-fries, cokes and milk shakes, along with regular exercise. I get the impression that all of the books and ads regarding the necessity for weight reduction are largely falling on deaf ears in the over 30 group. This says much about our discipline, our lack of regard for our bodies, and our indulgent way of life.

Two great values many Americans on the political scene seem to have dropped altogether are honesty and integrity. At least that is how it comes out when listening to the systematic, outright lies and distortions, the out-of-context cherry-picking of statements, and the making up of issues out of thin air made by fully 50% of the politicians in Washington--namely, the Democrats. One lies, and the rest swear to it. It may also be true that the current rank and file of the Democratic Party is equally likely to have deep-sixed their honesty and integrity in their quest for political victory at any cost.

The issue that has seriously divided the nation, mostly along party lines, is the war in Iraq. It has lived up to its original billing as a long, tough, tragic and expensive war, one that will take still longer. For example, it took the UK fully ten years to eradicate insurgents in Malaysia.

The Democrats, after voting to proceed with the incursion into Iraq, hypocritically decided to politicize the war to gain advantages for their political ambitions. Now they are trying to force us to give up. If this actually happens, we will lose far more than we will gain by pursuing the war vigorously. We want a win in Iraq, not a craven retreat. Pacifists do not wish to understand the reasons for conflict; therefore they simply shut their eyes and ears to the horrible threat of Islam.

They are doing our nation almost insurmountable harm, and for that reason, I am utterly opposed to electing such people. There needs to be a land where we could dump all of the pacifists and Leftists and let them govern themselves…peacefully, of course!

Participate in the system by:

Voting, championing, and commenting on issues,

Paying taxes, and supporting valid institutions,

Respecting majority and minority positions, but,

Working against majority or minority positions

that threaten harm to America, but always within the system.

Working against the poison spewed forth from fringe groups,

Supporting capitalism and free market economies,

Becoming well-informed about issues and trends,

Joining associations and organizations that work for the betterment of America, not its degradation,

Advocating conservative values and policies,

Supporting campaigns for trustworthy people, or even by running for office yourself,

Participating in the military services and in the conflicts that arise when we are called; we need a strong military!

Participating in support for our soldiers and veterans, and for provision of the proper tools of war,

Defending law-abiding and innocent Americans worldwide,

Defending the sovereignty of the US against all incursions,

Defending the religious choices of all citizens, including the religion of atheism or unbelief in God, unless the religion itself is a threat to us, as is Islam.

Defend and protect the US against:

Religious, anti-religious, and non-religious acts of terror,

Further secularization of the government,

Further attempts to denude religious symbols and prayers,

The incursions of the UN or other agencies on our sovereignty,

All forms of communism, socialism, and utopias,

Secular humanism and World Government encroachment,

Religions that advocate the overthrow of the US,

Irrational progressivism and destruction of morality,

Smut, porno, corruption of morals, and crime,

All foreign attempts to damage or defeat the US,

The worldwide threat posed by Islam and jihad,

The worldwide threat posed by communism and socialism,

The coming collapse of the European Union, and the probable Islamification of each nation in Europe,

Emerging world threats, by use of massive and deciding preemptive actions where needed, such as in the cases of the GWOT, Iraq, and Iran,

Zealots who use the gullibility of the public to further their own ambitions, such as Al Gore has done with the issue of Global Warming (which in itself is a little one degree over 100 years fact) and Climate Change( which has been unscientifically hyped),

Illegal immigrants must be deported,

Immigration to and residence in the US by Muslims must be halted. US citizens that convert to Islam must be treated exactly as we treat other Muslims--deport them,

Stopping foreign treaties and entanglements, many of which are not in the best long-term interests of the nation; especially those regarding the UN and the ICC need to be terminated.

Labels: , ,



This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?