We are military

This douchebag says that he and the New Black Panther Party are "military" and that they are going to "apprehend" Zimmerman.He claims an ability to perform a "citizen's arrest" under the constitution, and claims that according to "the street people's law" Zimmerman is guilty of murder, and states that he is not subject to "the white man's law," which is "America's law."

He then says that Zimmerman will be tried by the "people" and once found, he will "not be alive." He calls blacks who oppose his ideas "Uncle Tom Negroes."

It appears as though this New Black Panther party and the rest of the race baiters want a race war. Racist dickheads.

Difference of viewpoints

I have a female friend that I recently went to a show with. There were ushers who were assisting people on the stairs. She noticed that the (male) ushers were holding out their hands for the women, and simply standing there for the men. She turned to me and said that this made her angry when men did that, because it was a sign that men felt like the women were weak and could not do anything without the big, strong man to protect them.

I see it differently. I see it as a man cherishing women and womanhood by being helpful and kind. I open and hold doors for women, I offer a helping hand when they are on slippery ground. In general, I do this not because I think she is weak, but rather because I want to do what I can to be kind.

I have never before looked at it from her point of view, but I concede that she has a point. After all, why do we not do the same for men? Perhaps it is because we see the men as equals. This brings another question to mind: How do we show affection for a woman, if we are  not to be allowed to help her from time to time? How do we show kindness and affection, while still showing that you respect her as an equal?

Think about this

I am reading my textbook, and the current chapter is on hypertension (high blood pressure), and on controlling it. Read the following quote:

The benefits of a low risk status are enormous: A 72% to 85% reduction in Cardiovascular Disease mortality and a 40% to 58% reduction in mortality from all causes, leading to a gain of 5.8 to 9.5 years in life expectancy.

I would submit that the chance of mortality in all people, regardless of their risk factors remains unchanged and immutable at exactly 100%. You would think that there would be a better way to phrase this.

On a side note, it is currently spring break. However, studying in a program as intense as this never really starts or stops, it just is. In fact, it is a relief to get caught up on my studying without the complications of additional reading that would be placed upon me if class were in session this week.

School terms

When we return to class on Monday, there will be a week and a half of class, followed by the four calendar day Easter Break, and then there will only be six weeks until the end of the term. The first, and from what I have been told by previous students, hardest semester will be behind me.
We have a three week break before the summer session begins, and then it is back to the grind.

More education

Being in graduate school full time, and unemployed while I do it, is exposing me to the full force of what passes for college education in America. I have a professor who can best be described as a leftover hippie reject from the 60s. She was living in Berkley in the 1960s, and teaches several of my courses. You will remember her from this post. In some of those courses, she has told us how white men are conspiring to keep woman and minorities down by passing laws that discriminate, and by putting chemicals and hormones in food. She also believes that certain procedures, like vaccinations. should be mandatory, even over the objections of the patient, because the needs of the herd outweigh the desires of the individual. 

Anyway, now that you have some background, let me tell you about our lecture from the other day. We were in class when she began talking about the causes of premature death. The leading causes of death in the United States are:
1 Heart Disease
2 Cancer
3 COPD (Emphysema and Chronic Bronchitis)
4 Stroke
5 Accidents
6 Alzheimer's
7 Diabetes
8 Flu and Pneumonia
9 Kidney failure
10 Suicide
11 Septicemia (Blood infections)
12  Liver Disease (Hepatitis and Cirrhosis)
13 High Blood Pressure and its complications
14 Parkinson's
15 Homicide

Fair enough. So then she moved on to the next slide:  Behaviors that cause premature death. It listed:
1 Tobacco Use
2 Poor health maintenance
3 Lack of physical activity
4 Alcohol Abuse
5 Firearms
6 Unsafe sex
7 Car accidents
Then said that the leading causes of death were preventable.

I asked her why 'firearms' was the only thing on the list that was an object and not a behavior, and why it was on the list. She told me that I was 'splitting hairs' and that firearms were too dangerous for people to own. I then asked her if they were so dangerous, why did death by firearms not make the top ten? Actually, if you take other causes of death out of the blanket 'suicide' and 'homicide' categories, firearm related deaths don't even make the top 20.
She replied by telling me that I have a problem with authority. (Actually, my problem is twofold: I have a problem with bullshit, and I don't think that someone that I have hired to teach me a class has 'authority' over me. You, as a professor, are my employee, not my boss.) The fact is that more people died from prescription drug overdose in Florida in 2009 than died in the entire US from firearm related homicide. Perhaps we should be spending time in class trying to avoid THAT instead of railing against guns.
Abraham Lincoln only had a single year of formal education in elementary school. The requirement that you have to have a 4 year degree to enter medical school or even PA school is ridiculous. They don't even care what the degree is in, just that you have one. They want you indoctrinated in this college socialist bullshit, and it has nothing at all to do with being a good practitioner.

I cannot wait to get out of this environment. I have eight and a half more months of this, and I have to be careful what I say, as the professor has the ultimate power of the gradebook, which could potentially rob me of my $50,000 in tuition, and the hopes of my future career.

Medical tyrants

When it comes to health care, the patient is the one who ultimately has the final say over what is done to them. At least, that is what I have always believed. Apparently, that is not the case with many in the health care field, including many pediatricians who refuse to care for children if their parents refuse to get them a recommended vaccine.
Too many people believe that they should have the power to make others bend to their will. To me this is like a grocery store refusing to allow you to be a customer unless you buy healthy food. It never ceases to amaze me that people so often want to be able to tell others what to do. Maybe that is why we keep electing tyrants. People keep hoping it will soon be their turn to be boss.
Many of my instructors feel the same way. I actually had a class on vaccines where we were told "Maybe some of the kids who get vaccinated do have things like autism as a side effect, but the overwhelming majority do not. This is about herd immunity, and the needs of the rest of society outweigh the illness of the very few."
There is the division: there are some of us who think that individual liberty is most important, and others who value the herd. I don't think that there is much common ground to be had there.

Edited to add: Of course there are no studies that show that vaccines cause autism or any other ailment. Who would fund such a study? Certainly not the drug companies. After all, there is no financial incentive to NOT giving a vaccine.

Child support?

When I got divorced in 1997, I was making $1000 every two weeks. I lost $280 in taxes, leaving me $720 every two weeks. Following the state law formula, the court ordered that I pay $348 to my ex wife, nominally for child support, leaving me with $720 per month to live on. The support was taken from my check before I even saw it, so I wouldn't be a 'deadbeat dad.' The rent on my apartment was $600 for a small one bedroom. I was soon homeless and without a car, moving from couch to couch at the homes of friends. I got a second job, picking up garbage after the Shamu show at Sea World. I got an apartment with three roommates. I bought a car at a "buy here, pay here." Somehow, I made it.

How was my wife making it? She didn't have a job. She had $696 per month in child support, $400 worth of food stamps, $300 in earned income credit, $200 per month in WIC, and $300 worth of welfare, plus she was getting $750 a month babysitting two children while their parents were at work. She netted a total of $2646 a month.

I always knew that my 'child support' was going to support their mother, not the kids. That is why things like this always make me angry, when I think about how women use their children to ride the gravy train, while their fathers get accused of being 'deadbeat dads' because they can't afford to pay.

To prove that the children were just a gravy train for her, when they were 16, she threw them out of the house and had them live with me. First my son, and a year later, my daughter. As soon as it was no longer profitable, they were unceremoniously thrown out. She still plays the game to get your tax dollars. Right after the first kid was thrown out, she got  a job at WalMart as a cashier, and 'injured' her back soon thereafter. She now collects Social Security Disability, along with WIC, welfare, and food stamps with the child that she had with her new husband.

Prosper

While I was employed, I invested in a deferred compensation plan called a 457 plan. Similar to a 401K (but for government workers) money is taken out of your pay, pretax, and invested. When the stock market crashed in 2008, I lost more than half of the money that I had invested. Much of it was never recovered. Over $17,000 gone in the blink of an eye. While the market was crashing, I tried desperately to get my money out, to no avail. I had to watch as the amount in there dropped every day. At the same time, the value of my house fell to less than half of what it was worth when I bought it.

Since, I have decided to diversify. I have invested in physical gold, and direct lending. In direct lending, you join a network of people who lend money directly to consumers. As far as I am concerned, this is no different from buying stock, because stock is nothing more than you loaning money to a corporation. Like stock, diversifying your money among several borrowers limits your exposure.

The company that I use for this is Prosper. The way it works is that you open an account, and you look over people who have applied for loans. Prosper has already pulled their credit and verified employment. You then contribute some funds to each loan, and as the person makes payments, you get repaid with interest. Interest paid to you is part of the bidding process. Take a look. It can't be worse than losing half your money in the market.

No weapons on campus

This is the weekend before midterms. There are many students that are practically living in the cadaver labs in preparation for the tests. I myself spent 5 hours there yesterday, and 4 this morning. There was an incident at the school that really irritates me. When I went in yesterday, I noticed that the lounge that we used had been trashed. There were things torn from the walls, and general vandalism. The other students told me that there had been a "scruffy looking" guy in there (and his face around the nose and mouth was covered in blue paint) when they arrived at 7 a.m., but that he ran away when challenged. Found in there were a number of stolen goods, including a television, food, and other personal items. Security was called and they took a report.
I stayed until 2 o'clock and left. Shortly after that, the guy returned. Security came again, and he fought with them, they pepper sprayed him, and he ran. They caught him several blocks away. There has been a campus safety notice advising us not to be in the building alone, as they do not know if he had accomplices. (Great, the weekend before midterms).
Of course the school has a "no weapons" policy, violation of which will get you expelled. I am sure that the dirtbags will follow that policy as well as they have the "no stealing" the "no trespassing" the "no vandalizing" the "no huffing paint" and the "no treating the school as a drug den/homeless shelter" policies, which carry the penalty of a warm place to stay and several hot meals.
The people who oppose campus carry frequently use the excuses:
- A gun distracts from the learning environment. I find it hard to believe that me having a concealed weapon will distract from the learning environment more than being attacked simply because I am alone studying in the lab.
- College students are immature, irresponsible drunkards. I am 44 years old, a graduate student, and in less than a year's time I will be writing prescriptions and making decisions about people's lives and health. If I am too immature and drunk to carry a gun, how can I be a health provider?
- You could use pepper spray instead. First- pepper spray is also prohibited, and note that the assailant RAN several blocks AFTER being pepper sprayed by security. If that were a young lady using that pepper spray, and he felt like fighting, how much good would that spray do?

Good and compelling: Be rich

So in Maryland, the rule to get a concealed weapons permit was that you need to have a "good and substantial reason" to carry a weapon, and reading this article, it appears that a good reason would be "I am an attorney and carry large amounts of cash."

This indicates to me that if you are rich and need to protect your money, it is OK, but if you are poor and only wish to protect your life, then you deserve to die.

Thanks, suckers

This woman won a million dollars in the lottery. She still collects $200 a month in food stamps. According to her:

Clayton says it's okay to remain on food stamps because she doesn't have a source of income and has bills to pay. She also believes she's entitled to it because she's "still struggling" and has two homes to run.

What I don't understand is how she has money for lottery tickets, but is on welfare. If you are so broke that you need to steal other people's money to survive, how can you have money for gambling? To top it off, you get a half million after taxes, and still need to steal other people's money.

So remember Ms. Clayton when you are doing your taxes this year. This is what your tax money pays for.

Power

The reason why this country keeps getting a more powerful government is that people keep hoping that they will be the one with some power. For example, look at how much power that Waitresses (Airborne Division) get.

The dole

Fact of the day: 80% of the children born in New Orleans are funded by Medicaid. In fact, 24% of the population is covered by Medicaid, at an annual cost of $4.4 billion.

Hmmm

I am not normally one of those people who believes in conspiracies. However, the unexpected death of a person who is making waves and affecting changes in how the powers that be do business is certainly suspicious. I have often wondered what a purge looked like. Is this how it starts?  Is this how people began to disappear under Lenin?

African Americans

Can you spot the African Americans in the following pictures?

The first picture is Charlize Theron, born in South Africa. The second is Oprah Winfrey, born in Mississippi. The third is Richard Dawkins, born in Kenya, and the last is Morgan Freeman, who was born in Tennessee. 3 of them are American citizens, two are African. Only one is an African American. Stop saying African American when what you really mean is black.

A serious question

One thing that I always try to do is be morally consistent. That is, do I apply the same rules in the same way every time. To do otherwise is to be a hypocrite. Most humans largely try to do the same thing. Of course, this results in people trying to justify heinous and immoral acts in order to assuage their own guilt of the hypocrisy. This is where today's question comes from.

I can have camera footage of a crime. I can possess cell phone video of a fight, a murder, theft, or any other crimes and it is not illegal to possess that footage. There are even television shows that center around showing videos of crimes in progress. Most people do not have a problem with that.

Until the crime being filmed changes. Let me explain:
It is always a crime for an adult to knowingly have sex with a child. I don't care how or what anyone says, I think that we can all agree with that one. Now, there could be a legitimate argument over what age a person ceases being a child, or what constitutes knowingly, but let's leave that aside for now. The reason it is wrong and a crime is that a child cannot give consent. This is the reason why children can't consent to any number of things from marriage, to contracts, medical care, and many others. This is also why it is a crime to have sex with certain adults with reduced mental capacity.

So with child pornography, what is going on here is that a pornographer is committing a crime in taking the picture in the first place, since that child is incapable of granting consent.

That is where my dilemma enters. The crime is the sexual act with a person who is victimizing a child. I am not trying to claim that child pornography should be legal, but I am trying to understand why it should be illegal to have a picture of one crime and not another, while still remaining logically consistent. Any ideas?

Irony

The government, through the Department of Agriculture, is distributing more food stamps than at any other time in history.
Meanwhile, the Park Service, another branch of the government, tells us not to feed the wild animals in the park, because they will become dependent and lose the ability to fend for themselves.

Small scare

So I was sitting in my living room yesterday, quietly studying my books, when I heard the door handle begin to jiggle. I live alone, so there is no reason for anyone to be entering my apartment. I grab my M&P 40, and while I am doing so, I hear a key slide into the lock. While covering the door (finger not on the trigger, thank you) a dozen thoughts run through my mind at 100 miles an hour: Is it an apartment maintenance man coming to repair something? A home invader? What is my plan if the door opens? Should I try to hold the bad guy at gunpoint and risk letting him get the first shot? Or just shoot as soon as he enters the apartment? What if there are more than one of them? Is the wall I am behind good cover? Or just concealment? Why didn't I grab something heavier, like an AR or a shotgun?

The person on the other side of the door continues to jiggle the key in the lock, and jiggle the door handle. By this point, this has been going on for a good 30 seconds. I cautiously approach the door, and look out of the peephole, to see a youngish (maybe in her 20s) woman trying to open my door. She leaves. I still don't know what was up with that.