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For months I have procrastinated and given in to every lame excuse I could think of for not upgrading to the most recent version of WordPress but today I finally gave in and did the deed. As much as I balk at the idea of upgrading it really isn’t that tough of a chore and I am always amazed after its over, just how simple and quick it really was to get it done. All things considered it might have taken me a solid 45 minutes to complete the switch, turn everything back on and pick up the loose ends. Essentially, when it comes to computers and software, I learned a long time ago that the best way to keep them working properly was to leave them alone and not try to fix what wasn’t broken. This was not an easy lesson for me to learn. I started playing with computers long before I ever bought my first Timex-Sinclair and plugged it into an old black and white television. In fact my first experience with computers was on a machine that had big wooden dials, brass contacts that needed to be cleaned daily and enough vacuum tubes to fill a tractor trailer. To get it to do simple multiplication problems required a week of figuring out where to place the little square holes on a stack of 3″ x 6″ cards. At any rate, by the time I had accidentally deleted the registry file out of my first edition of XP I came to the conclusion that poking around in system files and tweaking things that I didn’t know anything about was a losing cause. Leaving everything alone to do what it did best started to make a lot of sense to me and in the years that followed I have done less and less poking around and everything has run smoother and smoother. Unfortunately, the less I dabbled with the machine and the software on it, the more reluctant I became to do anything other than simply use it as it was. Somehow that extended to upgrades as well and I now loathe the thought of having to perform even the most minor of chores. I suppose I figure that if the people that write these programs knew they would someday upgrade them then they should have provided some way to do it automatically without my involvement. Whatever, it’s done now and I am off and running on all eight cylinders again. WordPress 2.7 includes a nifty test feature to gauge how successful your upgrade attempt was after you have completed it and I have included that feature below. If you see yourself in the mirror at the bottom of this posting, then my upgrade to 2.7 was a complete success.

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Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich’s editorial carried in the Los Angeles Times on January 26th proposed the idea that labor unions could help reverse the current recession and restore prosperity to the American people and I nearly gagged at the thought while reading the thing.

As the reformed former vice-president of a major Southern California labor union I can honestly attest to the delusional nature of Reich’s proposition. Of course it could go without saying that the Democrats will probably love it because its an added push for the misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act.” Since the DNC owes big labor in a big way for the millions of dues dollars funneled into their campaign coffers and the “Employee Free Choice Act” is the promised payback, Reich’s editorial, illogical and dishonest as it is, helps to prime the DNC pump for what they have planned to push down our throats all along.

Despite what the former labor secretary says the American economy would be a lot healthier without labor unions in the picture. Unions stifle productivity, decrease competitiveness and add to the cost of doing business. Essentially speaking, labor unions make American businesses less profitable and when businesses are less profitable it adversely affects the nation’s economy.

There is no argument that union wages and benefits are often higher than non-union wages and benefits, but those inflated wages and benefits cut into the profitability of the company and in a tight economy the burden of artificially inflated union wages has put more than one business into bankruptcy. Two of the best paying American industries that ever existed were automobile manufacturing and steel production and the reason they paid so well was because of the labor organizations that represented the employees. The American big-three automakers exist today only because the government continually bails them out with the tax payer’s hard earned dollars and today as I am writing this the U.S. legislature is considering throwing even more money into this uncompetitive bottomless pit and the only thing that has kept the American automobile manufacturers from following the fatal path of the American steel industry is our tax dollars.

At the end of World War II the American economy was the most dynamic in the world and was growing at a rate between 3 and 4 percent. We were enjoying huge trade surpluses as the economies of Europe and Asia recovered from the devastation of World War II. By the 1970s the period of prosperity was at an end and the economic problems began to multiply seriously under the presidential administration of Jimmy Carter. Foreign competition began to seize large parts of the U.S. domestic market, and in 1971 the United States posted its first trade deficit in eighty years. The consumer’s dollar was worth less and formerly prosperous middle-class households found they could no longer make ends meet. The American people expressed their discontent with federal economic policies by getting rid of President Carter at the end of his first term in 1980 and replacing him with the former California governor Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, the American economy’s downward spiral had already begun and it would be years before the trend could be slowed down.

In the midst of a troubled economy and facing increased foreign competition, the world’s largest steel mill, Kaiser Steel in Fontana, began to have serious financial trouble. While many American families were being forced to count pennies to pay their bills, the employees at Kaiser Steel in Fontana were sitting in the lap of luxury. Thanks to the strength of their very powerful union, the Kaiser employees were enjoying exceptionally high wages, very lucrative benefits and an incredible amount of accumulative paid time off. When the company’s profits began to seriously fall their representatives petitioned the United Steel Workers union officials representing their employees for wage relief. The union represented employees of Kaiser Steel in Fontana knew the company was struggling to stay afloat and wanted the chance to vote on the concessions the company was asking for but the USW District Director in California refused to allow them that right even after the local union officials accepted the company’s proposed concession agreement. In 1983 the owners of Kaiser Steel in Fontana faced the inevitable and closed the plant down. Tens of thousands of Kaiser Steel employees were suddenly unemployed and the city of Fontana, the county of Riverside and the state of California lost millions of dollars in revenue. When the company was forced into bankruptcy in 1987 even the former employees were left destitute by a company that could no longer honor it’s pension obligations and most of them ended up settling years later for a mere fraction of what their pension accounts were once worth. In 1993 a team of 300 Chinese workers disassembled the much of the operation and loaded it onto ships that carried it off for reassembly in China. The 23 story high, $287 million dollar Kaiser Steel plant in Fontana was slowly bled dry by its union represented employees and the high wages and good benefits their union won for them did nothing to offset the collective losses that followed.

If strong unions make for a thriving economy then California should be the most prosperous state in the nation, however, that is not the case. One of the primary reasons why the state of California now has a $42 billion dollar deficit is because of the state employee’s extremely lucrative pension plan along with the astronomical wages and benefits won for them by their unions. This is not the only reason for the huge deficit but it is a big part of the red ink covering the state’s accounting ledger.

Least anyone get me completely wrong here, I am not totally anti-union. When labor representatives go to the aid of workers who are being abused by tyrants they are performing good and necessary work. When labor organizations go political and start donating 80% of the dues money they collect to politicians in exchange for favors, I have a problem with it. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics 16.1 million American workers belong to labor unions and government workers are five times more likely to be union members than private sector employees. It has been estimated that of these 16.1 million union members, 41% are registered Democrats, 39% are Registered Republicans and 20% are registered as Independent or some other political affiliation other than Democrat or Republican. Despite the nearly balanced distribution of Democrat and Republican union members in American labor organizations, more than 95% of all money contributed to political campaigns or political causes by labor organizations in the U.S. goes to the Democratic Party. During the two year long 2008 presidential campaign big labor dumped over one billion dollars of their member’s dues money into the campaign coffers of the Democratic candidates. On the other hand big labor donated virtually nothing to Republican candidates despite the Republican political affiliation of 39% of their members. In most cases the rank and file union members never have a say about where their dues money is contributed and the vast majority of them don’t know that money is being contributed to the Democratic Party in their name even though they are registered to vote for another political party. To make matters worse, even if the members did know, they couldn’t stop it if they wanted to. In some cases the tactics the labor unions use to separate their members from their wages constitutes criminal fraud. The union represented school teachers in Alabama were solicited by their union representatives for monetary contributions to an organization called the “Fund For Children and Public Education.” They later discovered that their contributions to the “Fund For Children and Public Education” went straight to Barack Obama’s campaign fund and their request for a refund was denied. The only thing rare about this particular incident is that it became public. If the labor unions spent half as much taking care of their members as they do buying political power then American workers would be a lot better off. Unfortunately that is not the case and in today’s world for every dollar that labor unions put in a worker’s pocket they want two for themselves and they aren’t willing to do anything for it. Robert Reich’s ideas about labor unions helping the economy are ridiculous. The only value they serve today is as a money laundering service to the Democratic Party and that certainly isn’t helping the economy.

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U.S. counter-terror officials confirmed Friday that Said Ali al-Shihri, a former inmate at the Guantanamo detention facility for terrorists, is now serving as the top deputy in a Yemeni branch of al-Qaida that claimed responsibility for the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen’s capital city of Sana.

Al-Shihri was released by the U.S. in 2007 to our good friends and allies, the Saudi government who promised to rehabilitate the terrorist before releasing him. By all appearances, they did a bang-up job.

Hopefully this bit of news gives our new president something to consider before he closes down Guantanamo and ships all of those characters back to the Middle East. The United States would be better off to simply shoot them all now and get it over with. It would save us the problem of having to hunt them down after they’ve slaughtered another batch of American citizens. Islamic terrorists are like pedophiles, they don’t rehabilitate. The only cure is a bullet in the head.

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Following Obama’s inauguration speech in which he admonished the American people to take full responsibility for their own lives the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery gave an inaugural benediction that ended with the perpetuation of the illogical and misguided belief that the entire spectrum of racial disharmony in America can be effectively heaped on the shoulders of the white race.

“Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back . . . when brown can stick around . . . when yellow will be mellow . . . when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. Let all those who do justice and love mercy say amen. Say amen. And amen.”

In the days leading up to Obama’s inauguration the news media treated us to rehashed stories about racially discriminatory acts and practices of the past as if to encourage the younger generation to feel the pain of some long deceased individual’s suffering, and more than one newspaper noted that the ground upon which Obama took his oath of office was once considered off-limits to blacks. All things considered, all of this BS is enough to stimulate my gag reflex and motivate me to swear off reading the drivel printed in this nation’s newspapers for awhile.

Admittedly, I did not vote for Barack Hussein Obama and even more so, I never felt even the slightest temptation to vote for the man throughout the entire two-year presidential campaign. Be that as it may, Barack Obama is now the 44th President of the United States, and I hope the man proves me wrong about his abilities and does a bang-up job as our president. In fact, I not only hope he proves me wrong, I hope he does so well that I am convinced to vote for him in 2012. Our nation deserves strong, honest and effective leadership. If we are going to solve the numerous problems facing us and return to our former state of prosperity then changes are definitely in order and it will take strong leadership to enact those changes. Whether or not Obama is the guy for the job is still open for debate, but despite my doubts I wish him well.

Getting back to where I started . . . before any individual or racial group can begin to accept full responsibility for their own lives they need to quit blaming others for their lot in life. The keyword here is “full,” not “some” or “partial” or even “a little bit,” but “full” as in 100%. Accepting full responsibility requires the acknowledgement that everything including your financial situation, your social status, your level of educational attainment, your occupational outlook and everything else is the product of your own actions and choices. If you accept full responsibility for your own life then you can’t blame somebody else for holding you back because you are responsible for your own life and it is up to you to get ahead despite the adversity or the obstacles in your path. If someone is blocking your path then it is your responsibility to find a way around the blockage. You can’t blame them for being in your way; you can only blame yourself for not being smart enough to figure out how to get around the problem. That is the essence of what it means to take full responsibility for your own life.

I don’t know how many people in this country will remember Obama’s admonishment to take full responsibility of their own lives over the course of the next few years, but I bet a lot more will remember the contradictory statement Rev. Lowery followed it up with, “when white will embrace what is right.” As a full-fledged, life-long member of the Brotherhood of Independent Crackers (BIC), I find the comments of Reverend Lowery to be highly offensive, racist and downright ignorant, the combination of which leads me to believe that, while the man may purport to follow a higher calling, he is little more than a bigoted numbskull and bears a close resemblance to the most moronic of all clan members he fears might be hiding under his bed. Who the hell does this character think voted Barack Obama into office? African-Americans only make up around 9% of this nation’s population and even if they were all eligible to vote in an election there simply aren’t enough of them to swing the outcome. Obama won with something like 53% of the popular vote and that seems to indicate, at least to those of us with any sense, that a whole gaggle of white people had to of voted for him. Don’t get me wrong here; I am not putting anyone down for the way they voted. Ultimately, we all make our own decisions and I can live with the outcome even with it going against the way I had hoped. Besides that, as I stated above, I am hoping that Obama does so well in his first four years that I am convinced to vote for him in 2012. But with that being said, my thoughts on the matter are not influenced by the color of his skin and anyone who voted for Obama simply because he happens to be darker than John McCain is a bigoted racist, even if they are black.

When you get right down to it, neither I nor any other white person in this country bears even the smallest bit of responsibility for what our ancestors might or might not have done to or for the black man in the past. We can be completely responsible for our own actions but we certainly can’t be responsible for the actions of others, especially when those others were born, lived and died long before we arrived on the scene. To think otherwise is entirely ludicrous, to say nothing of being illogical. If this nation is to really pull it all together and start building the best of all possible futures for ourselves and our children, then we need to get past this sort of counter-productive garbage, and that includes all of us, black, white or whatever. Nobody can claim to accept full responsibility for their own lives and still blame others for holding them down. It just doesn’t fly, and in today’s America it is the lamest of all lame excuses.

The people living in the inner-city ghettos and barrios are not shackled to those streets and nobody is standing guard to make sure they stay in those neighborhoods. They can drag their asses out of the crack houses, crumbling projects and trashy apartment building any time they get the motivation to do so. If their schools suck then they can get a free library card and educate the hell out of themselves at absolutely no cost whatsoever. There are jobs out there for everyone, and if you can’t find one then you create one. You start out at the bottom and struggle upward. If you fall, you get up and start over, same as everyone else. You never give up because you know that nobody else is going to do it for you. Hard work, persistence and self-discipline are free to everyone. Nobody needs any sort of special dispensation from a higher authority to kick those common human characteristics into gear and no purchase is required. The universal acceptance of full responsibility by individuals for their own existence would do more for the future prosperity of this country, and for that matter, the entire planet than all the government bailouts ever conceived or desired. In every sense of the word, this is the essence of what we call the “American Dream.” No tax dollars need to be spent and no personal outlay of cash money is required, but one thing is required. Before anyone can accept full responsibility for their entire existence and begin the long arduous task of achieving prosperity they need to drop all of the whiny excuses and quit blaming others for their own personal situations. Unfortunately, that may be too high a price for those who take comfort in blaming others rather than facing the reality that they are simply irresponsible, gutless and lazy.

Get off your ass America.

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In his final act of clemency, President George W. Bush on Monday granted early prison releases to two former U.S. Border Patrol agents whose convictions for shooting a Mexican drug dealer. Bush commuted the prison sentences of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. The two guards from El Paso, Texas, who were sentenced to more than 10 years for the shooting. They will be released within two months.

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The citizens and legal residents of the United States are advised to keep their back muscles thoroughly stretched out and flexible because the 111th session of the all too liberal U.S. Congress has begun and the expectation is that we will spend a lot of time bent over once the Washington D.C. crowd starts ramming home their long awaited changes.

Like the blossoms bursting forth in an early spring, the indications of their intent are starkly obvious. Harry Reid, the U.S. Senate Majority Leader for the 110th session has already unleashed his revision of the McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill that was fire-bombed so effectively in 2006 and 2007. The most notable difference between Harry the Toad’s version and the crumbling remains of the previously failed attempts is Reid’s call to reconsider (translated as “tear down”) the southern border fence, which, according to Harry, “has adversely affected the fragile environment and vibrant cross-border culture of an entire region,” and for good measure, “stands as a symbol of fear and intolerance.”

Harry Reid, like most liberals in American politics entirely ignores the fact that there is a full scale war being waged on the other side of that fence, and that more than 5,300 people have been tortured to death, decapitated and otherwise slaughtered by Mexican drug cartels and Mexican police in the last year alone. The U.S. Immigration authorities are swamped with a nine-month backlog of citizenship application, we still have over 700,000 illegal alien fugitives from deportation running free (including Barack Obama’s aunt Zeituni Onyango) in the country, there are an estimated 4-5 million illegal aliens who have overstayed their visas and least we forget, there is also the matter of 20 to 25 million illegal aliens who entered the country without legal authorization, have never been through a deportation hearing and were never issued a visa in the first place. While we are tallying up the number of corpses laying around, maybe we should add in the 4,500 American citizens killed every year in this country by illegal aliens driving drunk, illegal alien gang bangers blasting away at each other and at the general populace for entertainment purposes and more generally, the simple minded homicidal pursuits of illegal aliens opportunistically preying on American victims.

To some American citizens ignoring the build-up of innocent American deaths might seem incomprehensible but due to the careful avoidance of the perpetrator’s immigration status and the government’s refusal to actually (or accurately) account for all of the victims, this problem slides by unreported and appears virtually unnoticed by the liberal American press, who in collusion with American business and left-wing ethnic groups have managed to slow down, and in some cases, altogether stop every attempt at increased immigration enforcement. One prime example is the recent derailment of the employer-verification program (E-Verify) that would have effectively helped to stop the employment of illegal aliens by American business and freed up millions of American jobs in the current period of economic distress and outrageously high unemployment.

Despite the economic hardship facing so many American citizens, the steadily increasing unemployment rate, the vicious nature of illegal alien predators and the enormous financial drain of American tax dollars going to subsidize the untold millions of semi-literate, unskilled and poverty stricken illegal alien criminals currently residing inside the United States, the 111th session of an overly liberal U.S. Congress is quickly adopting a “What-Me-Worry” approach as they pave a quick path to paying back the major financial contributors responsible for backing the Democratic Party’s recent purchase of comprehensively consolidated control of the U.S. Government.

The reincarnation of the twice vetoed expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is already making its way through the U.S. House of Representatives and should see passage before this posting is complete. This less than wonderful tidbit of legislative payback will financial enable millions of pregnant illegal aliens with free health care at the full expense of the American tax payer and this is only the beginning. Close on the heels of this unmitigated giveaway will be the liberal’s renewed push for full-blown and entirely unrestricted amnesty, re-animation of the bloated corpse of a moldering Dream Act, a host of destructive legislation designed to give corrupt labor union officials more power than common sense dictates, a national healthcare reform act that will devastate American healthcare (and taxpayers) for decades to come, and a wholesale handout of social welfare benefits to every conceivable deviation in the socio-ethnic spectrum.

Janet Murguia, president of La Raza, the nation’s primary organized political outlet for racist Hispanic advocates has defined the big window of opportunity for amnesty legislation as being between September 2009 and March 2010. The Grand Imperial Wizard of the Hispanic version of the KKK has obviously calculated this period of time as existing from the point where Obama “the Magnificent” becomes comfortably and fully acclimated to his new throne, the 111th U.S. Congress manages to curb their over-active salivation glands and restores the left/right order of their individual footing so they can begin the “work” of fulfilling their lengthy agenda without fear of falling flat on their collective face, and on the other end of the ticking timepiece, that point in the not-so-distant future where the American people have had their fill of getting abused, burdened, ignored, screwed, shafted, traumatized and violated and by the heavy-handed, and as yet unexposed, corrupt practices and embarrassing escapades of the bumbling incompetent fools (aka: staunch Democratic Party loyalists and life long liberal pickpockets) they unwittingly voted into high public office as their representatives in Washington.

Whether or not they are aware of the situation before them, the Democratic Party’s 100% control over all three branches of the American government for the next two years is probably the best thing that has happened to politically conservative American citizens in the entire political history of this nation. The only prerequisite to securing the full benefit of this wondrous occurrence is our ability to survive the sheer insanity of what we are about to witness and to remain standing when the dust and debris begins to float down from the sky and settle to the ground somewhere toward the end of 2010.

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The liberal controlled 11th U.S. Congressional session technically begins today however it will not meet for the first time until January 6, 2009 when the herd will be officially sworn in. To say that the air is thick with expectations is an understatement. The liberals hold a 58.2% majority in the U.S. Senate and a 59.0% majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and they are chomping at the bit to get underway. Clearly, with the election of Barack Hussein Obama, the most liberal U.S. President in this nation’s history, the liberal legislature will have a definite edge and most of the old-timers realize all too well that throughout their political lifetimes, this is the most golden of opportunities. They have been stifled, muzzled and thwarted by public opinion, circumstances and conservatives up to this point in time but from this point forward there is nothing obvious blocking their path and we can all rest assured that the liberals will not be the least bit shy about altering the American vision to conform with their liberal agenda.

Meanwhile, a city block away from the White House, president elect Barack Hussein Obama suffers the inconvenience of hotel living in the Hay-Adams hotel while impatiently awaiting his January 20th coronation as the land of freedom’s 44th all powerful leader. While I doubt that anyone will see B.O. and Michel carting cardboard boxes full of eggbeaters and Tupperware down Jackson Place on the eight minute walk to the White House, you might catch a glimpse of the first family-elect standing in a Hay-Adams window staring longingly out over Lafayette Square towards their future home.

If Obama maintains the same level of performance that has marked his political career up to this point then things might no be as bad as most conservatives now believe. His time will be thoroughly taken up with making stunningly theatrical appearances before appropriately awe struck crowds of peasants who have been carefully selected from campaign contribution lists, and giving long winded but highly articulate televised speeches that are short on actual content but inspirational nonetheless. Exactly how much input Obama and the members of his administration will have for the liberal legislature is, at this point, uncertain. The man rarely showed up when he was supposed to be working there so it’s anybody’s guess how much of his precious time he will carve out to direct their actions now.

Regardless of Barack Obama’s intentions or his performance (or lack thereof) the liberal contingent of the U.S. Congress is fully prepared to alter the fabric of American life and breathe life into what has been up to now nothing but a socialist’s dream. There is little doubt that their actions will have an immediate and substantial impact on American society or that the changes they implement will shake working class American citizens right down to their core.

As I see it the primary question is not whether this nation will survive for I have no doubt that we will survive in one form or another, the real question is whether or not the quality of our continued existence merits the effort of our fight for survival. If there is anything even remotely positive in all of this it is that, four years down the road the Democratic National Party is going to have nobody to blame for state of the nation and when the next presidential election rolls around they will stand before the American people and it will be completely obvious to all that they are the sole reason why things are far worse off than they were in the good old days of 2008.

BTW – - – One of the most pressing concerns facing the new House of Representatives is an interesting piece of legislation entitled “Restroom Gender Parity in Federal Buildings Act of 2007.” Surprisingly, Congress let this essential legislation fall by the wayside since it was introduced in 2007 but the Democrats have vowed to renew their efforts to get this thing passed. H.R. 693 will mandate that all newly acquired or renovated federal buildings are equipped with twice as many toilets in the women’s restrooms as there are in the men’s restrooms (including urinals). According to the hallowed standards of liberal politics, a ratio of 2 to 1 is perfectly equitable.

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