Day Five of the Shutdown: Still not Feeling the Pain

As the title indicates, I am simply still not feeling the pain of the supposed government shutdown. If anything this one is easier to deal with than the 94-95 shutdown, and that was back when I was completely ignorant of politics beyond who the president of the United States was at that given time. Would report on what's happening, but it can be summed up in one word: NOTHING!

In other news, I finally visited healthcare.gov, to see if the glitches were as widespread as people said they were, and guess what! They totally were! This is the message I received after clicking "apply now" on the website:

From RFC 2068 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1:

10.4.5 404 Not Found

The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.

If the server does not wish to make this information available to the client, the status code 403 (Forbidden) can be used instead. The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address.

This is the glowing advertisement given to us the American people. This is the solution to all the healthcare problems in the country. THIS STEAMING PILE OF CRAP IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE HOLY GRAIL OF LIBERALISM? WHAT A JOKE.

Day Four of the Shutdown: It's the End of the World as I Know it, but I Feel Fine.

I stole the title of this post from a song that I and everyone who grew up in the 1990s with me likely heard on a daily, if not hourly basis for the majority of that decade. We are now in  Day Four of the infamous government shutdown that was threatened when Ted Cruz took the floor of the Senate to (sort of) filibuster amendments to a bill that would have funded the government at the cost of funding Obamacare. I would have reported on the first three days of the shutdown, but honestly, NOTHING HAPPENED that was worth reporting. At least not until a crazy woman decided to run the barricades that have been set up in Washington because she thought the President was stalking her (no joke). That, incidentally had nothing to do with the shutdown, and the story was over almost before it began, since the woman was shot dead after leading the capitol police on a merry high speed chase. The only other events of interest are the media's expected and not surprising-at-all attempts to link the woman to Tea Party politicians and blame her behavior on the aforementioned shutdown.

People from all over the country are either complaining or elating that the government has shutdown, even partially. Here's the kicker, though: The government isn't the be all and end all of our lives, and this proves it. Just a look at what is being shut down should tell you that this is only a game to the suits on the Hill. The Grand Canyon has been shut down, national parks, the freaking WORLD WAR II VETERAN'S MEMORIAL has been barricaded off and cordoned, only to be broken through by what one of my fellow bloggers in the sphere called "The Charge of the Walker and Wheelchair Brigade" or some such thing like that. Unlike the referenced Charge of the Light Brigade, however, their efforts were not futile, and they succeeded in visiting said memorial with the help of the Fifth Column agents within the D.C. federal security that were supposed to keep them out. So there's that.

The reason, in my opinion, why the government shutdown is at the forefront of the news is not for the sake of reporting on the shutdown itself, but rather it is being used as a smokescreen NOT to report on the disastrous roll out of Obamacare, which was supposed to go without a hitch on October 1 of this week, and instead was met with all manner of glitches and bugs almost from the moment of its unveiling. By the time I went to Healthcare.gov it was at least partially working, but I didn't actually try to go through the enrollment process. Chicks on the Right had a post with video that explains the glitches, changing the tone of a story that was originally intended to be a glowing report on the efficiency and effectiveness of the new system. I watched the video the day of that post and had to resist the urge to laugh out loud at the irony.

Also in Obamacare/shutdown news:

Reports initially came in from my home state of California that over five million people had attempted to sign up for Obamacare, which they said was what resulted in the shutdown of the site, as well as myriad other bugs and glitches. This was later revised DOWNWARD  to just over 600,000. Even here in the People's Republic of Mexifornia no one is signing up for this thing. Add that to the fact that no one is signing up in Her Highness Queen Kathleen Sebelius I's home state of Kansas, and you get a sense of just what kind of steaming pile Obamacare really is.

More to come on Day 5

One Step at a Time

Big news, blogosphere! I have come out of my pseudo-retirement in order to inform all of my followers that a victory has been achieved for our side. I heard on the radio today as I was working my recently acquired paper route that the GOP has finally decided that listening to the American people is a good thing. Specifically that they've voted in the House of Representatives  (on a bi-partisan basis, no less) to defund the legislative monstrosity that is Obamacare. CBS News reports that the continuing resolution passed the House in a 230-189 vote, and would allow for funding of every government program currently in place, save for the Affordable Care Act. I don't need to tell you all, dear readers, that the Left is absolutely livid at this development, which only goes to show that the House Republicans are finally beginning to do one of two things: Either they're showing some backbone, or they're more afraid of the American people than they are of their "colleagues" in Washington. My guess is it's a little of both. After all first it was amnesty, then it was gun control, and now they're finally bringing the big guns to bear. We still have a long way to go, but at least we're one step closer than we were yesterday, am I right?

The above article also notes a quote from Dear Leader, loosely translated as: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!:

You don't have to threaten to blow the whole thing up if you don't get your way," Obama said in a campaign-style speech at a Ford plant in the Kansas City, Missouri area, adding that legislators in Washington were focused on politics and "trying to mess with me," rather than helping the middle class.

That was King Barack complaining that Republicans are threatening to "blow up" the government so that they can get rid of Obamacare. Remember folks, that this continuing resolution funds EVERY DEPARTMENT IN NEED OF FUNDING except the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Every news report and article I've seen says this. Yet we have Nancy Pelosi being let out of her Crazy Box to say the following:



Yes, you heard right, readers. Apparently we who would see Obamacare defunded are nothing more than "legislative arsonists". I'm not even sure what the heck a legislative arsonist is, but as I haven't seen anybody burning piles of bills in the news or on the internet, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that no burning is being done. Maybe it was Pelosi's pants on fire that she thought were causing the flames? I don't know. What I do know is, that woman needs to cut out the botox so her brain can heal a little bit. Sadly, though, I believe it may be too late for the poor organ inside her skull.

Yet I've found that no one can sound quite like a whiny child better than Dear Leader himself. Listen to this:



Sour Grapes anyone?

You Don't Get Over it, You Just Get on With It

I read in a Facebook post once that behind every cynic is a disappointed idealist. I don't believe I've ever heard a phrase that fit me so well in my entire life. When I was younger, I was what you might call a textbook idealist. I believed the best in everyone, no matter what. I was raised in a traditional Roman Catholic household, and was raised to such ideals as that faith teaches. I embraced the idea of a loving God and a chance at living in a world beyond this where no one knew anything even remotely similar to pain, suffering or torment. When I was younger, however, I was also not nearly as wise as I am now. I'm still not as wise as I would like to think I could become, but I like to think also that I've learned a thing or two in my 32 years.

Now that I think about it, I believe my idealism started to erode a long time ago, though I can't pinpoint an exact moment in my life when it might have started. All I know for certain is that at some point I became much more cynical about the world I live in. Perhaps there wasn't just one moment where it all came crashing down. I don't know. All I know is that these days, I've found it hard to find the good where it used to stare me right in the face. Maybe it's because life wasn't what I thought it was. Maybe it's because there has have been so many changes in my life that I no longer believe there's any sort of rock or safe harbor for me to sail to in times of emotional distress. This blog, ,now that I think about it, reflects that change rather accurately judging from the older posts versus the newer ones. Before when I started this blog it was for the purpose of keeping track of my then current schooling at MTI College, where I was studying at the time to become a paralegal. I finished that schooling, marking the end of a milestone of my life. I completed half of the two year program, and was looking forward to completing the second half, yet that never materialized. Perhaps it was due to my own lack of action. I'm not entirely sure, but for whatever reason that second year never materialized. I despaired, as any human being would when their chosen path turns into a dead end.

Funny. As I wrote the above paragraph, I came to realize that maybe there was a single moment where everything went awry for me. It had to have been the day, the very first day, that I willingly missed going to church. I don't know which day of my life that was, but it was sometime after I graduated high school and stopped having my mother watch over my shoulder every Sunday to make sure I went. I just...stopped for some reason. I'm not even sure what the reason was. Maybe it was because I thought I could make my own decisions about my faith and my life. Maybe it was a rebellious streak I was experiencing without ever knowing it. I'm not sure. All I do know is that I did it. What I didn't know at the time was the effect it would have on me years down the road.

After high school, I didn't know it, but I was lost. I was wandering, trying to find an identity that I didn't even know I was missing. For a long while I was enamored of being a writer to make a living. I was told since eighth grade that I have a gift for the practice, and I even lurched about experimenting with ways to learn the profession before shifting my focus to drama and acting. On the stage a new me awoke. I'd done stage performance before in an extremely limited capacity (forced assignments in elementary school and a dance class in high school that I needed to fill an elective slot). But it was during my senior year of high school that I truly came alive in such an avenue as stage performing. I'd never had so much fun in my entire life. I shifted career choices, not because I was disappointed, but because I felt that there was a new purpose in my life. 

I think the first time I felt the despair I mentioned earlier, though, was when I lost my first job. I worked for five and a half years at my town's local Burger King. I was good at it, too, though I got off to a rocky start, as it was my first real job. After a while, though, I became their most valued employee. I say this without any sort of false modesty. I was good at that job. Everyone said so, and I knew it because everyone said so. I was on the fast track to high level employment at my first job because I was idealistic enough to believe that I could succeed. I believed I could go as high as I wanted if only I worked hard enough and long enough, and kept an eye out for the opportunity.

And then I got fired.

You read that correctly. I got fired from the job I'd held for five and a half years. The story behind that is that I was working the cash register one day, only to come up short by a few dollars. My current manager was talking to my new manager about this, and the new one was told that a second offense in that regard would result in termination. Not really thinking about this information, I went about my day as normal making an effort to be more careful about keeping track of the money in the cash drawers.

It happened again.

I came up a meager amount short, but it was by a wide enough margin to bring about a suspension. Okay, a suspension. I could handle that. I'd been suspended before for making a mistake, why not again? At least I wasn't getting fired. Or so I thought at the time. After a week's suspension I came back to work ready and rearing to resume my duties, only to discover that I'd been left a note. The note was simple. It stated that my employment was terminated because of the fact that my drawer had come up short.

This was when I knew true despair for the first time. I could not believe that someone of my reputation had been ousted from his job because of a simple mistake that anyone could have made. To this day, I'm convinced that I wasn't terminated so much because of that, but because that manager was cleaning house. I wasn't the first one he'd fired, and I wasn't the last, either. But I certainly felt like I was the only firing that mattered. I couldn't understand the why of it, and when I can't understand the why of it, I get angry. I got angry when I was fired to the point that I cried openly when I was in the shower that night. It didn't help that when I told my mother she reacted less than favorably, and took her anger and confusion out on me because I was there. I had another job at the time at Paradise Bakery, believing that I needed it to supplement my income. I used it to that purpose for a time, of course, only to lose the extra income of Burger King in the process. Once that happened it became my sole income. Instead of appreciating that fact, I dwelt on the loss I'd suffered. I lost a great deal of self-confidence when I lost that job, though I didn't come to that realization until much later.

Time passed, as time is wont to do. Nothing changed about my life much in those years after I left Burger King, but I thought I was still persevering, trying to find a way to make my own way in the world. I wasn't. I was spinning my wheels. I still am, to some degree, though I've found another career choice that involves the courtroom and might be more suited to my talents. God willing, it'll be so.

Much happened in my life that I could go into detail about, but the long and short of those intervening years is that the despair lingered, though there were intervening moments of happiness during those years, I didn't notice them. Or if I did notice them it was only as someone notices a fleeting memory they hold fondly. As something they've lost and can never have again. It continued that way for years, even though I either chose not to see, or was incapable of seeing.

Fast forward to 2008. The political event of the century. The first black president was on his way to being elected, and I was here to see it. I was lucky enough to become politically aware at this time, too. Though part of me at times wishes it weren't so. The things I see in the news each day make me want to give up each and every day, some more than others. There are fleeting moments of  a positive nature on the news, of course, but they are so few and far between that I often wonder if the good outnumbers the bad. I still despair, more openly in fact, because of the state of the world and the fact that I was largely powerless to stop many of the bad things that happened from happening. I felt weak, impotent and powerless. Yet I had someone with me by that time that would help me in ways I could never have imagined back then.

I met Stephanie a year before we started dating. It was a fairly innocuous meeting, and we didn't talk, though we shared the same group of mutual friends at Sierra College. All that changed a year after we met, when Steph and I began coming up with character concepts for the game and we discovered a mutual creativity for storytelling. We still express this tendency today over chat programs wherein we play the characters whose stories we're telling.

Steph and I grew closer as the months passed, and eventually became good friends. I still remember the moment it began, too. She'd announced to the group that she was going for a walk around campus and that if anyone cared, they could come with. I chose to be her companion that day on her walk, and I listened as she told me her troubles, offering what little advice I could on the matter when prompted. Little did I know the huge impact this would have on my life from then on.

After that walk, I believe Steph began to change as well, and definitely for the better. The talk we had that day was only the first of many to come, the ones back then focusing mostly on her troubles with her then-boyfriend. Eventually, Steph grew to realize through those talks that she deserved better than she had, though at the time I didn't know that I would be the "better" that she would end up with. Yet looking back I wonder if I wasn't just the "better" that she needed, but the "best". They often say that George Washington was the only one who could do what he did at the time that he did it. Is the same true with me? Perhaps I'll never really know, but I've always believed that things happen for a reason, and this had definitely happened for reasons I wouldn't immediately notice.

After I met Stephanie and we began dating, the despair lifted. It had always been a goal of mine for many reasons to have a significant other, and I'd had a small number of people I'd called such over the years before her, and many false starts in between those, but with Stephanie it was different. It was very, very different. For one, the others I'd known had some measure of self confidence. Steph didn't have any when I first met her. I suppose that's what first drew me to her. I've always had a bit of a hero complex, and I saw a chance to help someone who needed it. It's been a long road, but I think I've done well, if I may toot my own horn for just a bit. I didn't yet realize that the hard times were just around the corner.

Those hard times would hit, as hard times often do, like a ton of bricks. I would like to believe that we didn't see the hard times coming, but looking back I think we were just in a state of denial. Her parents were elderly. Older than my own parents are, which should have been the first indicator. The other obvious indicators were their respective states of health. Her mother was long disabled from years working as a nurse, and her father had smoked for years and , as we would find out later, had developed esophageal cancer in addition to his heart disease. It was the second of these that would claim his life a few years into our relationship. Three years later, her mother's numerous health problems would claim her, sending her home to the Father Above.

The first three years were hard, but bearable. It didn't seem bearable at the time, but the fact that we got through it tells me that they were in fact bearable. Losing Steph's father, my would-be father-in-law, hit us both right in the heart, but Steph took it a lot harder than I did. Or perhaps we took it equally hard and just had a different way of showing it. I focused my grief into helping Steph deal with hers, only really letting it show after her cat had to be put down after he was gone. Steph lost her job weeks after he left us, and then her childhood home months later. They found another place, after which time I stayed with them permanently for a year, before opting to take an offer from my Dad to help me get my own life in order and move back in with him and mom. 

It was during this time, just as I was starting to readjust to living with my parents again, that Steph lost her mother. I got the call when I was at work that Steph had called 911, and was going to meet me at the hospital when I got there. After waiting for several hours we found out that Irma Pauline Eckhardt had died of heart failure. After three years of trying to hold on, God proved that no matter how tight the grip, when he calls you home, you have no choice but to answer. Well, answer she did, and left us wondering why it had to happen.

We wondered for a long time. I think Steph is still wondering. But I've at least come to some sort of answer that makes sense. The both of them died when they did because we needed to be thrown from the nest. After they were gone I realized that we'd been depending on them too much. It was then that I realized I had been depending on my own parents too much as well. I poured myself into my studies and steph into hers, and we soldiered on, but the despair still lingered.

Fast forward to today. I've lost my job at Staples due to layoff, Steph has finished school after returning and has student loans coming down the pike, and I'm still trudging along with my own schooling. I'm not getting hours at my new job, though I'm lucky to have found one, and they insist that they're going to give me hours, but I'm forced to look for other opportunities in case they don't. The despair came back in earnest after being gone for quite a while. I had a row with my mother because of that despair. I contemplated suicide because of that despair. But here's where things start looking up.

I've been watching Touched by an Angel on reruns lately, and the lessons that show teaches have stood the test of time, at least for me, and some have hit especially close to home, but there is one that repeats itself over and over again each episode: God loves you. I hear it at least once each episode. I sometimes have trouble remembering this fact, but the episodes have done wonders for helping me do so. 

What's my point after so long a post, you ask? My point is that I have chosen, after a sleepless night writing this post, that I choose to keep going. I choose to remove the despair from my life and replace it with the optimism and hope I had when I was growing up. I choose to be a positive force and face the hard times with those I love, helping them when they need it, and getting help from them when I need it.

I will not give up.

Are the Cracks Finally Showing?

It would certainly seem so. I was originally going to post about the resignation of Jim Allen over racially charged remarks he made about rival GOP candidate Erika Harold in an email, but this recent post by Hot Air's Erika Johnson  caught my eye, and I was eager to see some evidence about Obama and his cronies' grand House of Cards imploding, so here it is.

According to the above link, it would appear that young,  healthy Americans aren't all that keen on signing up for the Affordable Care Act, and that's making folks just a bit nervous. The damning details:



Look at the breakdown of the above chart. 65 percent of those surveyed between the ages of 18-25 are worried about paying medical bills for a serious accident, yet a quarter of that group, and  a quarter of those between 26-30 (that's 50 percent of the entire survey, for those of you that need the comparison) are saying that they're  healthy enough not to need any insurance in the first place. If that is indeed  the case, and this is a microcosm of young people's opinions throughout the country, that does not bode well  for the vaunted saviors of the United States. Indeed, Erika makes the point her self by citing the following paragraph:

Total numbers that include both insured and uninsured aren’t nearly as useful as breakdowns that separate these two groups. And these numbers are much less encouraging. True, 76 percent of all insured ages 18-64 say that “insurance is something I need.” But 40 percent don’t think health care is worth its price, and that number should be extremely troubling to ACA advocates. Since many of the currently insured will keep their current employer-based plan, the fate of the exchanges really hangs on the decisions of the uninsured. Unless a high percentage of currently uninsured youth opt in, Obamacare will face severe, possibly fatal, problems.

Honestly, this is all turning out to be one huge gamble that it would appear is stacked against the house. If the gamble doesn't pay off and people opt out of Obamacare, they're going to see premiums skyrocket even more and even faster than they would if everyone signed up, and that will cause the whole thing to come crashing down.

I could live with that.

Racist Republican Candidate Makes the Rest of us Look Bad

In the last nine years, I've learned a lot about politics and how it affects the people of this country. I even started this blog in an attempt to be what you might call the next Carl Bernstein or Bob Woodward and uncover the next big scandal that would, if not completely, at least go a long way towards reforming the broken system that we now have in place after a century of diverting from the course originally plotted by the Founders over two hundred years ago. My efforts appear to have had at least a small impact, as I have a bit of a cult following here at Galt's Gulch which I for a time was trying to expand to more mainstream levels, a la The Other McCain, Legal Insurrection, and other such giants in the New Media. To that end, I sought out any story I could find that would expose the Left in this country for the conniving con artists they were. Often, I arrived late to the party, the big stories having been snapped up by the bigger fish in this pond we call the internet.

Yet I persevered. For five years, since Barack Obama became president, I blogged about whatever goings on I could find that I thought people would want to hear about. I covered the Tea Party rally of 9/12, I made mention of their evil twin the Coffee Party, and even brought some of my own commentary to the Kermit Gosnell story that had captivated the New Media while the Old Guard ignored anything negative about that monster in a doctor suit.

I'll admit that lately, I haven't given much time to the blog thanks to life concerns, which I'm sure at least some of my fellow bloggers understand. Pursuing a new career in court reporting, as well as trying to find a new source of income in the aftermath of being laid off has left me with little option but to put the newshound in me on the back burner while I get my own house in order.

Now, I believe, is the time to resume my watchdog duties. I've secured employment at Kohl's Department Store, and my fiance has finished her schooling. This leaves me more open to notice more that goes on in the political arena without endangering my sanity.

One of the first things I learned as a blogger was that objectivity is difficult. My fair share of posts here at the Gulch have been tinted with more than a few brushes of pro-Republican sentiment. This time, however, things are different. My time away has allowed me to put some perspective on what is going on in Washington between both parties. Most notably in the last few days, this has consisted of Marco Rubio's joining the so-called Gang of Eight and his apparent attempts to do something about our immigration problem, as well as a  new story that was brought to my attention via The Blaze regarding a somewhat racist rant from a Republican contender for political office regarding his opponent.

First, the rant:

The Blaze, as noted above, first drew my attention to this story early this morning. It would appear that they have uncovered some evidence that indicates (at least in part) why the Republican Party continues to be labeled with the "racist white guy" shtick:

There’s a battle brewing in Montgomery County, Illinois, where Republican Party chairman Jim Allen recently sent a controversial e-mail to a blogger in an effort to target Erika Harold, a former Miss America who is running for Congress.

The message, which was sent to Doug Ibendahl, an attorney who was general counsel to the Illinois GOP from 1999 through 2001, is sparking quite a bit of controversy — particularly because of Allen’s mention of minority quotas (Harold is an African American).

The e-mail overwhelmingly focuses on the notion that the former beauty queen simply isn’t conservative enough, as Allen charges that she is a RINO (Republican in Name Only). Noting that Harold is going up against Rep. Rodney Davis in the primary, the GOP chairman makes it more-than-clear that he is patently against her candidacy.

The email can be read in its entirety at the link above. Suffice for me to say, though, that this is clearly an indication that there is at least some truth to the "Republicans are racist" meme. One of my favorite highlights:

The little queen touts her abstinence and she won the crown because she got bullied in school,,,boohoo..kids are cruel, life sucks and you move on..Now, miss queen is being used like a street walker and her pimps are the DEMOCRAT PARTY and RINO REPUBLICANS…These pimps want something they can’t get,,, the seat held by a conservative REPUBLICAN  Rodney Davis and Nancy Pelosi can’t stand it..

Horror of Horrors. Allen's opponent is abstinent and a former beauty queen, therefore she is not worthy of holding political office. Another gem:

Rodney Davis will win and the love child of the D.N.C. will be back in Shitcago by May of 2014 working for some law firm that needs to meet their quota for minority hires.

This is exactly the kind of language that the Democrat party and others use to beat us with a stick every time an election rolls around. Recall Todd Akin's comments during the 2012 election. Everyone on  the left and their mother tried to tie him in with the mainstream Republican party, as well as the TEA Party as a cynical method for garnering votes against him and against then Presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

I'm not going to endorse either candidate for the seat, as I d say,on't have a dog in this particular fight. I will say, however, that anyone who rants like that in what must have been intended as a private email is not someone I tend to gravitate towards as a representative. Allow me to at least go on record as being against this sort of vitriol, whether Republican or Democrat.

Not Exactly Nelson Mandela, is She?

Well, I've tried to avoid posting about this for a while now, but it's time I weighed in on the Free Kate movement and the pending trial of admitted sex offender Kaitlyn Hunt. I don't know how apparent it is from my posts in the past, but I have a very low tolerance for those who use victimhood as a shield against the law. Kaitlyn Hunt is one such person that I have a low tolerance for, and soon it will very likely be no tolerance at all. Another thing I have no tolerance for is liars. I cannot stand to be around those  who falsify themselves. Honestly, I'm glad I haven't been doused in Gamma radiation a la Bruce Banner, otherwise I might have broken Palo Alto by now thanks to the episodes of Hulking out. Fortunately, however, that is not the case, and Palo Alto remains intact, for what it's worth.

The maestro of coverage regarding this story has been The Other McCain, who has followed it like a bloodhound follows a scent. I've read his posts, as well as those of Da Tech Guy and Viral Read, and the more I learn about this case the more I want to see her punished to the fullest extent of the law, which might happen since Hunt rejected a plea deal that would have kept her off of the Sex Offender Registry. However, this is Liberal Land, and those who would see Hunt proved innocent are insistent that, as the President once said of his own scandals, there is no "there" there.

I am more than a little inclined to agree with R.S. McCain regarding this issue, largely due to the simple yet logical argument  of "she broke the law. Period." That he brings to the table. Really, this should be an open-and-shut issue. Hunt was a  legal adult, and her "girlfriend" was not. Every state has some form of Age of Consent that is enforced there. Such is the case with Florida, their particular age of consent being 16 years of age. Admitted Sex Offender Kaitlyn Hunt's girlfriend was not sixteen, while Hunt herself was eighteen, and so the law was broken. This really should be the end of the argument, and probably would have been if not for the fact that Kaitlyn Hunt is (at least in some photos) a cute blonde.

This is, when you think about it, the bread and butter of the reason for all the media coverage afforded to Admitted Sex Offender Kaitlyn Hunt. Honestly, R.S. himself put it succinctly in this post, which is a lengthier version of the previous paragraph. The real bottom line is that the law is the law, and if it's not upheld, that way lies chaos.

That Mr. G Guy, one of my contemporaries and a reliable reblogger that I know, has a couple of articles regarding this subject, one from our mutual blogger McCain and the other from American Thinker. Read that post here.

What a Difference a Week Makes

What's the difference between a 25-week-old baby and a 24-week-old-fetus? Not a thing as far as I'm concerned. And not a thing as far as most if not all pro-lifers are concerned. But apparently that's the crux of the defense for Kermit Gosnell and his House of Horrors. Via the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Overcoming this pile of evidence may seem insurmountable, but that is the job defense attorney Jack McMahon begins Monday. …

It is not known if Gosnell will testify. The Constitution does not require a defendant to testify or present evidence, and a jury may not consider that fact in reaching a verdict.

But given Gosnell’s past behavior, it would not be a surprise if he does.

From his first court appearance in February 2009, Gosnell has maintained an amiable, courtly demeanor that belies his precarious legal situation and the anger of some antiabortion partisans who have attended his trial.

He has rejected several plea deals from prosecutors, the last before jury selection started March 4. The offer would have let Gosnell serve life in a federal prison rather than the grittier Pennsylvania system and his wife, Pearl, 52, keep their West Philadelphia home.

“You’ll know when I know,” McMahon snapped on Thursday when Assistant District Attorney Edward Cameron asked for his list of witnesses, which he is required to file before beginning his case.

Doesn't sound like Gosnell's defense is too confident in his ability to defend someone who kept baby feet in jars, hmm? No. No, not at all. Honestly, though, how DO you defend a man who did the sort of things Gosnell did? Maybe it's because I have a conscience, but I just don't see how anyone can justify this kind of behavior.

And what about the lack of media coverage? Does anyone have anything to say about that? Jonah Goldberg does:

My fellow Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers wrote a USA Today column last week shaming the media for not covering the Gosnell case enough or, in many cases, at all. She got results. Suddenly everyone was talking about it. Though a dismaying amount of the coverage is about why there was a lack of coverage.

It’s an important issue, of course. But it’s not a complicated one. It seems obvious that most mainstream outlets are run and staffed by pro-choice liberals. But whatever the motivation, The Washington Post’s Melinda Henneberger is surely correct when she says the mainstream media are generally locked into a single narrative about abortion: “reproductive rights under siege.”

Ironically, the same factors that might have discouraged the mainstream media from covering the story in the first place now give them an incentive to turn it into a story about the media. CBS News, for instance, broke its broadcast boycott of the trial by running a piece on the political firestorm over the lack of coverage.

Goldberg is a hundred percent right in that excerpt. The lack of coverage is quite simply a case of "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." This was obvious to anyone with a brain from the very beginning. Though it is a bit ironic that the lack of coverage has itself facilitated the desire and the need for more such. Streissand Effect at work? You be the judge.

From Willful Blindness to Stunning Admission

Hat tip to The Other McCain for this:

[T]he MSM has barely covered a story that could plausibly be named “The Trial of the Century”. And that demands explanation. So I’ll tell you why I haven’t covered it.
To start, it makes me ill. I haven’t been able to bring myself to read the grand jury inquiry. I am someone who cringes when I hear a description of a sprained ankle.
But I understand why my readers suspect me, and other pro-choice mainstream journalists, of being selective—of not wanting to cover the story because it showcased the ugliest possibilities of abortion rights. The truth is that most of us tend to be less interested in sick-making stories—if the sick-making was done by “our side.”
Of course, I’m not saying that I identify with criminal abortionists who kill infants and grievously wound their patients. But I am pro-choice.
What Gosnell did was not some inevitable result of legal abortion.

This gem of a quote comes from Meghan McArdle at the Daily Beast. Part of a larger column that you can read in its entirety here. Having just finished the column as of this writing, I was ready to pounce. The quote from TOM made it seem as though she was going to start profusely defending the abortion industry that she, by her own admission, supports. And then I read further.

The article from the Beast appears to double as a defense against those who are skeptical of McArdle's motives for not covering the Gosnell story, and insisting that Gosnell isn't the rule, but rather the exception, with a dash of "how could this possibly have gone wrong?" thrown in for neutrality purposes. It's an attempt to be Switzerland while at the same time trying to side with the Viccy French. McArdle admits freely to being pro-choice (itself a biased term that stands in for "pro-abortion") but insists in the same article that Gosnell's practices aren't the end result of making abortion legal.

Obviously if you're reading this, you want my take on the issue. Well, I think Ms. McArdle is simply trying to jump through any hoop she feels is necessary to jump through in order to spin the Gosnell story in a favorable light for the pro-abortion crowd. Her excuses reek of someone grasping at straws and finding nothing to grasp. 

Still, this also appears to be further evidence that the tide against Gosnell is turning. McArdle and her ilk may be rushing to defend themselves and their pro-abortion allies against our cresting wave of truth in journalism, but at least now they're noticing the elephant in the room (even as they try to explain its presence away.)

It also raises another point of interest. McArdle makes clear that the reason she herself did not report on this story is because "it made [her] sick". The idea that these atrocities were occurring out in the open appears to have been utterly incomprehensible to her, and now with Gosnell front and center on the internet news stage, she's having to realize that her crusade to help by relieving women of what she perceives as a burden lead to this. But is she really changing her mind?

I don't believe so.

Another mention of the article that the author makes is that "While legal abortion was not sufficient to create the horrors in Philadelphia, it was necessary.  Gosnell was able to harm so many women and babies because he operated in the open."

This quote made me turn my head and blink for several reasons. The most obvious of which would be the honesty of it all. her tone suggests an apologetic admission, but it may have inadvertently been the most honest statement made in this entire article. She just admitted in one sentence that in order for the sort of thing going on in Gosnell's clinic to be possible, legal abortion is a NECESSARY COMPONENT!

Are more of these admissions on the way? Only time will tell.

Kermit Gosnell Finally Being Outed by the MSM?

I'm not sure whether to trust this development or not. According to this link on Hot Air, the baby killer known as Kermit Gosnell, currently on trial for endangering women at his abortion clinic back east, has been called "the worst serial killer in history" by Nightline anchor Terry Moran. Does this mean that the formerly major networks of the near defunct Mainstream Media are finally giving in to public pressure and shedding light on the darkest corners of the West Philly abortion industry?

Don't count your chickens just yet.

The network has, according to that link above, no original content regarding Gosnell exists in the ABC  News archives. All of it is taken from the Associated Press, but there IS some content dating back to late January that amounts to little more than a pen and paper shield against late term abortionists and how they aren't all like the monster currently on trial. There's even a video. The spin on the video and in the article made me dizzy. So dizzy that I don't think I could read or watch either one again. This paragraph from the article pretty much sums up why:

We learned at his knee," said Robinson, speaking of Tiller. "Kindness, courtesy, justice, love and respect are the hallmarks of a good doctor-patient relationship. People tell me every single day, 'Dr. Robinson, you've given me my life back.' For these women it is life or death. Many women try to self-abort. The less available it is, the poor will have the hardest time."

The rest of the article is much the same. In tone, at least. The whole thing reads as a desperate defense of people like Gosnell, based on the idea that women who get late term abortions are "just as desperate" as those who get abortions at an earlier time in their pregnancy. The above quote, for me, was the money shot. This article goes to great lengths to paint these so-called "doctors" as victims just trying to do right by the women that ask them to perform this procedure. Nowhere in the article, except for a caveat somewhere towards the middle, is there any mention of the women who were injured or who died as a result of these botched procedures.

Question: How do you paint these women as victims, while not acknowledging the horrors (well documented horrors at that) that can result from botched abortion procedures?

Sorry if I drifted a bit off topic in that last paragraph, but if you stick with me, I do have a point to make.

My point is that the MSM may be cracking under the pressure, but I don't think so. At least not yet. The ABC News declarations that Gosnell may be the worst serial killer in the history of the nation are a start, but they're more likely the result of  network trying to save what little face it may or may not have among low info viewers whose only source of news is the dinosaur media. Still, even a small beginning is still a beginning, and I'll be watching the net for more developments and updates

Even Death isn't Sacred Anymore

I've just had the most interestingly dismissive exchange on Facebook. As we all know, Margaret Thatcher has passed on. Because the Iron Lady is no longer with us, the Left and their cronies are having a hate-filled field day trying to trash her name and run it through the ringer until nothing is left. I've seen the hate on Twitchy, I've seen it on Hot Air, and I've seen it even on my own newsfeed on Facebook. It's the Facebook post that really got my blood boiling, though, because it shows the true heartlessness of some who opposed Margaret Thatcher. Twitchy has some real gems, but as the Facebook exchange directly affected me, I'm going to focus on that one.

This image has been circulating Facebook for the last 24 hours, in which Ken Loach has declared that Margaret Thatcher's funeral should be as cheap as possible because "it's what she would have wanted." First, how does he even know that? Second, how heartless can you be to deny a human being a respectful funeral, especially one who broke the glass ceiling as it pertains to the Prime Ministry position? The answer, apparently, is as disrespectful as Loach was being when he made that statement..

The real kicker about today, though, was that when I defended Thatcher from that jackal Loach, I was, predictably, best from all sides by liberals wanting to smother me with the idea that Thatcher was a horrible person and that the above comment I mentioned and linked to was "witty". I'm used to being beset by liberals when I open my mouth and shoot it off, but this time it really got to me. Why? Because one of the liberals in question was a member of my own family. I won't say who, because they are family and I don't want to cause any undue stress or trouble for them. However, I will say that this member of my family was trying to justify, though subtly, that Margaret Thatcher did not deserve to be loved because of the supposedly "horrible" things that she did during her time as Prime Minister of England.

What were those horrible things, you ask? Well, let's start with a little history on what Britain was like before Thatcher took the Prime Minster position, shall we?

Before Thatcher became Prime Minister, England's government owned close to 9/10 of all industry and manufacturing in the country. Stagnation was rampant. Economic growth had sputtered to the slowest of crawls, and unemployment was as bad as it had ever been, possibly worse. Fast forward to Thatcher's tenure: privatization of the industries that were in most need of it, scaling back government control of agencies and ensuring less intrusion into the lives of Britain's private citizens. Sounds pretty evil so far, right? No? Well, then maybe this is what they were talking about.

During her tenure as Prime Minister, the Irish Republican Army was still up and running, and they decided to try and take out 800 years worth of frustrations over dealings with England by assassinating her. The attempt failed, and the culprits were imprisoned. Seeing that their attempt failed, the IRA members decided that a hunger strike would be enough to get the Iron Lady to bend. They were sadly mistaken. Tragically, several of these men died during their hunger strike, as Thatcher refused to bend and give in to their demands. Evil? I would have to say no. thatcher didn't force these men to go on hunger strikes and starve themselves, and  the UK and U.S. have always had a policy of not negotiating with terrorists, which is what the IRA were. The hunger strikes did provoke Ronald Reagan to action, however, and he convinced Thatcher to work with the Irish on a peaceful settlement, which she achieved. Top that off with bringing England back from the brink of economic collapse, and I'd say Thatcher was about as far from evil as a human being can realistically expect.

Building Character Classes: An Exercise in Balance

So I've continued working on my home brewed Dungeons and Dragons setting, Amadonia, for the last month or so, with mixed results. Most of it has been genuine progress regarding the lore of the world, such as the creation stories of each fantastic character races that I'm allowing, and has been difficult at times to tie in neatly, simply because I have no sure fire way yet of organizing the stories other than the wiki I've been slowly working on since this idea began to germinate in my head almost a year ago now. But that, in my opinion, seems like more writer's block than anything else. At any rate, that's not what this post is about.

One of  my players expressed a desire to play a class known as the Arcane Archer, a sort of magical Robin Hood type whose archery abilities are augmented with arcane magics. There arose an immediate problem with this that I found I had to rectify: The class he wanted to play that would allow him to use archery most  effectively was the Ranger, who does not have access to arcane magics. Rather, the Ranger class, as any Dungeons and Dragons veteran will tell you, specializes in DIVINE magics, that is magics that are granted as blessings from a patron god. To this end, I took it upon myself to, rather than simply deny his request, I took it upon myself to find a way to satisfy the class requirements of the rules, as well as his desire to play a spellslinging archer.

Delving into my creative mental recesses, I came up with the Divine Hunter, a class of warrior that not only can use divine magic the way an Arcane Archer uses the arcane variety, but also has a distinct set of abilities designed to battle such undead creatures as zombies, wights, ghouls, and other such horror movie fare.

It's been quite a challenge, but also a great exercise in my execution of the DnD rules. After I wrote this article explaining a rudimentary skill set and statistics block for the class, I enlisted the better half, my fiancee, to help me playtest it. So far I've run her through about six different solo adventure modules, with mixed results. At first there were no readily apparent kinks to work out, and I was partially believing that I'd succeeded in my task and wouldn't require any find tuning. I learned quickly that this was not the case.

Last session, I ran an adventure titled "The Silver Skeleton", and discovered that my desire not to overpower the class had actually resulted in it becoming UNDER powered, as even at midlevel (level 6-9) The class had almost no access to divine magical spells that would help her against any sort of adversary, undead or otherwise. The solution, of course, was to offer her wider spell selection and start the progression of her magical abilities at first level rather than at fourth, as had originally been the case.

The real test, of course, will be the upper levels. If I can keep her balanced enough to last until level 20, the absolute level cap for the class before going Epic, I'll know the class is ready for play.

Amadonia: The Beginning

Long time no see, fellow readers. You might remember that in my last post I decided that I would take a break from politics and bad news and focus on blogging about my own hobbies, if nothing else to give you all something to read about that didn't immediately send you into the doldrums. I intend now to deliver on that promise and update you on some of the work I've been doing on my Dungeon's and Dragons campaign world, Amadonia.

It's actually been a lot of fun working on this, something of a pet project, if you will. It was inspired most recently by a friend of mine who decided to base her own game around the setting of Ancient Greece, and it has somehow become something of an ongoing pet project of hers. In addition, It's long been an aspiration of mine to create a fictional fantasy world of my own. I've made several attempts over the years, but most of them have fallen flat. This time, however, it appears to be working better than I'd hoped it would. I began with starting my own wiki over at wikispaces.com, and from there the thing has somewhat snowballed  into a full blown project. I've mapped out three of the continents on the world thus far, with at least one more needing to be finished before I can start mapping the adventure sites. Once I get at least one of them mapped out and filled with appropriate challenges, I can finally begin helping the players create characters and the game can begin.

Next time I'll go into more detail about the world itself and how it came to be. Until next time.

A Change in Format

It has obviously been a while since I've posted here, for various reasons. After the 2012 election and the second coronation of King Barack, my confidence took a huge hit. I managed a "never say die" post mentioning Valley Forge and the Founders, reminding other conservatives not to lose heart in the event of the crushing loss we suffered on November 6th. I have since found it very difficult, if not impossible to blog about anything related to the Boy King or his policies. It's a far cry from the idealistic underdog crusader I styled myself  as when I first started this blog. I can only say  that prior to November I thought I knew what it was to put in hours to help defeat the first ever president I truly disliked having in the Oval Office.

I now realize that I was wrong. I'm just simply unable to muster the energy to get angry enough to post about Obama's latest use of his new Constitutional toilet paper. As such, I've decided to change the subject matter of this blog temporarily to give myself a chance to get back to neutral and cool the engines. What am I going to blog about in the place of Obama's tyranny, you ask? Well, I've always been something of a geek, ever since my high school days when I was introduced to Second Edition Dungeons and Dragons. Even before that I was introduced to Star Wars by my father, who showed me Episode IV before it WAS episode IV. Ever since those innocent days of my youth I've always been interested in the stories involving the hero who slays the foul dragon and rescues the fair princess from the evil clutches of the black knight, thus ensuring the gratitude of  the royal family.

With that in mind, I've decided to turn this blog into a progress report regarding a homebrewed setting I'm conceiving, Amadonia. Once I've done some work outside of politics, I may in the future attempt to wade back in. For now, however, no politics will be spoken of on this site.

Not Retreating, just reloading.

The Constitutional Crusader