GneissGuy

I do not condone what Joe Stack did, but I do understand it.  In the same way that I could not condone the homicidal actions of Klebold and Harris, I did understand them.  Not everyone is a willow tree that can bend with the storm.  Some of us are more likely to break than bend.  You can call Joe Stack a coward, but at least he had the conviction to fly the plane into the building himself.  The people I would call the cowards are the nameless, faceless, countless bureaucrats that sit in their government offices day after day issuing little pieces of paper that destroy people’s lives with no possible damage to themselves.  Well, no damage until someone like Joe Stark breaks and thinks he has nothing left to lose.

My point is, if you truly believe that Joe Stark was a coward and you cannot understand what he did then you are entitled to your opinion.  However, if you are engaging in damage control by denouncing a man that fought back against a government that no longer fears its citizens; you are doing no one a favor.  I say this because you are not going to soften up the statists attitude toward liberty activists by being tough on someone they broke.  The people that count are the people who are mad as hell about our current state of government and while they will not condone Joe Stark’s actions, they also understand them.  Take times like this to direct their anger in the constructive direction you want them to instead of blaming a victim of statist violence for breaking and fighting back with violence.

In Liberty, John West

Yep.  I’m back at it.  Watching what I eat and building up my running to half-marathon distances.  Today’s run will be a 9 mile run.  Next week 10 miles.  I will probably leave my weekend runs at that level for a little while and work on speed from that point.  I am already registered for the Colfax Half-Marathon and plan on running in the BolderBoulder and Denver Half-Marathon.  I just cannot put in the time it takes to train for a full marathon at this point in my life.  Maybe in a few years when my work life can handle it.  The biggest problem I have with the training is that I have to run the same distance during the week as I plan on running on the weekend and to run marathon distances I feel you have to train at marathon distances.  I don’t have the time to run two hours twice a week.  I really do admire people that can put in the time and run like that.

As seen on Twitter:
ProgressNowCO: RT @tweetwtf Big #WTF! Oil & gas companies spent at least $154 million on lobbying in 2009 up 16% from 2008.
So let me get this translated for you. In this recession and with wages being cut all over the business world the politicians are getting a 16% pay raise. Don’t blame the companies that have to pay to protect their interests. Blame the politicians that pull the strings. Then blame yourself for letting them have that kind of power. That goes twice for all of you “progressives” (read “statists”) out there!!

I am disappointed in America today. The SCOTUS has upheld the freedom of expression that campaign finance reform took away from corporations and unions. Instead of taking a really hard look at what the campaign finance problem is, all I have heard today is the usual bickering over how we limit money in politics. WAKE UP PEOPLE!!! Stop playing the shell game the politicians want you to play! Take a step back away from the con-artists table and look at the game. The REAL reason there is money in politics is because the corporations and unions have correctly identified the problem with campaign finance. The politicians have been given or have taken a massive amount of power and now they get to decide who wins and who loses. The corporations and unions are only fighting for survival. If they don’t pay to play, their opponents (often an opposing corporation or union) will pay the piper and make off with the loot. The only way this country will reduce the corruption of our government is to restore the restrictions that had been originally placed on the federal branch of government in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Remember, if you don’t play a game by a solid set of rules, expect to lose!

Just remember, if you think health care is expensive, just wait until it’s free!!
Indenpendance Institute\'s Take on the Government\'s Health Care Con, I mean Cure. No, I really mean con. Really.

How much longer do you think this house of cards can last? We have a government that no longer bears any resemblance to the Constitution. We have fiat money that no longer bears any resemblance to real money. We have politicians that no longer bear any resemblance to the citizens they are supposed to represent. This country is now a hard-scrabble of good intentions, bad ideas, and down-right thievery.
There is no other way to explain 95% of government spending today. Let’s take money from the working citizens and give it to the retired. Let’s take money from the healthy and give it to the sick. It’s devolved to the point that the politicians have now said let’s take money from those driving nice cars and give it to those driving clunkers. Sooner or later the bill is going to come due and while the politicians say they are not driving us to socialism they are already quickly running out of other people’s money.
The US managed to have a few wars come to it in its first hundred years, but now we have waged wars on foreign soil for almost one hundred years. Our founding fathers warned us that our freedom at home would be lost to the threat of foreign menaces. Each war we fight outside of this country has eroded our freedom at home. With this last war against “terror” our Bill of Rights is threadbare.
Within the US we has seen the evolution of the police forces from sheriffs with little more than badges to para-military police departments in our major cities that would count as a larger military than 75% of the world’s countries. We have the highest imprisonment level of any nation at any time in the world’s history. Even back to Roman times Tacitus’ words ring down to us that “The more corrupt the state the more numerous the laws.”
So I ask you again, how much longer do you think the US can last until we are reduced to a footnote in the textbooks of history?
I don’t think the old gal has much left in her. Now I just cringe every time a politician runs to the public yelling about how the government needs to “do something!!” Necessity is the creed of dictators and the mantra of slaves. If you count yourself as not amongst the sheeple, you need to take a hard look at the necessities our government is operating on right now. I wished I could tell you the answer is that we just need to tell our politicians to stop it but I can’t. Now I think the best we can do is to prepare for the coming collapse in the best way we each know how and then hang on for dear life. Good luck to us all.

Mahatma Gandhi once said: “There is no way to peace, peace is the way.”
I really have nothing to add to that, I just want you to think about the words.
With those words, please do not reach for you guns when TSHTF. Reach for your videocamera. Don’t cooperate with your captors or your would-be masters. Video their bad behavior and make sure they cannot hide in the shadows or behind their co-conspirators in the judiciary.

Here we go folks.  Colorado is looking to put pressure on our legislators to defeat the upcoming national health care plan that is expected this summer.  This weekend Coloradoans will take aim on Betsy Markey letting her know what they think of nationalized health care.

Every citizens nightmare has happened in NY.  A man holding a firearm in the open was shot by the cops.  It is not clear if any orders were given to the man who was killed or even if the plain clothes cops identified themselves as police.  Except this time the cops got one of their own.  In an attempt to arrest a man who was breaking in to his car a NYPD officer in plain clothes was gunned down by another cop.   I think this clearly shows how readily cops are willing to shoot the civilians they are supposed to be protecting instead of taking the risk of being shot themselves. A risk that they are paid for, at least that’s what they tell us every time they want a raise.  Maybe after this cops in NY might be a little more careful about shooting the next civilian they come across with a weapon drawn, but you won’t find me holding my breath.

I am a veteran.  Or at least I was a Reservist.  I was an Airborne Infantryman before President Clinton took the combat arms units out of the Reserves.  I will not try to compare my service to that of a WWII vet or even a current vet from Iraq or Afghanistan.  Those people have actually had people out there that wanted to kill them and they have survived.   I only make the statement because I have completed Army Infantry School and Airborne School at Ft. Benning, GA. 

That qualification is important from the point of knowing what I am talking about only because I have actually been through the training.  Army training, and to an equal or lesser extent all military training, teaches soldiers to react and not think about what they need to do.  This insures the soldier does what they need to do when they are in combat.  More importantly, the Army trains soldiers to de-humanize their enemies.  This is intended to allow soldiers to kill enemy troops without remorse.  I just had a chance to see parts of the “Band of Brothers” mini-series.  I think it was a remarkable piece of work.  It also drove home the point about war that I have taken to heart over the years since I was a gung-ho, hard-driving Airborne Infantryman.  Soldiers kill other soldiers.  That is too clean, too aseptic.  More accurately, men kill other men.  US soldiers came home from WWII and most didn’t want to talk about what they did over there.  This is because they had to find some way to deal with the fact that they had to kill other human beings and had to see many of their buddies die at the hands of other human beings.  On the ground and in the trenches, the inevitable situation soldiers find themselves in during a war is doing whatever it takes to make sure that they and their buddies get home safely.  There is no glory in war, there is only pain. 

So you may be asking, what is the answer to war?  My answer is to hold the leaders accountable for their actions.  Why would it have been so evil to assassinate Hitler (or insert the out-of-control government leader here) but its OK or even a great patriotic good to send millions of men onto battlefields to kill millions of other men?  Really, why does that make sense?  America always wants to point to how morally superior we are because we do not endorse assassination, yet we are always ready to send our soldiers into harms way. 

If you want something to remember this Memorial Day, I would ask that you remember the amount of pain that our war veterans have had to endure because of the actions of the leaders of governments (foreign and our own).