Blog

Slowly,  but surely, I’m going through loose notes I’ve made to myself over the years. These are pieces of paper on which I jus’ jotted down a thought or two and sometimes failing to date, then stuffed in a file for future use.

Many are like this one written — which I did date — on February 04, 1994:

“Mary and I went and bought some toilet paper last night. We actually stood in the aisle and debated with one another over how much to get, fretting over how much money we don’t have. It is at times like this that I find it strange how I have nothing to show for my life’s work, which is radio — not even a roll of toilet paper.”

Yikes!

Looking back now, I can see that pattern has stayed the same over the years. But I never got into the biz for the money, instead I always tried to follow what Proverbs 22:1 reads: “A good name is more desirable than great riches…”

The two squads slowly made their way down the hard pack dirt road, each man maintaining a proper distance from the one in front and the one behind. There was no sense in two guys getting hit by a guerrilla sniper for the price of one.

Their target for this late afternoon raid was a middleman in the Presidents “War on Drugs.” The man had a reputation for living like a peasant but he created roads and schools for his own village with the cocaine money he received from the killings he committed.

Doc was part of Team Two. His Team would back door the targets home and make the capture or kill, which ever was to come.

Both Teams used the hard packed roadway as much as possible only slipping back into the bush if there was the slightest chance of being detected. It took them nearly half an hour to finalize their approach on the small village.

It was set up exactly as S-2 Intelligence had said it would be.

“That’s a first,” Doc thought as he hunkered down along the ridge line overlooking the sleepy mud shanties.

The sun was setting as Team One moved off the ridge and towards the left and into the village. A dog could be heard barking in the distance. It was noise Doc found strange in this part of the world.

“There must be plenty to eat,” he said to himself.

There would not be after tonight if this raid went as planned, though. Team Two moved forward and off the ridge to the right.

Doc was in the number five position as usual. This time the two squads were accompanied by an interpreter by the name of Ruben and he was right behind Doc.

He had never met Ruben before this morning and he did not like the man. Ruben wouldn’t look Doc in the eye when he spoke.

It made the young medical Sergeant uncomfortable. But Ruben was assigned to the Teams and that was that.

“Okay,” the Gunny said, “We’re all in position. Let’s take the house.”

There was a sudden flash, followed by a loud bang. Smoke filled the air as a cacophony of voices raged.

This was followed by a burst of gun fire. Then more gun fire.

Before the Teams realized it, they were under attack from the household. The people inside the home were launching everything at them that they had inside the place.

The simple plan to raid and either capture or kill the target was falling apart.

Doc stepped inside to aid in the fire fight. Marines were being wounded but holding their ground without complaint, when a Corporal decided to toss a satchel charge inside the front door of the house.

When it went off, it had a devastating effect. There were dismembered humans and twisted and crumbled pieces of ruins scattered in a one-hundred foot circle.

The shooting stopped and many of the Marines slowly rose to their feet. Some looked on in disbelief.

Doc tapped three Marines and Ruben to move forward towards a portion of the house that still remained standing. It was under a stair way which was stronger due to the construction of the steps that lead up to the second floor which was now collapsed onto the first floor.

The front and right side of the house no longer existed. The satchel charge had found the weak point and destroyed the frame, causing it to heave up and fall back on itself.

In the distance the transports could be heard as they roared down the red hard pack dirt road towards the village and the Teams position. Quickly the four combat veterans and single interpreter moved through the wrecked house towards the lone door.

Doc signaled to two of the Marines to kick in the door and for one to cover them. They executed the plan with flawless precision, having done the same thing so many times before.

Once inside they discovered two women and three children. The two Marines who entered first attempted to coax them out.

They refused to move, frightened of the “Americanos.”

It was up to Ruben to talk them out of the nearly destroyed room. Instead of remaining calm, he started speaking loudly.

The look on the little girls faces was that of terror as they stepped behind the older lady. The little boy didn’t look much better.

Ruben started screaming at the top of his lungs. Doc suddenly recognized what he was saying, “Fuego, rapido, fuego!” or ‘Fire, quick, fire,” in his native latino language

Without warning the younger of the two women turned around with a pistol and fired it.  Her action was met with a blast from the two Marines rifles.

Doc pulled out his service pistol and cocked it. He calmly placed it against the back of Ruben’s head as he continued to shout.

He squeezed one round off.

By the time the melee’ was over Ruben lay dead. So did both women and two of the three children.

The three Marines staggered out of the room in shock, immediately falling down to their knees and vomiting over what they had just done.

Major Brownhorse wanted to know what had happened. As soon as Doc could composed himself he gave the commanding officer a brief statement and then offered him his sidearm.

“No, I don’t want that,” the Major said. “I want that damned traders’ ears! If he couldn’t talk straight in this life, I don’t want him hearing anything in the afterlife.”

The two Teams may have missed their target but Major Brownhorse got his trophy.

After we heard the National Weather Service alert yesterday warning the Spanish Springs area of possible tornado activity, my roommate and I went outside to see if we could spot any for our selves. What we witnessed were clouds spinning counterclockwise, forming tiny ‘nipples’ that dissipated as fast as they formed.

In total we observed three of these above the Pah-Rah Hills to the east of us. Each was racing slightly ahead of a quick moving thunderstorm that was dumping sheets of rain across the desert landscape.

The Reno Gazette-Journal says there have been 79 tornadoes reported since 1962, mostly in western Nevada and Clark County with “a Silver State tornado alley along Interstate 80.” They got their information from the website Tornadoproject.com.

The website lists only three incidents of damage from tornadoes in Nevada:

• May 26, 1964, when a small tornado damaged outbuildings on a ranch near Yerington. A man was struck and injured by flying debris.
• July 16, 1973, when a small tornado touched down six miles north of Reno. One person was injured.
• March 30, 1992, when one home was shifted and another lost part of its roof in southern Las Vegas.

The last time the NWS issued a tornado warning for any part of Nevada was July 21, 2008.

Over the last few years I’ve been over-wrought with all the political news I’ve been reporting. Much of it hangs in my mind even after the day is done and I’m laying bed trying to fall asleep.

Not only has this left me with insomnia, but also with a sickness in my soul that seems to linger longer and longer with each passing crisis. Because of this, my desire to write has been lacking – but I didn’t know what to do about it.

Then a couple of nights ago, after talking with the Lord about how I’ve been feeling, a voice inside me said, “The stop writing about politics.”

What an amazing revelation!

First, that the answer is so simple and second, because I know the voice, the one I believe to be my subconscious, is enabled by God. While it sounded like me in my head, it was a spiritual prompting from beyond me.

Now, this is not to say I’m hearing the voice of God and that he’s speaking directly by audio-form into my ear. Rather it is the Holy Spirit – which dwells in each of our souls and acts as a sort of holy tuner, if you will, channeling God’s will into our being.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that I’m stepping away from following politics to the point that I feel physically compelled to write about it. Instead I’m returning to writing simply for the fun of it – you know those little stories that make up life, living, loving, laughter and learning.

Allow me to share one more thing that small indwelling voice has let me in on: God is in control and everything works for His good and thus, our good too.

I think I already knew this, but had forgotten about it somewhere along the line.

There was a time when those who went to tattoo parlors were the ‘social misfits’ of the community. I contend that they are not when it comes to freedom of expression, rather the real misfits in today’s society are those who bad-mouth such places and such people.

My conclusion is drawn on the fact that the word ‘fuck in used like baseballs at a major league game. Furthermore, the word ‘nigger’ blasts from the sound system that plays the kind of rap music most ‘regular’ people claim they try to avoid.

But after observing this stuff, I realized that the vulgar language, the disparaging rap songs and the ‘social misfits’ are actually the ‘new’ normal. They are practicing their freedom of expression that only a few people know how to do.

It’s a shame that such a freedom loving portion of the U.S. has been mislabeled they way they have. These are the kind of people who don’t worry about what is or isn’t politically correct and I think it is time that as a people we should take a lesson from them.

The new Advanced Placement U.S. History exam is gutting traditional American history, turning it into a leftist view of an America based on identity politics and not a Constitution meant to protect the rights of individual freedoms.

For instance James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and the other founding fathers are largely left out of the new test, unless they are presented as examples of conflict and identity by class, gender, race, ethnicity and such.  belief in the superiority of their own culture.

The new framework forces teachers to ‘teach’ their students in a leftist, blame-America-first reading of history, while omitting traditional treatments of our founding principles.

The new exam has been authorized under David Coleman, known as the “architect” of the Common Core standards and, now, the president of the College Board, the organization responsible for the SAT college entrance exam and the various Advanced Placement exams.

Fortunately, leading the charge against the new exam is Texas, which is about 10 percent of the College Board’s market.

Texas School Board’s Ken Mercer is trying to introduce a resolution that would reject the new AP exam. Mercer is being told, however, that the resolution cannot be introduced until September, when it will be too late.

While the College Board has released a complete sample exam, it’s only done so to certified AP U.S. History teachers. And those teachers have been warned, under penalty of law not to disclose the content of the new samples exam anyone.

But don’t expect NBC to tell you the truth about the rewrite or Common Core . That’s because Bill and Melissa Gate’s ‘Gates Foundation,’ is now funding the news giant’s education coverage as noted on NBC’s website:

“Education coverage for NBCNews.com is supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. NBC News retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage.”

This isn’t the first time the Gates Foundation has entered into such an agreement with the media. In October 2010, ABC News and the Gates Foundation inked a yearlong project investigating global health problems and their potential solutions.

The Gates Foundation supplied a grant of $1.5 million in order to travel the world reporting on various health crises and suggesting solutions. ABC claimed it retained full editorial control.

Beginning in 2000, the Gates Foundation spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to ‘improve’ high schools by making them smaller, only to discover student body size has little effect on achievement. It then shifted it’s its focus on teaching and that increasing achievement is as simple as removing bad teachers, identifying good ones, and rewarding them with money.

Based on this the Gates Foundation will spend $290 million over seven years on school districts in Tampa, Memphis, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. These districts are intended as models that, if proven successful, can be rolled out nationwide.

While cities like Denver and Cincinnati have experimented with paying teachers for performance, the Gates ‘Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching,’ is the largest and most comprehensive effort to test teachers in all grades and subjects based on student test gains.

In his 2009 book, ‘Picturing the Uncertain World,’ Howard Wainer says the Gates Foundation’s data showing small schools are overrepresented, is in error. Wainer says big high schools outperform small ones, adding that the larger scale lets them offer more advanced classes, electives, and extracurricular activities.

Even though, the Gates Foundation started pouring money into creating small high schools and subdividing big ones.

With Gates funding, one Denver high school split into three and lost so many students that it shut down in 2006. It reopened a year later as a single school, without the Gates Foundation’s support.

In November 2008, Gates acknowledged that “simply breaking up existing schools into smaller units often did not generate the gains we were hoping for.” Still, the Gates Foundation is crediting the smaller schools for their skill at boosting attendance and decreasing violence.

Once it became clear small schools weren’t the answer, the Gates Foundation, in 2007, started evaluating teachers based on student test score. The Gates-funded plan in Tampa will start this school year.

Of the $100 million the Gates Foundation is pouring into the Hillsborough County district, about $60 million will go to teachers. With the cash comes a new evaluation system: 40 percent of the grade will be based on student learning gains as measured by standardized tests, 60 percent on observations by the school principal and teachers from elsewhere in the district.

A higher rated teacher could earn as much in their fourth or fifth year as a teacher with 20 years’ experience. The Gates Foundations goal is to get teachers to adopt ‘best practices’ and learn from colleagues who are more effective in handling disruptions or instilling particular concepts.

As a condition of funding, the Gates Foundation also required Hillsborough and the other districts to cooperate with local unions. So, Hillsborough agreed to tell teachers in advance when peers will observe their lessons, making positive evaluations more likely.

By contrast, teachers in Cincinnati will give two lessons in front of evaluators without prior notice.

More than 99 percent of Hillsborough teachers were rated satisfactory or outstanding in 2007-2008, and 98 percent of those eligible received tenure. Hillsborough currently terminates 0.5 percent of its teaching force annually.

A study of five Florida districts from 2000 to 2005 found that only half the teachers ranked in the top 20 percent one year were in the top 40 percent the next.

In Memphis, where Gates has invested $90 million, a third of students move during the year, meaning gains can’t be credited to one school or teacher. Giving several tests a year can sort out each teacher’s contribution, but ratings still may be tainted since teachers have to account for newcomers and student departures.

In a national survey of 40,000 teachers, co-sponsored by the Gates Foundation and released in March, 36-percent said tying pay to performance is not at all important, while only eight-percent said it’s essential. Meanwhile, 30-percent said it would have no effect on student achievement.

Presently, the Gates Foundation and Education Secretary Arne Duncan seem a bit too cozy. Two of Duncan’s top aides, Chief of Staff Margot Rogers and Assistant Deputy Secretary James H. Shelton III, came from the Gates Foundation, having been given waivers by the administration from its revolving-door policy limiting involvement with former employers.

Vicki Phillips, who heads the Gates Foundation’s education programs and Duncan, participated from 2004 to 2007 in the Gates co-funded ‘Urban Superintendents Network.’ When the federal government made $4.35 billion in federal ‘Race to the Top’ awards available, the Gates Foundation paid a consultants to prepare applications for 24 states, as well as the District of Columbia.

One of two winners so far is Tennessee, which had help from Gates, and will receive about $500 million from the Obama administration.
Both Gates and his wife argue there is anything amiss in the Gates Foundation’s relationship with the administration. All the Gates Foundation wants is results, says Bill Gates, however they are achieved.

During its annual convention in Los Angeles last week, American Federation of Teacher’s president Randi Weingarten stopped short of outright opposing Common Core. Some of AFT’s local chapters, including Chicago, have called for the union to end its support for Common Core entirely.

The unions have also criticized the standards for being too hard, rewarding a small number of “profiteering” companies that make the tests and books, and punishing both teachers and students. But at the end of the conference, with a massive push from New York’s Unity Caucus, AFT delegates voted by two-thirds majority to continue to support Common Core.

This may be a calculated move on the AFT’s part to tell the Obama administration union’s backing depends on whether the administration pays attention to its other demands. For example, AFT has long called for the repeal of No Child Left Behind, which mandates annual, multiple-choice tests for most elementary and middle school students.

But the news isn’t all bad as Oklahoma’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the Legislature did have the authority to repeal Common Core for English and math in the state’s public schools. The suit alleged lawmakers violated the state Board of Education’s constitutional authority when they repealed the standards earlier this year.

Several groups maintained that the standards represented federal intrusion into Oklahoma’s public education system, and Governor Mary Fallin signed into law legislation repealing the standards last month. The legislation, repealing Common Core standards for English and math, did not include standards for science and social studies.

Other states that have repealed or formally withdrawn from the standards are Indiana and South Carolina. Meanwhile North Carolina is moving forward with a bill eliminating Common Core, while in Louisiana, Governor Bobby Jindal and Louisiana Education Superintendent John White continue to negotiate over implementing the standards.

Some interesting stats from the Las Vegas Sun:

• 57,525 — Unaccompanied children apprehended at the Southwest border in the first nine months of FY 2014, already a 106 percent increase from all of FY 2013.
• 55,420 — Family units apprehended at the Southwest border in the first nine months of FY 2014, a 493 percent increase from all of FY 2013.
• $3.7 billion — Funding that Obama has requested to help address the crisis, including money to hasten deportations, improve border security, increase immigration court capacity and provide aid to the three main source countries for the recent influx: El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
• 5,000 — Beds available for unaccompanied children in shelters contracted by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which takes custody of immigrant minors who have no guardian in the country.
• 43 — Percentage of children who appeared before immigration court without legal representation since 2005.
• 71 — Percentage of unaccompanied children since 2005 who were either ordered removed or chose to voluntarily leave the country at the end of their court cases.

Sources: Customs and Border Patrol; National Center for Border Security and Immigration at University of Texas, El Paso; Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University

It’s a scandal only a few people have heard of and even fewer media outlets are reporting on.

As Harry Reid and his ilk railed against the Washington Redskins, a whistleblower complained hundreds of Native American Indian remains and artifacts being lost, boxed up for storage or loaned to museums and universities without the ability to track them.

Perhaps the attack on the football team was a deliberate ruse to distract attention from what the Obama Administration is doing to Indian tribes, especially in the West. The Bureau of Reclamation has erased records within an Interior Department database and changed spreadsheets to hide mismanagement of Indian collections under the agency’s control.

Since 1990, the bureau has been tasked with finding and returning artifacts and remains to their rightful owners under a federal law known as The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The federal government’s handling of such remains and artifacts, though has been criticized for years.

A Government Accountability Office report in 2010 was critical of the Interior Department after the agency asked for more money and eight years to come into compliance with the law. But documents also show the Mid-Pacific Bureau in Sacramento deleted hundreds of records hiding several years of errors.

A document from the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, (PEER), outlines a number of times where the bureau failed to catalog human remains and artifacts, failed to track loans, deleted records, and to let tribes know of recoveries. A filing with the Office of Special Counsel also raised questions about the agency not complying with the law once it stopped keeping records.

The office also routinely failed to tell tribes of long-stored and newly uncovered remains and funeral objects. Some of the collections date back to the 1970s, when the federal government was building the New Melones dam and reservoir on the Stanislaus River, west of Jamestown, California.

In August 2010, the Smithsonian Institution returned several artifacts to California’s largest tribe, the Yurok, in what is one of the largest repatriation of ceremonial artifacts in U.S. history.

The Yurok received 217 sacred items stored on museum shelves for nearly 100 years. The necklaces, headdresses, arrows, hides and other things from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian are thought to be a least a thousand years old.

Some of the items included woven baskets, headdresses, eagle and condor feathers, head rolls made from pileated woodpecker scalps, white deer skins, obsidian blades and flint, all of which were used for centuries in sacred rituals and dances.

The returned artifacts were purchased in the 1920s by Grace Nicholson who owned a curio shop in Pasadena, California. After she acquired them, she sold some of them to private collectors like Harmon Hendricks and George Gustav Heye, and eventually they became part of the Museum of the American Indian in New York.

Last month, the Smithsonian returned another of 128 ceremonial pieces. The most recent items included a basket cap decorated with shells, dresses adorned with abalone, arrow quivers made from woodpecker scalps, and “jump sticks” decorated with woodpecker heads.

And while most of items have now been returned, the museum is keeping 15 ceremonial caps that the tribe is working to acquire. As the tribe works to get the caps back, it also has plans to file claims against three more museums, including one in Del Norte County, another in Portland, Oregon, and with the University of Washington’s museum.

The 1989 National Museum of the American Indian Act (similar to NAGPRA) transferred stewardship of more than 800,000 Indian artifacts to the Smithsonian and required the institute to consider repatriating them to federally recognized tribes.

While it’s unclear how widespread the problem is, PEER said it wouldn’t be surprised if similar things were happening elsewhere given that budget shortfalls and other priorities are challenges found throughout the agency. The Secretary of the Interior now has 60 days to investigate the whistleblower’s accusations and report back to the Office of Special Counsel.

California Governor Jerry Brown has signed a bill into law that redefines marriage and replaces the terms ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ with the generic term ‘spouse.’ SB 1306 will take effect on January 1, 2015 and removes limits on recognizing same-sex marriages performed out-of-state.

“Under existing law, a reference to ‘husband’ and ‘wife,’ ‘spouses,’ or ‘married persons,’ or a comparable term, includes persons who are lawfully married to each other and persons who were previously lawfully married to each other, as is appropriate under the circumstances of the particular case,” it reads. “The bill would delete references to ‘husband’ or ‘wife’ in the Family Code and would instead refer to a ‘spouse,’ and would make other related changes.”

The legislation had been presented by Senator Mark Leno after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to overturn the 9th Circuit ruling that declared California’s Proposition 8 unconstitutional. However, with the court’s ruling against Proposition 8, Leno sought to likewise change California law to alter the definition of marriage and reflect same-sex nuptials.

“I am pleased Governor Brown has recognized the importance of this bill, which makes it explicitly clear in state law that every loving couple has the right to marry in California,” Leno commented in a statement this week. “This legislation removes outdated and biased language from state codes and recognizes all married spouses equally, regardless of their gender.”

Prop. 8 is still technically part of California’s Constitution, despite being ruled unconstitutional by a federal court in 2010. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed an appeal in June 2013, and two days later, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco lifted its injunction blocking the ruling that it was unconstitutional.

The National Organization for Marriage, a US-based pro-traditional marriage group, said the move was: “Further proof that redefining marriage is not simply about ‘equality’ or expanding the institution to include more kinds of relationships”.

Rather, it added, it is “about fundamentally altering the meaning of the institution itself, and discarding terms like ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ to ‘the ash heap of history.’”

Last year, Brown signed into law a controversial bill allowing transgender students to use the bathroom and join the sports teams or clubs corresponding to their gender identity. Lawmakers also passed a law last year that makes it easier for transgender people to change their gender and name on their birth certificate.

This fits right in with the banning of ‘Redskins,’ ‘Illegal alien,’ and ‘bossy.’ It also works well with Progressivism’s rapid movement away from a truly American ideal — ‘free speech.’

In May of this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed new legislation that banned swearing during public performances such as theater plays, cinema and other forms of art. Under the new anti-F word law, which take effects on July 1, persons caught swearing during public performances would pay a penalty of $750 while organizations and companies would be fined about $1,500.

In April, a similar law was also passed prohibiting swearing-in media. The new list of banned words considered as swearing has yet to be officially released.

However, last year the Institute of Russian Language at the Russian Academy of Sciences listed four words that represented swearing. They included words illustrating the male and female organ, an immoral woman and the act of copulation which were not allowed to be spoken in any form of art.

The new law shocked many Russians and drew a lot of criticism.

Swearing has played an important role in Russian literary art where even some of the country’s best writers are prolific with cursing. These include classical pieces from Alexander Pushkin to the works of Vladimir Sorokin, a contemporary post-modernist writer.

The Culture Ministry of Russia clarified that the swearing ban was directed to the mass culture and not toward art.

Culture Ministry representative Irina Kaznacheeva claims the new legislation aims to regulate the industry so that cursing would deliver a purpose. She added that it would depend on how the artistic director of a public performance would decide on how to deliver the swearing, whether it breaks the new legislation or not.

The push to split up California into six different states may have taken a step forward. Supporters of the “Fix it in Six” initiative say they turned in 1.3 million signatures to the California Secretary of State’s Office. They need a little more than 800,000 signatures to get this idea on the 2016 ballot.

Getting the idea before voters and on the ballot is one hurdle. Critics say, this idea will face even bigger obstacles.

Some research indicates the poorer areas of California would be far worse off by this proposal. The California Legislative Analyst’s Office claims the new Silicon Valley would become the nation’s richest state, while Central California would become its poorest.

Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist, Tim Draper is the man behind this effort. He and other supporters say this idea will make California government more modern and more responsive.

“The interests of 38 million Californians cannot be served by one government. There are 38 million of us trying to talk at the same time and they’re (lawmakers) just hearing noise, coming from all sides,” said Draper.

“Under a new regime, you can govern yourself. You don’t have to be governed by a bunch of voters who live way away from you. You can encourage jobs, you can take those jobs that are going off to other states and get them into places that need them, like in Central California,” he added

The plan would divide California into six states. The northernmost part would be a new state called “Jefferson.” “South California” would include San Diego and East Los Angeles. The rest of L.A. would be called “West California.” “North California” would be established surrounding Sacramento, and “Central California” would include the central valley farm areas, including Tulare and Fresno counties.

It’s believed there have been more than 200 attempts in California history to divide the state and all have failed.