“So, Dad, what did you do in the war?” my  son asked.

I answered, “I was never in a war.”

“But I thought you were in the Marine Corps,” he responded, “and I know I’ve heard you talk about being in combat.”

“Well, there’s difference,” I explained, “I was never in a war that was declared by Congress though I was involved in the so-called ‘War on Drugs,’ and that’s where I saw fighting.”

“Oh,” he returned, asking, “Did you ever get a medal for anything you did in the Marines?”

I smiled, “Nope, no medals.”

“That isn’t fair,” he declared.

“Why?” I found myself asking.

“You participated in battle and could have died,” he continued, “so you should get some sort of recognition.”

“First off, I didn’t do it to get medals, ribbons or certificates – though those things are nice,” it told him, “I did it because I’m a Marine and that’s what we do.”

The U.S Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is transferring oversight of the Internet to a ‘private’ nonprofit group called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on October 1. This means the Internet will move from U.S. control to a ‘multistakeholder’ group that includes 160 foreign governments and nongovernmental organizations.

The term ‘multistakeholder’ is troubling as it is most often part of the language used in U.N. programs like Agenda 21. This means that the agency could be used by foreign governments or the U.N. itself to shut down the Web around the globe, either in whole or in part.

Since ICANN already manages the domain naming and IP address systems, the transfer would give it full regulatory control as well. Also worth noting is the fact that ICANN already charges fees to users and that as a ‘nonprofit,’ it earned $219 million last year.

Alarming is the knowledge that shifting ICANN’s legal status away from the U.S. was a top agenda item for an ICANN working-group meeting in Helsinki on June 26.

The internet is one of the few places where, with some notable exceptions, free speech still reigns supreme. So what will happen when ICANN has the freedom to raise fees with no oversight?

Furthermore the facilities could, without notice, be relocated to say — China — and could go in the same building as the Communist agency responsible for censoring that country’s Internet since some of the American companies involved with the transition process have already given into Chinese demands to aid with censorship.

Besides, President Obama’s plan to end U.S. oversight without congressional approval is unconstitutional. Congress must authorize transfers of U.S. property, which includes the ICANN domain system, worth billions of dollars.

If the courts later rule that Obama’s action violated the separation of powers, there will be no remedy as control over the system will be gone forever, thus handing authoritarian regimes the power they have long sought to censor the web globally, including in America.

Meanwhile, the “Protecting Internet Freedom Act” was introduced in Congress last month with the hope of reinforcing the separation of powers clause. But like most other constitutional side-steps, Obama plans to acted unilaterally and then by fiat you and I can kiss the last true realm of free speech goodbye.

Over the last two years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has hosted a series of summits promoting the role of LGBTQ farmers as a part of its “Rural Pride” campaign. For those of us who don’t know what “rural pride” means, the agency is happy to explain.

“Contrary to widely held myths that the LGBT community is largely living in affluent metropolitan areas, studies show a very different and more realistic picture of the LGBT community,” the USDA claims. “For a number of reasons, many people in the LGBT community choose to live, work, and raise their families in the rural communities that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is proud to serve.”

What the agency really wants to do, along with the entire Obama administration, is purge what they believe the average U.S. farmer is – a “white, rich male.” At first, I thought there was some sort of mistake, because the USDA failed to mention ‘Christian,’ but I was mistaken.

White House liaison Ashlee Davis, who was special assistant to the assistant secretary for the USDA’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), is the point person for these summits. Davis used to work on the ‘National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’ and for the ‘Equality Federation,’ where she “researched and analyzed religious-based bigotry and its influence on civil rights legislation.”

These all-day summits supposedly ‘teach’ LGBTQ persons how to get subsidies from the federal government — like food stamps and housing loans. It’s unclear how much the program’s costing you and me, although USDA’s OCR asked for $24.4 million in funding in its fiscal-year 2016 budget request.

So, maybe I can get in on this scam — after all I’ve always ascribed to stand-up comedian Kip Addotta’s line of thought: “I’m a lesbian in a man’s body.”

The federal government already has millions of acres of land in Nevada. Now they want an embattled segment of land in northeast Clark County known as Gold Butte.

Twice now, President Obama has acted to preserve land in Nevada. In December 2014, he signed into law a bill passed by Congress creating the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument on 22,650 acres at the northern edge of the Las Vegas Valley, and then July 2015, he invoked the 1906 Antiquities Act to designate the Basin and Range National Monument on 704,000 acres in Lincoln and Nye counties.

Cattle belonging to federally-held political prisoner Cliven Bundy still roam the Gold Butte area in defiance of three federal court orders and two failed attempts by the Bureau of Land Management to round-up the animals. And of course, Senator Harry Reid backs monument protection for the area.

“We’ll see if President Obama will protect this area. He has the authority, as any president does, to stop this sort of destruction and stop it now,” Reid said during Senate speech in April. “Congress created the Antiquities Act to empower the president to protect our cultural, historic and natural resources when and where Congress cannot — or will not. Many of our current national parks were created using this authority.”

When a national monument’s named, the federal government assumes all control of that land and can make decisions to control the land without the need for congressional approval. So Reid and his syndicate may very well end up getting their wish of a few thousand acres of solar panels after all.

Senator Harry Reid claims that Donald Trump couldn’t pass the required test it takes to become U.S. citizens. Reid also called Trump “nothing more than a spoiled, unpatriotic drain on society who has earned nothing and helped no one.”

“Since Donald Trump wants to impose new tests on immigrants, he should take the one test every immigrant has to pass to become a United States citizen,” Reid commented. “He would almost certainly fail, given his general ignorance and weak grasp of basic facts about American history, principles and functioning of our government.”

Reid’s statement is laughable since he violated the U.S. Constitution by helping navigate legislation mandating all American citizens have healthcare.

While in Youngstown, Ohio, during a campaign stump speech, Trump proposed giving ideological tests to newly arrived immigrants. The test, he said, would help keep the nation safe and keep our American way of life.

Reid criticized the idea: “Unlike immigrants, Donald Trump represents none of the qualities that make America great. Immigrants work hard to get here and become Americans, while Trump inherited everything from his father and works hardest at tweeting insults and ripping off hard-working people with two-bit scams.”

Reid’s comments come as his Democrat pal Hillary Clinton begins recruiting illegal aliens for her new national voter registration drive. It’s called “Mi Sueno, Tu Voto” which translates to “My Dream, Your Vote.”

Meanwhile Trump will appear Augusts 26 at the Nevada Battle Ground Dinner for the Nevada GOP at Lake Tahoe.

Recently, the Pyramid Fire burned near 300 acres north of Reno, Nevada and was said to have been started by target shooters who fled the area without reporting the blaze. The BLM notes on it’s website that campfires cause only three-percent of the fires, whereas shooting over 34-percent as it points to target shooting causing other fires in Nevada, Utah, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona and Washington.

Following a July wildfire on BLM managed lands in Lemmon Valley, also north of Reno, a BLM fire investigator stated, “Steel core, lead core or copper core has the potential to start fires,” adding, “every time a high velocity round would hit a rock like this, it would fragment into hot pieces.”

The investigator may have been talking about a USDA study on whether or not outdoor target shooting was the source of many wild land fires. In that 2013 report, researchers claim they found once certain bullets fragmented, they would ignite the peat moss in the collector box.

According to this study, pieces of the steel core can be 1,200 degrees. Furthermore, the study claims it only takes 600 degrees to ignite cheatgrass, yet the study’s author USDA’s Mark Finney told an ABC affiliate in Denver:

“We designed an apparatus that consisted of a steel deflector plate and a box at the bottom called a ‘collector box’ that we could fill with various materials that could be tested for ignition.”

“The bullet by itself isn’t very hot until it strikes something very solid,” Finney added. “The process of deforming it…is what heats it up.”

In fact the study reads in part, “Bullets were fired at a steel plate that deflected fragments downward into a collection box containing oven-dried peat moss. We found that bullets could reliably cause ignitions, specifically those containing steel components (core or jacket) and those made of solid copper.”

As any scout, from Cub to Eagle, can tell you this is the same method used to start a campfire; striking a piece of metal like the edge of a knife against a fire-starter, which is a piece of high carbon or alloyed steel. The knife (bullet) hits the fire-starter (steel plate) causing sparks to fall on the tinder (peat moss)and like that a fire begins.

So needless to say, research like this appears to be yet another way for our federal tyrants to further restrict our Second Amendment rights.

A recent KOLO-TV report by journalist Sydnee Scofield, which did not appear on the station’s official website, noted that Syrian refugees have begun resettling in the Reno, Nevada, area. Scofield’s coverage focused on the challenges of securing housing, employment, and social-service support for new arrivals.

Some commentators, however, argue that the report overlooked national-level security concerns that have been raised throughout the broader Syrian refugee debate. As of May 2016, federal data recorded 1,037 Syrian refugees admitted to the United States. Critics of the Obama-era vetting process contend that screening procedures were still incomplete at that time and warn—without presenting specific evidence—that hostile actors could potentially attempt to exploit refugee programs.

Reno’s existing Muslim community has also drawn attention from those raising questions about the region’s preparedness. The June 2008 Reno Gazette-Journal obituary of University of Nevada, Reno professor Ahmed Essa identified him as a founder of the Northern Nevada Muslim Society—now the Northern Nevada Islamic Center (NNIC)—and an adviser to the university’s Muslim Student Association (MSA).

The MSA, founded in 1963 in Illinois, historically received organizational support from individuals affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, according to academic research and historical records. Several prominent U.S. Muslim organizations, including the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), later emerged from networks associated with early MSA chapters.

In the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing trial, the U.S. Department of Justice listed ISNA, NAIT, and CAIR among several entities it described as having historic ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. None of the groups were charged with crimes in that case. In 2013, the Canada Revenue Agency revoked ISNA’s charitable status after determining funds had indirectly supported a banned militant organization; ISNA denied any intent to finance extremist activity.

Local leaders emphasize that neither the Northern Nevada Islamic Center nor the UNR Muslim Student Association has any link to terrorism. Nonetheless, national discussions about radicalization and refugee vetting have led some residents to call for heightened awareness as new arrivals integrate into the region.

Separately, CAIR’s political advocacy arm—CAIR Action—has come under review for regulatory compliance issues unrelated to refugee resettlement. Public records indicate the organization has conducted political-advocacy activities in Nevada without obtaining state licenses or registering as required for certain nonprofit political organizations.

CAIR Action operates as a 501(c)(4) entity, a status that allows political engagement at the federal level. That authority, however, also requires compliance with applicable state-level reporting and registration rules. Despite these requirements, the group has solicited donations, collected dues, and coordinated voter-outreach efforts in Nevada without the necessary state authorization, effectively functioning as an unlicensed interstate political-solicitation organization, according to filings reviewed by regulatory observers.

Experts note that conducting solicitation or voter-coordination activities across state lines without proper registration places an organization “outside the legal framework required for entities seeking funds across state lines.” Nevada authorities have not announced whether they intend to investigate the matter.

The State Department turned over several previously unreleased Hillary Clinton email exchanges that the Democratic presidential nominee failed to include among the 30,000 private messages she turned over to the government last year.

In April 2009, Doug Band — Clinton Foundation overseer and former Bill Clinton aide — had an exchange with Hillary aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills. He requested a meeting between the then-American ambassador to Lebanon and Gilbert Chagoury, a major Clinton Foundation donor.

“We need to speak to the substance person re: Lebanon. As you know, he’s (Chagoury) key guy there and to us and is loved in Lebanon,” Band wrote.

Chagoury, a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire, has donated between $1 million and $5 million to the foundation, according to its disclosures. He is also known for his close association with Nigeria’s military dictator, Sani Abacha and a 2000 conviction in Switzerland for money laundering.

(What’s that old saying about the company you keep? Anyway…)

Abedin replied, “Its Jeff Feltman, I’m sure he knows him. I’ll talk to Jeff,” who was the former American ambassador to Lebanon and who later became assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs in August 2009.

Clearly this was an urgent situation since Band responded less that 20 minutes later, “Better if you call him. Now preferable. This is very important. He’s awake I’m sure.”

In January 2011, Band created The Teneo consulting firm, which boasts of having more than 550 employees in 14 offices around the world. Two of these employees include Bill Clinton who is a paid honorary chairman and Huma, now a $15,000-a-month consultant.

And to think, Attorney General Loretta Lynch already closed the book on this investigation, so for now, none of this appears as if it will stick to Hillary – yet again.

“Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.” — George Bernard Shaw, playwright and proponent of eugenics.

It’s amazing how the Progressive media tends to overlook stupid statements when the candidates they support make a so-called ‘threat’ against another candidate. Even more amazing is the fact that so many political candidates forget what they’ve said as quickly as they’ve said it.

By now, if you are paying attention to these sort of things, you should have heard Donald Trump’s so-called ‘assassination threat,’ made against Hillary Clinton: “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”

Shortly afterwards, Hillary tweeted, “A person seeking to be the President of the United States should not suggest violence in any way.”

She is obviously a woman of much hypocrisy and even greater memory loss as noted from May 24, 2008, when she stated, “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it.”

Now, who do you suppose Hillary was ‘threatening?’

Oddly, not even the Secret Service took her seriously enough to pay her a visit as they supposedly have to Trump. Talk about making a mountain out of a mole hill.

The nice thing is that the Progressive Republicans are showing their full-colors as they crow about how Trump is bad for ‘their business.’ Since they have to reach this low into their bag of campaign tricks, it’s obvious they’re as scared as a chicken “with its head chopped off.”

And yes, because I wrote about chopping off heads, I expect a visit from the Secret Service at any moment.

First off, lets define ‘White Fragility:’ a state in which even a smallest amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. Give me a fucking break — you bunch of mama’s skirt hiding, pansy-assed sissies!

This will really hurt your tender feeling as it is the most politically incorrect article you may read all year, because I’m the son of a bitch Barack Obama warned you about — White, Christian and male. As I see it, political correctness is nothing more than fascism masquerading as politeness — and I’m tired of niceties.

Furthermore, I’m college educated and I served in the U.S. military in two different branches. I’m not an active member of any political party and I sure as hell am not a member of ay group that espouses our differences and tries to divide.

In fact, I believe in American exceptionalism because I am an American! I also believe in equality – and I also believe you’d best be ready to earn it as I certainly won’t hand you mine on a silver platter.

Whether you like it or not, I stand for the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Holy Bible. And if you don’t like it, then feel free to kiss my lily-white ass as you slither by looking for your so-called ‘safe place.’

Finally, I’m an old man and if you threaten me or mine — which includes, but is not limited to family, friends, neighbors, acquaintances and strangers, etc. — I won’t waste my time in a fist-fight with you. No, I’ll simply plug you full of holes and let the coroner clean up the mess.

So simply put, I have but one life to live and I refuse to live it under your or anyone else’s tyranny, so fuck you and your White Fragility! And you can quote me on that.