Independence Day...

July fourth is right around the corner, Independence Day. The skies will be full of fireworks, the lakes full of boaters, backyards full of barbecue and beer, and parades all celebrating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. We throw around words like “independence” “liberty”, and “freedom”. Ask almost any American and they'll tell you “it's a free Country”, but are we really a free people?

Freedom is a word we throw around almost daily in this country, but have any of you thought about what it meant to be free? The dictionary defines freedom as: the state of being free; exemption from external control, interference, regulation; the power to determine action without restraint. Most of you probably think those definitions fit your lives fairly well, but do they really?I'd like to believe that we live in a free country, but more and more our freedoms are being eroded, and sadly the citizens of this country give those rights away so easily that it makes me believe that most don't truly want freedom.

Freedom is something that only a society based on personal responsibility can have. Personal responsibility is what makes people save for their retirement. Personal responsibility is the thing that causes people to save or get insurance to cover their health needs. It's the thing that causes people to put shampoo on the outside of their bodies, and to not use electrical appliances in the shower. It's the thing that puts a man on trial for murder instead of his gun.

Freedom would be allowing people to send their kids to whatever school they thought would best teach their children, it would be allowing their children to pray to whatever god they chose in those same schools. Freedom would be not getting a ticket for failure to wear your seatbelt. Freedom would be having the choice to not spay and neuter your pet, or to choose how many pets you owned.

No folks, the reality is that we are not free because we don't want the responsibility for our actions. Instead of working hard and saving money, we would rather the government take care of us in retirement and supply us with health care. We'd prefer that the government educate our children and teach them right from wrong instead of doing it ourselves. We want the government to give us a false sense of security by giving us a number to call in case of an emergency, instead of protecting our property and family. We want the productive to pay more in taxes so the unproductive can remain unproductive.

Freedom has a cost, and that cost is personal responsibility. Over the last one hundred years we've lost a lot of our responsibilities, we've given them to others to take care of so we aren't burdened with them, but along with those responsibilities we gave away our freedoms. So this fourth of July while the fireworks are going off and the burgers are burning, remember the Bill of Rights, remember the Constitution, and remember the reasons the founders of this country declared independence from the government that ruled them.

If we aren't willing to be responsible for our persons to gain our freedom from the countless regulations that our government has put in place to protect us from ourselves, we might as well call July fourth Hypocrites day, the day we say we are free, but aren't willing to be responsible enough to deal with freedom.

Torqued.

WTF...

http://www.charlotte.com/118/story/174578.html

Here we have a guy who has been convicted of murder. He's in prison serving a life sentence and he's suing the prison system for a sex change. Now the kicker here is the reason his lawyer claims the taxpayers should pay for this surgery is because he's suicidal, has already been on hormone treatment, hair removal procedures, and psychotherapy, but he still has anxiety and depression.

What am I missing here?

He's in prison, right?
Yup.

He's depressed and may commit suicide?
Yup.

He's serving life?
Yup.

Hand him a rope and a pack of razor blades, feed him bread an water, and turn the sprinkler on twice a day. If we're lucky this psychopath will to the right thing and off himself. He's already tried twice, obviously he needs a little help to even do that right...

Torqued

Immigration bill still kicking...

In Iraq when people cross the border to commit crimes against the country we call them insurgents and shoot them.

In America when people cross the border to commit crimes against the country we call them immigrants, give them health care, welfare, subsidized housing, social security, and citizenship to them and their families.

Is there any question as to why we are mad?

Torqued

This ain't rocket surgery...

Once again our elected officials are doing their best to pass the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill. Forget the fact that the media has been telling us in one story that the bill is dead, and in the next story how it's been resurrected. Obviously congress thinks we're all stupid, if something is dead, it's dead. Dead things don't just hop up out of their coffins and run a marathon, but that's what they want us to believe happens in the magical fairy land that is the US Congress.

I guess I'm just not smart enough to figure out how this bill is good for America. I know it says "immigration reform", and that most people look at the word "reform" and think "better" (or "more gooder" if you went to public school), but I don't see it that way. If your car gets run over by a monster truck, it's reformed, but is that a good reform? If I run you through a wood chipper, you've been reformed, but would you call that a good reform?

Let's just look at one item in this bill and see what we can make out of it. I don't know about the rest of you, but I have a calculator. There were only about 350 million people in this country at the time of the last census. I've heard estimates of somewhere between twelve and thirty million illegal invaders are actually in our country. If we allow each one of them to bring in 11 of their family, that's somewhere in the range of 144-360 million instant voters. If we import that many instant voters, we've basically brought in a new majority that will run this country (and those of us here) as they see fit.

I've heard people say that the illegals are here to do jobs Americans won't do, but who do you think is going to be picking lettuce when they are the majority? Do you think they'll continue to take the lowest paying jobs when they have the political power to vote the rest of us into servitude? Nope, the current American citizens will be the ones working two or three jobs so we can pay enough taxes to support the new majority.

If that bill passes, we'll have been taken over by Mexico without a shot being fired.

Ponder that
Torqued

What ever happened to "live free or die"??

Alright, I've done a little looking around about the erosion of the second amendment, and I've come to some interesting conclusions. So let's get started.

In 1791 the bill of rights was ratified. In case you've forgotten the second amendment reads, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

In 1837 Georgia passes a law banning handguns, but it was ruled unconstitutional and thrown out.

1850's several states pass laws to stop slaves from bearing arms.

1861-1865 The Civil War.

In 1865 several southern states adopt “black codes” that forbid blacks from possessing firearms, in response to emancipation.

The gun control movement started in 1837 as a way to keep slaves from bearing arms. When that law was ruled unconstitutional, the slaveholders changed tactics to ban blacks from having guns of any kind. Then when it looked like the “elite” could no longer prohibit blacks (slaves/former slaves) from gaining freedom, the south seceded from the union starting the civil war. Well, they lost the war, but after emancipation the south managed to continue to control their slaves with the black codes of 1865, which prohibited blacks from possessing firearms.

The person with common sense would have no problem figuring out that when one group wants to control another, they take away the guns. That's something to think about. Let's continue.

The NRA was organized in 1871 with the primary goal of improving American civilians' marksmanship in preparation for war.

1920 Prohibition

1927 Congress passes a law banning the mailing on concealable weapons.

1929 the great depression starts and hits bottom in 1933.

1933 Prohibition repealed.

1934 The National Firearms Act of 1934 regulating only fully automatic firearms is approved by Congress.

The Federal Firearms act of 1938 places the first limits on the selling of firearms, requiring a Federal Firearms license to maintain records of the names and addresses of the people who bought guns. Gun sales to people with violent felonies, are prohibited.

The early 1900's brought on a second front in the war on our freedoms with prohibition. Ironically this is also the beginning of blaming objects for the things people do with them. Instead of blaming people for abusing alcohol, we banned alcohol in 1920. Instead of controlling alcohol abuse and drunkenness, we turned the average American into a criminal. In response to all the criminal activity the government did what they could to suppress the rebellion by banning the mailing of concealable weapons (which they could do, without bringing the second amendment into play).

Then came the Great Depression and the New Deal. The great depression put Americans on the ropes and allowed the New Deal to start us down the road to socialism. Once a portion of Americans started relying on the Government for food and their income, all that was needed to control the outlaws of America was to disarm them.

In a brilliant political move, one form of bondage was traded for another when in 1933 prohibition was repealed, and while everyone was celebrating, the National Firearms act of 1934 was passed banning fully automatic weapons. The first step to erode the second amendment was taken.

In 1938, the Federal Firearms act was put in place. This act required a Federal Firearms license to sell guns. Part of the requirements of keeping the license were that the seller had to keep the name and address of the buyer. Within just a few decades, the government not only had superior weapons to to the public, but new the names and addresses of almost every American that owned a gun.

The gun control movement rested for thirty years. In 1963 President John F Kennedy was assassinated and the gun control movement focused the population on the regulation of firearms. The bill championed by Democrat Senator Thomas J Dodd was supported by the NRA (ironically), and focused mostly on the mail order purchasing of handguns, even though JFK was killed by a mail order rifle. The bill was held up in the commerce committee and was not allowed out onto the senate floor. In 1964 urban riots in America started as a result of poverty and inequality.

1965 brought us President Johnson, who aggressively endorsed gun control as a way to control crime. His efforts were suffered three years of defeats through the lobbying efforts of the now opposed NRA, congressional leaders who supported them, the American Legion, and gun importers.

1968 President Johnson intensified the push for gun control once again, pushing the bill as an anti-crime bill called the Safe Streets and Crime Control Bill that required national registration of every gun in America, and licenses for all gun owners. The version that made it to the President's desk was watered down and excluded rifles and shotguns from any regulations.

Johnson signed this bill into law the day after the assassination of Robert F Kennedy in 1968. The American public had been led into the pen, and the gate closed. The second amendment had truly been breeched. The American public had been sold the lie that gun control leads to crime control.

Now if you're into conspiracy theories, you take the assassination of JFK and make it a government job to start the ball rolling on gun control. Then introduce a bunch of recreational drugs, and start some riots to soften up the public. Then with the assassination of MLK and Robert Kennedy, you have the public begging for their rights to be taken away. The watered down version of the gun control bill passed in the summer of 1968, and the supreme court gives it the nod while no one's looking. Once you have precedent in place, the stronger version, The Gun Control Act of 1968, was pushed through in October of 1968.

Not only is the government slowly disarming the American public, but they have citizen groups rushing to support the cause. Every time there is a national news worthy crime committed with a firearm the gun control nuts use the publicity to push another piece of legislation down the pipe.

Fast forward to 2007. The Virginia Tech massacre takes place in an environment where no guns are allowed. The anti-gun movement makes a push to try to further ban guns, but most in the general public can see that if some of the teachers or students were armed, they could have stopped the mentally ill man who shot up all their children. Not being able to admit that their movement is flawed, the conversation was turned toward more government regulation with the argument "mentally ill persons shouldn't have firearms". Most sane people if asked would agree that people who are mentally ill shouldn't have guns. There is public outcry to take away our rights further, but what the ignorant American public doesn't know is that the Gun Control act of 1968 already bans the sale of guns to mentally ill people.


Another nail in the coffin of a free America has been driven home. The second amendment is dead they just haven't buried the body yet.

"An armed man is a citizen, and unarmed man is a subject."
"Gun control is not about guns, it's about control."

I have no idea who said that, but I have to agree.

Torqued

Forget gun control, we need SUV control...

4 Teens Killed After SUV Crashes Into Train

6:41 a.m. CDT June 14, 2007

BAYTOWN, Texas - Four teenagers were killed and two others were injured after a sport utility vehicle crashed into a train on Thursday, KPRC Local 2 reported. Harris County sheriff's deputies said the wreck happened just west of Baytown on East Archer Road near Fleming Drive at about 4:30 a.m.

Do you ever read the news and believe what you read? Personally I find it hard to take anything at face value, and this article is a prime example of how in order to get the news you have to read between the lines.

Whoever wrote the story would like you to believe that this SUV started itself up, and ran away from it's yuppie, global warming contributing family, and drove around town until it found the most innocent victim it could find. Somehow, the SUV must have herded the four unsuspecting teens into a tight pattern, and then smashed them into a train that was not moving. I suppose we're to assume that it used it's powerful headlights to hypnotize the teens with it's "deer in the headlights" trance. Give me a break.

The media in this country is so hung up on sensationalism that they are no longer reporting the news, but are twisting it so it sounds as exciting as possible. All the while trying to condition people to think that guns and SUVs are bad inanimate objects that are lurking around every corner just waiting to assault unsuspecting citizens.

The real story should read:

Justice Served

BAYTOWN, Texas - Four teenage car thieves got what they deserved when they stole a Jeep Cherokee from an unsuspecting working class family. The teens stole the SUV out of the driveway of Mr and Mrs Jones who both work 60 hours a week to pay their mortgage and taxes. When their SUV was stolen and wrecked, their insurance company told them their policy doesn't cover underage drivers and that they would be responsible for not only the value of the vehicle that they use to get to their jobs, but they needed to pay the railroad for damages to the train car the thugs smashed into.

Mr Jones is trying to find a second job, but doesn't speak Spanish. He's put applications in at every fast food restaurant in town, but has been turned down since he's overqualified. Mrs Jones has taken a job as a dancer at the local strip club to make ends meet.

I'm sure if you're on enough drugs you might think someone's gun jumped out of it's case and shot it's owner three times, or that a cars start themselves up, back themselves out of their driveways, and run people down on the streets. For those of us living in reality we know that people are responsible for those actions. The real victims in these stories are the people who get their rights taken away, or who take big financial hits so that criminals can be victims.

I suppose next we're going to start suing fast food restaurants for making people fat.

Torqued

Gun shoots woman...

Adams was lying in bed when a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson she kept under her pillow discharged and struck her in her left wrist, Dougherty County Police Chief Don Cheek said.

I know, I know, I couldn't believe it either, but it's right there in black and white. It's even a quote from the Police Chief himself. She was sleeping with the gun hiding under the pillow, and at sometime in the middle of the night, Officer Adams was brutally assaulted when the gun pulled it's trigger and shot her in the wrist.

Now personally I cannot believe a gun would do such a thing. Normally they're real peaceful creatures who wouldn't hurt a fly. That particular gun must have been raised to be violent, after all, it's all how you raise them. The story didn't say if the gun had been abused, but I'm sure all of that will come out in the civil suit.

All we can hope now is that the gun wasn't part of an Al-Quaeda sleeper cell.

Torqued

Hmmm....

So, I pull into a gas station today to fill up with three dollar a gallon gas, which reminds me, if the Iraq war is about oil, where's my cheap gas? Am I the only one that sees this? People are protesting "no war for oil", "we're trading soldiers for oil" etc... but yet gas prices still keep climbing. At this point I'm calling B.S. If the war was really about oil, wouldn't a gallon of gas get cheaper as we're stealing more oil from the Iraqis?? That's not the real reason for this post though....

So, I pull into the gas station to fill up with three dollar a gallon gas. I remove my gas cap, grab the filler, push the button for the arm and a leg grade, and nothing happens. I know what you're thinking, "Torqued, you gotta go inside and pay before you pump", and I know that, but why do I have to pay before I pump? Why can't we trust people not to pump and run?

First off, if I pump $100 worth of gas and drive off without paying, isn't that a crime? I know every one of these convenience stores has thousands of dollars worth of security equipment. They also have at least two people in the store holding up the counter or standing around in the cooler, why don't you fire one of those slackers and hire someone to watch the security cameras, and cross reference the reciepts with the license plates of the cars who pull up to the pumps? Surely you can find someone in America qualified to watch a TV.

Now once you've got your illegal immigrant to figure out who stole your gas, call the cops. It's their job to find criminals, right? Well, obviously they must be too busy handing out seat belt tickets, and harrasing people who park in a spot too long, to waste time protecting and serving the population of thier beat. After all, those things bring revenue into the city. Last time I checked, cities make their money off taxes to their citizens. SO if we follow that line of thinking, most cops are nothing more than tax collectors.

I'll get off the cops for now. Let's look at this whole pay before you pump from a business standpoint. Supposedly, all the real profit at a gas station comes from the drinks and snacks that people who purchase gas also pick up while they are at your store. Now, if I pay in cash, I have to come into the store to do it. So that makes good business sense, right? Make everyone there come inside to pay for their gas, so they'll be tempted to buy the high profit items. Sounds reasonable.

BUT, if I pay with a credit card, I can pay at the pump, which eliminates my chance to binge shop inside the store on high profit items. Now where this gets really messed up is credit card companies charge venders a percentage of the purchase, along with transaction fee everytime you swipe a card. So if I buy ten dollars worth of gas with a credit card it's really only worth about nine dollars and seventy cents to the business.

So these rocket surgeons have figured out a way to make it convenient for the customers who cost them the most money in fees, to not only bypass the real profit center of a gas station, but to punish the guy who is paying with cash by making him do the walk of shame into the store to stand in line to give them cash so they'll turn on the pump, so he can walk back in the store, and stand in line again to get the change.

I know what you're thinking, the cash customer costs the owner man hours because the pothead behind the counter has to figure out how to make the change, but if you think about it, the employees are almost always paid by the hour. That slacker is going to get paid if he's making change or not...

I just can't believe that cash paying American people haven't lost their mind about this type of discrimination. Cash descrimination, I'm calling my lawyer.

Torqued

Survey Says...

Politicians worry a lot about their approval rating, or what this poll said or that one, so how is it that they can be so out of touch with the American public? I thought about this exact question and then it dawned on me that all the polls and surveys they do are over the phone. Well, I haven't had a land line for years, and when I did, I treated the people who called when I was trying to eat like they had the plague.

So who is answering these surveys? Well first it has to be people with a regular phone. Then those people can't screen their phone calls, or have an answering machine. The people answering the pollsters also have to be people willing to spend thirty or more minutes of their day, while their dinner is getting cold, and their wife is giving them the evil eye, to answer the same question reworded over and over.

Those requisites excludes a huge majority of the population of the United States, like anyone younger than forty, or anyone with a job. It also wipes out people who have hobbies, and people who are working a second job. It probably eliminates most parents, and those of us who hunt or fish.

The people left to answer the pollster's daily probings end up being my grandmother, the houseful of illegal immigrants down the street, the lifer welfare recipients, my retarded neighbor, oh, and Paris Hilton home on house arrest. No wonder our government thinks we want public health care, a bunch of illegal immigrants, and increased taxes.

If they really want to get the pulse of the American public, they should send the survey out with my IRS forms, with $100 deductible if I fill it out and send it in. They'd get opinions from the people paying the bills at least, and at the time they payed them.

Torqued

Feedback...

Anonymous said...

Great idea about the American Idol debate format. With the text voting we would probably get a better turn out than we do with our current elections. At least with Simmon hosting the debate, you might actually get some honest feed back....

Simmon: "That answer was pathetic! You didn't even come close to answering that question"

June 7, 2007 3:56 PM

I was actually thinking maybe we should do it like a game show. When the one party has their little debate amongst themselves, we could structure it like Jeopardy. Make them pick the category, and all of them have to write down their little answer. "what is, send the invaders home". We could condense three hours of grandstanding into a 20 minute show.

Torqued

Gun control...

"Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. That's pretty plain language that even a layperson can understand. I'm no genius but to me the second amendment of the US Constitution says if there is any law made about guns that impedes or denies anyone access to a firearm, the Supreme court should rule it unconstitutional.

I guess I better do some more research and find out when the first unconstitutional law about my right to own, buy, and carry a gun came to be. Obviously there was a generation of Americans who were more afraid of an inanimate object, than they were of slavery and tyrany.

Sheesh...
Torqued

By the way...

Where's that fence?

Wasn't there a bill passed a year or two ago that said we were going to build seven hundred miles of fence on our southern border? Where is it? What's the hold up?

Torqued

The dog and pony show...

Over the last several days we've had the Dem's on stage debating each other, and we've had the Rep's debating each other. Why do we need all these debates? If any of those politicians had real beliefs (instead of talking points) we could have one debate a month before the election, and the American public could be spared the dog and pony show.

Really, the whole thing reminded me of the Miss America pageant. I imagine all the candidates lined up on a stage wearing evening gowns and sashes. They ask a lot of leading questions that the contestants already had someone write their answer to (why do you think actors make good politicians??), and then each of the pageant contestants talks for five minutes and never answers the question. OH, and they all want world peace.

You can tell the debates were about nothing because the media didn't talk about the issues discussed, but talked about who had the best hair, who spit out the best canned joke, or what their facial expressions were. How dumb are we, that we can't focus on WHAT our politicians say instead of HOW they say it?

Another thing that really bothers me is that half of the people running for President are currently Senators, and they still have the gall to use the phrase “If I were President I'd do....”. Hello, you're already a part of the legislative branch, if you want something to happen, all you have to do is introduce the bill. Actions speak louder than words, yet half of our candidates have spent the last 4+ years in a position to enact change, and none of them have done any of the things they say they would do if they were in a position that they couldn't do them.

Anyone who is a current Senator or Representative should be smart enough not to run for President. The legislative branch puts the bills together, the President only signs them (or doesn't). If change is going to happen it's going to come from the places these people are, already. How do they get away with telling us they'd do this or that, when they've been in a position to do something for a long time and nothing has been done?

I guess I really shouldn't be surprised, with public schooling the way it is, most of America probably thinks the President does everything and the Senators and Representatives jobs are to lean on shovels and tell the president what he's doing wrong. We treat elections like American Idol, all that's lacking is texting in our votes. Maybe we can get Simon, Paula, and Randy to do the next debate and instead of having questions we'll just cut to the chase and have a hair competition, a teleprompter reading contest, and then maybe we can bring out each contestant's writer to explain why they thing their candidate is better than the others. At least then we'd be getting our canned jokes from the horse's mouth.

Senators: Mr President, we forgot to bring the shovels to this legislative session.

President: Well, just lean on each other until I get there then.

Later

Torqued