Patriotranter's Weblog

Recently I have been seeing a certain PSA (Public Service Announcement) on television in regards to the fact that germs are getting stronger.

In the commercial the advertisers advocate the avoidance method of not spreading germs. Staying at home from work, washing your hands, that sort of thing. The motto is :Germs are getting stronger we need to get smarter.

It seems to me that, sure, maybe the germs are getting stronger but by avoiding them and evading the issue of letting our immune systems take care of them internally we are only making ourselves ever weaker and more vulnerable to germs.

Personally I expose myself to as many germs as I can as often as I can and my health is what doctors would describe as exemplary.  Yes I do get sick and when I do I can be laid out for days BUT those days are few and far between. When I am sick it is usually more severely than others I know but it is also considerably less frequently than anybody else I know.

There are numerous times throughout the year when everyone around me is sick (probably from something I gave them) yet I will be walking around the perfect picture of health.

I heartily and in good health advise everyone to avoid prescription medications and expose yourselves to as many germs as you possibly can. Germs, for lack of a better word, are good Germs work !

Now it is true that I am not a doctor and there are germs out there that can lead to a terminal event so even though I myself rarely go to the doctor I do make a visit if my health ever deteriorated to the point where my life was in jeopardy.

So in summation I tell you get out there, get exposed. But if you are too stupid to go to a doctor when your health is in genuine jeopardy resulting in your death it is in no way my fault and I am in no way legally responsible for any negative results of this advice.

A cold for the common cure

patriotranter

If you have been paying any attention to the news lately you will see that there are some very serious crimes being committed by teens and young adults. This in itself is nothing new but the alarming trend is that parents of some of these young criminal masterminds are doing what ever the must to cushion the blow of justice being served. Or for whatever other reasons courts are being too lenient in regards to the punishment of these suburban scum.

Two cases in particular come to mind

First lets discuss the so called Barbie Bandits a couple of teenage white suburban middle class girls who robbed an Atlanta bank for some $11,000.00. By all accounts the girls were the stereotypical kids of over indulging baby boomers who can’t seem to withhold anything from their kids and have taken the adage “spare the rod, spoil the child” all too far. These kids get spoiled beyond belief and then all of a sudden they are out of high school and their parents can no longer keep up with their habits soooo…. one thing leads to another, the kids who are living beyond their means and having few if any talents due to the fact that their parents have coddled them their entire lives now start stripping, possibly hooking, and absolutely doing illegal drugs and have little way to legally maintain their spoiled little lifestyles. Now Ashley and Heather (typical suburban spoiled white girl names) have been sentenced and while Heather has been given a whopping 10 years of probation poor little Ashley will actually have to do 2 years in jail (rather than the 10 years typical sentence for this kind of crime). Both these girls are bad news and should be assigned the maximum sentencing. By offering them substantially reduced sentences the judge is only encouraging further crimes and practically telling all spoiled little brats that it is okay to commit felony larceny. Remember people, these girls robbed a bank – that wasn’t the banks money they took it was your money and the judge is telling these kids it is okay to steal YOUR money.

Case number two addresses felonious computer fraud in upstate New York Spoiled boys being spoiled more. Several students at Fayetteville Manlius High School were caught stealing passwords and changing their grades to enhance their educational profile. Of course they are all saying how sorry they were to do it but we know they are truly only sorry they were caught. In an absolutely heinous act the Onondaga County District Attorney has agreed to not pursue felony charges on these spoiled little boys because he doesn’t want them to face jail time. Jail time is exactly what these future ENRON executives need. Arrest them while they’re young and before they get into a position where they can do real harm.

People of the United States, it is high time for us to seriously get tough on crime and that means punishing everybody severely regardless of their social status.

sleep well, if you can

do good – do right

patriotranter 

As all citizens of the United States are aware, the price of gasoline has reached costs that are increasingly troublesome. Many people like to blame the government for these problems and the truth is the government IS responsible for the high cost of oil, but not for the reasons you may think.

You see, the real problem is not what the government has done but what it is not doing. What it is not doing is stepping in and forcibly regulating the prices oil companies are allowed to charge for a gallon of gas.

With many industries, if certain corporate policies are followed that would be detrimental to the consumer the government often steps in and gives said company and ultimatum. You see this most frequently in the Airline Industry. Whenever there is even the remotest talk of a pilot strike the President of the United States simply steps in and forbids such action. Why ? Because a nationwide pilot strike would cripple the nation in such a way as to bring us to a nearly complete and utter standstill.

Now if we take a brief look at some historical data we can see that the government used to regulate many industries specifically the telecommunications industry and once again the airline industry.

With the telecommunications industry it was in 1984 that the government split up “Ma Bell” AKA American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) into seven different entities and began letting independent companies provide the necessary services. Until this point Ma Bell essentially had a monopoly on the primary means of communication for most of the U.S.  The reasons for this divestiture are mainly due to illegal practices by the bell company to stifle competition. (Read the wikipedia article here : Ma Bell Wiki ). Examining todays world, what industry has a choke hold on the American public whilst stifling competition such as power derived from solar, wind or other interesting means. But also a few minutes spent at any shopping mall in the United States will reveal a cornucopia of telephone service providers and the inexpensive plans they offer it is quite obvious that deregulation was the perfect answer. Yes there were some hard times on the road to this point as anybody who tried making a collect call to New York from southern Florida in the late 1980’s can attest to.

With the Airline Industry deregulation took place in 1978 with the Airline Deregulation Act to remove the air transport industry from governmental control and by exposing it to certain market forces competition would bring the prices down and the services up. Those two benefits are now steadily being eaten away by the costs Airlines are forced to pay by the monopolistic behavior of oil companies.

You see deregulation is a good thing when there is a government backed monopoly but when that same monopoly is corporate backed such as the oil industry it only costs more for the consumer.

Face it, you really don’t have much of a choice. You must buy gas. Some claim that there are many ways to reduce your fuel consumption but are there really ?

Lets quickly discuss the falsehoods of carpooling.

A. How many people are there  who not only live near you but also work close enough to your work  to make car pooling actually efficient. If you are at all like me that answer is ZERO.

B. Let’s assume that the above criteria have been met – they live near you they work near you. Now do they work hours similar to yours as well ? I didn’t think so

C. Again, let us one more assume that the above criteria are met. They live near you, they work near you and have a similar work schedule as yours. Now comes the Dagwood Bumstead effect - how many times a month do they either cause you to be late or do they suddenly depart work early due to a family emergency stranding you without homeward bound transportation? I thought as much.

So even though carpooling make work fine for a few hundred thousand lucky groups, for the other two hundred million of us it just DOES NOT WORK. Period. This conversation is over.

Now that we have confessed our need for gas and we have discussed the monopolistic behavior of oil companies lets quickly address a few other issues

First there is Price Per Barrel. Oil companies have convinced the American public that the Price Per Barrel you see oil being traded at is what it actually costs to pump the oil. This is the biggest lie in history. Price Per Barrel is just an arbitrary number created by commodities traders who are hoping that the price of gasoline will continue to rise which it does because the commodities traders have so grossly artificially inflated the Price Per Barrel in their trading. Remove Oil from the commodities market and you will suddenly see the costs plummet because it costs no more to pump and transport oil in todays world than it did in 1992.

Simply put, commodities traders are erroneously speculating that the cost of pumping oil has increased and the amoral oil company execs are cashing in on this fantasy.

If you think the war in Iraq is influencing the cost of oil in any way shape or form you had best think again. You see OPEC could easily increase the flow of oil to the States reducing our costs but they refuse to do so ( CNBC OPEC leaves Oil production unchanged ) Why ? Because these Arabs are making a killing selling us oil that is being pumped by American companies.

Why should OPEC have to increase it’s oil production ? In one word CHINA. China demand on oil has increased dramatically over the last decade and will eclipse US consumption in a few years Resource Consumption US vs China but you see China has a distinct advantage over the US in that it’s oil industry is wholly subsidized by it’s communist government so the gas prices are considerably lower than those in the U.S. You may ask how the Chinese government can afford to subsidize the oil industry and that is yet another simple answer. You the American People are paying for the Chinese to have cheap gas. Every time you shop at WalMart and buy some Chinese made product you are  doing a number of things

1. You are causing the loss of a job to one of your fellow US citizens

2. You are enriching the Chinese government so they can continue to harass Tibet and Taiwan with their military.

3. Due to lack of Chinese pollution regulations your taking yet another bite out of the sustainability of this planet.

4. You are increasing the cost of fuel in the U.S. by making it more affordable in China

Enough about China for now.

Let’s get back on track with US oil companies. If they were truly independent organizations there would be huge fluctuations in the cost of gas from company to company but they always collude to price points within a few cents of each other. If oil and gas were actually expensive as they want us to believe there would not be a huge discrepancy in price from region to region, It would cost the same at every gas station nationwide. Why doesn’t it ? Because oil companies are trying to charge the maximum amount they can get away with and due to geo-economical influences and regional inflation oil companies know they can charge more in California than they can in say Arkansas.

It is high time for the government to step in, analyze the gross and indecent near criminal profits the oil companies are making and set a standard nationwide gas price also eliminating the profits oil companies are reaping and especially those dishonest oil executives

Oil Companies MUST BE STOPPED but it takes you the people to do it

Write your Senators and Representatives in Congress and demand that the government seize control of oil company assets and begin marketing affordable gas

It can be done. But it will take all of us

Good Luck America

patriotranter 

We here in the United States of America have a thing called The Bill of Rights. This document affords us citizens with a few inalienable truths that are presumed self evident.

The second amendment of these rights is the right to keep and bear arms. A direct quote from the document is as follows “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“

Now lawyers, politicians, and other self serving scum have been debating what these words truly mean for centuries now, and it seems every year you will find some new infringement encroaching the basic verbiage of this amendment. In many states you actually have to undergo an excruciating and invasive application to receive the permission to own and carry a firearm in direct contrast to these simple words “shall not be infringed”

I will gladly be the first to admit that notoriously violent criminals should not have access to firearms BUT I also must stress that there is a very simple way to prevent their obtaining firearms in the first place and I will discuss those methods in a future post.

What I am advocating is the need for our federal government to remove the policing of firearms from the individual states and begin issuance of a Federal Concealed Carry Permit that would allow all us average Joe’s who own firearms to travel where we want in this country with our guns as the Bill of Rights claims we should be able to do.

Now I know that many of you who feel the same way about firearms as I do know in your hearts many of the violent tragedies that have occurred in this nation over the last several years ranging from 9/11 to specific college campus shootings would easily have been prevented if there were a few well armed honest citizens in the vicinity just before those crime were occurring. Those of you who are against firearms simply do not realize the old adage “when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns” is a truism and gets demonstratively proved repeatedly every day. I’m sorry, it’s just the way things are.

The National Rifle Association is the largest most vocal gun lobby group we have and they do some excellent work but they also neglect to look at the big picture. We have a right to our guns. It is time to take action into the hands of the people – that means you and me. Please, if you value your right to own a firearm, write to your congressperson – your representative and your senators, insisting that they pass a National Firearm Concealed Carry Permit and let them know if they fail to do this you will vote against them in future elections. We need to take back our rights and seize our guns.

A great man once said “There comes a time in every patriots life when he must defend his country from his government” . Well gun owners, that time is now.

Life , liberty and the pursuit of happiness, have a great day

patriotranter