A Few Thoughts On 2015 And The New Year

This is a little long. I guess I got carried away. But the wishes at the end are sincere.

It's the last day of the year 2015. I'm sitting in a dark house because the power just went off for some reason. Fortunately the house is warm and well insulated. I'm thankful for that.

The electric company says they are aware of the problem and it should be fixed within a couple of hours.

Tomorrow it will be 2016. How is that possible? I remember as a kid talking to my friends about the year 2000 and how far away it was. Now it's 16 years behind us.

I guess it's true what they say – that when you're a kid a year is a very large fraction of your life but when you're older that fraction is smaller. When you're 10 years old a year is 1/10^th of your life. When you're 50 it's 1/50^th of your life. That's why time seems to speed up as we get older.

Well... that and the fact that everything has speeded up in today's society. The internet brings us information instantly. The same thing we can find with just a few key strokes on a computer used to take hours or days, depending on how deeply you wanted to research it and what research materials were available to you at the time.

We used to have to go to... the library. That's where information was stored. In books.

Today the information is stored on the web and is available instantly.

Travel is faster now. In less than 24 hours you can be halfway around the world. And if you're lucky you can sleep on your way. (Personally, I don't sleep well on a plane.)

Food is faster. And no, I'm not talking about fast food restaurants but about already prepared foods that you can buy at any grocery store. Many are already cooked and ready to eat – just add heat or water.

And how do we heat already prepared foods? In the microwave oven, of course. In minutes or mere seconds, depending on the item.

I remember the very first time I experienced a microwave oven. One of my friends had it in his home. I was a young teenager. His mother showed us how she could boil water in about a minute. We were fascinated. Today there is hardly a kitchen anywhere that doesn't have one and we don't think twice about them. They're even in gas stations for public use.

One thing that has not increased is the intelligence of our young people. In the 60s and 70s college students were demanding freedom of speech and expression; freedom to voice their opinions and disagreements with the government; freedom to do what they wanted whether or not everyone approved.

Today our college students are demanding that freedom of speech and expression be curtailed so they don't have to worry about having their feelings hurt. Some of the professors and deans support this movement. I thought colleges and universities were places of learning? It seems to me they are becoming places of growing ignorance.

2015 was a year in which a large “racial equality” movement grew out of a lie and became disruptive to the point where a majority of Americans no longer have any sympathy for the cause. I'm talking, of course, about the Black Lives Matter movement – built on the lie that Michael Brown had his hands up and was surrendering when he was killed by Darren Wilson.

The investigation into that case, even the one done by the Justice Department, showed that Brown had assaulted Wilson, tried to take his gun, and was charging him when he was killed. The notion that he was on his knees with his hands up was a fabrication by his friend and partner in crime – who now works for the city government in St. Louis.

Imagine that? Tell a huge lie that goes nationwide and spawns an entire activist movement and you get a cushy job with the city. Maybe Mike Brown should have lied instead of stealing...

The BLM movement these days is mostly about intimidating white people. That's pretty much what they do. Invade restaurants, shopping malls and other public places to harass and intimidate people who don't look like them. In many cases they don't even want white sympathizers to join them – at least not where they can be seen.

The movement is about expressing anger at a perceived wrong but the method is more destructive than helpful. They want whites to understand and sympathize with their grievances but their actions are more divisive than uniting.

In Washington, 2015 has been a failure. Republicans took over the House and Senate in January and immediately gave all of the power to President Obama and the Democrats. They made a deal with the devil.

Then Speaker of the House, John Boehner, declared that no matter what happened, Republicans would not allow a government shutdown to occur. And in doing so he gave the President all control. The power of the purse is really the only thing the House controls that can stop President Obama's radical, left-wing agenda. Boehner gave away that power. Replacing him with Paul Ryan didn't really change anything because the first thing Ryan did was pass a budget bill that gives Obama everything he wanted.

Republicans lied to get elected in 2014 – promising to fight executive amnesty, Obamacare, etc., only to go on and completely fund Obama's agenda. And they wonder why people are angry and why Donald Trump is doing so well in the polls.

Speaking of Trump – his rhetoric on the campaign trail has him leading the once very large pack of Republicans seeking the Office of the President. And why shouldn't he be leading? He's the only one saying what angry Americans, who are fed up with Washington politicians, want to hear.

Both the Republican and Democrat campaigns are interesting – in a bizarre kind of way. Establishment Republicans like Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Lindsay Graham, etc., are failing. Their poll numbers are so pathetic it's difficult to understand how they can convince themselves to stay in the race.

Newcomers like Trump and Ben Carson are polling far higher than the establishment candidates. And the more the establishment candidates attack Trump the higher his numbers go. Carly Fiorina, who is an accomplished, intelligent woman, doesn't seem to have the right stuff for this election.

Ted Cruz, the only true conservative with a record of keeping his promises to this constituents, is doing well, slowly and steadily moving up in the polls. And Marco Rubio, the young, well spoken and obviously intelligent Senator from Florida seems promising, particularly on foreign policy. But he is too much like an establishment Republican for most conservatives.

On the Democrat side you have a criminal, a socialist, and an unknown. Democrats like to chastise Republicans as being “old white men.” But while Republicans have a black candidate, two Hispanic candidates and a woman in the race, the Democrats offer only Hillary Clinton, a proven liar and possibly the only Presidential candidate to be under investigation by the FBI for criminal activity while actively seeking the Office of the President; Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialst who wants to turn America into an economically and financially equal society for all – using your money to do it; and a third candidate that no one really cares about.

Three white people, two of them old. And they are the diverse party?

2015 has been the year of completely failed foreign policy and completely failed leadership from the White House.

President Obama also made a deal with the devil when he decided to form a nuclear agreement with a sworn enemy of the United States. In a deal where we get nothing and Iran gets everything they want, even Obama says it won't prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear bomb. Yet he praised the deal and John Kerry was mentioned for a possible Nobel Prize for giving away the store.

ISIS has done well in 2015. They have gone from the “JV team” to a force that has worldwide reach.

President Obama hasn't done well on this front either. As he tells us ISIS is not an existential threat, Americans watch as thousands upon thousands of innocent people in Iraq and Syria are executed on a regular basis.

One day after Mr. Obama declared ISIS contained they killed 126 innocent people in Paris, France. The day after Obama told Americans that ISIS wasn't a threat to them here in the States two wanna-be ISIS members killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California.

Here's an idea – maybe the President should stop making comments about ISIS and how safe we are. It seems they have an agenda to prove him wrong.

Obama tells us that going to war with ISIS plays right into their hands. Really?

For the sake of argument let's say that's true. Let's say ISIS really believes they want a war with the United States. If we went into that war with the intention of destroying ISIS it would be over fairly quickly. ISIS has bravado (and a lot of captured U.S. weaponry and vehicles.) The United States has muscle, intelligence, strong military leadership and the know-how and capability to annihilate their “army.” We have the experience and the power to completely destroy their major forces. Up until now President Obama has been playing patty-cake with them.

Certainly there will be consequences since ISIS is recruiting terrorists around the world. But that is our world today. We will never again see a world without Muslim terrorists and they will increase in this country over time. And through that reality the Democrats are trying to take guns away from law-abiding Americans. Yeah – great leadership there, Mr. President.

The President and the Democrats say that climate change is causing terrorism. Really? If that's true – where are all of the Christian terrorists? Where are the Israeli terrorists? Where are the Buddhist terrorists? Hindus? Sikhs? Why does it seem that only Muslims are affected by climate change to the point where they need to kill innocent people? Please explain that one to me.

The President likes to tell us that 2015 has been a great year, that the economy is booming and unemployment is down. The truth is that the median income for the middle class has dropped by $2500 a year and that nearly one third of the working age population is out of work. Food stamps and government subsidies are at an all-time, record high. Obamacare – that great piece of legislation, is failing.

Obama promised taxpayers that they'd see their health care premiums drop by $2500 a year. Yet most people have seen their health care premiums go up instead of down.The fines... excuse me – the tax... for not having health care is increasing yearly. Those who cannot afford health care insurance are being forced to pay the government for not having the money they need. Makes perfect sense, huh?

I could go on but this is getting rather long and my laptop battery is getting low. Yup – still no power. It did come on within that promised two-hour window, with about 10 minutes to spare. Then it went off again.

I want to wish all of you a very happy, healthy, prosperous and safe new year. May it be filled with love and blessings.

Thanks to all who read through my stuff. I'd write them anyway because I enjoy writing. But having readers makes it so much better. I'm grateful to each and every one of you for taking the time to see what I have to say. Perhaps one day I'll write a best-seller book and actually make some cash from my writing. Hey – I can dream, can't I?

May God bless each of you and bless the United States of America. We are still the greatest country in the world, despite the efforts of the current administration to change that. And we will remain so as long as we don't replace the current administration with more far-left idealogues.

Happy New Year!!

Putting A Hold On Muslim Immigration Is NOT Racism

I hear it all the time. I read it all the time. People are calling Donald Trump a racist because he wants to stop Muslims from entering the country for a period of time until the government can figure out a way to properly vet them.

His idea stems from the fact that it is already known there are Muslim terrorists in the United States and from the fact that the heads of the FBI, the NSA, and other agencies have stated publicly that currently there is no way to properly vet Syrian refugees and that ISIS has already made it known that they are infiltrating the refugee groups to gain access to Western countries.

How people can't see that it's a no brainer is beyond me. But there it is. Here's the problem with calling Trump the R word.

Islam is not a race. Islam is a political ideology and religion rolled into one. And while Muslims do believe they are superior over all others, it is not based on skin color or ethnicity. It is based on their belief in Allah and Mohamed. So those who toss around the R word saying if you don't like Muslims you're a racist are actually showing their ignorance of what the word means.

The data isn't complete yet but I would venture a guess that most of the terrorist acts committed in the last few years are related to radical Islam. They are killing thousands upon thousands of innocent people around the world. Our President wants to bring Muslim refugees from Syria into the country without proper vetting – even has he rejects the idea that Christians from the same region be allowed to enter the U.S. Once again he favors Islam over anyone else.

Of course, he says they will be properly vetted. But guess what? Tashfeen Malik, the female terrorist who helped to kill 14 people and wound 21 others in San Bernardino, was “properly vetted.”

I'm not going to say the government screwed up (although there is evidence that they did). What I'm saying is that this woman was vetted by Obama's Department of Homeland Security and cleared for entry – even though there is now evidence that she was already radicalized before she was vetted.

There is simply no good way to properly vet these people – but the President has ordered that they be allowed in anyway. Trump's idea is not so far fetched.

And Trump's idea is not only nothing new – it has been done in the past. The only difference is that Trump is calling for a temporary moratorium on Muslim entry as opposed to nationality.

During World War II, FDR banned Germans, Japanese and Italians from entering the country. During the Iran hostage crisis between 1979 and 1981, Jimmy Carter banned Iranians from entering the country.

The entire Middle East is not a threat to the United States. Nor is any one country at this time. Only Islamic radicals are the threat. But since our government has failed to devise a screening process that can determine who is and is not radicalized, it only makes sense to suspend entry into the country for all Muslims until a better system can be worked out.

Exceptions certainly could be made. Someone pointed out that the King of Jordan would not be allowed entry under this ban. But heads of state would certainly be the exception, as would diplomats and trusted others who have already been vetted and have been here before. This ban would mostly be on Muslims who have never been here and those attempting to immigrate.

And again – the ban would be temporary – only until the government creates a better vetting system. Given that President Obama loves Muslim immigration to our country, it would give his administration incentive to actually create that vetting process within a reasonable time.

One must ask why the Obama adminstration is rejecting Christian refugees from Syria. Are they not in as much danger as the Muslim refugees? To my knowledge, no Middle Eastern Christians have committed acts of terrorism in the United States or elsewhere. Doesn't it make sense to bring them first? Or is it just me?

I'm sure some will call me a racist for agreeing with Trunp on this issue. But they will simply be proving the point I made above – their ignorance of Islam and what the word “racist” means. But it's really not surprising given the way the R word is tossed around so easily these days.

Just about every disagreement with the Obama adminstration will get one labeled a racist. And criticizing any group of people, from Muslims to those crossing our borders illegally, earns you the same label. Some people cannot have an intelligent discussion on the issue and instead try to make the issue about hatred and bigotry.

But that's just my opinion – I could be wrong.

What The World Owes The Jews

I didn't write this. I received it in an e-mail. But if all this is true then the Jews of the world not only deserve our help and protection but our praise as well. This is long but well worth scanning. There is a lot of good information on the accomplishments of the Jewish people in the world.

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Some time ago, Iran's Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khomenei urged the Muslim World to boycott anything and everything that originates with the Jewish  people.

In response, Meyer M. Treinkman, a pharmacist, out of the kindness of his heart, offered to assist them in their boycott as follows:

"Any Muslim who has Syphilis must not be cured by Salvarsan discovered by a Jew, Dr. Ehrlich. He should not even try to find out whether he has Syphilis, because the Wasserman Test is the discovery of a Jew.

If a Muslim suspects that he has Gonorrhea, he must not seek diagnosis, Because he will be using the method of a Jew named Neissner.

"A Muslim who has heart disease must not use Digitalis, a discovery by a Jew, Ludwig Traube.

Should he suffer with a toothache, he must not use Novocaine, a discovery of the Jews, Widal and Weil.

If a Muslim has Diabetes, he must not use Insulin, the result of research by Minkowsky, a Jew. If one has a headache, he must shun Pyramidon and Antypyrin, due to the Jews, Spiro and Ellege.

Muslims with convulsions must put up with them because it was a Jew, Oscar  Leibreich, who proposed the use of Chloral Hydrate.

Arabs must do likewise with their psychic ailments because Freud, father of  psychoanalysis, was a Jew.

Should a Muslim child get Diphtheria, he must refrain from the “Schick" reaction which was invented by the Jew, Bella Schick.

"Muslims should be ready to die in great numbers and must not permit treatment of ear and brain damage, work of Jewish Nobel Prize winner, Robert Baram.

They should continue to die or remain crippled by Infantile Paralysis because the discoverer of the anti-polio vaccine is a  Jew, Jonas Salk.

"Muslims must refuse to use Streptomycin and continue to die of Tuberculosis because a Jew, Zalman Waxman, invented the wonder drug against this killing disease.

Muslim doctors must discard all discoveries and improvements by dermatologist Judas Sehn Benedict, or the lung specialist, Frawnkel, and of many other world renowned Jewish scientists and medical experts.

"In short, good and loyal Muslims properly and fittingly should remain afflicted with Syphilis, Gonorrhea,  Heart Disease, Headaches, Typhus, Diabetes, Mental Disorders, Polio Convulsions and Tuberculosis and be proud to obey the Islamic boycott."

Oh, and by the way, don't call for a doctor on your cell phone because the cell phone was invented in Israel by a Jewish engineer.

Meanwhile I ask, what medical contributions to the world have the Muslims made?

The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000; that is ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION or 20%  of the world's population.

They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:

1988 - Najib Mahfooz

Peace:

1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat

1990 - Elias James Corey

1994 - Yaser Arafat:

1999 - Ahmed Zewai

Economics:

(zero)

Physics:

(zero)

Medicine:

1960 - Peter Brian Medawar

1998 - Ferid Mourad

TOTAL: 7 SEVEN

The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000; that is FOURTEEN MILLION or about 0.02% of the world's population.

They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:

1910 - Paul Heyse

1927 - Henri Bergson

1958 - Boris Pasternak

1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon

1966 - Nelly Sachs

1976 - Saul Bellow

1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer

1981 - Elias Canetti

1987 - Joseph Brodsky

1991 - Nadine Gordimer World

Peace:

1911 - Alfred Fried

1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser

1968 - Rene Cassin

1973 - Henry Kissinger

1978 - Menachem Begin

1986 - Elie Wiesel

1994 - Shimon Peres

1994 - Yitzhak Rabin

Physics:

1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer

1906 - Henri Moissan

1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson

1908 - Gabriel Lippmann

1910 - Otto Wallach

1915 - Richard Willstaetter

1918 - Fritz Haber

1921 - Albert Einstein

1922 - Niels Bohr

1925 - James Franck

1925 - Gustav Hertz

1943 - Gustav Stern

1943 - George Charles de Hevesy

1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi

1952 - Felix Bloch

1954 - Max Born

1958 - Igor Tamm

1959 - Emilio Segre

1960 - Donald A. Glaser

1961 - Robert Hofstadter

1961 - Melvin Calvin

1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau

1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz

1965 - Richard Phillips  Feynman

1965 - Julian Schwinger

1969 - Murray Gell-Mann

1971 - Dennis Gabor

1972 - William Howard Stein

1973 - Brian David Josephson

1975 - Benjamin Mottleson

1976 - Burton Richter

1977 - Ilya Prigogine

1978 - Arno Allan Penzias

1978 - Peter L Kapitza

1979 - Stephen Weinberg

1979 - Sheldon Glashow

1979 - Herbert Charles Brown

1980 - Paul Berg

1980 - Walter Gilbert

1981 - Roald Hoffmann

1982 - Aaron Klug

1985 - Albert A. Hauptman

1985 - Jerome Karle

1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach

1988 - Robert Huber

1988 - Leon Lederman

1988 - Melvin Schwartz

1988 - Jack Steinberger

1989 - Sidney Altman

1990 - Jerome Friedman

1992 - Rudolph Marcus

1995 - Martin Perl

2000 - Alan J. Heeger

Economics:

1970 - Paul  Anthony Samuelson

1971 - Simon Kuznets

1972 - Kenneth Joseph  Arrow

1975 - Leonid Kantorovich

1976 - Milton Friedman

1978 - Herbert A. Simon

1980 - Lawrence Robert  Klein

1985 - Franco Modigliani

1987 - Robert M. Solow

1990 - Harry  Markowitz

1990 - Merton Miller

1992 - Gary Becker

1993 - Robert  Fogel

Medicine:

1908 - Elie Metchnikoff

1908 - Paul  Erlich

1914 - Robert Barany

1922 - Otto Meyerhof

1930 - Karl  Landsteiner

1931 - Otto Warburg

1936 - Otto Loewi

1944 - Joseph  Erlanger

1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser

1945 - Ernst Boris  Chain

1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller

1950 - Tadeus Reichstein

1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman

1953 - Hans Krebs

1953 - Fritz Albert  Lipmann

1958 - Joshua Lederberg

1959 - Arthur Kornberg

1964 - Konrad Bloch

1965 - Francois Jacob

1965 - Andre Lwoff

1967 - George  Wald

1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg

1969 - Salvador Luria

1970 - Julius Axelrod

1970 - Sir Bernard Katz

1972 - Gerald  Maurice Edelman

1975 - Howard Martin Temin

1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg

1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow

1978 - Daniel Nathans

1980 - Baruj Benacerraf

1984 - Cesar Milstein

1985 - Michael Stuart Brown

1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein

1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]

1988 - Gertrude Elion

1989 - Harold Varmus

1991 - Erwin Neher

1991 - Bert Sakmann

1993 - Richard J. Roberts

1993 - Phillip Sharp

1994 - Alfred Gilman

1995 - Edward B. Lewis

1996- Lu RoseIacovino

TOTAL: 129!

The Jews are NOT promoting brainwashing children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non-Muslims.

The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow themselves up in German restaurants.

There is NOT one single Jew who has destroyed a church.

There is NOT a single Jew  who protests by killing people.

The Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have  leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.

 Muslims must ask 'what can they do for humankind' before they demand that humankind respects them.

Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel  's part, the following two sentences really say it all:

'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel."

Benjamin Netanyahu: General Eisenhower warned us. It is a matter of history that when  the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered  through the camps and even made to bury the dead.

He did this because  he said in words to this effect: 'Get it all on record now - get the films -  get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of history some scoundrel will get up and say that this never happened'

Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred.

It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear  that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.

 How many years will it be before the attack on the  World Trade Center 'NEVER HAPPENED' because it offends some Muslim in the United  States?