The First Amendment seems to get more attention these days than any other. You would think that with all of the attention, people would actually take the time to learn about it and figure out what protections it really offers. But alas, knowledge is a lost concept in America. We all laugh at the stupidity of those who defend sports stars from claiming some infringement on their rights. Dumb statements and misguided at best arguments. Many well intentioned folks though misunderstand the constitution and make claims that private companies like Facebook, Twitter and other social media are somehow depriving folks of their first amendment rights. Here is a great site that highlights success in fighting real infringements on first amendment rights. The thing I find interesting isn’t merely their successes. As you go into their various success stories, you get to see actual first amendment issues that you might never realize are protected conduct.

Americans are creatures of habit. We get used to doing the same things, used to stupid rules and laws, and were brought up with the notion that you “can’t fight City Hall”. Government bureaucrats live on this notion. They love the fact that people “accept” the BS that they do. Well, there is a group that is changing this paradigm. The Institute for Justice’s “Ask Why” initiative challenges governments idiocy and is winning. Obviously they would like to motivate people across the country to “ask why” locally. They get involved legally when they can. This is a great site that highlights government stupidity and actual success in overcoming the rules. It’s a great motivator and reminds us that “You CAN fight City Hall”.

The duty of Americans to hold their politicians accountable is paramount to our country’s well being. Attending and speaking out on issues of concern at City Council, County Commissioner and School Board meetings seems to be an American tradition. Well, one school board decided that they would go through the motions of appearing to encourage such public participation but then made restrictive rules on actually doing it. It created the rule that the Superintendent would have to “pre screen” your “request” to speak and then could delay your request forever. The good news is that the court ruled that they couldn’t have this delay process built into the request to speak process. The bad news is that they ruled that the only reason that the school district lost here is because they had a policy that allowed someone to speak. In other words, if the school district merely eliminated the public forum part of the meetings, you would have no right to speak. …

If you are inclined to share blog posts, this is probably the most important posts you read all year. Imagine at the height of World War II if you found out that the US was training the Nazi SS? Imagine if you found out that during the Cold War the US was funding the Soviet Army? I’m certain that most would consider this to be treason of the highest order. Well, the US and its allies did that with Al Qaeda and ISIS! This isn’t a conspiracy theory, this is all revealed in a recently released DoD document that only released after an FOIA request forced the DoD to released it. DoD turned down the FOIA request, but they were sued and the courts forced them to release the document. Here’s the “killer lines”: “Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad.” ‘in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, despite anticipating that doing so could lead to the emergence of an 'Islamic State' in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).” “the Pentagon foresaw the likely rise of the 'Islamic State' as a direct consequence of the strategy, but described this outcome as a strategic opportunity to "isolate the Syrian regime." This is political strategy conducted by insanity. We claim that ISIS is an enemy and expend US resources to destroy them, yet we created them, supported them and trained them. At best these are some stupid people. At worst, it’s treason. Our war in Syria has created a mere 28 casualties and even one MIA (when have you ever heard about the MIAs in our never-ending wars – two in Iraq and one in Syria)? This is a must read and must share post. I recommend not reading it on a full stomach. It made me want to vomit. Here’s the worst part: This was originally posted in 2015! I’ve been unable to find coverage of this in any of the mainstream media outlets.

America’s biggest “never met a war he didn’t like” senator is John McCain. Many will forget the times he and his buddy Lindsey Graham went to visit ISIS in Syria. Senators “dropping in” to war zones in an attempt to create foreign policy seems wrong at best, but these two have been doing it for a long time. Here’s a story from the “way back” machine to remind folks that McCain not only does this, but even posses for pictures with our enemies. Should be exhibit A at his trial, but he’ll soon be tried by a higher judge….. with no chance of appeal.

During my Army days, I had a pretty cold blooded approach to spending. My thought was that if it took Americans eating cat food in order to protect this great country of ours, so be it. I always added the zinger though. That if this was the case, it was incumbent on the Army to spend every taxpayers dollar as efficiently as possible. In other words to respect the folks that were paying the bills. Such an attitude isn’t common anymore. While most would silently agree with the first part of the argument, there is no concern over the second. Our two current “never ending” wars have turned into a cash cow for the Pentagon and it’s contractors. Billions are spent for equipment that never even makes it into the field. Heck, some of it never leaves the factory. The F35 is just one of the bigger examples. Development started in 1992! By 2914 it was $163 BILLION over budget and seven years behind schedule. A recent report reveals that the Air Force won’t even update as many as 200 F35s to modern, combat capabilities. They are considering scrapping them. The Army has let a contract to upgrade 1000 M1 tanks at the same time that they are changing their operations doctrine to fight in a Cold War scenario across the plains of Fulda. Only $20 million apiece. We’ve been unable to us tanks in our never ending wars, and at 70+ tons, they aren’t easily strategically deployable. Heck, even if they were for the defense of the United states, at that weight, they’d be pretty limited to the interstate highway system. I just have one question. In light of the trillions of dollars wasted on the never-ending wars, and at 70+ tons, they aren’t easily strategically deployable. Heck, even if they were for the defense of the United states, at that weight, they’d be pretty limited to the interstate highway system. I just have one question. In light of the trillions of dollars wasted on the never-ending wars, who has been fired?

Most folks only have two concepts of India. One is that they “control” the help desk world of American companies and the other is that they own most of the medium priced hotels across America. India is a complex country. Back in the days of the Cold War, they had the largest collection of PhDs in the world, just behind the US and the Soviet Union. They designed some really good ships, submarines and other military equipment. Their challenge wasn’t at the top. They had the smart folks. What they didn’t have was a clever work force. They could design it, but they couldn’t build it. They have evolved. They launched 104 satellites from a single rocket. The old record was 39. Good news for India. Sadly, 96 of them were ours. I guess when we outsourced NASA that included putting satellites in orbit too. As an aside, Nasa’s Maven Mars mission cost us $671 million. India sent an unmanned rocket to orbit Mars for $73 million.

Regular readers know that I think the bombastic attitude of the US towards North Korea is foolish at best and dangerous at worst. Pushing for a nuclear WWIII is not a good idea and has no winners. The US concept of diplomacy at gun point has created many problems for us, but certainly makes the deep state a lot of money. Yours and my money. How can any thinking person not think that getting North and South Korea in the same place and talking to them be a bad thing? I know, the “Russia bad” mantra is a common retort to such diplomacy, but if they can ease the tensions, how is that a bad thing? Obviously Putin and the Russians aren’t doing this just for fun. They are looking out for their national interests. A concept that our leaders need to embrace too.

The Vegas shooting has fallen off the radar screen of most of the mainstream media. But then that’s common in America. We move on very quickly. Who even talks about the Houston storm? Florida’s hurricane? Puerto Rico? There are more of the unanswered questions being answered in Vegas, and the link below actually has kept track of them from the beginning and is keeping track of the questions and the answers. It’s a good reference. Of course the conspiracy theories continue to grow, and the “false flag” arguments seem to grow by the day. False flag arguments resonate with people because it’s well known that our government has conducted lots of them over the years. Usually though the false flags that our government runs are foreign efforts to affect foreign governments. It has only been since 9/11 that we’ve seen an increase in false flag operations domestically, with most of them to support the notion that we have lots of domestic terrorists and that our FBI and DHS are doing a “crackerjack” job of stopping them and that they just need a little more money and power to prevent more of them. In my experience, if you are looking for a false flag, you need to start at the end of what happened and see who wins. The “what” of the event is mere theater. The result will help you determine what the false flag is about. In the case of Vegas, I’d suggest you look at who sells metal detectors and other security devices for casinos and hotels. There is a whole lot of money about to be spent to “secure” hotels and casinos. Look for a TSAesque setup in the hotels and casinos not only in Vegas but in mass venues everywhere.…

The “what” of North Korea’s nuclear weapons is a known thing. It’s a copy of a 1960’s Polaris missile. An old US design. This design was copied by Israel, France, Russia and China; probably even India. It is also the Israeli Jericho 2 design, copied from the Polaris A1 design. The UK also had it in their older nuclear submarines. The good news is that the warhead does not separate from the missiles’ main body, so it’s easy to intercept. The re-entry platform is quite crude. The bad news is that with 150kt yield, it’s still dangerous. What puzzles most analysts is how fast North Korea got from rudimentary designs to this latest improved version. In other words, who has been helping them. The notion that it’s Iran is pretty bizarre. Iran doesn’t have a nuclear bomb. It seem to make more sense to look at who does have them and see who would have an interest in North Korea having one too. This site below makes a strong argument that it’s China. This is the part of the post that drops down from knowledge to mere information. It’s a good argument, but for now I don’t know. You would think our zillion dollar intelligence agencies would have an answer. If you are a conspiracy minded person, you might be inclined to believe that they do know.