Bob Costas Vs. Barry Bonds.

This is probably going where no blog has gone before, into the annals and depths of….BASEBALL….but I do think that this whole thing can relate to something that is much involved with our society.

Now for those of you who may not follow Baseball…you know who you are….the story is basically goes as follows. Barry Bonds, the rumor is, that he has taken steroids because he has hit a lot of Home Runs. He has done some amazing things. So Bob Costas has, repeatedly, come out and said, well he must have taken steroids! Look at what he has done. Look at all these amazing statistics that he has put up something HAS TO be up!

That is the general gist.

That Bob Costas has openly questioned the legitimacy of his stats, every single one of them.

That they are super human, no one in Baseball has done them before, and this is so far beyond and special than anything has ever done before.

So are we going to assume that anyone who does anything special is a steroid user and a cheater? So what about the greats like Ty Cobb and Hank Aaron.

And this idea, specifically about steroids, seems to be polluting the game despite the game beginning to move past it.

Why Kevin Youkilis is over angry, that is a sign of steroids, why Jose Bautista just hit his fiftieth home run, surely he is using steroids…after all he sucked before!….Oh Troy Troy Tulowitzki is doing things that no short stop has done in history! Why its common sense!

And on and on it goes.

Now Bob Costas can have any opinion that he chooses. I support him fully in that, in fact he could even be right! Barry Bonds’s stats are pretty awesome, you draw your own conclusions.

But at the moment this all remains nothing but opinion, allegations, and innuendo in regards to Barry Bonds. And this remains unproven about what happened, and when it happened.

The perfect solution to this would be to determine through the facts if he was taking steroids, when he was using steroids, and when he was not using steroids, was it an illegal substance at the time, and if it was then strike those specific stats from the record.

But with athletes this happens time and time again. They get accused and blamed for things when there is scant evidence.

The Duke rape case, accused, had their lives apparently ruined in some ways…at least especially at the time…based on evidence and accusations that proved to be false in the end.

Kobe Bryant was ACCUSED of rape and had a long case drawn out against him in Colorado, and was acquitted of all charges. But if you listen to people, and the people working the case, it was such a shame and he got away with it and that the victim had lost out.

We seem to have a rush to judgment in this country when it comes to people and things. And in cases time and time again, in sports, and beyond.

Yes Bob Costas can have his opinions….so does Glenn Beck, and still others.

Again the court of law is what is important here. The Court of what can be proven, and the court of public opinion too. But in so doing keeping in mind the actual facts to draw your opinions and conclusions from.

Because, as it seems to me, Costas did not pass this off as his speculation or Opinion. This is the way it happened, this is common sense, he must have done them look at the numbers!

What he took, and when he took it.

All I see is a Baseball player who hit a lot of home runs.

Yes he might have taken steroids, yes the allegations could be proven to be true, yes you can draw your own opinions from what you have seen and heard.

But it is not yet known.

So whether it is Barrack Obama, Glenn Beck, or Barry Bonds, we need to give each one a fair shake, and honestly look at the facts to draw our opinions from.

If we don’t we do ourselves a dangerous disservice.

Tax Policy: Saving vs. Spending.

A while back I was watching the Glenn Beck program and he had Joe Rogers on. He was talking about the American tax system, how it had discouraged saving.

I did not know what to make of it at first, but it was good food for thought. And then it hit me.

You see we have the tax system…a tax system. That taxes income. It taxes how much you make, and discourages saving.

That if you make money, have money, save, be frugal, or suddenly find yourself into a lot more dollars you will be taxed at a greater amount. Or at the least treated with suspicion. In other words such a tax system and such a culture that actually discourages saving.

And they have talked about other ways of taxing including savings accounts, taxing transfers of money, and other things.

We need something to, at the least reverse the trend. I do not advocate ‘tricking’ people into saving but we need a way to encourage people to be as frugal with the dollars and the resources that they have rather than the opposite which has trickled all the way to the top of our Government and our current policies of big spending.

Some people do not like giving money to the Government, some people do not even like spending more money then they have or spending in general.

Therefor any future tax will have to be consumption based. Based on what people buy.

That way people will, hopefully, start saving again. It will start going about its business again and then decide, is this item really what I want to spend on? Since it will slightly more expensive.

And that way you can have no loopholes, no tax breaks, no benefits, and everyone would be taxed in some way regardless of income.

That way people are not going to be taxed on purely what they save, but what they chose to spend in the markets and through society.

The Greatest Catch 22.

For a while now, for over six months I have been wondering just what is the greatest catch 22 of all time? What is the greatest catch 22 of our time?

Because I think figuring this out is important and bears practical real world necessity.

And I think I have found it. And it has to do with us, and our political opponents.

It has to do with the idea, my idea, of being bridge builders, guides, and teachers to others throughout the generations and through to each other. That we have to make a stand and hopefully lead others to the truth, or at the very least what we consider the truth, or at the very very least that they can consider a new perspective and find the truth on their own.

You see I want to build bridges. From all over the political and religious map. I want to look for the commonalities and the principles and the divine rights and God’s Law. I want to find the truth. We may disagree on the specifics, what rituals to follow, or anything else in the physical material world. And that is fine.

And I want to be a teacher and guide for people. And at least have them consider alternative options.

And no matter what I am, usually, quite willing to let by gons be by gons.

But yet the great catch 22 is that we have a large number of people in this country who do look at my and for many people reading this blog, our, ideology as being potentially dangerous.

Worse they are willing to force their political ideologies on you through the voting booth and through their Governmental preference.

And they do it, partially, because part of their ideology demands it of them.

That they must, they must put their ideology and their beliefs…despite most of them believing in Moral Relativism…into actual political action. Or through real power by voting for politicians who will enact their ideology on the country as a whole.

Whether it is on Abortion, Marriage, war, welfare. Whatever the issue, the Government must be there to regulate it, mandate it, control it, or condone it. As I have pointed out the modern progressive are very happy with the Government in your reproductive organs, or your bedroom, or in your most personal decisions. As long as the agenda is their own.

And if you disagree with them?

You are ignorant, a bandwagon person, willfully blind, or a racist bigot and any other number of things that you are. Often it is some combination of those but not all of them. If you dare to question you are some of those.

I do not think this is the way, I do not advocate or think anything of the kind of this way is the way to go.

But the best way to ‘defeat’ them and their ideology by our ideology, or at least mine, is to not defeat them in the first place.

That we do not use power and coercion, of education, the media, the press, or the Government, to defeat our enemies. That we do not demand that they be destroyed or that only our ideology works.

But their ideology demands of them and makes them deal with us in the collective.

And I have seen often enough that they in small and large ways advocate extreme sanction to use the Government to ensure that we no longer have our piece of Sky.

Life and Death.

I have been pouring over Facebook recently and two items of interest came up.

One was a poll, posted by a Pro Israeli Facebook group, where it stated that 32% of Palestinians supported the Itamar massacre of the Fogel family. (In case you missed the story) The other was a Facebook question where the question was posed what would be the next big Industry? Jew Burning was one of the options. Two people, last I checked, voted for that option.

Now the numbers aren’t important…really they aren’t.

But what is important is there are people, no matter how small the minority in the overall population, who would do these heinous acts. Or others…like stabbing pregnant women in their bellies. Or hanging Clarence Thomas, or any number of atrocities both on the individual, and on entire groups, or advocate that this should happen.

What do we do about it? Where do we stand? How do we react?

In this conflict and in conflicts passed, like the conflict with the Native Americans, you hear it all the time. Well what would you do? What would you do if someone was invading your home land and occupying your land and forcing you to do things for them? To live with them? To get out of their way? To submit to random searches? Wouldn’t you fight? At least this is the logic used.

And yes I would, I would fight, I am not at the end of the day, a pacifist. I suppose my philosophy here is the Jedi philosophy.

I hate war, I think when you have gone to war and draw weaponry and violence you lost something in the end. But at the end of the day I will fight if pushed to it. In my own, probably non violent, way.

But the logic here is supposed to shame people into supporting the Palestinian cause, or feel guilty about what we did retroactively to the Native Americans…and we should but we should not be tricked into it.

Yes I would, if I felt it the right thing to do, in my own way, fight those individual forces that I deem to be a threat.

In the Israeli situation, IF I was a Palestinian, and IF I felt that I was being wronged, I would fight the soldiers, or the policemen or the people who are directly oppressing me.

I would not advocate wiping out the Israeli Government, all the Jews, or the state of Israel, I would not want to kill them all. IF these circumstances were to result.

I mean could you just imagine that, if during the American Revolution, had a revolutionary group of militia gone in and massacred an entire, completely innocent, had nothing to do with the Brits, family with children, what would be the reaction to this? What would be your, oh member of the audience, reaction to this situation?

Or what if a Native American tribe moved to wipe out and burn down an entire town half way across the country?

What is morally acceptable?

Any of the situations that I laid out in this blog I do not think are. In fact I can guarantee you that killing innocent non combatants is not morally acceptable.

We must continue to make the moral choices in our own lives. And in our own times. We must continue to stand for good, and against evil.

And if it is ABSOLUTLY NECCESSARY that we fight. Then we fight. If our lives and our very way of life is threatened.

Understanding that this is not a good choice, this may not be the right choice, and we should exhaust every single option before we go down this dark path.

We must stand with the good people of the world, and against the mass murder of the innocent.

If you Treat People Like Cows, They Will Moo.

Big Government Liberals, statists, progressives, and almost any of the ideologies on the Big Government Left deals in collective terms. In the enlightened and the groups of ideology, and the herd, the dumb people, the people who just do not know better and cannot take care of themselves anyways.

Ideas expressed from Margret Sanger and Edward Bernays to most of our current crop of politicians and academia.

Now, in dealing on individual terms, they do have a point. We all have a little bit of animal in us.

But because of our sentience, because of that divine spark, because of our humanity…or what have you, we can rise past that. We can be higher selves that is capable of doing…great things on many levels. And bad things.

To even sacrifice ourselves for our cause and our agenda, what ever that has to be.

Its like the story that I mentioned in Becoming a Crusader, about us being slaves to our hormones and our instincts.

Well just imagine if we could rise past our instincts, and our hormones, imagine if we can move past our base animal instincts and create a better world and one of freedom and dignity? awesomeness baby!

Because if you treat people like animals, if you treat people like dirt…except for the few college ‘educated’ people that you can ‘save’….then they will act like it. If you divide everyone into their own groups and have one group that is smarter and wiser, well sometimes people believe the negative rhetoric.

If you divide all people into the ‘educated’ and the ‘herd’ the ‘enlightened’ and the ‘unenlightened’ the ranchers and the herd then that is what you will get out of people.

You will get people who do believe in these artificial groups, which may lead to a bigotry hitherto unseen in human history, bigotry based on intelligence. My educated group versus your ignorance.

And you will get people who will believe this. Besides it is easier to act like an animals sometimes. Living by desire and temptation alone, living by getting fed and coddled by our ‘betters’.

But on the other hand if you treat people like divinely gifted humans and with respect and dignity, you may in the end get a better result.

Life Lessons in Poker.

When I was writing the notes to this potential blog I had just beaten me Dad in a poker game that we were playing against of each other as I was trying to learn the game, still am.

But how I did it, it pissed him off, he was mad that I did not pay attention to the board and hit a lucky card on the river.

Now I would not have changed anything, I won, and sometimes that is how one plays poker, but I did not consider the option and well I got lucky.

We have to pay attention, to all the options out there that we possibly can. I know this is hard, I know that this is next to impossible to do in today’s world for the individual.

Keeping this in the Poker realm it is hard to keep track of the dozens of factors in the game. Chip Size, position, your fellow players, your cards, everyone else’s theoretical cards, the cards on the board, if you can make a straight, two pair, a full house, or a flush.

Because there was at the time of the hand a lot higher cards on the table that could have broken me, a lot higher options and card possibilities that someone else could have and did have in this situation that would have beaten me until the end.

Though in the end I might have taken the risk anyways, I might have still played the cards anyways, and still had gotten lucky.

So we have to know our options. We have to come to a good understanding, as individuals and as a Liberty Movement, of the possible threats, risks, rewards, and dangers out there in life and what is facing us.

Because the more information we have out there, the better we know how to react and what to do and in what direction to move in as individuals.

To know when to fold em, hold em, and to know when to run like crazy. To know when to call, bet, raise, check, or sweat.

Because if you know the threats, like there is a ten on the board and you have a four, and you could be beaten even if another four comes up.

You can still decide to risk it, to bluff, to see if you can get lucky later and see where the hand goes, but you must not be blind sided.

We have to know where we stand as a country if we can begin to fix things and address the problems and not be blindsided by all the potential threats and stumbling stones of our ideology.

Because if we don’t we can never go forward, and if we don’t and something hits us, it could mean the death of us, but if we go in with eyes open and decide to go in, it could just mean we survive.

And are we really willing to go all in, to risk everything, if we believe that we have the strongest ideological hand?

Reminder/ Lessons From Beck.

As many of you may know Beck will be leaving his Fox News show later on this year and transitioning off of it. (Story)

As of right now only he really knows what he is doing and what the future will bring, but he has promised us bigger and better things.

Whatever this ends up being though I do expect seeing more from him, and his company, later in the future. Regardless he has to do what he has to do.

He has often advocated, and implored us, to find our own answers. If he is not here who will we turn to? And that we have to be strong people on our own and know the truth on our own in the event he is not here. And even when he is here now, we should search on our own.

Now I do not think this is where he is going with the move, in fact I ultimately think quite the opposite.

But regardless this should serve as the perfect wake up call, the perfect remind, of just what if? What happens if he is not here to share his unique perspective on the world?

We have to use this as a reminder and to consider for a moment just what our lives would look like if something were to happen with him tomorrow.

I do not think we would stop believing in everything that we currently believe. I do not even think that we could stop finding the answers and the truth.

But the fact still remains that we are ultimately the only guardians of our own liberty. And we have to find a way to be stronger and to find more of the answers on our own if we are to survive.

I am not really down for the whole forty day and forty night challenge that he has come up with. It will not work for me. I think it’s a good idea, but I tend to move a little slower than that in all of my interactions with the world around me.

I need time to react and interact and to learn and to grow in all areas of my life.

I am at the start of this process. Figuring out a religious/spiritual/philosophical belief, and where I fit into the grand scale of the universe.

Right now that is where my focus primarily is.

More than on Presidential politics and what is coming up in the world and current events, more than science or anything else. And as many might have noticed my blogs have taken on more of a metaphysical twist lately.

But we need to constantly be learning and striving about our current world and the many threats we face in it. If we are to grow as humans, and survive. Individually, and as a Republic.

Striving for Absuolutes.

“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” – Vince Lombardi.

I do not like absolutes. I do not like dealing with them, I do not like thinking about them, and I do not think we can deal with them. I do not like them for solutions, and I do not think that we live in a world that supports them, for good or evil.

We live in a world that seems to be quite hostile to absolutes, even absolutes that seem to be absolutely good.

But yet, I do not think that we strive for anything anymore. Not absolute evil, not absolute good. It certainly seems that way, and probably a lot of people do it, and a lot of people who I think might not do it, do it, so who knows? I could be blowing smoke.

Regardless of that though, who is striving and what we are doing life is about striving. Even if you are just milling about not striving you are striving, or letting others do so on your behalf.

That is the goal in life to often strive, and work, to something that you deem good. Or even letting someone do it on your behalf.

A Government that redistributes wealth, organized religions, almost anything.

But we cannot get to ultimate good, or ultimate evil, by ourselves. Often we need help.

From those around us in the temporal realm, and those entities behind the veil either tempting us or laying down a series of guides and principles that we can live our lives. Either God guiding us, or the other guy tempting us.

We just have to pick the ones that we believe and feel in our essence is right, and then strive for that.

Because those are principles and we often do not live up to them as much as we like to, all we can do is strive towards it.

All we can do is strive for what we believe is right and hope that we are striving in the right direction. Striving to emulate more closely the divine principles as laid down by our Creator.

The Two Spirits.

I believe we have a divine spark in us.

I was talking with my Dad in Costco about this subject and I stated my belief that we have a divine spark and each one of us.

It is one of the things that makes us God’s children, one of the things that makes us Sentient and distinguishes us from non Sentience, and it gives us a small bridge between us and God. And an ability to talk with, and try to come to some understanding of the divine.

But it stands to reason that if this is true and we do have a divine spark in us then it stands to reason that we have a part of some evil force as well. For if it stands that there is an absolute good then there must be an absolute evil as well.

It stands to reason that there is a bit of each one in us a bit of both forces and we have to choose which one we listen to, and which one we strive towards as people.

A force that is good, divine, and just, and a force that is more evil and animalistic in nature, giving in and living in purely on our temptations.

It is literally the devil and the angel, the good and dark sides of the force inside of you that is pulling you and trying to get you to do one thing or the other. Yes you have free will, but that helps you chose which one to follow and which one you are. Or which one you try to be, whether you know it or not.

And if we can choose to be our higher selves, if we can choose to listen to, or at least emulate that higher spirit, then maybe, just maybe, we can heal the wounds of our world, or at least our own lives, which is a start.

Living In the Veil Between Worlds.

You know I am not sure whether or not this is the right track getting purely philosophical and religious and trying to make what on reflection should be an obvious point. But, well its been a busy month. 😛

The main issue here is that we live in a world that is in between two worlds. Two perfect alternatives and two absolutes. One that is perfectly and absolutely good, and one that is perfectly and absolutely evil. Muhahaha.

Whether or not you believe in a Heaven, or Hell, or any after life one can appreciate the point. This world, though it does see to work and have a certain ‘perfection’ to it, thus the universe does not explode, but it is corruptible, it is imperfect, and it decays.

To say the world is perfectly good or perfectly evil, or to say that humanity is perfectly good or perfectly evil, is just not true and quite a silly assertion. And should be obvious.

We are in the middle of a gray world, in between these two perfect options, these two perfect absolutes.

We can be mostly good, we can be mostly evil. But we are not.

And, as with any veil, we can sometimes see an imprint or an echo of what is on the other side but we can never fully comprehend either absolute in their entirety.

Ultimately we are striving for one world, or for the other.