The Future of Sports

                The hoopla over horse-racing’s first Triple Crown winner in 37 years has temporarily obscured the fact that, in today’s changing moral climate (the one climate that demonstrably, inarguably is changing, and rapidly at that), horse racing’s days are numbered. Who are we to “own” an animal and make them work hard, train and exercise for our enjoyment?

                The writing is on the wall (not off-the-wall) for other sports, as well. Most human contact-sports are also doomed to go the way of the Stegosaurus.

                Significant changes have been made recently to make football and hockey, in particular, safer and more tolerable to the metro-sexual sports fan. There has been serious talk of eliminating what is arguably the most exciting play in football, the kick-off return, in the interest of the player’s safety. Fighting in the NHL has nearly been eliminated and this year an automatic icing rule was instituted to protect the players from possible collisions while racing after the puck.

                Boxing, in days past called “the sweet science,” is obviously not long for this world, either. Why would anyone want to see one man hit another man for their pleasure?

                I will be the first to say that the “gladiator” games were over-the-top. Way, way beyond the pale of simple human decency, and almost incomprehensible, though that is easy for me to say as I didn’t live in those times.

                Yet, we now face an entirely different issue. The popularity of several major sports is in danger of collapse, not just from being banned, but from being watered down to the point that the average fan making 45 grand a year will not want to pay big bucks to watch a millionaire or billionaire prima-donna play a sport requiring  no extraordinary physical or mental courage. What makes for exciting viewing and good drama in the (formerly) contact sports are the hard hits and hotly contested competition between two teams gritting it out and sacrificing all to achieve victory. When it comes to the point that no play is allowed that could possibly be injurious or overly taxing to these wealthy athletes, many former fans will think, “I try harder, sacrifice more and suffer more in my job working 60 hours a week than these guys do playing a game 3 hours a week (football) or perhaps 12 hours a week (hockey). Screw it, this is lame and these Nancy’s should be paying to see me perform in my job.”

                I can see boxing eventually becoming shadow-boxing, with points deducted if you actually hit your opponent.

                Yes, we will eventually abandon our current sports ethos in favor of watching robots compete, perform,  and get stronger, better, and smarter as we lose our competitiveness, heart, courage, strength, fortitude, desire and tolerance for risk, stress, pain, etc.

                Ironically, we will insist the “robots” take on our more masculine, if not outright heroic, human roles as we bow out and become… (craven, politically-correct) robots ourselves. A cosmic and tragic case of role-reversal.

Second Amendment Clarity

               The second amendment to the Constitution is THE most important one. It was put there deliberately. It not only is a guarantor of rights itself…it is the only one that can protect the first amendment-the principles, the building block, the foundation of a new nation - and all the other amendments to follow. The second amendment in no way was meant only or simply to protect the right of the people to hunt or shoot or just have a gun around the house. It was meant specifically to protect the people against tyrannical (big) government. Indeed, unlike the first amendment’s ‘freedom OF religion’ clause, which in no way meant freedom from religion (a concept that would have made the founders cry…or laugh…an oxymoron),  the second amendment was, as previously stated, meant to protect the people from big government, and indeed was seen as not just a  right…but a duty!

              Many constitutional scholars don’t believe that the second amendment was deliberately put where it was, that it was intended to be…the second amendment… for any particular reason. I mean, hell, they had to put it somewhere, right? B.S. It was quite intentional.

               Similarly, many anti-gun nuts purport to believe that the authors of this fluid and ‘living document’ would no longer  want individual citizens to have the right to own firearms in today’s world. In fact, they would believe it to be just as important  a right (and duty) as ever.

              The majority of leftists/”progressives” seem to believe in one of the following three theories regarding the crucial amendment:

1)                                   1) The Founders didn’t really mean that people had the right to individually own and use firearms, but only as part of a government-controlled militia or fighting unit. This is exactly the opposite of their proclamation’s intent.

2)                                   2) The Founders missed a typo, or perhaps succumbed to a mild case of dyslexia, and actually meant that we had the right to arm and keep bears. This interpretation, however, would not go over well with the animal right’s crowd.

                     or

 T                   3) The Founders were clearly stating that people had the right to go sleeveless.

Artificial Morality

                Artificial limbs. Artificial insemination. Artificial intelligence.

                Transgender. Gender questioning. Gender abandonment. Gender re-assignment. Bi-gender.

                Artificial uteruses? Artificial penises?

                It is a Brave New World, indeed.

                Who will be the first person to actually impregnate themselves??! You know it is coming soon.  That will give a whole new meaning to single parenthood! It doesn’t take a village, it doesn’t take a family, it doesn’t even take a mom and a dad…it just takes… me! This will perfectly suit these selfish, self-absorbed times and  ironically take us back nearly to unicellular organism reproduction. This regression by “progression” will, however, result in the first asexual, sexual reproduction! Cool!

                The whole “there isn’t two genders, but literally an infinite number of gender possibilities,” gig is  potentially a huge boon to the greeting card industry. There will be “Happy Gender-Questioning Day” cards and “Happy Non-Binary Gender Day” cards and “Happy Trans*Female Day” cards, etc., etc.

                If you eventually do impregnate yourself, you may get both a Mother’s Day and a Father’s Day card! That begs a question, however. Is it proper to get yourself a card on both holidays?

                Interestingly, the exponential increase in artificial intelligence is occurring at the same time as the rapid change in morals, mores and values.  Add to that the fact that most of us now interact far more with computers, monitors, televisions, video games, I-pads, smart-phones, etc., than we do with real live people in the same place and moment with us, and we have a potent recipe’ for truly fundamental change.

                Artificial insemination has long existed. Artificial intelligence is now here. Artificial organs are on the way.

                Artificial morality is coming soon.

              And it will likely be the only kind of morality left.

"Public Servants" Vs. Those Who Serve

                Incredibly, less than one-half of one percent of the U.S. population is in the armed forces today. And, of those that are, nearly 80% come from a family in which a parent or sibling is also in the military, many from multi-generational military families.

                Moreover, virtually half of all active-duty service members in the United States are concentrated in just five states- Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia and California. In essence, the country harbors a separate warrior class that is beginning to see itself as distinct from the land and people it is protecting. Sadly, more and more civilians are looking at the military as distinctly apart from their daily lives and notice, as well.

                “As a nation, we’ve learned to separate the warrior from the war,” wrote Gen. Martin Dempsey, current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a 2013 commentary. “But we still have much to learn about how to connect the warrior to the citizen.” Indeed, there is growing concern in the military that reintegrating service members into communities whose knowledge of war is limited to what they see on television may be as difficult as fighting a war.

                Tragically, many “sophisticated” civilians, especially those in big cities on the coasts, regard the military itself as- at best- a necessary evil. These liberal elitists aren’t particularly smitten with the idea of soldiers hunkering down amongst them, at least not in the immediate vicinity. “Camouflage…?! How gauche!”

                Southern states typically provide the vast majority of recruits.  The age group that necessarily fills the military rolls on a yearly basis is 18-to 24-year-olds. The highest-rate contributors of this group, in 2013, were Georgia, Virginia, Idaho, Florida and South Carolina.

                The District of Columbia was last. That’s correct, the nation’s capital now sends, per capita, the fewest new recruits annually to its own country’s armed forces.

                Ironically enough, six of the wealthiest ten counties in America surround Washington, D.C.

These wealthy “public servants” are too busy taking staggering amounts of taxpayer’s money and spending it on themselves and their favorite special-interest groups and campaign-contributors to pay much attention to the military, though they have repeatedly voted to slash the military’s budget in recent years. In fairness, they ignore the taxpayers, too.

In summation, the largest wealthy group of Americans, our “public servants,” take oodles and oodles of money from those in the private sector (while berating them for being greedy) and spend it to buttress their own power, while ignoring- or worse- those true public servants that risk their lives for us on a continual basis.

                In contrast, General Washington refused a salary for the duration of the Revolutionary War, while leading his troops into battle, his own life in jeopardy on a daily basis.

Rest assured, Washington weeps for his city. And his nation.

It is time that we retire the terms “public servant” and “civil servant,” as they relate to politicians. They have been made offensive and obscene by those hungry only for power, and obscure the true nature of “service” that our volunteer military exemplifies.

Americans: I do hereby propose we change the name of our nation’s capitol to Clinton, D.C., so as to more accurately jibe with the priorities and mores of its inhabitants and relieve the Father of Our Country of any guilt-by-association that he, uniquely, does not deserve.

Living Evil, Unborn Justice

                On March 18^th, 2015, a woman named Dynel Lane lured Michelle Wilkins to her house with a Craigslist offer of baby clothes. Shortly after the 7-months pregnant Wilkins arrived, Lane literally cut her unborn child, Aurora, from her womb, utilizing a knife and a piece of broken glass. Michelle was critically injured and Aurora was killed. Lane brought the now lifeless Aurora upstairs and placed her dead body in her bathtub.

                Under current Colorado law, an assault that results in an unborn child’s death isn’t a homicide. The Colorado legislature is attempting to change that and join most other states in recognizing that unborn children can be victims of a heinous crime. Predictably, the abortion lobby is not convinced. One of the potential new Colorado law’s opponents opined in the New York Times that the “core harm” of crimes like Lane’s is that “reproductive freedom” is trampled!

                Everyone in the world has “reproductive freedom” right now. If you really don’t want a child, don’t engage in the act that could produce one. The freedom that was trampled was that of the baby’s right to life…to exist.

                Lane may well be prosecuted for “unlawful termination of a pregnancy.”

                You’ll recall how the Jews experienced “unlawful termination,” in the 1930’s and 1940’s, and how Martin Luther King, Jr. was “unlawfully terminated” on April 4^th, 1968.

                The “core harm” was to Michelle Watkins’ core…and her baby that resided there.

                And to the soul of the nation and civilized peoples everywhere.

Too Fat To Fight

                It’s a good thing the U.S. is reducing the ranks of its military. Many of the country’s kids are too fat to fight according to a group of retired generals. They say that many- if not most- kids are overweight, eat too poorly and don’t get nearly enough exercise to qualify to join the military.

                In other words: they are too soft.

                The report, released at the end of April, was titled, “Too Fat, Frail, and Out-of-Breath to Fight.”

                Among the report’s findings pertaining to the state of Minnesota: 69 percent of Minnesota’s young adults cannot serve in the military; 40 percent of Minnesota ninth-graders receive no physical education and less than a quarter of the state’s high school students get the recommended minimum of one hour of physical activity during their day! One hour!

                The report warns, “Long-term military readiness is at risk unless a large-scale change in physical activity and nutrition takes place in America.”

                How utterly different we are than the Americans of Revolutionary times or even World War II. The country defeated the grandest military the world had yet seen in large part because so many of its citizens lived an active, rural life, cultivating the land and hunting for food. In early America kids in these rural and frontier areas often brought their guns with them to school and might well shoot a rabbit on the way home to add to the dinner table. Almost everyone owned a musket or firearm of some sort and did not have to be trained in its use, yet, oddly, there were no school shootings.

                Later on, after the invention of the automobile and mechanized tractor, etc., farm boys were shown how to plow and drive at very young ages. Even many of the more urban lads took pride in “working under the hood” of their or their family’s vehicles and then “cruising” Main Street on Friday night.

                Kids were expected to play baseball or another sport- or two- and were allowed to hike, bike and explore their world. Most boys even had Swiss Army knives! Many even had them on their person while at school! Gasp! I spent much of my youth outdoors whether “up north” at “the cabin” or in town. I would throw a tennis ball onto the roof of our house- and catch it as it bounced off- for hours on end. My friends and I went sledding and played “boot” hockey or ice hockey in the winter and fished, swam, played “Wiffle Ball” and collected rocks among other beloved outdoor pursuits in the summertime.

                Typically, if a kid is allowed to go biking in his or her cul-de-sac these days, they are wearing a helmet, knee-pads and an airbag, and certainly not a Swiss Army knife. It’s scary, you see!

                Today, if a kid is “playing a game,” odds are it’s a video game or on-line pursuit. Between television, computers, I-Pads, Smart-phones, the internet, Face-Book, Twitter, Grinder, etc., etc., there isn’t really any time left for physical activity. Or mental activity for that matter, like reading a book.

               Virtual reality is more real to most kids than actual reality.

                And that is scary.

               

                

It's Music To Our Fears!

                According to a recent article in the Minneapolis StarTribune, a graduating senior at the University of Minnesota has translated global temperature data into music. He took the coldest year in Minnesota history, 1883, and assigned it a musical note. He then did the same with the average annual temperature for every year since 1880 in the four northern regions of the globe. Voila’…”climate change for a string quartet.”

                Apparently, the composition, “Planetary Bands, Warming World,” starts low and ends up high, “especially the violin that plays the music of the Arctic region, which is warming faster than the rest of the world.” The article goes on to state that “the average annual temperature for the 44^th-through 64^th-degree latitudes, which includes Minnesota, peaked at 36.1 degrees in 2007. As transcribed for the piece, it is two octaves higher than the corresponding 1883 temperature.” It does not say what the temperature trend has been after that.

                The string quartet, again according to the article, is the senior’s “second climate change composition. The first one, completed in 2013 at the suggestion of a professor, also played across the world and was picked up by the Weather Channel and the Dot Earth blog in the New York Times.” That one was called, “A Song of Our Warming Planet.” The article deemed it, “a rare marriage of science and art.” Admittedly, it was not a great piece of music. The student himself said in an interview that musicians complained “that it wasn’t very musical.” He went on to state, “It got the point across-it was really scary to listen to.” Really scary to listen to? Was it that stupendously awful, or are we just that soft, gullible, ignorant and craven?

                The student’s climatology professor, who came up with the idea in the first place, called the apparently sad, discordant composition an excellent teaching tool, and a way to express climate change “without defaulting to some guy in front of a slide showing a graph.”

                I propose we start taking lots of mathematical data, previously illustrated by graphs and the like, and put it to music. The government’s debt, for example, could be incorporated into a funeral dirge. The number of illegal immigrants poring over our southern border over the years could be accurately illustrated by an opus with rising crescendo. Allegro, allegro, presto!

             The article went on to opine that this second composition “tells an equally important but more complex story about the warming world.” And that vital and labyrinthine tale is…? “That different regions of the globe are experiencing climate change differently.” Really? I mean, really??!!! Talk about stating the obvious. There has never been a time in the history of this planet, with or without homo sapiens, that this hasn’t been the case! It’s been really warm in India recently. Much of the central and eastern U.S. has been much colder than normal of late. Is it even possible to experience climate change on a consistent, regular, harmonious, uniform, homogenous basis around the planet? Is that not oxymoronic? That would be real climate change...and extremely unnerving. After all, change is the only constant. (Okay, besides death and taxes).

                The student says he would eventually like to go to graduate school to study climate change, but for now wants to find a job and save some money, “and give my brain a break.”

                And  ours.

               Ears, too.

                      **************************************************************

                The rapidly changing nature of change is changing things at changing rates around the world! That’s scary!!

At least b.s. is still b.s.!

The Gaia Democratic School Goes On A Field Trip!

                The leader of a “progressive” Minneapolis private school took about a dozen middle- and high-school- aged students on a sex education field trip to an adult novelty store ( porn shop) last week according to news reports. The students, brought to the “Smitten Kitten,” were as young as 11. Parents, apparently, were not notified before the trip.

                The head of “Gaia Democratic School,” and host of the “field trip,” is/was Starri Hedges (a great porn starlet’s name, by-the-way. If no one is currently using that moniker, they should snap it up). Starri said she wanted to provide a safe and welcoming environment for students to learn about human sexual behavior. “What I saw happening on our trip, I thought it was beautiful because kids could talk to these sex educators without any shame, without any fear,” she added. Beautiful? I could think of many adjectives for what was happening, but I’m not sure beautiful would be among them.

                The school is housed in a Unitarian church on Mount Curve Avenue. Naturally.

                The store’s owner said via an e-mail that she considers Smitten Kitten to be “an educational resource  about sex and sexuality…”

                The field trip afforded students access to educators and products that could be used to practice safer sex, Hedges said. She also said that some students bought condoms. “It was certainly the first time we have taken that kind of field trip and it will probably be our last, which I feel bad (about) because the kids had so much fun.” Imagine that.

 I always thought that a person had to be 18 to even enter one of these esteemed educational establishments.

Oh, well, what’s the big deal? Just gives “Toys for Tots” a new meaning, I guess.

Seriously, this decision is incomprehensible. The name of the school tells you everything you need to know, but to break city code and take wildly under-aged kids into an adult sex shop without prior notification of- and approval from- their parents is, or should be, unconscionable.

The Smitten Kitten was, in fact, cited for breaking the city code for the location/zoning region that it occupies, as  the store didn’t have the most sexually explicit material properly contained in a separate section of the shop, as that code requires. The store will be made to comply with the code, but no fines or other penalties will be levied.

It is the “Gaia Democratic School” and its director that should be hit with fines and penalties.

               

                                                         ***************

Gaia means “mother of the Earth.” The school’s mantra is: “We offer K-12 students individualized learning in an environment of empowerment, freedom and fun with an emphasis on cooperative and democratic methods. Unschoolers, homeschoolers, and free spirits are welcome!”

               

Can We Recall A Bail Out? A Tale Of General Motors And Uncle Sam

                 Justice Department investigators say they have identified criminal wrongdoing in General Motors’ failure to disclose an ignition switch defect tied to at least 104 deaths, and are therefore in the process of negotiating what is likely to be a record judgment against the automaker, according to people briefed on the inquiry. A settlement could be reached sometime this summer, and is expected to exceed the $1.2 billion paid last year by Toyota for concealing unintended acceleration problems in some of its vehicles, the sources said. That would make it the largest penalty ever levied by the Justice Department against an automaker.

                GM began recalling 2.6 million Chevrolet Cobalts and other small cars in February of 2014, due to faulty ignitions that could randomly and unexpectedly turn off the vehicle’s engines, thereby disabling power steering, power brakes and air bags. This prompted a wave of additional recalls by the company, for various safety issues. GM recalled more than 30 million vehicles worldwide last year alone.

                It is as yet unknown if GM will receive a deferred-prosecution agreement… as the Justice Department recently granted the Japanese automaker Toyota, or if prosecutors will force it to plead guilty to a crime. In the latter case, a guilty plea would brand General Motors as a felon.

                The company has spent approximately $3 billion on recalls and other safety issues in the past year, including $600 million to compensate switch-related accident victims and their families. Moreover, GM paid a $35 million penalty to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for failing to report the switch issue in a timely fashion.

                The United States government (also known as the U.S. taxpayers), lost $11.2 billion bailing out GM. The U.S. government (also known as the U.S. taxpayers), spent about $50 billion total in attempting to bail out GM. The company received such unearned largess as it was among those deemed “too big to fail.” Nothing is- or should be- too big to fail, as evidenced by the mastodon, the public school system, and the Soviet Union.

              As a result of the company’s 2009 bankruptcy, the government’s (read taxpayer’s) “investment” was converted to a 61% equity stake in the giant, Detroit-based automaker… in addition to preferred shares and a loan. (The remaining shares were sold in December of 2013).

                It’s ironic, to say the least, that taxpayers have been bailing out the government for many years, yet appear to be “granted” less and less “equity” every year.

                What an amazing scam! Even for a government! First, with the country many trillions of dollars in debt and each individual taxpayer liable for $1.1 million dollars of it, the feds drop $50 billion more of their money on GM. Now, after the company was owned, operated and under that self-same government’s management for four years, they turn around and essentially sue the company for record amounts of cash. Are you following the story? The government took billions of dollars from taxpayers and gave it to a massive corporation. Then, after running that corporation for four years, they are about to sock them with a billion-dollar plus fine for mismanagement! What do you think they will do with the taxpayer’s money that they take back from GM?

                It would be really humorous if the penalty levied was so high that it eventually caused GM to file for bankruptcy again, triggering another government (taxpayer) bail out!

The New Clergy

                The times, they are a changin’, as they say. Organized religion used to be about morality, such as time-honored good-vs.-evil stuff from the Bible. It was constancy, and a specific guide to repentance, hope and redemption. It was an accessible guide of how-to living and dying. Immutable. It was God’s word, and yes, some found it restraining.

                Now it’s about making sure that everyone feels good about themselves and their actions, whatever they may be. It’s all inclusive. Have you boinked a horse in the public square on Sunday afternoon? Who are we to judge?!

               It used to be, in the time of America’s founders, that it was the height of immorality to covet what your neighbor had. Now, the only true immorality is to be rich.

                Priests and pastors typically could not be female in days past. Now there are many females in the calling. They couldn’t be married in days of yore, either. Now they can be. Gays weren’t allowed to preach until recently.  They do so now. Some of them are now touting and supporting gay marriage. Gay, married clergy members will soon be commonplace.

                Transgender and gender “re-assigned” people are the newest politically-correct, protected members of society, even though they number a fraction of one percent of the population. This is obviously the next frontier for the clergy, as well. 

                It will get really confusing when a trans-gender, non-binary, questioning priest takes confession. “Bless me father, for I have sinned!” the young confessor might say.

                “You bet your cute little ass you have," may be the reply. "You assumed my gender identity was as a male, and a patriarchal one at that, bitch! That is, like, so totally judgmental! I’m afraid you’re going to burn in Hell!”

                Tolerance. Pass it on.