1) Watch your mouth
2) Oh, behave!
3) Venus
4) Gun control
1) “Watch your mouth.”
Lots of people in this country are big on the ‘Freedom of Speech’ portion of our First Amendment to the Constitution. ‘I’m allowed to say anything I want, about anyone that I want, about anything that I want, however I want, whenever and wherever I want – no holds barred.’
Lots of well-intended people are ill-informed.
Our founding fathers gave us the freedom of speech, but, just like driving on the roads, there are rules which must be obeyed, otherwise, you lose your license to speak.
With rights, come responsibilities.
Perhaps Congress should, in accounting terms (former CPA talking here), draft a credit to the oh-so popular and commonly referenced debit of our Bill of Rights. It could be called the Bill of Responsibilities. Not as catchy, not nearly as much to go root-toot-tootin’ to the neighbors about, but, ultimately, probably more important. Sure, the residents of Cell Block E can open their mouths and spew whatever garbage they like at and to their heavily tattooed neighbors. *In prison, residents get to say whatever they want. They also shower together – take your pick* Our societal modes of speech seem to be scarily similar to those of our inmate population. We, as a people, do not always have to speak as if we were having high tea at noon with the Queen of England, but slinging feces at one another like chimps at the zoo will take you exactly where you belong.
I could get existential here, far out, invisible prisons and the like, warnings, tickets, misdemeanors and felonies of speech – I think that there’s an entire system in place – just like I kind of think that UFOs must be real somehow, but there will never be anyway to prove it, only that their existence based upon so many kinda-sorta sightings by reputable individuals (Air Force and Navy pilots, commercial pilots, astronauts, etc.) cannot be summarily dismissed unlike reports from a redneck out fishin’ on the pond with their young niece and a bottle of Jack Daniels at 3:00AM ‘down on the Bayou.’
Same idea as infrared and ultraviolet light – you just need to know where (and how) to look – different spectrum. Our Bill of Rights is okay, gun ownership rights (in particular) today make me chuckle, the idea of a fully automatic assault rifle 250 years ago was probably right up there with the idea(s) of the light bulb, motorized vehicles, jet planes, even the internet – gun people can get real whacko in my opinion. I would say that gun ownership rights should basically be limited to basic handguns and hunting rifles, shotguns and the like … but I digress. Ever notice how the name Waco (as in Waco, TX) looks suspiciously like the word ‘whacko?’ I’m not sure what the real story was at the Branch Davidian complex down there in Texas, and the guys and gals in the ATF, FBI, etc., etc. might not have been singing in choir on Sunday mornings, but there’s a message here. Really.
But back to the topic of speech.
We all have the freedom of speech BUT:
We do not have the freedom to lie,
We do not have the freedom to swear (curse),
We do not have the right to say that we will do things and then not,
We do not have the right to libel,
We do not have the right to slander,
We do not have the right to defame,
We do not have to right to engage in (harmful) gossip,
We do not have the right to criticize others abusively,
We do not have the right to make threats,
We do not have the right to put our neighbor on the plate, and ‘eat’ them for dinner (cannibalize or maul them) with our words.
We do not have the right to ‘gaslight’ nor do we have the right to yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.
Talk is only cheap because people break all of the rules (of the road) I have just listed (and more).
If you obey the rules of the road, then your talk can become quite valuable.
God spoke the entire universe into existence.
His words have meaning.
The more you obey the rules of speech, the more you obey the Word of God,
the higher your word becomes.
(there’s more to it than this, not eating pork for example, but it’s a start)
Staying on the road really isn’t that difficult, but it takes practice.
I would think that spending time with other people who are ‘licensed’ is the best way to both learn and improve. If, on the other hand, you hang out with feces-slinging monkeys, you’ll probably become one in no time flat! We become like those with whom we associate.
God’s Word is Higher than all of ours. Everything He says comes to pass and there is absolutely nothing any of us can do to stop it. Absolutely nothing.
If He says it, it will happen.
The best any of us can do, I would think, is give God a good game of chess. There’s no honest way to beat Him, and He knows this, but I would think that He enjoys when someone actually shows up on His radar screen. There’s only one way to get there, and it takes a lot of practice and a lot of hard work.
You’ve got a better chance of buying a spade shovel down at the local hardware store and using it to dig a hole to China than you do of defeating His Word and His Will.
Anyone who has actually thought this topic through would understand what I mean.
There is another dimension of existence where Words actually matter.
Where words are tools.
When they issue from someone’s mouth, they go out and get the job done.
When you tell the truth,
when you keep your speech clean,
when you do what you say,
when you tread carefully about speaking of others (behind their back),
when you defend someone else (rightfully) behind their back,
Then, after a while, Hashem willing, words actually begin to mean something,
actually begin to gain in value, begin to gain in strength, in weight.
When you actually pay attention to the words you speak, I mean really pay attention,
A) I guarantee you won’t believe the amount of garbage that spews forth from your talk-hole and; B) Your entire world will change because in order to straighten yourself out, you’ll need to close your mouth for a while and do some thinking.
Sounds pretty easy!
Well, kind of, but in order for this to work, you need to ‘fall in line’ with God’s will.
You need to let Him in to your life and then not kick Him out! In order for God to move in with you, He’ll also have you eat the words (and deeds, and maybe even thoughts) from your past. God won’t play around with a lost cause I suppose, but He knows who’s got a chance, He knows where to put His money on the table.
There’s an equation at work, physics, accounting – most people already have about a million pounds of baggage on-hand by the time they might realize anything is going on, and will run, and I mean run, as fast and as far as they can from eating their own meal, because their very life will depend on it. I’ve led a relatively isolated existence, and I never had many friends – my meal, although quite substantial in it’s own way – just a couple of grains of sand compared to the desert’s worth other people have prepared for themselves.
Science, Accounting, and Religion all work together as one – a ‘trinity’ if you will – bringing the universe together in perfect harmony.
It all reconciles in the end.
2) The Holocaust
We all know about the horrors of the holocaust. Wickedness and cruelty beyond all human comprehension, all while the United States just sat idly by without intervening or helping the Jewish people, until they were brought into the war via the attack at Pearl Harbor. Not only should we look back and wonder how the world and our nation allowed the Germans to perpetrate such atrocities right under everyone’s noses without an immediate red hot, break neck, unified and overwhelming response to save the Jewish people from this extermination attempt, we should look at our current world situation and forward, and worry and here’s why:
If God would allow the Holocaust to take place with His very own people, people whom He would identify as His children, people who worked to make Him happy, and to obey commandments, and didn’t eat pork, who obeyed a sabbath, who feared Him and worked to walk around on egg shells in His presence, and still, despite all this, God permitted (because nothing of this magnitude would ever be even remotely possible without God’s explicit consent) these atrocities to take place, then … just imagine what God would allow to happen to nations and peoples who ignore Him at every turn at best, and, at worst, seem to work tirelessly to defy, provoke, frustrate and enrage Him, pay no attention to commandments, have pork hanging out of their teeth as the walk off to the abortion clinic, fly rainbow flags proudly promoting sodomy, desecrate the sabbath in every way imaginable, and who seem to think that boys dressing up as girls and then competing in 100m sprints and using the same bathrooms is a.o.k.
Remember, and picture this, pork hanging out of their teeth, on a sabbath, heading to the abortion clinic all whilst claiming in some straight out of the pit of hell line of thought to be a member of something called ‘civilized society.’
Just imagine what He’ll let happen, or do, to those people.
Vengeance is the Lord’s.
3) Venus
The third brightest object in our skies, after the sun and the moon, is the planet Venus. Venus of course is named after the mythological Roman goddess Venus who, according to Wikipedia, is the goddess of ‘love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory.’ Now before space travel and exploration, it seemed plausible that this bright wandering dot in the sky, so close to earth, and similar in size, might somehow actually embody these very positive qualities. How dreamy! What a beautiful neighbor (sister planet) we have!
Unfortunately, after the US Mariner 2 did some firsthand measuring back in the early 60’s, and then after the Soviet Venera 2 attempted a landing in 1970 or so, and after lots of scientific data has been collected since then, we now know that our ‘sister planet’ in the heavens, the third brightest (kind of most ‘powerful’) object in our skies and ‘heavenly’ vocabulary, is actually anything but representative of the qualities of, again, believe in this kind of stuff or not, the ancient Roman goddess of Venus. In fact, at 900°F and about 50 atmospheres worth of surface pressure, with an atmosphere filled with sulfuric acid and a retrograde rotation resulting in a day that lasts longer than a year, the second planet from the sun is actually kind of the cleverly stated opposite of the defined characteristics of Venus. It should probably be called Hell or ‘the pizza oven’ or something like that. It’s pretty hard to sugarcoat something that horrific, even with pure cane sugar!
There are consequences both big and small when we don’t call a spade a spade.
The IAU decided that Pluto is no longer a planet for some obscure reason in that it failed to clear it’s own orbital path, even though no planet, earth included, completely clears out it’s own path. Well maybe they should look at the name Venus, and what it means, and the reality of the situation, and make the necessary change. I saw some video on YouTube that I think was talking about somehow terraforming Venus. I thought to myself about the creator of the video and the very idea and said to myself, ‘Moron. What’s your next idea Einstein, putting out the sun with a garden hose?’ I advise the IAU to change the name of Venus to a moniker more reflective of reality as we now know it to be. Sometimes reality is pretty, sometimes, not so much.
How hard would it be to just call it a ‘purple onion?’ What’s the disconnect?
What color is my Book?
(look at the pictures page)
Would you say it is brown, or black?
Birth control pill? Isn’t it really about the other side of the equation? Pregnancy prevention?
What about Planned Parenthood?
I get jokes.
xxx
https://www.usdebtclock.org/
So you see: consequences.
4) Gun control
So obviously, gun crime and gun violence are out of control in our society today. They really have been for a long time now, but the situation seems to be getting worse with each passing week with some very highly publicized mass shootings, and there seems to be no end in sight. Lawmakers pass various types of legislation restricting this and that, trying to control, limit or ban the sale of certain types of weapons, put into place waiting periods and red flag laws, they try to keep guns out of the hands of violent spouses, the mentally ill, convicted felons – all sorts of preventative measures – and they’ve been taking these same steps for a long time now. Just like the Federal Reserve seems to have just one tool in the box, to raise or lower rates, our Congress, our Leadership, seems to have just one tool in it’s box with regard to guns, restrictions on who is eligible and what members of the general public can legally acquire.
They only address one side of the gun equation: access.
When gun laws get tougher, i.e., when it gets tougher for some people to get their hands on a gun legally, it seems that there is some reduction in gun crime and gun violence, some, but nothing meaningful, nothing that will help police officers, estranged ex-wives, and convenience store clerks sleep easier at night. Nothing our nation does when it comes to guns has teeth. This country doesn’t even growl at guns. All we try to do is play a schoolyard game of keep away from the bad guys. Our current way of doing things in this country when it comes to gun control has failed miserably. Period.
The solution comes not from controlling who can get their hands on what, although that of course is an important part of the equation, the solution now comes from the penalty phase of using a gun in the commission of a crime. We need to create penalties which will create fear in the mind of a potential perpetrator where the calculated risk of using a gun in the commission of a crime far exceeds any potential reward. We need to make individuals in this nation scared to use a gun in the commission of a crime because the potential punishment will make using the gun not worth it.
Crime is bad. Violent crime even more so. Hurting or killing somebody with your fists is bad. Using a baseball bat on someone is bad. Or a hammer. Or a knife. Or brass knuckles. Or a broken bottle. Or a lamp. Or a candlestick in the study. Or a bow and arrow. All of these things are bad. But they are all acts which are using human energy and muscle and reflexes and strength to do the deed. Using a gun to commit a crime, even if you don’t use it, but just point it at the teller and instruct her to clear out the drawer, using a gun is different.
A gun is a weapon that is in a different dimension than human flesh and muscle and mind. That’s the point here. A GUN IS A WEAPON FROM A DIFFERENT DIMENSION. A gun fires a bullet which is propelled as a result of a chemical reaction, not human force. That chemical reaction results in a very loud ‘bang’ and as a result a small metal projectile exits the hole at the end of a short metal tube very, very quickly, with much, much more force and deadly potential than any human in a million years would ever be able to generate on their own.
A gun uses force from a different dimension than our own, and, therefore, deserves penalties and punishment from a different dimension as well.
Just like a gun creates a loud, scary bang when someone pulls the trigger, the penalty phase of someone having used a gun in the commission of a crime should create it’s own ‘loud, scary bang.’ That’s the cure.
Deuteronomy 19:19,20 states, ’19you shall do to him as he schemed to do to his fellow. Thus you will sweep out evil from your midst; 20 others will hear and be afraid, and such evil things will not again be done in your midst.’
The key to solving the gun control conversation in society today is fear. Fear of the consequences of using a gun in a way it shouldn’t be used. My idea might sound barbaric to some, but pointing a gun at a woman standing behind the counter at a bank is also barbaric. Shooting a police officer who pulled you over for a simple traffic violation is barbaric. Pointing a gun at a convenience store clerk and ordering them to empty the drawer is barbaric.
There will never be any way to end all gun crime. People who go in and shoot up a nightclub or a school and are willing to die themselves, either at the hands of the police or through suicide at the scene are basically impossible to prevent. But those shootings are such a tiny fraction of what goes on out there, just like most car accidents are not fatal, that scaring people into not committing gun crimes will basically solve the problem.
A different dimension of crime not only deserves, but requires, a different dimension of punishment.
I’m going to give one example of what I’m talking about here, and then, just like a Reagan-era trickle-down economic theory, I’m going to let the water, gravity and time do the rest for me.
Example: A man walks into a convenience store and pulls out a gun and points it at the clerk, a 17 year old girl who is just working there part time after school and on weekends to earn some extra cash to put gas in the tank and go to the movies with her friends. He demands the money from the register at gunpoint, she quickly complies, takes everything out of the register, hands it over, and the gunman bolts from the store just a quickly as he entered.
The entire incident is captured on the security cameras, we can see his face as clear as day, he’s in the system, he’s got a rap sheet a mile long, the police are able to identify him quickly and without any uncertainty, and they go and pick him up from his mother’s house, where he currently lives, less than 48 hours later, without incident.
Open and shut, as clear and as clean as it gets.
This man used a gun in the commission of a crime. He didn’t fire it, but he could have, and the point here is that he used a gun. Currently, as the system currently stands, I suppose he’d end up going away to prison for armed robbery. I’m not sure what the sentence would be, all sorts of variables go into the sentencing, but he’d end up in a cell someplace for a bunch of years, probably walk out of the prison a decade later as a convicted felon and then try to get his life going again.
But the point here is to stop him, or anyone else for that matter, from pointing a gun at anyone, let alone a 17 year old girl who wasn’t doing anything but trying to be responsible and earn some money on her own, in the first place.
So, in my system, and this is just some basic framework, here’s how the penalty phase of this transaction goes down, and remember here, the idea is to instill real fear into the hearts and minds of anyone who might think to use a gun in this capacity ever again. The penalty phase itself should ‘look’ and ‘sound’ like a gunshot.
– The crime takes place at 4:00pm Friday afternoon
– The perp is arrested on Sunday at 2:00pm at his mother’s
– He arrives at the police station and is booked and tossed into a cell at 3:00pm sharp
– There is a special court (a different dimension – just like the weapon he used) in charge of gun crimes
– An official within the special court decides that no attorney will be necessary or permitted for the defendant in this case as the evidence is so overwhelming and indisputable
– The defendant is notified of this decision right before dinner time late Monday afternoon
– The defendant is further notified that he will appear before the judge, alone, Tuesday morning at 10:00am, and that the court, and it’s staff, sarcastically wish him, ‘Sweet dreams.’
In the meantime, the police have discussed this matter with the victim, have been helping her deal with the trauma, and have also been talking with the girl’s father and mother and telling them not to worry, that this guy is going to pay for what he did to their little girl. The father can’t wait.
At 9:50am Tuesday morning, a guard takes the defendant from his cell, in handcuffs, and brings him to the courtroom. The judge enters at 10:00am sharp, walks to the Bench, sits down, and tells everyone to be seated.
– The defendant is sitting alone at a table, handcuffed, with guards standing on either side.
– The Judge has reviewed the case, looked at the evidence, considered the circumstances, and done some thinking on the matter.
– The man used a .45 caliber handgun in the commission of the crime, the weapon was recovered at his mother’s house at the time of the arrest
– The Judge asks the defendant if he has anything to say to the Court in his own defense
– The defendant yells out, still seated and cuffed ‘I didn’t do it! I was framed!’
– The judge asks the defendant if he has a twin brother, because the Court has a very clear video and that the police recovered identical clothes from the defendant’s mother’s home, along with an identical gun, at the time of the arrest
– The defendant says, ‘Yes, I do have a twin brother!’
-The Judge says, ‘You do not have a twin brother. You are lying. Your mother already told us you don’t have a twin brother and we checked your birth records. You are now guilty of lying to the court. The penalty for that, under these circumstances, and because of my mood at this very moment, will be 40 lashes to the back, and an additional 5 years imprisonment on top of the mandatory 10 for the armed robbery. I find you guilty of armed robbery and now lying to the court as well. Guards, have this man removed from the Court and taken to the shooting range. The Judge bangs his gavel, and exclaims, ‘Guilty!’
– Now convicted of a gun crime, the man is whisked away to the shooting range, which sits 3 levels below street level underneath the courthouse. Police also practice firing their weapons there, so it really is a shooting range, too.
– The convict is brought in, and strapped down into a chair specially placed on the side of the range where only the targets are usually allowed for safety reasons
– He isn’t blindfolded, just strapped down on the wrong side, facing the wrong way
– He is gagged, however, because nobody wants, nor should they be forced, to hear anything this individual has to say
– It’s now 10:15am on Tuesday morning
In walks the girl’s father, and he’s holding the very pistol that the convict used in the crime in his right hand. He hands the pistol to an officer, who mounts the gun, pointing at the convict, into a vice of sorts and he (the officer) aims the gun at the convict. Not at the convict’s heart or head or stomach, but at his left kneecap, which is strapped very, very securely into place. The gun is mounted about 10 feet from where the convicted armed robber is strapped and is pointed directly at his left kneecap. The father of the 17 year old girl gets a nod from the officer, he walks up to the loaded and aimed gun, looks the muzzled convict straight in the eye, places his right hand into firing position, and pulls the trigger.
Palestinian children throwing rocks never stopped an Israeli Merkava tank. A BB gun never brought down a charging grizzly bear. Aspirin never beat cancer. Mike Tyson never went down because someone hit him with a pillow. Harmony Montgomery didn’t have a chance in the world against her father as he punched her in the head repeatedly with a closed fist until she was dead. Similarly, our current approach to fighting gun violence will never work.
I’m not always an ‘eye for an eye’ type individual, but sometimes, that’s exactly what the situation requires.
‘People will hear, and they will be afraid, and they won’t do these things anymore.’