The first and major purpose of a government is to protect its citizens and to protect the rights of its citizens. This is stated in various ways and goes back to the Ancient Greeks who said that the purpose of government was to improve the lives of its citizens. Note the operative word: citizens. One more time, since that word is very clear: to protect the rights of its citizens. The operative word is citizens.
No. The United States is not a world government. No. The citizens of the United States are not world citizens. No the citizens of the United States do not have citizens’ rights in any other country unless they hold citizenship there too. Similarly, and consequently, citizens of other countries do not have citizens’ rights in the United States. They are not world citizens unless other countries want to accept that fact, and honestly there aren’t any yet.
So, how stupid is America?
The first sure sign of America’s stupidity is the game its citizens allow the government to play with its language and its confuscating of the definition of citizen.
No. Illegal aliens are not undocumented citizens. No. Although the government under the past and now this president would have you think so, it is not wrong to call illegal aliens illegals. It is also not wrong to call them aliens. They are not immigrants if by immigrant one means a person who comes to establish permanent residence. Permanent residence implies legal status though not necessarily citizenship. So if an illegal alien in his or her heart wants to stay here permanently, the best he or she can become is a long-term undetected illegal alien. He or she would not be a citizen, can never become a citizen without moving through the proper channels to do so, and is only here by the fact that he or she remains undetected.
Illegal aliens are not entitled to the benefits of citizenship and should not be. They should not be allowed to vote. They should not get public housing, welfare, social security or food stamps. They should not be entitled to any form of public assistance.
So how stupid is America?
America affords all of the above to its illegal aliens. The shameless leaders, from the Congress down to local state and city governments, offer us all kinds of silly arguments to protect their ability to keep the flow of illegals coming into the United States. It is in their best interests, but it is not in our best interests. Most of our leaders these days are millionaires and being leaders they do not spend much of their own money. They and their children and families, for the most part, live in the gated cities, protected by bodyguards and private security, and sometimes by the Secret Service. Their world is not our world.
How stupid is America?
State and city governments won’t even turn over public voting records to the Justice Department. They are required to do so upon written notice but fail to comply. Why? What are they afraid of? Why, in America, the land of the free where anyone can walk into a DMV and get an official ID, is an ID not required to vote?
There are only several reasons for the stupidity of the American Citizens allowing their governments, local, state and Federal, to perpetrate this ridiculousness. One is indifference. A second is not wanting to rock the freebie boat. A third is ignorance. Our public education, by the way, is a reason unto its own for why we are so stupid.
America the stupid. Only in America can an illegal alien get a legal aid lawyer and sue the government for not protecting his/her rights. Only in America are American citizens and taxpayers forced to support those who have broken our law, do not legally belong here and are very often treated better than the hardworking citizens supporting them.
So, how stupid are we?
By Peter Weiss
So which shoes do you wear? Are you one of those people who see things on social media and don’t bother to check them out? Do you then take them and repost them on your social media outlets? Are you one of those people who actually believe any of the ridiculous things that come from either the left or the right?
Or are you one of those people who checks out everything? Are you one of those people who understands that facts are facts and facts are incontrovertible? There may be different facts formulated by different outlets, so when that’s the case are you one of those people who checks out all the sets of facts and attempts at least to determine which ones are real and which ones are fabricated?
Are you one of those people who believe in suppression? Or are you one of those people who believe in free expression and the exercise of free rights? Are you one of those people who sees beyond the hypocrisy of both the left and the right? Or are you one of those people who subscribe to one side’s hypocrisy?
Well, some of these are pretty hard questions. They’re pretty hard because we all wear different shoes. They’re hard because we all feel different ways about ourselves and each of us have different reasoning capacities and different senses of self-gratification.
Do you really think that putting President Trump’s Supreme Court pick onto the court will really kill millions of women? Do you really believe that the second he’s put on the Supreme Court Roe v Wade will be immediately overturned? Or are you capable of seeing that these are hyperbole and not even responsible hyperbole? In one fell swoop the lefties have gone from pushing grandma over the cliff in a wheelchair, what they’ve accused the Republicans of in the past, to having their Supreme Court nominee kill millions of women. No matter which shoes you wear, it just doesn’t make sense. Furthermore, it’s irresponsible to advance such divisive rhetoric.
It goes on and on and it gets worse and worse. No matter who is put on the Supreme Court, it won’t be the end of the world, as the lefties have already said. Not only will it not be the end of the world, but it won’t be the end of the Constitution or the Republic or the democracy. Those who insist that it will be any of this and do it with a straight face have really jumped off the deep end along with a whole host of the lefties.
That’s not to say that the righties are always right or right about everything or right even most of the time. But they’re not always wrong about everything or maybe even most things. The righties simply wear a different pair of shoes and have their own personal interests.
So the real issue is always what we really want for our country. Do we want a country that suppresses people’s rights in the name of advancing people’s rights? Do we want a country that does not ascribe to its own laws? Do we want a country whose government spends most of its time arguing back and forth on political terms rather than looking for the realities of what’s going on in this country and then looking for solutions to the problems at hand?
These are really hard questions too. They’re hardest because we all wear different shoes. However, no matter which shoes you do wear, we ought to be critical of and ashamed of the Congress we’ve elected. And we ought to check out our minds about how we elect our officials. And we surely ought to be asking ourselves if this is the best we can do.
By Peter Weiss
America is more divided than ever before. We hear this statement made over and over. Actually we hear a lot of things nowadays, especially with 24/7 cable news channels which not only say a lot of things, but say them over and over and over. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it isn’t. Regardless, it is a fact of our life.
I wonder: are we more divided than we were during the Civil War times? Than during the Viet Nam War times? What do they mean by divided? Do they, whoever they are, mean divided politically? Racially? By religion? Culture? By economics?
Which station(s) do you watch? Which newspapers do you read? Do you get your news from social media? Do you pay any attention to the news at all? I mean, one of my friends recently said that now that marijuana was legal in his state he was just gonna chill out for the rest of his life and not pay any attention to this ridiculous stuff.
Your answers to the questions above tend to define which shoes you wear, especially if you subscribe exclusively to one grouping of any of them. Our shoes are determined, very often, by where we’re born, to whom we’re born, our parents’ experiences and beliefs and their socio-economic status.
No matter which shoes you wear, however, on some level what’s going on in this country is ridiculous, even in the realm of the absurd. Actually it’s in the realm of the theater of the absurd. But on another level it is very real, especially if the effects of what’s going on impact your income, benefits, taxes, services or education.
Once again, as said before, this is tough stuff. Remember, about fifty per cent of the American population doesn’t pay taxes and many of these people get money back from the government. They wear one set of shoes. Those who pay taxes wear a different set of shoes. Those people who have children benefit from free public education. Those with no children who pay taxes pay for the public education of people with children. These groups wear different sets of shoes. In America, such groupings are numerous and varied. Some people in America aren’t here legally and still get money and benefits from the government, this despite what the government would have you believe. These people wear a different set of shoes. If you’ve been waiting to immigrate here legally and have tried to do it the right way, you wear one pair of shoes. If you’re the illegal collecting benefits, you wear a different set.
Different points of view, depending upon which shoes you wear is a characteristic trademark of America. It is one of our greatest strengths. It can also be one of our greatest weaknesses, especially when we let the priorities our country was founded upon deteriorate into ridiculousness. For example, in certain states one can be fined, even put in jail for using the wrong pronoun. Imagine that! For another example, during the Obama administration if one’s findings on climate change contradicted theirs, one could be prosecuted. Imagine that! When our rights are suppressed because of the shoes we wear, our country’s values have been diminished and we as a free country are in peril.
Which shoes do you wear? Maybe you wear many different shoes. Maybe not. Whichever shoes you wear though, you should be free to wear them without fear of being suppressed for wearing them.
By Peter Weiss
How stupid are we?
Talking about America, there seems to be no limit to the depth of our stupidity, the depth of the pit of stupidity we have fallen into. It’s rather amazing actually. Think about it. When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin wall came down, the United States was the only world power. In the thirty years since then we have allowed Russia to regain its world-power status and we have allowed China to become a world power. China’s economy has overtaken ours and just recently, for the first time ever, the dollar is no longer the world currency.
So how stupid are we? Well, how stupid can you be?
The war on poverty has been going on for fifty-two years, since 1965. We’ve poured twenty-three billion dollars into it. That’s 23,000,000,000. For that money there has been no real noticeable change in the poverty rate and no real change in the demographics of the people in poverty. Yet we continue down the same road. Stupid?
As regards education, we spend more per capita than any other country and yet we rank a whopping twenty-seventh in the world in education. Now that’s a big bang for the buck. Furthermore, segregation was outlawed in 1954 and yet our schools are becoming more and more segregated. The rate at which segregation is occurring continues to increase.
Stupid?
It gets better. There are those who fought against segregation who now insist they have a right to their own spaces, or they insist that whites not be allowed into certain spaces. Well then…
Stupid? You bet
Just as stupid and actually most dangerous to our society is the disregard shown for logic and facts. Replacing logic and facts are feelings and subjectivity. The gender identity laws exemplify this. But that raises a controversial issue and God forbid that should happen. So let’s put it this way. Mr. X doesn’t have any cash and can’t buy that five-dollar super mochaccino he wants because he left his wallet in his Porsche. He feels poor. He identifies with poor people at that moment. In accordance with the gender identity rules, he is poor. He identifies himself as poor, ergo, by the new rules, he is poor. If that happened on April 15th, Mr. X should be eligible for not paying taxes and even getting an earned income credit.
Stupid? Beyond stupid. How stupid can we be?
Let’s see. Remember “you have to sign it to see what’s in it?” Stupid? Well, what’s even more stupid is that she’s still in office and the head of her party. She’s not stupid. She didn’t have to read it because she doesn’t have to deal with it. She and her cronies voted themselves an exception so they could stay on the government congressional plan. That’s the Cadillac of Cadillacs plan.
Stupid? Not them! Us. More than half of them are millionaires And they way their positions work, they don’t really have to pay for anything. Our tax dollars pay for everything. Or, they’re having a great, self-enriching time on our dime. So how stupid can we be?
Russia. Russia’s goal is to create chaos here in America. Well, look at what our media has been pushing for the last four years and more. Look at what the party of opposition, now leadership and in control, has done. How stupid are we as a people and as a nation? Haven’t we played right into Putin’s hands? China’s hands? Stupid.
Well, aren’t we stupid for allowing all this to go on? Aren’t we more stupid for continuing to fund it?
Finally, as the liberals push left toward the welfare state and socialism, history tells us that capitalism and the free market pay for the bulk of all charity work done throughout the world. It also tells us that no socialist government thus far has ever managed to succeed. Why would we push toward that which we know will fail?
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Really, how stupid are we? Pretty damn stupid.
By Peter Weiss
WYSIWYG came about in regard to computers, referring to the notion that what was displayed on the computer screen was exactly what would be printed out. What you see is what you get. Computers programs did not always produce this, so around 1982, when they began to, it was a pretty cool thing.
Overall, it’s nice to know that when you are looking at something it is what it’s supposed to be. Similarly, when you’re looking at someone, it’s nice to know he or she is what they appear to be. WYSIWYG.
Most often, however, this is not the case. Most often language is coded, ideas are couched in innuendo or inference, and people are not what they appear to be. It’s sad, but it’s true.
So let’s start with the media. News reporters are supposed to be unbiased. That was why the press was protected in the Constitution. When the media are puppets for governments, we in America look at them with scorn and derision. Remember the 1950s and 1960s, particularly regarding the Soviet Union, when we viewed their propaganda-spewing press as despicable agents for the government hiding the truth from the Soviet people? When a coup occurs, the first thing a new power does is knock out the broadcast media. It is only restored when controlled by the new government.
We were supposed to be free of that propaganda stuff here in America. We were supposed to be free of a biased press. That’s why the press was protected from the get-go, in the First Amendment to the Constitution. But the media is no longer WYSIWYG. Most of the media is in the tank for Democrats and these days they make no bones about it. Two newspapers come to mind, The Washington Post and the New York Times, both of which lean really far left. It’s okay to lean one way or the other, but the particular bent is supposed to be expressed editorially, not through the news itself. The news is supposed to be sacrosanct. But it’s not. The first, by the way, is owned by the owner of Amazon. His personal holding company bought it in 2013. Carlos Slim, one of the world’s richest men and Mexico’s major cell phone controller, is the major stock holder in the other. Since he’s a shady character, it’s alleged he became top owner in the Times to prevent negative press about himself.
WYSIWYG NOT.
It gets better. We knew where the real media bias was pretty early on in the Obama presidency. GE owned NBC when Obama invited GE’s CEO into the White House and made him a major player in Obama’s green energy transformation of America. GE got sweet light bulb deals and a lot more, especially some major contracts in China. NBC, a major media player, was fully in bed with the POTUS.
WYSIWYG NOT. But at least Obama was transparent in his corruption.
We now have what we were never supposed to have, the APN, the American Propaganda News. It purports to be unbiased but we know it isn’t. It pretends to be fair, but study after study shows it leans heavily left, and this year in particular it isn’t even trying to hide it much. A lot of it is owned by big moguls whose private interests control much of what it does.
Unbiased, First Amendment protected, free press? WYSIWYG NOT.
By Peter Weiss
Are you maybe someone who has lost a family member, maybe a son or daughter, because of an illegal alien? Drunk driving incident? Convenience store robbery? In the wrong place at the wrong time? Gang incident?
Maybe you haven’t actually “lost” anyone, but maybe you or someone you know has lost benefits because of illegal aliens, like a disabled child no longer eligible for lunch subsidies because your state has accepted and is paying the benefits to illegal aliens, which, by the way, you, the taxpaying citizen, don’t have a right to know about?
Maybe you haven’t actually lost benefits, but maybe you just can’t get to see the doctor you want to see because he/she is so overworked and overbooked due to the influx of those illegal immigrants on Medicaid (who are not supposed to be receiving benefits but who are despite what they say) that the next appointment which you need now is a month away.
Which Shoes Do You Wear?
Maybe you are an illegal alien who was brought here as a child with no say in the matter, someone who has gone to school, learned the language, and not broken the law.
Or maybe you are an illegal alien who came here on your own and worked here for years and years keeping a low profile and not getting into any trouble, someone who has tried to remain invisible as much as possible so you can stay here and have a better life than you had where you came from.
Which Shoes Do You Wear?
Any way you slice it, this one is a really tough one. Unlike many other issues, this one is truly complex and difficult, one for which there is no one-size-fits-all answer.
But there are some things that are facts.
- Illegal immigration into the United States is a real problem.
- Our government and its illustrious leaders (on both sides) have been derelict in their duties of dealing with this problem, kicking the can down the road, so to speak, for decades.
- Our government and its illustrious leaders are not telling us the truth about illegal immigration, who is coming in, where they are being relocated to, what states are accepting them, whether or not they are getting welfare, food stamps, Medicaid and Social Security benefits.
- The media is not reporting accurately regarding this issue and many others. The media does not report the reality of the problem, choosing instead to promote a left-wing liberal bias leaning toward socialist values.
- Spokespeople for the illegal immigration population do not present an accurate or fair depiction of their clientele and opt for the heartbreaking talking points about how all the “good” illegals who came here by no choice of their own will be deported by this hateful president (the all or nothing argument).
- The left-wing Democrats depict this issue in the same way the media mimics it.
- DACA is not what it seems, and when one reads the reality of what it is versus what it was supposed to be, that becomes evident.
- American citizens should be the first priority of the American Government and no one else’s rights should abrogate or supersede American citizens’ rights.
That last point is incontrovertible. Also incontrovertible is the fact that the government, by its inability or lack of desire to deal with this issue has simply exacerbated it.
So, which shoes do you wear?
Are you paying for the illegal aliens when you can hardly put food on your own table? Are they taking jobs that you would want but can’t get because they are working for lower wages than you would expect to be paid? Are you a victim of their crimes?
Are you an honest, hard-working illegal-alien person just trying to get by? A child who was brought here by no choice of your own?
This one is a tough one. Which Shoes Do You Wear?
By Peter Weiss
Are you a payer or a payee? Or are you both?
As the tax bill looms in conference and is being formulated into one bill to be sent to the president, we hear a lot of information about the bill. Most of what we hear from the left side is scare tactics and divisive rhetoric, about how us regular people will pay more in taxes and the rich will get big tax breaks, about how it will increase the gap between the rich and the poor, about how it will decimate Medicare and Medicaid, and on and on. Nancy Pelosi called it Armageddon, as if she, with her more than 115 million dollar net worth has any understanding of what such Armageddon would be.
Most of what we hear from the right side is about how it will stimulate fiscal growth and corporate growth, put people back to work again, put more money in the pockets of us regular people who have been paying taxes, repatriate a lot of cash that is overseas which will in turn help corporations to invest in themselves and grow, thus employing more people, not touch Medicare or Medicaid, and on and on.
Somewhere in between the left side’s rhetoric and the right side’s selling points is something getting toward truth.
Remember balance? The first rule of real research aimed at truth is balance, an honest look for and appraisal of the bonafide research about the issue.
So which shoes do you wear and what do you want to believe?
If you are a payee, and have mostly been a payee, and if you have no real incentive to be anything other than a payee, you can choose to believe the left’s point of view and sit on your sofa and feel angry about those who will maybe pay less and are richer than you while those others go out to work to pay for your benefits. And you can choose to believe the left’s divisive talk about how the rich get richer, which is actually true, while they neglect to tell you that the rich actually work for their riches and employ most of us regular people who make regular wages, which is also true.
If you are a payer, a tax payer, someone who’s been wondering for a long time how come the government takes a good chunk of your modest income and then the state and city governments come along and take another good chunk of your modest income, you might tend to believe what the right’s selling points are trying to show you, that you might have to pay a little less, which, since you are paying for everything for everyone who is a payee, doesn’t seem like a bad thing at all.
So there are some facts out there, that are really facts that give some indication as to what’s actually going on here and what is political BS. who pays taxes latest Federal tax data
The top one percent (1%) of Americans pay forty-three percent (43%) of the Federal taxes. Forty-five percent (45%)of the people pay no federal taxes at all. Those of us at different levels in between pay the rest. The two links show slightly different percentages and so you can see what’s close to real.
Once again, you can cut and paste onto your Facebook page the misleading headline bullet-list points of either side, left or right, and thus be part of the left’s divisive, fear-mongering rhetoric or part of the right’s economic selling points, true or not.
But if you’re one of the ones who pay nothing, receive everything and have no skin in the game, it seems like you should really stay pretty quiet. And if you are one of ones who are giving a chunk of your pension and Social Security to the government to pay for those who pay nothing, then it seems like you really ought to find out what is real and accurate and support that.
Which shoes do you wear?
By Peter Weiss
Hard to believe that we’re living in America. Hard to believe that we’ve come to here, to this point in our country’s development, the point where I can’t say what I believe or feel.
It’s nothing really new. I was a teacher in New York. In case you hadn’t noticed about New York… In case you hadn’t noticed, the UFT and AFT have been in the Democrats’ pocket forever, so there in the Bronx where I taught anyone who did not sign-on to the left-wing shenanigans had to stay quiet, to form a kind of secret society where they could speak their minds.
America?
Not really!
Here where I live now some five or six years ago I made a comment about something political that leaned toward the right. A bit afterward, one of the people in a supervisory position at the place where I made the comment approached me privately to tell me they (gender purposefully not indicated) agreed with what I said but would I please be careful not to let anyone know and to refrain from outwardly making such comments in the future.
America?
Not really!
Well, so… You can’t put a Trump sticker on your car or a sign out in front of your house without worrying about being harassed and vandalized. You can’t state any opinion other than the current mob-think ridiculousness without putting your job I jeopardy, fear of ostracism or even maybe persecution or prosecution.
America?
Not really!
Not the America I envisioned or once thought I lived in.
By Peter Weiss
We’ll keep this one short too. For all you Democrat-dogma supporters, nah, nah, nah, boo boo on you. Only one thing left to say besides imploring you to think for yourselves independently and that is: be careful — you may just get what you ask for.
You/we all have choices. You can believe what Pravda USA mainstream media Democrat lapdogs want you to believe, or you can look at things independently for yourself. You can question, or you can accept. You can act like an ostrich and bury your heads in the sand or…
Once again, and straight out for the record…
In 1970 at the Ohio State University demonstration in which six hundred people were arrested, I was the first one. Six unidentified FBI agents were beating on a demonstrator, a small kid not more than 135 pounds soaking wet. I went to help him, they knocked me out, I came to in a paddy wagon. An undercover policeman led us through a conversation that was recorded and showed up verbatim at my trial.
Here was the offer: plead guilty to misdemeanor assault and battery on a police officer, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct and be allowed to graduate (not be expelled from the University), get sixty days in the workhouse and a two hundred fifty dollar fine. The trial would be held off until I finished up my last trimester and graduated.
Or:
Don’t plead guilty. Be re–arrested for a felony, rioting one. Go to trial almost immediately and be facing a year in the state penitentiary. Bail would go up so high I couldn’t post it and I’d be expelled, hence not graduate, upon being found guilty.
My lawyer refused to let me do anything other than take the plea deal. He said they would surely find me guilty in the political climate there at that time and that I wouldn’t last a week in the penn. What he actually said was a young boy like me, they’d kill me (literally) in the first week.
My lawyer also said that if I refused to take the deal he’d quit my case and he’d make sure that any other attorney I got made me take the deal.
So I lied. I didn’t lie about being innocent. I lied about being guilty. I said I did something I surely didn’t do.
Think independently. Look what they did to Flynn. Check out who did it, who lied about what they did and why they did both.
They are guilty. Not Flynn.
Flynn was the key to… We all know what the Democrat-dogma-people can’t/won’t say.
Two things to remember: be an independent thinker, and, you lefties, be careful because you may just get what you want and discover it’s not at all what you think it is or you thought it would be.
By Peter Weiss
I say it over and over and take no credit for it. I credit my father-in-law who said to me in the early 1970s “Man is by nature selfish and greedy.”
And here we are. Now some 50 years later we are ruled by a class of politicians many of whom are career politicians. The large majority of them are millionaires, many of them multi-millionaires. They stay in their political positions for many, many terms and then pass them on to family members. Or, quite simply, we are now ruled by a political class very similar to if not the same as the Politburo was in Communist Russia.
We deserve better.
We are told by these people what to do, yet they do what they please.
We deserve better.
Examples? Do I really have to? Al Gore: he flies in a private plane and uses more electricity in a month than his whole town. Yet he tells us to conserve. We must sacrifice so he can live like a king.
Our media today is no better than Pravda is in Russia. It is biased and dishonest. Some of the print media is owned by the billionaire-owners of large corporations with strong left-wing ties. So, like the Bloomberg paradigm, they leave the lefties alone while they concentrate on destroying the Republicans, especially President Trump. They are so corrupt, dishonest and brazen that they don’t hide their bias anymore and aren’t afraid to admit it or say it openly.
We deserve better.
Our government, particularly Congress, stays home during this pandemic and gets paid while they tell people who literally need their paycheck to survive on a day-to-day basis to stay home and stay out of work and thus not get paid.
We deserve better.
If you look back to what now seems so long ago, the impeachment, we see it was plotted before Trump was inaugurated and the biased media’s not investigating it truly has allowed it to go where it has.
We deserve better. Trump deserves better.
General Flynn and Brett Kavanaugh are some good examples and metaphors for what happens if you go counter to the Darling Democrat politics. What the Democrats and their media lapdogs did to Flynn and Kavanaugh show how ruthless and destructive the Democrats are as a political party and as our media that are supposed to present unbiased truth. What happened to Flynn and Kavanaugh shows how power hungry that party is and how little they care for the people they are supposed to represent.
We all deserve better.
When the president of a country is criticized for saying that his job is to take care of the people of his country first, something is drastically wrong.
We deserve better than the politics we’ve seen from the left for the last four years. We deserve better than the government we have.
For all the taxes we pay and how rich we let our leaders get on our dime, we deserve a lot better.
