Being a subject matter expert........

I have some thoughts on love, relationships and marriage, I have little experience with the first, almost none with the second and zero with the third. But this year we have a presidential race with both sides downplaying experience and running on values/positions so I figure what the heck. A couple things I have heard ruin relationships are the following:

1. Just trying to be happy in the relationship.

2. "Women are disappointed that the man hasn't changed and the man is disappointed the woman has."

3. Mistrust

Now the first one is actually pretty tricky. Everyone knows marriages fail because the couples aren't happy in the relationship. When things start to get a little tough people want to remedy it and a logical step is "I will do everything I can to make this work and be happy." Now I know there is a lot more going on than that but bear with me. People can make make the mistake that they are responsible for making themselves happy in the relationship. The big problem with the above solution is it leads to selfishness. I truly believe that in a marriage relationship your sole goal is the happiness of your spouse. This really only works when your spouse is also focused on your happiness so that with both of you trying to make the other one happy you are both happier than if you just worried about your own happiness. If this is not the case then by all means, you do need to watch your own interests but this is a very dangerous path. 1 Corinthians 7:4 is talking about a slightly different application but explains the principal very well.

I can't tell you how many times I have heard women talk about the chances of changing a man after marriage. The other day there was a discussion of the chances a a girl who is a member of my church marrying a non-member man and eventually converting him. I have heard this discussion many times and have often heard supporting opinions from people who are normally sensible. Think about: there is a major, core value that you do not like and think you can change it. You can not bank that your spouse will eventually change for you and can easily destroy your marriage. I heard a story from a friend who had been engaged to a wonderful woman for a long time and shortly before the wedding he was driving her home and was a few blocks from her apartment when she asked him to drop one of his hobbies (I don't know which one) and he pulled over, called the wedding off and gave her money for a cab. I think he may have saved himself a ton of grief, for all he knew she secretly had a list of things she was going to slowly push to "improve" him into the man she wanted.

Now men can have the opposite problem. I just John McCain would be a great example as his wife waited for him for six years while he was a POW in Vietnam and he came home and divorced her for a rich beauty queen.

One of the many reasons against premarital sex is the question of trust. If you had an intimate relationship before marriage your spouse knows you have and would have sex outside of marriage. If you had a marital affair with your current spouse while married to you last one then the problem is increased ten fold since now your spouse knows you have a record of cheating. I had a friend who was married and I don't know anything about their background. I knew him through a club and one time he mentioned he told her he was going to a meeting and would be back at 9. when he got back at 8:55 she was screaming at him because she thought he had said 8.........How fun.

The sky is falling

I won't pretend to be an economic expert but I have a few thoughts on the matter of the bank bailout and the failure of the bailout bill's passage. We are in this predicament due to risky sub-prime loans and loan officers acting like they were bullet-proof. This crisis isn't something that ambushed us overnight as its been going down hill for several months before it became a national crisis. I could get a little more worried if so many people weren't acting like this was the opportunity of the century. I am reminded of the following from H. L. Mencken,

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

The book State of Fear by Michael Crichton talks about how since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 the fear mongering in the media has expanded by leaps and bounds. Why is kind of complicated but basically "You're on the verge of apocalypse! Only I can save you, worship/follow me." covers my explanation. I feel a lot of the Global Warming stuff falls into this category as well as the Patriot Act.

To those in our country who want to socialize us (step forward Congresswomen Maxine "This liberal wants to socialize big oil" Waters) (D-CA), this is a golden gift from the gods. For heavens sake, the populace is crying out for the Government to buy and therefore own corporations because, as they postulate, Capitalism has failed. (see Websters dictionary's entry for Communism) In return for bailing out (see buying) corporations now the government gets control how they do business. Regardless if we like to admit it or not money is what makes the world go around and now, in addition to the power to make laws, tax and make war we want to hand the keys to our financial system over to the government? If we don't we are threatened with the possibility of a new depression. I have only one thing to say:

Better dead than Red

PETA on Milk

I got this link off CNN's website about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals latest push. Apparently, they heard a Swiss restaurant owner is replacing 75% of his cow milk with human breast milk. He bought the milk from nursing mothers in his area. Excited at the possibilities they sent a letter to the owners of Ben & Jerry's ice cream asking that they replace their use of cow's milk in their ice cream with breast milk. To convince Ben & Jerry they presented the following:

1. Health concerns for people from cow milk, including allergies, obesity and heart disease.

2. Horrible treatment of milk cows, constantly impregnated to keep the milk flowing. Then once worn out from years of production the cows are made into hamburger or a tasty soup.

3. Male calves sold to veal farms to be fattened up and butchered.

4. "The breast is best!"

Ben & Jerry's responded via spokesmen with "We applaud PETA's novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother's milk is best used for her child,"


I guess my first question is, “Are you PETA guys really serious?” Second question, “Just in case you are serious, did you think this one through?” Although I am not really sure I assume breast milk tastes different than cow milk which would probably give ice cream a funny taste, which may or may not be appealing. Health problems exist, as I can attest to, I get sick from drinking milk so guess what? I don’t drink milk! Ben & Jerry’s is not, sadly, a staple of life. My request I sent to the US Department of Agriculture to have Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie added as the elusive sixth food group was turned down. If you have ever bought Ben & Jerry’s you know it’s a luxury item costing either your first born or second favorite offspring.

PETA cites the conditions and treatment of milk cows and their non-milk bearing offspring. I don’t want to be too insensitive to PETA’s cause (or do I?) but cows are in fact animals. Women, however, are people (despite occasional inhumane treatment of ex-boyfriends), babies are also people (see Horton hears a Who, “A person is a person no matter how small.”) Ben & Jerry’s makes a lot of ice cream and need a lot of milk to operate. While the emotions of milk cows weighs heavily on my mind, the thoughts, feelings and happiness of women is foremost in my consciousness. Not really a reflection of speciesism on my part but because I hope to mate with, have offspring with and share a home with a woman and really do not want to do any of the above with a milk cow.

Hence, I am a little weary of plans to turn the pregnant women of this nation into nothing more than milk cows. Of course the PETA plan is to get the milk from “willing” donors but we are really opening a Pandora’s Box with this one. Strangely-or not so strangely, I come back to my main objection to legalized prostitution. The complete denigrating of women to provide service for money with the extreme potential for coercion. Imagine a young poor woman going to a social services office. She is pregnant and for whatever reason cannot rely on the father for support and need welfare. She is told that because she will now produce milk she is not eligible for welfare until she runs dry since she can sell the milk and get formula. Similar situations have played out in Germany since they legalized prostitution.

I do have to admit, they got me with that last one, how do you argue against “The breast is best!”?

War in '49

Here is the intro to the book I am writting

War in ’49
The Great War of Liberation

“Only the dead have seen an end to war”
-Plato

“I know not what weapons World War III will be fought with but, World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”
-Albert Einstein


August 6th, 1945: At about 8:15 a.m. local time, the American B29 bomber Enola Gay dropped one bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The bomb’s codename was Little Boy and it is one of the most famous bombs in history. But there was nothing little about what followed, the bomb detonated about 19,000 feet above Hiroshima with the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT. The city was flattened, hardly one brick stood on another. About 70,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed by the blast and another 70,000 or so wounded. The explosion was so bright and so hot that it burned shadows into the sidewalk. Burns caused flesh to fall off in roasted chunks when touched, the dead were truly the lucky ones.

August 9th, 1945: The B29 bomber Bockscar flew over the city of Nagasaki and dropped a Bomb codenamed Fat Man. It killed 40,000 people and wounded 25,000. Due to the hilly terrain in Nagasaki the damage was not as wide spread as it was in Hiroshima.

August 15th, 1945: Emperor Hirohito makes a radio address announcing Japan’s Unconditional Surrender. World War Two is over, on September 2nd the Japanese Instrument of Surrender is signed on the deck of the USS Missouri. The Allies celebrated their joint victory but the philosophy of Communism and the philosophies of Democracy and Capitalism are at odds and shortly after World War Two the Cold War started and both sides became locked into a great arms race and were constantly planning the others’ demise.

Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD was the only thing that kept World War Three from breaking out between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. MAD is a policy of deterrence, its key is to make it so there is no way for one side to launch a sneak attack and destroy the other country without massive retaliation. Thousands of nuclear weapons were made mobile or hidden or scattered so that they could not be destroyed before having the chance to launch a retaliatory strike. It was the assurance of MAD that kept both sides from going to war.

But what if the US had not developed the Atomic Bomb in World War Two? During the summer of 1945 US war planners drew up the plan for the ground invasion of Japan called Operation Downfall. It was to start on X-Day, November 1, 1945 and it would have gone forward had not the Atomic Bombs ended the war first. A War Department study estimated 1.7 to 4 million US casualties including 400,000 to 800,000 dead. The Generals and Admirals planning it predicted between 31,000 and 49,000 casualties by X-day+30 and 125,000 by X-day+120. To put that in perspective, total US casualties in World War Two were 1,080,000 with 418,000 dead.

The casualty estimates were based on losses incurred fighting the Japanese for nearly four years. The closer to the Japanese mainland they fought the more determined they became and their military was not the only thing they had to fight. Japanese civilians were being prepared to fight to the end as well. Women, children and those not fit for the military were being organized to rush US troops on the beach with nothing but sharpened bamboo stakes. US casualties would be much lower than the Japanese’s, in the end Japan would have been a devastated no-man’s-land with few or no Japanese left to rebuild.

As staggering as the estimated casualties of Operation Downfall are, the casualties of a World War Three, with or without Nuclear weapons, would have made World War Two look like a skirmish. That is what this book is about, World War Three in a world without the A-Bomb. Using now declassified war plans from the late ‘40s and theoretical fielding of experimental weapons of World War Two and the early post war years, I try to imagine what it would have been like had there been a War in ’49.

The Oath

This ancient tale comes to us from mid-7th Century BC Rome. Rome was at war with her neighbor Alba Longa and eventually the outcome was agreed to be decided in the “old” way. The Horatii, a set of male triplets from Rome and the Curiatii, male triplets of the same age from Alba Longa, would duel while both Armies watched. Jacques David’s key masterpiece The Oath of the Horatii captures the Horatii as they leave their home and family for the battle.

As the 6 men fought in full view of their nations we can only imagine how every blow was watched by a thousand eyes, victory or enslavement hinging upon its landing. As all three Curiatii were wounded Romans cheered and the Alba Longans mourned but then one of the Horatii fell dead! Then another fell and the last of the Horatii fled across the field back to Roman lines with the Curiatii in hot pursuit. The Romans cried in horror at the cowardice of the last of the brothers as his light doomed them all. Looking over his shoulder the last Horatii suddenly wheeled around, for wounded the Curiatii pursued at different speeds. Now separated the Horatii was able to cut down all three Curiatii one at a time; Rome was victorious!

A victory parade made its way to the home of the Horatii with the bodies of the two fallen Horatii and the last at the front. Upon seeing one of her brothers alive the sister of the Horatii broke down in tears because it meant that her lover, one of the Curiatii, was dead. In a fit of rage her brother killed her for greaving more for the enemy dead than her own fallen brothers. Initally condemned to die, the City could not bring its self to execute its savior of the previous day.

Adolf Legalité

In 1923 Germany was in the throes of the volatile post-Great War period. In an attempt to keep up with war reparation payments to the victorious allies imposed in 1921 Germany hyper-inflated it’s Mark. Before the reparations it was four Marks to the US Dollar but by 1922 it was 400 Marks to the USD. In the Late summer of 1923 when the Mark was about 1,000,000,000 to the USD a former army corporal and head of the National Socialist Party Adolf Hitler announced he would hold a series of mass meetings in the City of Munich’s large beer halls starting on the 27 of September. Able to call up 15,000 of his loyal SA Stormtroopers Hitler was a force to be reckoned with; as a result Bavarian Prime Minister Eugene Knilling declared a state of emergency.

Following the example of Mussolini’s successful March on Rome, Hitler planned on bring in his SA and taking the leaders of Bavaria at gun point and forcing them to recognize Hitler, with Great War hero General von Ludendorff at his side, as their leader. Once in control of Bavaria the Nazis would move on the rest of the country. On November 8th, 1923 Hitler, Göring with his SA and others burst into a beer hall the local leaders were speaking at with guns drawn and shouts of “The National Revolution has begun!”

Over the next 24 hours the uprising unraveled culminating with Hitler, Ludendorff and Göring at the head of a column of SA numbering 2000 men. They ran right into a roadblock of 100 soldiers and police. In the ensuing skirmish 4 police and 16 Nazis were killed and Göring was severely wounded in the groin. While Ludendorff pressed forward under fire Hitler fled leading the Great War General to brand Hitler a coward.

It was while serving his five year prison sentence that Hitler and Rudolf Hess wrote Mein Kampf. Also during his imprisonment Hitler rethought his ideas on violent revolution. The sehr ordenlech German people were not comfortable with the rules being broken and reacted badly to it. So once Hitler got out of jail his rise to power was characterized by doing everything strictly legal. Hitler was so committed to exact legality that he became known as “Adolf the Legal One” or Adolf Legalité.

In our time we face many threats to our wealth, peace of mind, freedom and our very lives. Marching under foreign flag and wearing stormtroopers’ uniform, goose stepping in jack boots, evil is easy to see and defeat. While we must always watch for Hitler’s SA marching towards us there is another kind of evil we must fear and watch for most: The Fifth Column rallying around our flag!

They say all the right things; all they want is our best interest. They say they love everything we love; they will fight for our children. “Rally with me to our flag that our Nation might persevere!” they cry; but listen to them, look at their words and deeds of old and their private words with friends. All great nations that have fallen have fallen from the rot inside; evil was not at the doorstep but at the hearth!
In 1923 German soldiers saw evil marching on them and opened fire, smashing the evil that threatened their nation. Yet in 1933 Hitler was able to size full control of the government that had gunned down his followers less than ten years before. He used Germany’s own laws to destroy the very laws he was using.

We must always be vigilant that our own system is not used against us to destroy us and enslave us. We must always ask not how we would use a law, but how our worst enemy would use it. Be careful in who we let close to the halls of power, do not make hasty judgment in cave in a moment of passion to a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Alpine slide a no-go

If you are in Park City, Utah at the resort don't take the Alpine slide if you want to live. I was on it and came off and tore a bloody great hole in my arm. 24 stitches and enough IV anti-biotics to sterilize a pig later, I am starting to recover. That is my excuse for not writing of late, that and starting classes.

Not to worry, I have something in the works.