Sword Of Blogging...The Last Frontier

The handle of a sword is almost more important than the sword itself. Its power is in its role of unity, direction, and movement. One of the most commonly used terms for a sword handle is the hilt. I find it funny that outside the world of swords its definition is to the limit or go completely.






Shouldn't we communicate to the hilt, apply our skills completely, not find our ego filtering the words of others because it just doesn't suit our own agenda? As if one man’s agenda is better suited, that’s where the sword has been, lacking a hilt. We go about our day ex-communicating others with a line in the sand of a beach, as if the line gives credence to the falsehood that the rest of the beach doesn’t exist.






The hilt, taking it to the limit, is truly asking the artist has one lost the art of communication.






Many people post their beliefs, post facts, lay their heart and souls in the many social communities on the internet with just one goal...CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?!






Where is the empathy?






How tragic is it that we don’t acknowledge one another because they aren’t completely in accordance with “our” plan? Do we own the market on great plans? Are we the only people that are “in the know”? It’s a shame that we look at another’s point of view and dismiss them so easily. How can humans sharing the same land, the same air, and damn sure the same pain and suffering, refuse to share ideas and find common ground in order to survive and prosper.






I know there are many that say "I don't give a damn what you think". Yet at the same time you have a contact list. I think that thou protest too much. You do care. Your anger isn’t that hard to pick up on. We can hear it in the context of your words. Your pain isn’t as esoteric as you would believe. We feel it. Even when we lash out in anger, we feel it. There are many times that we just don’t understand it and give a backlash that matches your lash. It’s time for a healthy dose of care and concern. You can’t do that without listening. You can’t listen if your sand castle is better than everyone else’s beach.






We need to come together at one table and listen. Don’t say that you have. Come to the table. Bring your skills, all of them; include the ones that makes it possible to listen. Many share your pain, wouldn’t it be less of a burden if we could all carry the burden together.


We can ill afford to limit the invites because our way doesn’t match the way of others. We all have the same needs, do we all want to go without because a couple of disagreements of the wants?














I hope that we can put pride and ego aside and replace it with strength and understanding. I hope that we can take a moment to see the pain of a man and not think lesser of him. I hope that we can open our minds long enough to take it to the hilt.






If we don’t…we may miss the point.

Woke Up This Morning

I never knew what the day would bring. I would imagine that we all have plans and have an idea of what to do with our day. Does it ever be what we expect? Does it ever come a time that you wind down the day lay your head on the pillow and say...just how I planned it? Well this evening I am now convinced that it is NEVER a foresighted episode.

Tonight, I go to bed surprised, disappointed, and informed. Yes, I meant informed. I learned that the world is as I thought it was. Many bubbles trying to avoid its bubble to pop, even if that means other bubbles must sacrifice its existence.

I learned that the world is cold, distant, disconnected, and selfish. It needs its picture to be the picture of us all. It needs to destroy in order for it to be born.

I guess what I am trying to say...I saw the enemy today. I saw you...again.

I will never need that reminder again. My life for yours will never be.
Drawing first blood doesn't make you the winner, it only makes me resolved in your death.

I hope you are prepared...because you have shown...not that you don't care about me...but you don't care about yourself.

Ill prepare your last words.
I am Priest.

The Rally That Made Many Insane

There has been quite a back and forth about the rally that Jon Stewart held prior to the election. Most of the back and forth has been between liberals, progressives, and those on the left. The basic premise has been whether or not it was liked…let’s get to the real point.



Liked? Who cares if it was liked? A rally was held to point out the fear and political craze. Mr. Stewart fell very short in his goal. That is not an opinion…it’s a fact. A fact not lost on members of the MSNBC prime-time line up or Bill Maher.


But I want to point out some things that were missed…he proved the old premise of a “liberal”. It’s a disease that permeates many on the left, the desire to play it down the middle. He didn’t look at the truth in his criticism, he just looked to criticized. A flawed process, where he placed what is wrong with the right and applied to the left, which he even went on MSNBC to defend by nitpicking. So now he has placed his own peers in a enviable position. His peers must now criticize the “critic”, they must call out his blatant hypocrisy. He wanted it both ways; he tried to be independent and critical. He played fair and lost balance. His comparisons could only be achieved by him pressing a thumb on the scale he was using to compare. Teabagger is not in the realm of Dr. Tiller the baby killer.


The phrase false equivalence has been bounced around. I say it’s improper in this case…


Stewart flat out lied!


If he is going to have a rally to restore sanity he needs to start with his own.


For those that don’t know or don’t want to admit it, Stewart exposed the left vs. right pundit issue with Crossfire and killed the show. Don’t believe me, fine.


Prove me wrong…I was watching that show for the entire year prior to Stewart’s appearance. Ratings didn’t kill the show, Stewart (Mr. I'm not in the game) killed it by using a critical analysis of the show.


His best defense of lumping MSNBC with FOX is the left vs. right premise. Really?
Really? MSNBC is for the left? reporting the facts of what is wrong with the government is left. Lying at every turn in order to serve an agenda is the right? That’s the lie you made.


If there is amplification on MSNBC for the left…why has the left not heard it? If there is an apples and oranges comparison in his “analysis” how can one produce facts and the other be nutjobs? That’s a fair analysis? That’s how you come to the conclusion that they are the same? MSNBC is hurting America? Really, facts that lean to the left hurt America? Calling people that vote against their own financial interest by voting for their religious and racist interest teabaggers is hurting America? I just wonder would he have the balls to tell Gore Vidal that mocking or exposing the ridiculous is hurting America?

I would imagine that its my fault. I expected sanity restoration, I expected Stewart to say enough of the race bashing, internet bullying, media manipulation, astroturf deception, political side-stepping, and military expansion.


Alas, I got a bottleneck example to describe how we all get together to get things done. Maybe he needs to point out the insanity that got the myriads of bottlenecks in our country in the first place.


I just have one question left…would Jon Stewart tell this person who wrote the following that she is hurting America when addressing a lying, manipulative teabagger? Or just telling the truth…something Stewart was delinquent in doing by playing it down the middle:


“This is the point at which you show the exact dismissiveness I'm talking about. Note that I said I routinely CHECK the facts. It's not on my impression of his character or my inclination toward his views that I base my assertion that he gets his facts right. It's on quite a lot of experience at checking those facts and finding that they're right.


But you ignored that part so that you could do exactly what I said was the problem in the first place--be dismissive of something you really have no reason to dismiss.


If you said Hannity was a credible source, yes, that would be laughable, because he is often wrong. If you said, in contrast, that William F. Buckley was a credible source, you would not be ridiculous.


This is exactly what I'm talking about. You WANT Olbermann to be "the liberal Hannity"--and there are liberals just like Hannity, O'Reilly, and Limbaugh. But Olbermann isn't one. Is he biased? Even mean sometimes? You bet. But he gets his FACTS right and cites his SOURCES.


And that, my friend, makes all the difference. It's the difference between me actually being laughable or "worshiping" someone and me getting off my ass and doing my homework and drawing a conclusion about a source based on actual evidence--and the difference between us is that I read all of what you said and didn't just dismiss part of it.


The pumps, alas, are no more. One is missing.


See? All of it--even the part that some might say trivializes me and others might call an olive branch.
Here is one of those comments pointing out an error that you like to ignore: I said that you like to dismiss Olbermann, for instance, as being not credible because of his bias; I explained that it is possible to be biased AND accurate; I told you I'd checked his accuracy repeatedly and also checked his sources; and you came back with a comment that said EXACTLY what I said you always say, without evaluating the new evidence I'd provided or paying attention to anything I said after the part that you COULD ridicule if you took it out of context. In other words, you attempted to defeat my argument by committing the same error that that argument said you routinely commit.


How about this? YOU watch Olbermann talking about, say, the voting record of an elected official and then check that voting record. Do that over and over again. Come back with your results. If you catch him making the kinds of "mistakes" O'Reilly and Hannity do or outright lying like Limbaugh a statistically significant percentage of the time, you'll have a case to make. Until then, you can either accept that I believe him to be credible on FACTS because I CHECKED them--or you can call me a liar or suggest that I'm simply not competent to check things like how an elected official voted on something.


But you can't go "your argument is wrong because I say it's wrong" and expect any respect.”

Frame The Debate

I do truly feel sorry for my fellow humans. We fight, we bicker, and we complain!
I just wonder are we missing the point, are we denying our only true right…seek truth.
We hate change and the truth! It’s a painful existence to constantly have to analyze a situation that we believe should be absolute and final. Poor humans, it must be hard to grow, be analytical, and logical.

We have no idea how to comprehensively address a damn thing! Problems for us are like addressing a monster in a horror movie. If we don’t have a magic bullet…we start to shoot…even if it doesn’t work.
We aimlessly meander in our everyday lives as if it truly matters; we wear masks as if people don’t see them. So let’s look at one of the truths we ram our heads in the sand to avoid:

“That's just the way it is

Some things will never change

That's just the way it is

But don't you believe them”

That’s the Way It Is-Bruce Hornsby and the Range

Every American loves a successful rich person! We love a good happy feely story of success! But that’s been the point of the argument lately. We are divided between the two sides of a love/hate opinion of the rich. On one side has its “No poor man has ever given me a job”; the other side boasts the opinion of “they make too much”.


Well let’s start the flowchart properly. Are they a self-made man? Yes? Good, both sides love that. Did they work hard to get where they are? Yes? Great, both sides love that.Did they earn it the right way? No? Now we have a problem right? Wrong. We are arguing over the money, without addressing the real source of the problem.


Greed! We don’t have a class warfare issue. We have a crime/greed issue. No one can say that they like it when someone steals, kills, or just breaks the law without remorse. We don’t like it when harm is brought to people. Rape is a crime, when a deceitful businessman can rob you blind it’s a shame. A murder is a crime, when a politician, seeking to look tough on crime, can deny a man on death row a DNA test to prove his innocent it is a shame. Robbing a bank is a crime; bank failures accompanied with a bailout is a shame.

It’s a damn shame that “it is what it is” can be the explanation of millions of jobs lost due to laws and treaties made by the very people that we send financial contributions to and elect. It’s a dame shame that a company can make or do something that can kill you, but murder isn’t the case that we give them. Didn’t know that defective breaks killing you is a civil issue. Do I truly need to give anymore examples of what greed will do in order to make a dollar? Do I truly need to mention anymore horrors they have committed for the almighty dollar. Do we need to see anymore examples before too damn much isn't enough? Health Care?

Education? Wars? Housing market manipulations? Outing a CIA agent? What more do you need to know? How is it that you cant buy into the truth, but they can sell you anything but?

The truth of the matter is that we love the lifestyles of the rich and famous. We just don’t like when their riches makes us poor and their rise to fame is made by our fall of grace.

Greed isn't morally and legally right. No matter what anyone tells you…don’t you believe them.

Tyranny Leads To Tyranny

All forms of collectivism lead to tyranny…Really?




Here I am thinking that tyranny leads to tyranny, how could I have been so wrong? Could it be because any belief system, when just a belief is flawless? Capitalism, Socialism, and even Communism is a flawless theory. Now let’s use scientific application. Let’s place human nature into the equation. Not so flawless anymore is it? Shall we use the collectivism vs. individualism argument? Once again, when it’s used…flawless in theory, flawed in practice and application. Once again, we have to analyze the theory with human nature involved.

See that’s where the need to place stop gaps, regulations, or laws is needed. In order to stop the desire to corrupt, impede, or warp a system there has to have an agreement…a collective agreement. It’s a difficult process though, how do we come to an agreement when historically tyranny has been allowed? It’s been a hard task to combat man’s desire to oppress another man in an effort to profit or conserve profit.

It’s an understood rule of nature that we will always face evil in the path to positive evolution. Evil will tell you that spreading the wealth means the collective is after YOUR wealth. Never acknowledging that you are BROKE! Evil will tell you that climate change is a hoax. Never acknowledging that wind, solar, and water energy is evolutionary progress. Evil will tell you that government is against you. All the while, asking for your vote. Evil will tell you that the educational system is flawed. But never acknowledging that its own offspring are in private schools that has more revenue, better paid teachers, and generally a comprehensive and adaptable syllabus. Evil will tell you that you need to accept fewer benefits for Social Security and Medicare. Never acknowledging that they made monumental financial mistakes and got their BONUSES bailed out! Evil will tell you that taxes makes jobs. Never acknowledging that it’s an economical fact that supply and demand dictates job creation. How can there be a demand for an iPod if I can’t afford rent or food because I don’t have a job. Does evil have an answer for that? Of course not! Then it would have to admit that many can’t afford one because iPods aren’t made here, which is the reason that evil doesn’t have that conversation. Evils greatest trick is not to convince you that it doesn’t exist. Its greatest trick is to show you an argument that fits its own dark agenda.

In order to have what we need there must be a collective agreement. We must acknowledge that evil can destroy our existence and path to progress. We must be up to the challenge daily. We must look at all sides of a conversation, even if it means asking the hardest questions of ourselves. Are you asking for a benefit that you believe that you should have because you are an individual that only benefits you?

I would go further into my point, but I think that you know what I mean.

I will leave you with this…

Evil used slavery in our country, progressives worked against it.
Evil oppressed women, progressives worked against it.
Evil opposes DADT, progressives are working against it.
Evil opposes change, evolution, equality…

A progressive embodies it.

If you are against change, evolution, equality…

Then you are not a progressive, you are not positive, you are not right.

You are the evil I have written about. I do mean evil.