This is what I see EVERY day. People who expect special privileges, only for themselves, who are indignant when they do not get their every demand!

Subject: Some Sobering Facts
About the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2000 years prior: "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. From bondage to spiritual faith
2. From spiritual faith to great courage
3. From courage to liberty
4. From liberty to abundance
5. From abundance to complacency
6. From complacency to apathy
7. From apathy to dependence
8. From dependence back into bondage

Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:
Population of counties won by: Gore: 127 million; Bush: 143 million;
Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000; Bush: 2,427,000
States won by: Gore: 19; Bush: 29
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore: 13.2; Bush: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the tax-paying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare..." Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some 40 percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

Well, the new job starts in a week. Looking fwd to working w an old cronie, the increased salary, but not the drive. I am glad to be getting out of Corrections, and away from the cop mentality. Interestingly, my soon to be former boss was a former cop....hmmmm, wonder why he is detested??? Interestingly, it is just that station in life that has saved me several times, from getting ticketed up the ass. Last week, I was driving my usual way, speeding, cutting people off. Suddenly, I spy the truck in front of me seriously slowing down. I am too late as I notice in my rear view the Highway Patrol on the chase. I am pulled over. He is just delighted to snag me, as I have a high profile car. After much ado, he comes over to my side window, only to see my "cop" ID hanging around my neck. So, once again, instead of getting a BIG fine, I get just a warning. Translation: don't get caught! And...continued drama at the moonlighting place. One inmate got into some meth, probably laced, and went psychotic. The psychiatrist saw him, not me. He was deemed OK. He smashed his TV and with the broken screen, sliced both sides of his neck and both wrists. Moral to that story, don't be that last person to see the crooks! I'm not under investigation, the psychiatrist is! End of story!

THANK YOU AUSTRALIA......

This is an absolutely beautiful tribute to our United States of America. Say what
you may ~ we still have the best country in the world. I thought this to be worthy
of passing on. And an Australian wrote it. Many people love America - many
people don't. But it is what it is and we are blessed (my humble opinion).

To Kill an American:
You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American.So an Australian dentist wrote an editorial the following day to let everyone know what an American is . So they would know when they found one. (Good one, mate!!!!)"An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani or Afghan.An American may also be a Comanche, Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as native Americans.An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim.In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses.An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.An American lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the world.The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return.When Afghanistan was over-run by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country!As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in Afghanistan. Americans welcome the best of everything...the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best services. But they also welcome the least.The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty , welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built America.Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September 11, 2001 earning a better life for their families. It's been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 different countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists.So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did. So did General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world. But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American.Pass this around the World. It says it all, for all of us.

Watch for the Perseid Meteors Aug. 11-13
A 'Shooting Star' Every Few Minutes

(Aug. 7) - The Perseid meteor shower, an annual celestial event beloved by millions of skywatchers around the world, returns to the night sky this coming week. But moonlight will interfere somewhat with the view.Sky & Telescope magazine predicts that the Perseid shower will reach its peak late on Friday and Saturday nights, August 11-12 and 12-13 (for viewers in North America). The rate of activity should pick up after midnight until the first light of dawn.You'll need no equipment but your eyes. The moonlight in the sky will hide the fainter meteors, and so will artificial light pollution, but the brightest meteors should still show through.Find a dark spot with a wide-open view of the sky. Bring a reclining lawn chair and a sleeping bag; the bag not only provides warmth against the late-night chill but also serves as mosquito armor in this era of West Nile virus. Cover your remaining exposed parts (including hair and clothing) with an effective mosquito repellent.
"Go out after about 11 or midnight or so, lie back, and gaze up at the stars," says Sky & Telescope senior editor Alan MacRobert. "Relax, be patient, keep the Moon out of sight, and let your eyes adapt to the dark. With a little luck you'll see a 'shooting star' every few minutes on average."
Perseids can appear anywhere and everywhere in the sky. So the best direction to watch is wherever your sky is darkest. Faint Perseids appear as tiny, quick streaks. Occasional brighter ones may sail across the heavens for several seconds and leave a brief train of glowing smoke.If you trace each meteor's direction of flight backward far enough across the sky, you'll find that this imaginary line crosses a spot in the constellation Perseus, near Cassiopeia. This is the shower's radiant, the perspective point from which all the Perseids would appear to come if you could see them approaching from the far distance. The radiant is low in the north-northeast before midnight and rises higher in the northeast during the early-morning hours. Don't give up if it's cloudy on the peak nights. The shower lasts for about two weeks, with fairly good rates in the predawn hours of August 10 through 15. (The radiant is always low or below the horizon for Southern Hemisphere countries like Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa; therefore few if any Perseids can ever be seen from these regions.)The Perseid meteoroids are tiny, sand- to pea-size bits of rocky debris that were shed long ago by Comet Swift-Tuttle. This comet, like others, is slowly disintegrating as it orbits the Sun. Over the centuries, its crumbly remains have spread all along its 130-year orbit to form a sparse "river of rubble" hundreds of millions of miles long. Earth's own path around the Sun carries us through this stream of particles every mid-August. The particles, or meteoroids, are traveling 37 miles per second with respect to Earth at the place where we encounter them. So when one of them strikes the upper atmosphere (about 80 miles up), it creates a quick, white-hot streak of superheated air. For several years in the early 1990s the Perseids performed spectacularly, flaring with outbursts of up to hundreds of meteors visible per hour. The rubble streams responsible for these outbursts were probably shed during Comet Swift-Tuttle's swing by the Sun in 1862. In recent years, though, the shower has returned to normal.

Finally, a minute to update my blog: Last Monday, I was offered the position and accepted it. First day on the job will be 8/28. The "bosses" had to take $ from 2 funds to meet my requirements, and I actually rec'd more than what I asked for. An incident that pushed me over the top was this: the Friday before I was offered the job and accepted it, I had 2 cardiology stress tests. In the second test, I was attached to an EKG, blood pressure cuff, IV (for the radioactive dye or whatever it was) for injection. I am on a treadmill, and all vitals are being monitored. I am watching the screens. The nurse on the right side of me wants me to walk/run and talk at the same time. Pulse rate is 124. She injects the dye. She asks me what I do, and as I am explaining it all, my pulse jumps up to 148. The nurse freeks, says she has to stop the test, pulse too high, too fast. They are checking vitals. I say..."Don't ask me about my job, and I will get my pulse rate down." I meditate and it goes right back down. And a light switch goes on in my head AGAIN, that if I stay where I am, the job will kill me. I am excited about the new job. It is high profile, very prestigious, lots of government people watching it...and can't wait to leave the old job!

The problem I have with this, is that all parties are generalizing. Certain factions of Muslims have been violent, cruel, etc, etc. but this cannot be generalized to all Muslims. And certain Muslims call Christians and anyone not Muslim infidels.

"Subject: Michigan State Prof Wichman
Claim: A Michigan professor sent an e-mail telling Muslim students to leave the country.
Status: True.
Hooray for Michigan State University(The Spartans) and Professor Wichman! Well, what do we have here. Looks like a small case of some people being able to dish it out, but not take it. Let's start at the top. The story begins atMichigan State University with a mechanical engineering professor named Indrek Wichman.Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student'sAssociation. The e-mail was in response to the students' protest of the Danish cartoons that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. The group had complained the cartoons were "hate speech."Enter Professor Wichman. In his e-mail, he said the following:Dear Moslem Association: As a professor of MechanicalEngineering here at MSU I intend to protest your protest.I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey!), burnings of Christian churches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called "whores" in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris France.This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many, many of my colleagues. I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile "protests."If you do not like the values of the West -- see the1st Amendment -- you are free to leave. I hope for God's sake that most of you choose that option. Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.Cordially, I. S. WichmanProfessor of Mechanical Engineering. As you can imagine, the Muslim group at the university didn't like this too well. They're demanding that Wichman be reprimanded and mandatory diversity training for faculty and a seminar on hate and discrimination for freshman. Now the Michigan chapter of CAIR has jumped into the fray. CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, apparently doesn't believe that the good professor had the right to express his opinion.For its part, the university is standing its ground.They say the e-mail was private, and they don't intend to publicly condemn his remarks. That will probably change. Wichman says he never intended the e-mail to be made public, and wouldn't have used the same strong language if he'd known it was going to get out.How's the left going to handle this one? If you're infavor of the freedom of speech, as in the case of Ward Churchill, will the same protections be demanded for Indrek Wichman? I doubt it. Hey folks, send this to your friends, and ask them to do the same. Tell them to keep passing it around until the whole country gets it. We are in a war.This political correctness crap is getting old!"