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As Crimea votes, hindsight has given us a clue to opportunities lost with Ukraine.
We should have already air dropped 30,000 troops into Ukraine near the Crimean border. Their duty would not be to change any of the outcome resulting from Crimea returning to Russia. Their responsibility would be to protect the rest of Ukraine from subsequent invasion by Russia, and send a signal that we are seriously invested in solving this crises peacefully… We put skin in the game.
We tend to think the Russians are not smart. That belief is our own ignorance dictating to us what we want to hear. Actually Russians are an amazing group of people, very similar in mental prowess to us here in the US. They understand pragmatics when someone calls their bluff.
It is important here that our actions demonstrate and back up what we are saying. Our words are no longer believed, and it is with good reason… If one thing the scandals of the US have shown lately, it is that our nation’s government is isolated from its moral authority, and lives in a bubble that truly exists within the confines of the Washington DC Beltway. The particularly tragic fallout from the NSA spying operation is that anything we as a government now have to say to the world community, cannot be believed anymore…
Also a very serious opportunity exists here for the Chinese to absorb some of the world policeman’s cost, and we should take every advantage of their weakness at home, to entice them to bolster their support at home by joining us as a peace keeper in the Ukraine, and positioning themselves with us along the northwest side of the Dnieper River
If Russia wants to crush our troops, it will with catastrophic cost. As for worries over flash-points, one must remember that Europe survived 50 years with no war, even though both sides trained 24/7 to initiate hostilities at a second’s notice. There is little reason to believe the Russians desire to commit suicide and fight a ground war on two fronts each on a different continent…
When you play a game of basketball, you don’t say… “you’d better not try that layup, because if you do, I’m going to shoot a 3 pointer.” No. You shoot the 3 pointer and that does your talking for you….
The world is looking at the US and wondering to themselves what are we going to do? Just let Russia take over?
We only have two choices. The best one is immediate containment. Think how would history have been different if we’d airlifted 30,000 of our troops into Kuwait as Saddam began to line his tanks along the border?
This, I’m afraid, is our Berlin moment, which back then due to our gutsy move, signaled the end of Russia’s aggressive posturing in Europe… The alternative, is Munich; because once you give into force, it is only a matter of time after a truce on false promises, till force gets tried again….
Hopefully others looked at this and we’ve already begun… I apologize for it not hitting me sooner.
The Golden Flush Award /Click Image for Past Winners
Usually this is an after thought…” Oh, wow, year’s over, let’s get a person of the year”… And then once we elect one, we go… “holy crap… we totally forgot so and so….”
So to try to stir up some old simmering coals of memory, both mine and others, and perhaps even to (heaven forbid) get some debate going in the blog sphere, I thought I’d make an initial run on Thanksgiving Week, and then add people into the nominating category as others mention various ones I should kick myself for forgetting.
It will also force me to review the year which is something I rarely do… because face it, as a human being, I am slave of the moment…. If I did this last year, come December 14th the entire world would have been turned upside down and all the old priorities of 2012, would in one day become trivial….
And so starting early gives me the chance to make the argument for each of those I decide to enroll with your kind recommendations included….
Julius Cephus: Particularly this one man organized and stopped an end run around the Port of Wilmington. The Kinder Morgan deal did not go through, and the Wilmington Port is bustling like never before… Kinder Morgan was to strip the union of power, and drop the rates of pay, further dampening the economy of Wilmington proper. It was also the first defeat of a Lavine-Markell development project, .. Fisker and Bloom had gone forward without a hitch. Julius and other’s push back resulted in a General Assembly motion that stated they, not the governor, had final approval. It was the first time we were exposed to the current Governor’s manipulations. They were to play a significant part across this year’s tapestry.
Steve Newton: A blogger who has written infrequently, but effectively. His piece on SB 51 is what alerted us to the end run being performed by Dave Sokola on lowering the current standards being used for educating teachers. It is brilliant. It took an evening of reading the legislation line by line and cross referencing it with Steve’s analysis, to understand the huge negative impact this bill would cause. By the time this was done, the Bill had already passed the Senate unanimously without comment, and with an friendly amendment added that was voted upon without even being read. Some public outcry was mustered within the House, both in committee and on the floor, but under the Governor’s direction, the Speaker of the House, pushed the bill to the floor before significant outcry could be mustered. Only 4 House members were not on record for it’s passing. Our educational schools now have to water down their teaching standards to meet the new law. Steve also has brought the Highmark story to Delaware. His research in the increase of medical costs in Western PA as a result of knocking out competition by unfair practices, leads one with a cold chill of what to expect in Delaware’s future. We are already there. As an insurer, Highmark is only paying medical claims in its own affiliated clinics. As the new Blue Cross/Blue Shield owner, that is a huge percentage of Delaware’s residents. None can go to any other hospital. He has properly fingered Karen Weldham Stuart for not catching this prior to implementation. Without Steve, this would have passed unnoticed. The News Journal still has not once mentioned the takeover of Delaware’s health field under one owner.
Ernest Lopez. If Kennedy were still writing Profiles of Courage, he should include this man. Ernest Lopez is a conservative, and voted with Libertarian values to pass the gun legislation recommended by Markell and Biden. Reflecting the views of his district, instead of taking the threatening message sent to him down from the NRA, he voted for his district. A very vocal minority, who is always vocal, and always in the minority, swore they would unseat him. He disregarded their idle threat, and voted both his and his constituents conscious. A major billboard was put up to call him out. His vote caused the passage of us now requiring background checks at public gun sales. Now a certifiably insane person cannot slap cash and get a gun. It is a no-brainer, and Ernie was the only Republican with brain enough to even know what a no-brainer is….
Cathy Cloutier: her vote allowed gays to marry. Again, she is a Republican who said enough is enough… Tired of voting against her conscious just so Sussex County would not flip over to the Democrats, she finally did not toe the line and voted along the lines of her own constituents, all overwhelmingly in favor of gay marriage. In doing so, she went against the entire grain of her party, who firmly feel that gays are second class citizens, even though most Republicans in office are closeted gays.
Bethany Hall Long: on the same vote, made a viable personal decision, and also voted for the legalization of gay marriage. Unlike Cathy’s vote, this was accomplished at great personal sacrifice, for all of those in her personal life, were solidly against this policy from taking effect. In voting for what was morally right, she had to contend against those whose influence she could not escape. She went with the correct vote, over the easy one. As a result, Gay marriage is now legal in Delaware.
Paul Baumbach: gave great ammunition against the fight for SB51, and later against HB 165. Both bills which will damage Delaware’s education for years to come. He was one of the four who put up a fight on the House floor. Paul also arranged for the meetings in Newark to discuss the new Power plant that figured in this past week’s election.
John Kowalko: also was against SB51, HB 165, as well, being against the power plant. In fact, John was the first person to sound the alarm over how big the power plant would be. Without his big voice, it may have slid through unnoticed. The power plant has defined northern Delaware politics since September.
Kim Williams; responsible for HB 40 which investigates Charter School’s meddling into our educational systems. She was as an acting state representative, allegedly refused entrance into a committee hearing on education, for fear she might say something damaging to the bill being rushed through…. She brought to the public’s knowledge, that the Charter School bill was drafted illegally without public input, and the charter group constructing it, was also under FOIA, to which the private group denied. The Attorney General backed up her assertion, that the bill was formulated illegally but their decision was moot, because the bill was passed both houses anyways. Kim Williams also in the HB 40 task force, led the group to realize that charter schools unlike public schools, do indeed filter those entering charters to weed out those who might lower their test scores….
Mark Murphy, Rodel, Sweeney, Hefferman, and the Fake Educational Reform Establishment: I almost purposefully did not post this. Although the first person’s name is usually followed by explicatives whenever mentioned, it is unlike Voldermort’s, still getting mentioned. Mark Murphy was not put in his position based on his ability. He was placed there for his loyalty to the cause of corporatizing public education. Markell pulls the strings, Murphy figures how to get it done… It is hard to make a puppet the most influential person of the year… So I was going to skip him… But at the last minute, remembered that every time he or anyone of these make an op-ed, it resonates as gigantic news. The entire community rises up to counteract each op-ed, usually with the word “lies” thrown liberally about…. So, they do exert an influence. I looped all of them together, as the group of liars in a Greek play, who stand on the stair steps and taunt the protagonists. Well,… they are part of the play…….
Dan Short: Sometimes villains get noticed too. Primarily a single issue candidate, who personally supports the NRA, he actively campaigned and organized to create enough backlash so Markell’s gun laws could not get enough votes… Without him, there is a possibility that all four of Markell’s gun control pieces of legislation would have passed both houses of Delaware’s legislature. Dan Short should be given the credit for stopping them.
John Sigler: Single handedly by his very brief tenure as the re-elected head of the Republican Party, he pointed out through his pigeon shooting, just how inept the Republican Party was at everything else. With his leaving, all fissures cracking the Republican bedrock, were impossible to ignore. Blogs split. The IPOD’s split. Former candidates of the same party just months earlier, now not talking to each other. The Delaware Republican Party is dead; no it is past dead. More dead than a pigeon shot inside a box by John Sigler, former head of the Delaware Republican Party.
Nancy Willing: Her blog, the Delaware Way, is the go-to site for local information. Whether about Dover, about New Castle County, about any of New Castle County’s associations, Nancy combs all sources and puts them down in aggregate form. Heavily involved in the Power Plant controversy, The Delaware City Rail Yard controversy, Barley Mill controversy, the Woodlawan controversy, the Kinder Morgan controversy, the Charter School Controversy, the Common Core Controversy, Nancy has who is saying “what”, and links to “why”. One can expend less energy by using her blog to follow all the stuff the News Journal neglects, in a few quick empty steps.
Amy Roe: a head of the Sierra Club, who emerged from nowhere to lead the fight against the power plant, and give quite a run against the establishment candidate. Becoming the face the anti- power movement could coalase behind, she gave the anti power plant movement both dignity and grace. Coming up short only 115 votes, she has awakened Newark now politically as never before… The power plant if it goes forward, now has a strong group of Newarkeans against it. Hopefully they will be monitoring it regularly and helping authorities keep in in compliance with all local law.
Tom Gorden; although much quieter than his first term in office, Tom Gorden is rapidly rolling back the privileges the previous Clark administration handed over to our state’s top developers. The Barley Mill plaza which had a green light, is now parked at a red. In a big sea change, though handled quietly, community groups are now no longer persona non grata in county government. It is no longer accepted as a matter of course that the Woodlawn Trust will be gobbled up by developers. If enough fight can be mustered, it can be stopped. Furthermore, with Tom there is closer coordination with the City of Wilmington, than we have experienced anytime in our lifetimes. In the county, local policing has been stepped up, particularly in neighborhoods prone to crime…
Dennis Williams: Came in with grand expectations, which looked deliverable for a while. The tide is turning and his relevance on this list, is because every day, the headline reality in Wilmington’s streets, brings his electioneering boasts back to haunt him, like a sizzling hot branding iron. Time, Dennis, to say “Damn the torpedoes… Their punk asses are going in jail no matter which blowhard on City Council spouts off,before mine gets tossed in jail for impersonating a mayor..”
Alan Levin: Jack Markell’s second in command, he was instrumental in defending Markell’s position on Kinder Morgan and the port, as well as the new power plant for the data center. He also had a hand in keeping Dole in Delaware, and worked to slip the power plant past a slew of unsuspecting Newark City officials.
Jack Markell: had his hand in everything. He was behind Kinder Morgan’s takeover. He was behind SB 51 and HB 165. He was behind the illegal charter group, requiring HB 40. He also was the driving force for the four rational steps to gun legislation, 2 of which were passed. He was also the driving force behind the passage of gay marriage, signing the bill in the chambers just moments after its passage. He also supported the transgender bill in its travels through the labyrinth of Legislative Hall. He as behind keeping Dole in Delaware. He was behind changing an icon in Millsboro away from pickles, over to poultry. He pushed the bill to curtail Flowers. Despite your opinion over whether these were good or bad, they still showed a ubiquitous and wide reach across the state of Delaware. Seems like nothing got done that didn’t have his fingerprints all over it.
John Young: As head of Christina board, John Young led the board in standing up to Mark Murphy and Jack Markell, by refusing the RTTT funds slated for his district. Although some hired fools, (Jea Street) tried to paint Young into a corner, it served the opposite purpose and gave Young a platform. For the fist time, Common Core was getting publicly bashed. For the first time, many were finding that aligning themselves blindly to this sham of improving standards, was probably going to hurt them politically in the next couple of years. It was the fist salvo back, so the damage estimates were not high, but it did open eyes of many who had been on the sidelines of all educational issues, making them also become vocal in fighting Common Core. His blog Transparent Christina has channelled a lot of detailed information into the Delaware market, and had made Common Core an apprehension, instead of the savior it was supposed to be….
Kilroy: Kilroy has always been haranguing over education. In fact he was doing such a good job I left that issue alone for years, because other issues for me, like the economy and elimination of guns from the hands of the mentally ill, were more important. But as the issue has shifted back into the limelight, Kilroy’s hard hitting is making its mark… Kilroy is blunt, and right now, that is the language that needs to happen. Blunt descriptions of what takes place in the stratosphere of he academic field…. Kilroy often breaks stories before the News Journal, especially ones embarrassing to the Murphy/Markell cartel of education. If you have read Kilroy over the past couple of years, you would already know that Common Core is not the panacea we have been promised. It is a power grab for taxpayer dollars, financed by Wall Street itself…. If you think otherwise, you haven’t been reading a balanced reading list….
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That is what I have so far. In retrospect I am surprised that education has played so much, as even I have only come to that topic lately… But if one looks over the News Journal op eds, education really did dominate the discussion in the 2nd smallest state this year….
I may have forgotten some big ones. To reiterate, that is why I am posting this early, to catch those big mistakes as they get brought to my attention….
Issa’s hearing just got the lowdown on what happen that night Stevens died.
It is a very gripping tale of what went down. They were attacked. There was no warning. It was a 9/11 surprise that took everyone by surprise.
From the account of the attack, everything went according to plan. There were no glitches. There were no acts of cowardice. There were no mistakes made. Adequate and proper procedures were in place especially knowing the anniversary of 9/11 was intact. I was most impressed how the counsel of Turkey was walked out to the front gate by Stevens and they noticed the calmness of the city in the desert night. One hour later, Stevens would be dead.
Blaming the State Department for this incident is similar to blaming Rudy Giuliani for the 9/11 attack on New York, his city. It is stupid, arrogant, idiotic, and could only come from a Republican thug like Issa. He deserves to be deported.
There is something horribly sick in this Republican’s brain. Imagine blaming Giuliani for the loss of the twin towers. This Republican thug Issa deserves punched in the face, a thousand times. This Republican thug deserves to be outcast from the country he stole all his money from. America is too good for this thug Issa.
These guys who died were heroes. Stevens is a hero. Not some scum like Issa implies, who deserved to die for his cowardice. Just like if Giuliani had been a Democrat, this same thug Issa would have probably said it is a damn shame Rudy Giuliani didn’t die to rid ourselves of his disgusting caricature.
If someone had brought up that Giuliani was a hero, thug Issa would have dismissed that as poppycock. “He’s only acting that way to disguise his role in the tower’s collapse. He’s the mayor, he needs to die.”
Issa represents the soul of the Republican party at its darkest. That soul in hell would have no shame standing next to souls from parties such as the Nazis. Brown Shirts, or Red Communists, or the Spanish Inquisition. They would all be compatriots. Issa is simply in it for Issa. He is replaying Joe McCarthy’s role,… not of cleaning out communists from America, but making Joe McCarthy famous and important, and a household word. Issa is disgusting.
This attack and the real drama that ensued makes the State Department’s actions commendable. In offense and defense, truth is not a player. Obfuscation and distraction and fooling the other side, are as rightfully at home here, as they are on a football field. If the State department had announced the truth of the matter on the day Romney stepped forth and castigated in an embarrassing example of how he would lead in foreign affairs, then every Arab would see that every Embassy, every consulate was undermanned and an easy target.
All it took was forty men. You think you can’t find 40 disgruntled men in every country in which we have diplomatic relations? Hell, you can find 40 disgruntled men in Issa’s own district. Is he suggesting he now needs a bodyguard of 100 soldiers to now protect him?
The level of security to prevent this kind of surprise attack is unprecedented. In all honesty, we probably had sufficient security to repel such an attack in Baghdad. Other than that, every embassy, every consulate across the world was vulnerable to similar attacks.
It makes obvious sense that to protect American lives across this planet, especially those in areas where 40 disgruntled men having access to RPG’s can easily be found, one would not give out details that showed how easily every embassy, every consulate could now be attacked.
Obama should be commended. His state department acted very professionally in this crises. One can assume now that this has become public knowledge, sufficient security at a very large expense, including A10’s are now stationed to be at any hotspot within 5 minutes.
If you are going to castigate the Commander in Chief for Libya, you had better throw Rudy Giuliani in jail right now too. This Republican sham is easily seen. Republicans are the true enemy of Mohamed. Not the America Public.
Issa should be zip stripped and gagged, and kicked out of a car in Freedom Square in Cairo, with a sign, Ugly American, pinned to his back.
I’m joking, but they are not. It is time all Republican scum be humiliated, and exposed for the ugly frauds they are in public. Romney, Ryan, Issa, Boulton, Dan Senor, Cofer Black, Christopher Burnham, Michael Chertoff, Eliot Cohen, Norm Coleman, John Danilovich, Paula J. Dobriansky, Eric Edelman, Michael Hayden, Kerry Healey, Kim Holmes, Robert Joseph, Robert Kagan, John Lehman, Andrew Natsios, Meghan O’Sullivan, Walid Phares, Pierre Prosper, Mitchell Reiss, Jim Talent, Vin Weber, Richard Williamson, Dov Zakheim.
Romney/Ryan excluded, these people are the ones responsible for $1.5 trillion dollars of the national debt categorized under Iraq and Afghanistan. $1.5 trillion that future generations of American children will have to pay, out of which we simply got nothing, nothing at all. Not respect, not financial gain, not even a simple “thank you.” We’ve have exited Iraq, (Romney says we need to go back in) We are exiting Afghanistan in 2014 (Romney says we need to stay there indefinitely)
This new truth that came to light, really shows that President Obama was willing to take political heat just before an election which he could still lose, in order that American lives could be protected and made safe, before the truth came out. An America that can still elect a thug like Republican Issa, really doesn’t deserve as great of a self-sacrificing man as we currently have as Commander in Chief of the United States of America, a man who would put American lives above his own career. This nation is truly blessed to count such a man among its citizens.
It is time to fight back.
Predatory lawsuits are the next thing corporate America is trying.
You get a call from a lawyer that says you were looking at copyrighted porno on the internet, and you didn’t pay for it.. someway, somehow.
You will be taken to court and it will cost you $10,000 in damages as well as $6-7000 in court costs… However…(there is always a however) if you pay to this lawyer who is calling you right now, a fee of $2,000, he will make this whole thing disappear; he knowing that you have learned your lesson, will no longer partake of illegal activity….
This lawyer is counting on these three things…..
One, the threat of an award of statutory damages and attorney fees
Two, that the plaintiff has no knowledge of their lawful rights.
Three, that the stigma of porn will cause the plaintiffs to settle.
Basically the corporation uses the discovery process to gather IP addresses and then shake down those people behind those addresses.
Incidentally, the court where the discovery takes place, often has no jurisdiction over where the recipient lives…
In an exact case, AH Holdings LLC, filed discovery in Washington DC, and received over a 1000 IP’s… They could have easily paid a service to track down the IP’s for them. But, that would have cost tremendous amounts of court costs to go after 1000 individuals wherever they supposedly committed the crime of watching free porn.
Instead, armed with the IP information(only 28 lived in the jurisdiction filed), their legal arm began to extort those recipients, even though they did not have the jurisdictional authority to do so..
So……
How do we fix this problem long term?
We make the internet a copyright free zone… No lawsuits over copyright infringement if the product is digital in nature…..
The legality comes down to this question. Is the internet a business or is it free speech?
If we decide it should be corporate, then let’s regulate it. But if as a people, we decide it is free speech, then hand off… For over 136 years Americans have used the telephone… We paid our phone bill and what we said over the phone was ours, it was free… If we wanted to spoil the ending of the new upcoming Batman movie, ..”Dad, you gotta see it, here is what happens…” we did not have a lawyer extorting us with attorney’s fees for telling copyrighted information…
I don’t know about you, but…. today all we do is communicate with digital information. We send links, we copy and paste, we click here, we click there, we like, we comment, we post, we twitter, we facebook, we take pictures of the advertisements on Time Square and send to all our friends…
That is what we do….
Voice is no longer our prime means of communication. We have evolved… It is time our laws catch up to the reality of our world.
Everything on the internet needs to be free… Period… Make your damn money elsewhere…..
End of Argument.
ADDENDUM: Elect no political legislator who does not subscribe to a totally free internet.
MegaUpload said they had tried to comply with all of the copyright requests, and they had…
Listen how the Obama Justice Department twists that into a crime.
Courtesy of the LA Times.
MegaUpload provided no index or search function to the public, and sister site MegaVideo filtered its search results to remove copyrighted content. Wait, doesn’t that sound like good thing? Wait, see how the Obama justice department twisted that around….. The indictment contends that it’s a bad thing because it made it harder for copyright holders to see how much piracy was occurring on the service. WHAT?
The list of the “Top 100” files at MegaUpload is edited to exclude copyrighted works. Wait, that sounds like a good thing…. The indictment, however, asserts that it “makes the website appear more legitimate and hides the popular copyright-infringing content that drives its revenue.” WHAT?
Users could not stream a file on the affiliated MegaVideo site for more than 72 minutes unless they were paid subscribers to MegaUpload. (72 minutes is too short to copy a copyrighted movie) The indictment contends that the point wasn’t to discourage illegal movie viewing, but rather to monetize it. WHAT?
The Conspiracy made no significant effort and the company is being faulted for not monitoring what each of its users did on its service, not inspecting content as it was being uploaded for copyright violations, and not combing through its servers for infringing material. But that’s inconsistent with the rulings from several federal courts, which have held that online companies have no duty to police their services to prevent infringements or detect them after they occur.
Justice David Souter wrote, “in the absence of other evidence of intent, a court would be unable to find contributory infringement liability merely based on a failure to take affirmative steps to prevent infringement, if the device otherwise was capable of substantial non infringing uses.”
This indictment was done in haste and is not a condemnation of MegaUpload, a COMPANY THE INDICTMENT ITSELF, CONFIRMS WAS TRYING TO COMPLY WITH EXISTING COPYRIGHT LAWS……
This was served in Federal Court in Richmond. The same court that says that National Health Care is unconstitutional, even though a number of courts have ruled opposite.
This is a rogue court. This court has proven twice, it is not representative of America, and New Zealand should suffer for not questioning the authority of the order it was given… Injunctions across America need to be filed immediately in more circumspect courts, all aimed halting this injunction issued by this rogue court.
If an EMP went off right now, what would happen? Let’s say it was caused naturally, and not from an earthly application… Just stop for a second and imagine if in one split second, all electronics got fried…
What could you do? You would initially do just what you do when the power goes out. You would get up, open the door, look at all your neighbors opening the door looking back at you, say a few words, and go back into wait for the power to come on…
You might get suspicious when your cell phone wouldn’t turn on, or not being primed to consider what the possibilities were, you might just think your battery picked that interlude to die…. You might likewise get suspicious when your car wouldn’t show life. You might curse your luck that the power went off, your cellphone battery died, and your car now needs a new battery, all in the same afternoon… You couldn’t get a hold of anyone to help, and so you walk over to your neighbor. He’s out back trying to get his generator started. It won’t work either. He’s mad as hell and is taking it back to Lowes where he bought it.. and he finds his Ford Pickup battery has died too… Oh the terrible luck …
So you walk to the store and see no one is open, everything is temporarily closed until the power kicks back on….
Only it won’t come on… ever.. I mean ever… Well at least in your life time…
Why? simply put, every electrical component, every magnet, every fuse, every connector, will have to be replaced from your house to the nearest power plant. .. Even if somewhere a power plant opened, and produced, that would leak all over the country unless someone actually got up and cut the wires to keep that power from dissipating and becoming too weak to do any good…
So new power plants would have to be built. New wires strung, new transformers built, forget about the ones on the shelf for emergencies, they’re shot too. Everything would need to be rebuilt from scratch…
And we would have no access to the information that told us how to rebuild….
This is how civilizations disappear rather quickly.. They become so specialized, that no one can put everything back together. It mimics the Tower of Babel accounting.. “There once was a great civilization, that evaporated instantly” is how most scholars view the accounting of that story today…
To survive, you would have no heat.. unless you had either a fireplace of wood stove. Everything else is electrical unless your unit dates back before 1990…. You would have no transportation. You couldn’t buy a working car. The first cars to be made would have to be created from scratch, at a factory, that unfortunately had no power.
Your world would shrink to where you could walk. There would be no news, unless someone walked to tell you what they saw in Wilmington. And what someone from Philadelphia had told them when they had walked from there, and rumors that had been told from those who had walked from New York, and from New Jersey, and up south from Washington and Baltimore…
Was any of America working? NO one knew… Once a military fighter roared overhead, and it was the first sound heard since the event, and all raced outside to cheer… But that was it.. Hope was that someone, somewhere out there, was in charge, and was working to make our lives return to normal…
But years went by…. Most people moved from the cities. Many died of disease, and starvation, and life became involved of defending oneself and ones property from those that wanted to take it… To live, you really had to sell yourself to an Overlord, who was intimidating enough that no one moved into your neighborhood because of him.. Most of what you made, he took as payment for protecting you. It included your children.
The once great civilization, was erased. No one knew about Rome. No one knew about Babylon. No one knew about Greece… unless it was from the old Bibles kept in decorative cabinets. Some books existed, but most had been burned to keep warm that first winter…
Just like that… Our huge skyscrapers, began to fall, one by one, each time covering the streets with an overbearing dust cloud.
Nature began to reclaim her own. The ice caps grew back. The seas lowered. The flora and fauna multiplied as people perished. The children heard stories, about the world being round, and names like China and Japan that could be found on old artifacts. But, without any reinforcement, they gradually faded from all knowledge…
The question I want to raise is this. Is our education system as it stands now, capable of continuing civilization as we know it, in and if, such a natural event were to occur? Or non natural event?
Do we currently teach enough basics so anyone can build a computer, build a electronics kit, and repair cars, generators, home electrical appliances, were such an event to occur?
It is not hard; the hard part is that no one knows how to do it.
If everyone knew simple basic electricity, and how things worked, we’d have power in some places within a week, and withing three months, we’d be 50% back to normal. We would be back to normal within three years.
Our current educational system is teaching us the wrong things…. We are focused on the wrong items. We test for the wrong items. We do not teach the basic knowledge our life needs right now…
It should be: A: fixing your phone/ and or computer.
B: fixing your generator.
C: fixing your vehicle.
This knowledge is vital for national security. It needs to be taught to every man, woman, and child… 3 x 6 equaling 18 doesn’t do much.. Nor does Black History Month, or proper English Grammer, or American History, or Economics, or ………….
Our first grade needs to begin…. “Ok, kids…. this is a 1… this is a 0…… All of life revolves around those two numbers…”
Right click to open full image… Pictograph Courtesy of Viral..
So, can someone tell me again, why we shouldn’t tax the rich, and instead, balance the budget on the backs of everyone else?…….
I seem to be missing that little detail where that all makes sense……
kavips 