he video game Grand Theft Auto takes place in a version of Los Angeles where crime is rampant and virtually unchecked. Gavin Newsom, the Democrat governor of California and 2028 presidential contender, currently oversees a version of Los Angeles where crime is rampant and virtually unchecked. Newsom’s real-life domain, however, extends far beyond LA.

As if white-collar crime wasn’t bad enough, California recently passed a law that makes it more difficult to report fraud within state lines. Where most of the world attempts to eliminate crime, California clearly aims to stimulate it.

Though the immigration crisis dried up at the southern border, the problem persists in California, perpetuated by Governor Newsom.

For decades, Mexican immigration into California, much of it illegal, has been a major theme. Liberals always supported Central American immigrants to justify their welfare programs, and conservatives were proponents because they wanted suitable candidates for cheap labor. This trend worked well for a while, but time exposed the consequences. Very commonly, immigrants would live off welfare, refuse to adopt any American culture, and cause crime rates to rise.

The mass illegal immigration during the Biden administration only amplified the problem. At least one million illegal immigrants flooded across the border into California during Joe Biden’s term, and the state government assumed the downright wasteful role of supporting them. The state started committing over a billion dollars toward supporting illegal immigrants through various organizations, some of which operate illegally.

Al Otro Lado (translation: “to the other side”) actively helps smuggle illegals across the border. Oasis Legal Services defends illegals who are gay, transgender, or HIV positive. ImmDef has consistently called ICE terrorists and has stated its intent to jailbreak ICE prisons. These organizations and many more are being paid hundreds of millions of dollars by the California government to harbor thousands of law-breaking noncitizens.

Even when federal organizations attempt to right the many wrongs caused by this self-induced crisis, Newsom and California fight back by sending over $100 million to fund the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles (CHIRLA), an army of “social activists” known for organizing protests that, in many cases, turn into mass riots costing billions of dollars in damages. CHIRLA portrays ICE as an invading foreign military rather than law enforcement.

If you didn’t know any better, you’d think they were describing Nazi Germany.

Newsom and his government have become directly and indirectly responsible for so much criminal activity in California and all across the nation. It is frighteningly impressive how he and his predecessor, Jerry Brown, have taken an incredible state and turned it into a criminal underworld while simultaneously convincing their population that everything is fine. The average California citizen now pays the illegal immigrant $1,200 a year in tax money — a portion of the state’s insanely high taxes. Californians also have to deal with vastly increased crime, astronomical expenses, and a growing foreign culture.

Taxpaying American citizens are not the ones benefiting here. So who does benefit?

First and foremost, the illegals themselves greatly benefit. Most were exceedingly poor in their home countries, and they were encouraged by the Mexican government to leave for America by whatever means possible. They are seeing more money than they ever had before, welfare or not.

Second, these migrants keep the abetting nonprofit organizations alive. By maintaining large numbers of impoverished people, the manufactured nonprofits can meet the manufactured needs of the people who shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Lastly, this benefits the politicians in power. By creating problems and pitting two groups of “unaffiliated” people, they can more easily influence the population to take one side or the other, with few criticizing them. The Left often touts compassion. But it’s clear that instead of caring about people, California only wants to keep feeding the extreme leftist agenda.

Courtesy of https://patriotpost.us/

Did You Know

The idea of cats having multiple lives is found around the world, but the number of lives is inconsistent. While Americans say a cat has nine lives, Germans and Italians say a cat has seven lives, and in many regions of the Middle East, they are believed to have only six.

February, thanks to its already short length and leap days, has missed a full moon several times in recorded history. In 1999, not only did February have no full moon, but a misalignment between the human and lunar calendars led to January and April having two full moons.

95 percent of cranberries are processed immediately after harvest into juice and cranberry sauce. The remaining 5 percent are sold fresh or dried and sweetened.

The English idiom “you can’t have your cake and eat it too” was originally said as “you can’t eat your cake and have it too”. The word order was reversed sometime around the 1930s.

Thanks to metal shortages during World War II, there was a three-year span of time where Oscar recipients received a plaster statue painted gold; after the war, the Academy replaced the plaster statues with the traditional gold-plated metal ones.

The very first Saturday Night Live host was George Carlin; the first female host (and first person to host the show more than once) was Candice Bergen.

In the original version of Pac-Man, each level had 240 little dots for Pac-Man to munch on.

The house edge, the percentage the casino wins over the player, is lowest for Blackjack (less than 1 percent) and highest for Keno (25-29 percent).

Only four nations have national anthems with no official lyrics: Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and San Marino.

Compliments of http://www.howtogeek.com/

Independence Day

 

On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence, announcing the colonies’ separation from Great Britain. The Constitution provides the legal and governmental framework for the United States. However, the Declaration, with its eloquent assertion “all Men are created equal,” is equally beloved by the American people.

Philadelphians marked the first anniversary of American independence with a spontaneous celebration, which is described in a letter by John Adams to his daughter, Abigail. However, observing Independence Day only became commonplace after the War of 1812. Soon, events such as groundbreaking ceremonies for the Erie Canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad were scheduled to coincide with July 4th festivities.

In 1859, the Banneker Institute of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, urged African Americans to celebrate Independence Day while bearing witness to the inconsistencies between the ideals espoused in the Declaration of Independence and the practice of slavery. Chairman of the meeting, Mr. Jacob C. White Jr., also promised his audience a brighter future:

We have learned by experience and by the comparison of ourselves with people similarly situated, to hope that, at some day not very far in futurity, our grievances will be redressed, that our long lost rights will be restored to us, and that, in the full stature of men, we will stand up, and with our once cruel opponents and oppressors rejoice in the Declaration of our common country, and hail with them the approach of the glorious natal day of the Great Republic.

By the 1870s, the Fourth of July was the most important secular holiday on the calendar. Congress passed a law making Independence Day a federal holiday on June 28, 1870. Even far-flung communities on the western frontier managed to congregate on Independence Day.

In an American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 to 1940 interview, Miss Nettie Spencer remembered the Fourth as the “big event of the year. Everyone in the countryside got together on that day for the only time in the year.” She continued:

There would be floats in the morning and the one that got the [girls?] eye was the Goddess of Liberty. She was supposed to be the most wholesome and prettiest girl in the countryside — if she wasn’t she had friends who thought she was. But the rest of us weren’t always in agreement on that…Following the float would be the Oregon Agricultural College cadets, and some kind of a band. Sometimes there would be political effigies.

Just before lunch – and we’d always hold lunch up for an hour – some Senator or lawyer would speak. These speeches always had one pattern. First the speaker would challenge England to a fight and berate the King and say that he was a skunk. This was known as twisting the lion’s tail. Then the next theme was that any one could find freedom and liberty on our shores. The speaker would invite those who were heavy laden in other lands to come to us and find peace. The speeches were pretty fiery and by that time the men who drank got into fights and called each other Englishmen. In the afternoon we had what we called the ‘plug uglies’ — funny floats and clowns who took off on the political subjects of the day…The Fourth was the day of the year that really counted then. Christmas wasn’t much; a Church tree or something, but no one twisted the lion’s tail.

Now you know the rest of the story!    Thanks to the Library of Congress!!

Happy 4th of July to you all!

*The Library of Congress posts a wealth of online information pertaining to the Declaration of Independence and its principal author, Thomas Jefferson. Declaring Independence: Drafting the Documents provides a Timeline leading up to the revolution and a fragment of an early draft of the Declaration. Also, see the Thomas Jefferson Papers, 1606 to 1827, which includes Jefferson’s rough draft of the Declaration of Independence.

I’ve had some questions about the tag line in the header portion of the website…’The Wise Bamboo Bends With The Wind’.

During the Korean war I was in Japan for 3 years and that’s where I got that saying.  The story that was told to me was, there was a large typhoon coming and the people working in the fields ran for cover.  Some ran into the forest with the large Oak trees for shelter and some ran into the forest of bamboo trees.  After the typhoon had blown through, they found that the people who ran to the Oak trees had mostly all been killed as the trees were uprooted or cracked.  The people in the bamboo grove were all saved as they had tied themselves to the large bamboo trees, the trees had bent with the wind and when the typhoon had left, they became upright again!

I have used that phrase throughout my own life and found it to be a fine guiding light. 

Just for the heck of it, I googled it and this is what I got…..

The phrase “the wise bamboo bends with the wind” (often part of a proverb comparing bamboo to a rigid oak tree) means that true strength comes from resilience and adaptability, not stubborn resistance. By bending, you yield to life’s challenges without breaking, allowing you to bounce back once the storm passes.

 There is another phrase that I have followed religiously, from my father, a very wise man, that he told me when I was a very young boy, in the 1930s.  I’ve never forgotten it. He said, “You never learn anything while your talking”.  How true that is.

This is what AI says about that phrase:

AI Overview

You never learn anything while your talking.

The exact phrasing of this wisdom has been attributed to several notable figures across different disciplines:

Broadcasting & Interviews: Legendary interviewer Larry King lived by the rule: “My first rule of conversation is this: I never learn a thing while I’m talking.” 

Politics & Leadership: President Lyndon B. Johnson famously kept a similar maxim framed in his office: “You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking.”

 Sports & Motivation: College football coach Lou Holtz adapted the philosophy: “I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.”

 While the sentiment is widely cited to prioritize listening, the online Quora community points out an interesting caveat. Many note that verbalizing, teaching, or explaining concepts can actually be powerful tools for revealing gaps in your own knowledge and cementing new ideas.

 Ultimately, the best approach is a balance: listen to absorb fresh information, and ask questions to spark deeper dialogue. 

Now you know the rest of the story! 

 

 

Happy Father’s Day to all you Fathers out there!

It was a sunny morning, a little before 8:00 AM, on the first hole of a busy course, and I was beginning my pre-shot routine, visualizing my upcoming shot when a piercing voice came over the clubhouse loudspeaker:

“Would the gentleman on the women’s tee please back up to the men’s tee, please?”

I could feel every eye on the course looking at me. I was still deep in my routine, seemingly impervious to the interruption.

Again the announcement: “Would the man on the women’s tee please back up to the men’s tee, please!”

I simply ignored the guy and kept concentrating, when once more the man yelled, “Would the man on the women’s tee please back up to the men’s tee, please!”

I finally stopped, turned, cupped my hands and shouted back….

“Would the asshole with the microphone kindly keep quiet and let me play my second shot?!”

I mean, really….

“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.”— Benjamin Franklin

                       “The 10 Cannots” by William J. . Boetcker

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.

You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.

You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.

You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.

You cannot build character and courage by destroying men’s initiative and independence.

• And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

Checkout his website….very interesting:  https://yourwealthymind.com/ten-cannots-boetcker/

Dear Lord, so far today, I am doing alright.  I have  not gossiped, lost my temper, been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish or self-indulgent.  I have not whined, cursed or eaten any chocolate.  However, I am going to get out of bed in a few minutes and I will need a lot more help after that.  Amen.