Winter Conspiracy Theory

Thursday afternoon boredom led me to attempt something a little unusual. I got the idea of winter poetry from NEO-NEOCON. She writes:

Just to make sure I receive full appreciation for the arduous work involved in writing [the poem], I refer you to this. It explains terza rima, the convoluted rhyme scheme involved:

Terza rima is a three-line stanza using chain rhyme in the pattern a-b-a, b-c-b, c-d-c, d-e-d. There is no limit to the number of lines, but poems or sections of poems written in terza rima end with either a single line or couplet repeating the rhyme of the middle line of the final tercet…There is no set rhythm for terza rima, but in English, iambic pentameters are generally preferred.

And her poem:

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ACQUAINTED WITH THE WHITE

I have been one acquainted with the white.
I have walked out in snow–and back in snow.
I have watched drifts climb to impressive height.

I have felt blizzard winds that rage and blow.
I have shuffled my muklukked, booted feet
And sniffled wanly, crying, “Woe, oh woe!”

I’ve slipped on ice and skidded down the street
And heard those dying voices with my fall*
Then gone inside to fix myself a treat.

“Snow is design of whiteness to appall,”**
My favorite poet would say, with keen insight.
(Just note his name; he’s called “Frost,” after all.)

I’ve heard friends call me wrong, and far, far Right.
I have been one acquainted with the white.

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NEO, I liked it. It's fun and quirky and perfectly captures your aggravation at this never-ending winter. For my own effort, I decided to tell a story. For all I know it could be a true story. You see, I know that liberals are not just misguided but actively engaging in darkness and evil. So I put my mind to the question of why on Earth they would want this planet to actually be colder. I came up with something, and I think you'll find it a plot both sinister, and darkly compelling.

Winter Conspiracy Theory

These evil trolls have seen the light.
They hate the rays that burn their skin
A pact is made; it is their right.

Dark science is sought for darker sin.
Freedom for slaves must be revoked
They pervert our knowledge to seek their win.

This land of snow was frosty cloaked.
For five-hundred generations,
Darwin's law was surely invoked.

Ice men solved winter's equation.
They changed to survive the cold.
Western man's frame was no aberration.

Thick of body, stout and bold,
wrapped up in furs driving their sleds,
"Winter is coming," is what they were told

It is ice that they hope brings the dead.
These trolls wish the return of an age,
when the weak were confined to their beds.

The long legged blacks they will rage,
as frost saps their will to prevail.
Warmists have already set the stage.

None alive know what this will entail.
As forests die and green leaves turn brown.
Those "blacks" that they hate are sure to fail.

He wants winter to drive them all down.
Killing the world in his hateful need.
He despises these freed slaves in his town.

His nefarious plans they just may succeed.
And falling sky has Chicken Little in a sorry state.
Killing two birds with one stone is what they agreed.

Genocide for that race all trolls hate.
First keep them in ignorant squalor,
then cause an ice age to seal their fate.

Ignorantly hobbled by the traitors next door.
Learning disdained their minds bound in rage.
"keeping it real," means they'll always be poor.

Thinking outside the box—or the cage,
is so much harder in a beery daze.
Carbon taxes are setting the stage.

Blinded by some science liar's craze
these hustlers just want to take us.
"Global Warming" is a liar's phrase.

Lefties they've raised an awful ruckus.
The grand marshal of this fool's parade,
Al Gore must really want to ... us.

But now that their phony hand is played,
and now that the people know their game,
The trolls' evil hopes will soon fade.

These nightmares they will not soon claim,
and their hopes of genocide will soon dwindle.
Evil racist liberals, they're all the same.

Getting the word out that we can't be swindled.
Don't listen to the warmists' sleepy little tune.
Holy Water on the fuse so their plot can't be kindled.

If you laugh at my story and think I'm a loon,
If you joke and give side-eyes while passing me by,
The fate you were warned of could happen soon.

When your tears are frozen, you won't be able to cry.
So get rid of the warmists if you don't want to die!

Demanding what you have no right to ask

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) demands an apology. Hat Tip PJ Media. This particular issue concerned Chairman Darrell Issa's accusation that Hillary Clinton may have ordered the Pentagon to stand down the night of the Benghazi terrorist attack on the US consulate in Libya.

“Although you have frequently made baseless accusations without evidence to support them, I believe the statements you made on Monday in New Hampshire are the most insulting and unpatriotic accusations you have made during your past three years as Chairman. You may believe this kind of affront is acceptable at a political event with donors who expect rhetoric with ‘red meat,’ but Members of Congress have a higher and more solemn responsibility to respect the Constitution and those charged with fulfilling its mission. As the Ranking Member of this Committee, I ask that you publicly apologize for your statements and withdraw them immediately.”

The quote from Chairman Issa:

“We need to have an answer of when the secretary of Defense had assets that he could have begun spinning up. Why there was not one order given to turn on one Department of Defense asset? I have my suspicions, which is Secretary Clinton told Leon [Panetta] to stand down, and we all heard about the stand down order for two military personnel. That order is undeniable.”

Two people disagree...vehemently! One of them crosses some hypothetical imaginary line. You see, now this person has just gone too far. Before it was a friendly disagreement, now ... now ... he's officially offended. And he demands ... he demands! that the other party take it back. He demands that the other party unsay or undo whatever it is. He demands that his enemy admits he was wrong. He demands an apology. Demanding an apology is nothing more than crass brazen hypocrisy. If it wasn't so hypocritical, I would demand that any person who dares to demand an apology should be forced to apologize. What is an apology? An apology only means something if the person who committed the dastardly deed sincerely regrets its doing. Imagine a serial-killer "apologizing" to the families of his victims ... all he's doing is hoping for a little mercy, the same mercy he never once showed to his prey. A serial killer's apology is the exact opposite of an apology, it's an affront, a splash of salt in an open wound. It's more than an insult, it's yet one more act of darkest evil that our system of justice allows to happen to a grieving family ... but what it is not, what it can never be, is an honest admission of error.

When two friends who happen to disagree vehemently about a particular topic lose their tempers and say things that they later come to regret, I think at that moment there is probably an apology that comes due. But, when two enemies battle, they battle without regret. The only mistake possible is failing to annihilating their foe from the face of the Earth. The gall, the effrontery, the sheer arrogance of demanding an apology from your most hated foe is the epitome of hypocrisy!

You demand an apology Elijah Cummings? Let me tell you where you stand. You stand athwart every dream I hold dear. You stand against every moral standard I hold true. You are anathema, and I declare us enemies from this moment forward. If I see you drowning I will attack your rescuer. If I see you burning, I will hunt for accelerant. If I see you bleeding, I will fill my cup. Do you understand yet? I despise you without reservation! You are my enemy, and as such I desire only one thing from you ... an apology!

Elijah Cummings, you demand that your declared enemy abase himself before you and confess that you are right while he is wrong? Let me tell you something Elijah Cummings. I'm offended! That's right. I demand an apology from you! In the name of all that is right and good I call upon you to abase yourself. In the name of all humanity, from the richest to the poorest, from the strongest to the weakest, from the most exalted to the most despised, for their sakes, for all of our sakes, I demand that you—Elijah Cummings—apologize. You can pick your own method of contrition ... as long as its fatal. Noose, pills, gun, high place, deep water, razor, self-immolation, etc. All of humanity is waiting. Your very existence is the sin. Now tell us that you're sorry!

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UPDATE 03/06/2014 6:48 AM CST

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Friends and family have informed me that the above apology topic that I wrote about yesterday went too far. They have demanded that I apologize to my readers. So, with genuine and heart felt remorse, I abjectly beg your forgiveness.

I shouldn't have written that if Elijah Cummings was drowning I would attack his rescuer. That was wrong. Obviously there wouldn't be a rescuer, and so I'm sorry. Furthermore, I apologize for writing that if Elijah Cummings was on fire I would hunt for accelerant. I now realize that far from getting distracted I would savor every delicious and fiery drop of schadenfreude.

Finally, last but certainly not least, I apologize for saying that if Elijah Cummings was bleeding I would find a cup. I'm sorry. I realize that I didn't make myself clear. I would find a cup to pour champagne in for a celebratory toast, not fill it so that I could drink his blood. I never meant that I wanted to drink his blood! Gross! Lord only knows what vile diseases and foul ungoodness is oozing through his bloated, disgusting, and grotesque carcass.

No truly sincere apology would be complete without a genuine compliment—a sort of bury the hatchet kind of thing. Therefore Elijah Cummings, I must admit I admire your tenacity in the face of worldwide condemnation. You represent your constituency not only with your heartfelt words, but also with deeds and determination. God put parasites on this giant dirt ball for a reason, and far be it from me to second guess His divine purpose. Even though I can't fathom the need for mosquitos, ticks, leeches, fleas, lice and those like yourself, I believe in my heart that even these seemingly useless vermin have their place here on this good Earth. So, to you and your ilk—ilk means useless parasitic dirtbags like yourself, Eli—I salute you, and may you receive everything you truly deserve.

We live in two different worlds

Front page on Google News was this link: Proof GOP doesn’t actually care about the poor. Now how could anyone not click that link? It called out to me ... Jack ... Jack ... Everything you thought you knew ... it was wrong Jack! Except of course that once I did click the link all I discovered was that Brian Beutler—the SALON.com author of the linked editorial—is a moron and a buffoon! As Bugs Bunny would say, "What A Maroon!" Brian Beutler doesn't like facts. I'd even go so far as to say that if you ask Brian what he thinks about facts, he'd tell you they're all a bunch of lies. You can't trust facts. They lie to you. These fact things they come up with cannot be true because if they were true, why that would mean that everything liberals believe is fantasy, fairy tales, moonbeams and wishes upon a shooting star. How do I know what Brian Beutler thinks? Well, he was thoughtful enough to tell us what he thinks, and—based on those transcribed thoughts—I was able to extrapolate his entire philosophical mental pattern. I know, I know it's an impressive skill, but it's just what I do.

Brian Beutler knows that Paul Ryan is an evil fiscal conservative. Conservatives are wrong because they believe in stupid things like facts, statistics, and the lessons of history, instead of Keynesian economics and critical race theory. For this reason—and the fact that people are starting to listen to him—Paul Ryan must be discredited by any means necessary! He must be politically DESTROYED!

When you live in an echo chamber—as do all liberals of Brian Beutler's ilk—you don't have to ask how other people feel. You know how they feel. They feel angry. They feel frustrated. Things are not happening as they are supposed to. Where's the Peace on Earth? Where's the moonbeams, butterflies and where ... where ... where the hell is Tinkerbell? It's not fair! Nothing is fair. Everything is supposed to be fair! If only the people who had more would give the people who had less their extra wealth, why then, that would be fair.

Okay here's the excerpt:

Every time a Republican wins positive press by posing as a tribune for the poor, an angel gets its wings ripped off by the invisible hand of capitalism, which means today, the day after Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc unveiled a tendentious audit (PDF) of U.S. anti-poverty programs, is an exceptionally gory day.

My colleague Joan Walsh gets at why credulous coverage of Ryan et al is so frustrating:

“How many times are we going to be told that there’s a “new” Paul Ryan who really, really, really cares about the poor – and whose budget proposals consistently slash programs designed to help them.”

This is an especially large challenge because when (likely) future presidential candidates do stuff, reporters can’t just ignore them and anyhow who’s to say Ryan hasn’t had a change of heart?

Actually the evidence is right there on the first page of his new report. “Despite trillions of dollars in spending, poverty is widespread,” it reads. “In 1965, the poverty rate was 17.3 percent. In 2012, it was 15 percent.” Sounds like a huge bust, right?

Except, there’s a footnote at the end of that sentence, and it reads, “The Official Poverty Rate does not include government transfers to low-income households.”

I’m surprised Ryan included this caveat, even though it’s more honest to include it than to leave it out. Because it also reveals that his critique of federal anti-poverty programs is premised on a metric designed to create a false impression that tons of money has been wasted, when really it’s done exactly what it was supposed to.

As I noted in the title of this post, we—liberals and conservatives—seem to be living in two completely different worlds. Alright Brian, let me try to break it down for you. Paul Ryan said: “In 1965, the poverty rate was 17.3 percent. In 2012, it was 15 percent.” In response to that horrifically damning accusation you said: "[welfare] has done exactly what it was supposed to." Yes Brian, if the point of 17 trillion dollars of federal spending was supposed to ensure that nearly a sixth of all Americans are bound into poverty and which condition shall apparently be visited upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth [generation].

The point—Brian—is that these people are not supporting themselves. Yes, thank you Uncle Sam, for generations of families living on government handouts. Thank you Uncle Sam, for a 90% black illegitimacy rate. Everyone understands that when people are below the poverty line the government will redistribute enough wealth to bring them back above it. That's not the argument, that's the problem! We shouldn't have one-sixth of the country making their living by clinging like leeches to the rest of us.

The point—Brian—is that they're supposed to make their own way. The point—Brian—is that needing that kind of government help ought to shame them into doing for themselves. They are supposed to be ashamed to need that help. They're supposed to feel embarrassment to the point that they finally, finally! do something, anything, for once in their completely pointless and unproductive lives. But they don't. That's the problem. The argument that Paul Ryan and conservatives are making is that giving the poor government money—with no end in sight—is the exact opposite of an incentive to find a job. Giving them welfare—for six generations—is a disincentive to ever becoming useful! WHICH IS WHY WELFARE DOESN'T WORK, BRIAN! You idiot!

Slavery at the hands of the litigious LBGTQ?

Can someone force you to work against your will? That is the question that was addressed by Congress and the States when the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified by the United States on December 6th 1865. The answer is that, unless you are a criminal duly convicted of a crime by due process, you cannot be compelled to work.

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Unfortunately, however, it's more complicated than that. If you're doing business with the public, you cannot refuse to deny goods or services to select individuals based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. As an employer you are even more constrained. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—EEOC—receives nearly eight-thousand discrimination claims every month, and that number continues to grow.

You cannot refuse to do business with select individuals based on the above mentioned criteria, but what if other criteria such as degenerate sexual proclivities, gender-confusion, wanton promiscuity, et cetera, complicated an otherwise clear understanding of rules and rights? A bakery with cakes already baked in the kitchen cannot refuse to sell a piece of cake to a particular person because of that person's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The question of the hour however, is: can a business owner refuse to bake a particular cake in the first place? That's a thorny and convoluted question, and the answer is probably that unless the bakery owner's own constitutional rights are at issue, the courts would find against the owner and impose punishing fines, to the point where the bakery would either comply or be forced to close its doors. But what if being forced to bake particular cakes presented a compelling argument that the baker's own First Amendment rights were being violated?

The Arizona Legislature has passed a controversial religion bill that is again thrusting Arizona into the national spotlight in a debate over discrimination.

House Bill 2153/Senate Bill 1062, written by the conservative advocacy group Center for Arizona Policy and the Christian legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom, would allow individuals to use religious beliefs as a defense against a lawsuit.

The bill, which was introduced last month and has been described by opponents as discriminatory against gays and lesbians, has drawn national media coverage. Discussion of the bill went viral on social media during the House floor debate Thursday.

Opponents have dubbed it the “right to discriminate” bill and say it could prompt an economic backlash against the state, similar to what they say occurred when the state passed the controversial immigration law Senate Bill 1070 in 2010.

The Arizona legislature has decided to weigh in on the question of the hour. In their opinion, the right to religious freedom—the First Amendment—trumps other laws. This bill has been dubbed the Arizona Anti-Gay Bill by the main stream media. Is that what it is? Does the bill harm the rights, opportunities, and freedoms of gay people? Or does it simply protect the rights of those who would otherwise be compelled by judicial fiat—unconstitutional judicial activism—to perform work against their will and against their religious beliefs?

This Arizona bill is one piece of scotch tape applied to one page of a Constitution being fed—one page at a time—into the left-wing's paper shredder. This bill—if it passes—would represent only a momentary bump in their plan to destroy this country, but because applying that tape represents active defiance!, it cannot and will not be tolerated. What if other States, other people, federal legislators, future presidents, etc., get it into their head to step into the path of the Left's Country Destroying Wrecking Ball? They've a schedule to keep, you know. Today marriage, tomorrow socialism, the day after, extinction.

Common sense cake walk

Several years ago I read Rich Dad Poor Dad. I vaguely remember that what I got out of it was simple: if you want real success, don't follow the herd through college and graduate school, start a business, study people, figure out what they want and then sell it to them. Well, thanks Mr. Kiyosaki! I'll just sit down and figure out what it is that everybody wants and that nobody is already selling. It should be a piece of cake...

Okay, I'd really like a teleportation device so that I can save all that commute time. No wait, maybe better would be a device that waits in line for me. I'll just go find a place to sit down with my tablet and the Line-Waiter™ will beep me when it's my turn. Hold on! I've got it! I'll call it: The Asininely-Redundant-Paperwork-Filler-Outer-Thingamabob. (ARPFOT) When the doctor, the government bureaucracy, the school, etc., hands me the booklet full of pages filled with blanks that I have to fill in, this scanner-printer—using some kind of Watson-esque AI protocol and full knowledge of all my personal information—will blitz through the B.S., in a trice!

I've been a "contestant" in a few cake-walks, but with nary a single cake to my name. If you ask me—and even if you don't—I'm pretty sure they were all rigged. The music plays, the people march in circles and the commissar with the microphone sitting in the tall chair gets to decide whose turn it is to win the next go-round. It reminds me of Big Government.

My name is Jack, and if you're a fan of fairy-tales, you'll find plenty of stories where my namesake—a hapless and thoroughly bored young man—goes out to seek his fortune, and in the process of this fortune-seeking, happens to defeat unimaginable evil, win the love of a princess, and then winds up living happily ever after. Sounds like a cake-walk to me.

The floundering around, seeking something, anything, purposes, causes, ideas, etc., can quickly become habit forming. Being a young man without a clue dragged on for me, way too long. Luckily, America is still a country where the clueless can manage to get by. Jobs are out there if you're willing to sweat, have half-a-brain, and remember always that being ungrateful will earn you a pink slip faster than you can say: "That's not my job."

All the formulas for success start with hard-work. I bet there's millions of unemployed college graduates who worked hard to learn whatever it was they teach in a university classroom. King Sisyphus was the hardest working boulder-roller in history and it didn't get him anything. If you're working hard doing the wrong thing, or going the wrong direction then you're worse off than people who're just sitting on their asses. Work smart before you work hard.

The lesson I learned at the fair was that "fair" is where you go to get cotton-candy, life ain't fair, and if you want a cake, you're best bet isn't a cake-walk it's cake-mix.

The Problem Inherent in the School System

Think for a moment about why you work for a living—assuming of course that you do in fact work for a living—or have in the past. We do it for the money. We don't do it for the pride of a job well done. We don't do it for pats on the back, commendations, awards, accolades, or even 'we're proud of you's. If we did what we do for any of those reasons it would be either because we were so well off that we didn't need any money but instead seeking some kind of purpose, or because it's a hobby that we enjoy doing anyway. Work is hard. It's at times difficult, confusing, exasperating, stress-causing, wearying, and—quite often—thankless. We work for the money.

I just finished reading a well-written and entertaining post called: A Conservative Cure for Sick Schools. I disagree with the main premise, however:

In the final analysis, if neither students nor their parents truly value education to the point of redirecting their powers of intention, then changing schools will not be enough. While a voucher system would help some families, to a greater extent it would devolve into funding underperforming schools that offer kickbacks to politicians.

The top performance of private schools has been spurred by the self-fulfilling prophecy of parents willing to seek out better schools for their children. They also have a financial stake in their children making the most of that experience. Families without that mindset and personal investment are unlikely to see similar results.

What is the greatest problem inherent in the health care industry? Third party payment. People who pay for health insurance and never use it feel as though they're being cheated. I know because that was me. Then I got married, had children and suddenly...far from being cheated, it was me doing the cheating. Wives are sometimes expensive but children are back-breakers, and never more so than when it comes to health care. At some point you'd think the insurance companies would start to complain. Hey, do you really need to take your kid to the doctor again? Give him a couple of aspirin and don't call the doctor in the morning!

So you pay for your precious child to go to a private school. Because you pay so much, you expect your child to excel. You expect him or her to internalize your own goals. Since you're investing in your child, you expect little darling to step-up his game, take on school work with the seriousness and diligence with which you approach your own labors at work. In short you expect this child to do what you would do in his place. Don't you think that's a little bit naïve? Your child isn't paying for school, you are. Do you care how much your insurance company pays your doctor, or do you only care about how much you pay your insurance company? The goals of the third party are in most cases completely irrelevant to the first and second party.

I may be approaching fifty but I still vividly remember what I wanted as a kid: To have fun. I still remember what I hated: being bored. Fun and boredom are heads and tails of the same coin, what we call life. As a kid, life is sometimes fun, sometimes boring. Usually children haven't experienced the hard, bitter, life-changing events that cause each of us at some point to grow up. The other thing to remember is that some kids are clingers and some are loners. A child that constantly seeks parental approval would probably do quite well at any school he or she attended. Meanwhile a loner finds meaning often in choosing a path at times diametrically opposite to the desires of parents and society. That was me by the way.

I didn't care—and having never worked for a living, didn't understand—what it cost my parents to send me to a private school. I knew what I wanted ... fun and what I hated ... boredom, and so pats on the back, approbation, and 'proud of you's were meaningless, shallow, and non-rewarding. My parents were the third party payers in this instance. I didn't care what it cost them, only what it cost me ... my freedom, my time, my life ... wasted as hours and days and months went by, enduring unendurable boredom. Facts that were seemingly of vital importance to these sour and sober lecturers were absolutely meaningless to me. To get an idea of my viewpoint back then, imagine if you found yourself imprisoned in a classroom and forced to learn the intricacies of three seasons of MTV's Teen Wolf. It was torture! Not the turning of the rack kind, but the slow and inescapable dripping of drop after drop of water hitting the same spot on the forehead for hours and days and months kind!

So let me ask this one question in unequivocal terms and then you tell me the answer: When it comes to performance in school, what's in it for the children? Pats on the back? 'We're proud of you's? Nobody has asked that question. Nobody has answered that question. Society ignores it. If forced to answer the response would sound like this: "It will rub the knowledge into its mind, or it will get the hose!"

UAW LOSES! HAHAHAHAHA!

I won't be the first to blog this, won't be the last. UAW loses in Chattanooga. Why this is a victory: It's a victory because now Volkswagen has an incentive to invest in Tennessee. As a resident of the state of Tennessee I applaud the slightly more than half who work in the Chattanooga factory who didn't fall for the complete load of bullshit being shoveled by the UAW union. We all know what's going on here. As our fifty states and associated territories fight for their lives, the forces of evil—that's right I said it! EVIL!—are strangling us in bureaucratic red-tape, laws, rules, and agreements.

The plight of Detroit—in any kind of rational or sane world—should have shown us all the end-game of the evil that is organized labor. However, apparently it has not. Recently as Hostess was driven into bankruptcy by what should be some kind of a joke baker's union, you'd think that finally everyone would understand what is at stake here. But no, apparently they have not. This so-called free-market economy that powers the—so-far—most prosperous economy in the history of the world has been under assault by the forces of evil for the past fifty or sixty years. The stakes are these: Heaven or Hell. You want hell, vote for the UAW or BCTGM. As you smile in satisfaction at your slightly higher paycheck, and pat your own back in satisfaction, consider a famous man who made a similar choice.

Matthew 26
14 Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, 15 And said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver [Jesus] unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver. 16 And from that time he sought opportunity to betray [Jesus].

There will always be those who'd sell their own mother, their own children if the price was right. Don't bother asking what's wrong with these people. What's wrong is that if they ever had a soul, they sold it long long ago.

Consider these facts: Unions were originally formed to protect workers from unsafe working conditions. We have OSHA now, so we no longer need unions for that. We have minimum wages, and a free market economy, the internet, MONSTER.COM, and a host of other avenues for skilled workers to shop around for the most advantageous position and wages, so we no longer need unions for that. What then, is the modern day purpose of a labor union? The technical term is: Extortion.

1. the practice of obtaining something, esp. money, through force or threats.
synonyms: blackmail, shakedown; formal exaction
"arrested on a charge of extortion"

If somebody knocks on your front door and says: I'm going to burn your house down unless you give me money. That extortionist can and probably will be arrested on a charge of extortion. In any civilized society, we can't have people threatening to destroy something if they don't get what they're demanding...which brings me to organized labor. Unions threaten business with destruction, bankruptcy, ruin, unless they get what they demand. How is this legal? I'm sure there's some fancypants lawyer out there with a ten-thousand word explanation that defies explanation. But if you took the trouble to boil all that obfuscatory bullshit down to plain English what you'd wind up with is simply one word: "BECAUSE."

Labor unions engage in legalized extortion and the kicker is this: Employers can't even fire the disloyal scumbags who've turned on them. Tennessee is a right-to-work state, which means that even if labor unions have managed to bamboozle the workers at some factory, they still can't require new-hires to join their damned union. Furthermore, and more to the point, in Chattanooga at least, you've got a small majority of people who A: want to work, and B: don't feel like blackmailing their employer. Sounds to me like Tennessee is a great place to come if you want to open a factory, plant, business, shopping center, etc. The Volunteer State is an okay slogan, but maybe it needs an update. Tennessee: Where You Won't be Blackmailed!