Author: Rex Nipper

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What Freedom are you Protecting?

I was hiking through Garden of the God’s park this weekend and I saw an old man wearing a t-shirt that said “I’m a Republican because I believe in Freedom.”  I see and hear these statements all that time from the right.  They tell me if I’m not a Republican I’m a communist.  There’s always talking about how they’re about to lose their freedom.  So as I walked through the park I tried to think about all the freedoms they want to protect.  I made a mental list and the following was my thought process:
1.     It’s not the freedom to choose.  Evidently I don’t have the freedom to make decisions about the health and welfare of my own body.  If Republicans had their way, they would decide that for me.
2.     It’s not the freedom of Speech.  The leading Republican candidate has stated many times that he will expand the libel laws so if someone is critical of The President they will be jailed and fined.  In fact in all the Republican rallies they limit press access to a pen as far away as they possibly can from the candidates. 
3.     It’s not freedom of religion.  According to the Republican platform Christianity is the only true faith.  In fact they want to keep me out of the country if I practice another.
4.     It’s not freedom for quarters of soldiers.  Republicans and conservatives have consistently upheld and supported measures that would allow law enforcement to enter a home without warrant, and without warning.  In modern parlance they are called “no knock orders.”
5.     It’s not freedom from search or seizure.  Republicans in many states, most notably Iowa, can seize property on your person and keep it without warrant or due process.  They only have to “suspect” it might be used in a crime. 
6.     It’s not freedom of privacy.  Republicans support unwarranted surveillance of my personal communications.  They’ve even demanded the extradition of whistle blowers who have provided clear evidence of invasion of privacy violations committed by the U.S. Government both inside and outside our boarders.
7.     It’s not freedom from war.  If it were up to the Republicans we’d bomb every country in on the planet for no other reason than they don’t agree with us.  They’re willing to go to war for so little provocation and disguise it as protecting our freedom.  The problem is when you smack a hornets’ nest you don’t reduce your chances of getting stung, you increase them.
8.     It’s not freedom from being poisoned.  Republicans want to remove the laws and regulations which surround food safety, air quality, drug safety, and any regulation that has to do with the products I consume or use.
9.     It’s not freedom from being killed by faulty products.  Republicans want to remove any regulation that inhibits manufacturers from making products that would impose life threatening dangers for me and my family.  For instance regulations for automobiles, toys, construction, bridges, roads, and any other product I might use in everyday life.
10.   It’s not the freedom to have a quality education.  At every turn they remove funding for public education and install some of the worst policies which every leading educator say don’t work. 
I could go on, but really the only freedom the care about is the freedom to own a gun.  I guess they think that’s all the freedom that is important in the world.  Because if you have a gun then you don’t need the government to protect you.  We can remove all those other pesky freedoms and just live by the rule of the most powerful.  The problem is that’s not freedom.  That’s anarchy.
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The Big Lie

Oh I hate to admit it when the facts fly in the face of what I believe.  So does everyone else.  However, the grownups among us are usually able to concede our opinions when we’re confronted with the facts.  This is why I have to eat some major crow when it comes to discussions I’ve had with my wife.  But let’s not get into that.  Let’s just say that I’m really not ready to hear “So I’m what?” for the countless time during our marriage.  Anyway, with that said, here we go!

Mitt Romney made a speech today about how no one should be backing Donald Trump.  I agree with his sentiments.  However, he also said that Hillary Clinton was the most dishonest person in politics.  I hear that a lot so I decided to go out to Politifact.com and do some checking.  I have been a Bernie Sanders fan throughout the election, thinking he was by far the most honest person on the campaign trail.  It turns out that I was wrong about that as well.  Either way, below is the breakdown: 

5.       Donald Trump       10% factual.  He couldn’t even make a tenth of a percent.
4         Ted Cruz                 36% factual
3         Marco Rubio         66% factual
2         Bernie Sanders     76% factual
1         Hilary Clinton        78% factual.  That’s right folks!  She’s by far the most honest in the campaign!

Politifact lists candidate statements that are True, Mostly True, Half True, Mostly False, False, and Pants on Fire.  For these numbers I took out the Half True, and Mostly False stats since many of those statements could go either way.  I wanted harder numbers.  It also is important to understand that out of all the candidates Bernie had 0 pants on fire and Hillary had only 2.  Rubio had 4, Cruz 7 and Donald a WHOPPING 21!  For my calculation I took out the statistics for statements that were half true, or mostly false since I wanted pretty clear numbers. 

Now, what do these number mean?  They actually don’t mean that these people are always just lying or telling the truth.  It shows their connection to the facts.  They may not be always lying, they just may be ignorant of the facts.  There’s a huge difference between lying and just being wrong.  Either way, Hillary is more correct than any other politician in the field.  Swallow that one!  I thought it would be Bernie.  I hate it when my wife is right.  It should also be noted that Mitt Romney who said that Hillary was the most dishonest politician scored only 55% in the fact category and was almost as bad as Trump in the pants on fire category at 19!

So why do a people think Hillary is the most dishonest politician?  Because they’re sheep.  They don’t want to check the facts.  They want mommy and daddy to tell them what to think.  That’s why when they’re told over and over and over again wrong information when they see a fact they think it’s a lie.  It’s like when their parents told them for the first 3 years of their lives that Santa was real and then when they’re hit with the truth they get violent.  Think I’m kidding?  Try telling a 3 year old there’s no Santa and see what happens.  And no group is better at this than Republicans.  They do better than Joseph Goebbels when it comes to the “big lie” and their minions eat it up! 

I don’t just blame the Republicans for Hillary’s honesty problem.  I blame her as well.  In fact I blame all Democrats.  They seem to cower at the thought of pushing back when someone presents them with bullshit.  They function under the false assumption that people will take the time to verify the facts.  No…they won’t.  Most people only have a tenuous grasp of a sixth grade education.  How the hell do you expect them to understand critical analysis?  The four word soundbite baby!  That’s the best they can do.  Most people lack the intellectual fortitude to understand anything that can’t fit on a bumper sticker.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people without an education call someone with one an “educated idiot.”  Really?  The guy with the education is the idiot?  Right.  Sure he is.  The problem is more likely that gomer barely possesses the scholastic ability to sign his name on a voter registration card.  We require anyone coming into this country to pass a simple civics test to be a citizen.  I say we require that across the board and send the failures some desert province where they can do no harm to the existing gene pool. 

There are many people are just too lazy to research the facts.  You never take a single source for your information.  Take the Hillary email scandal.  I read today that Hillary was the only Secretary of State to use a private email server.  Was she?  Nope.  Condoleezza Rice and Colon Powell both used their own private servers.  I read that Hillary had secret emails doctored to take them off the government server.  Nope.  She had an assistant remove the secure headers of an email that had her talking points for a speech.  The system wasn’t working so it wouldn’t send the damn email.  Is this high treason?  Nope.  Is it getting the job done?  Yep!

This is a little inside baseball, but even I have had to use my private computer systems when working projects for government jobs.  The reason being that the work systems were so jacked up that it made it difficult if not impossible to do my job.  Too often organizations tie up their systems in such a way to make them more secure that they render those systems useless.  They’re more secure alright!  They’re useless!  But when it gets to the media it turns into high treason.  If the Clintons were as criminal as the right says they’d have been in prison decades ago.  This isn’t about crime, it’s about getting idiots to swallow your bullshit.  No…it’s not bullshit.  It’s brown cottage cheese.  Really!  Try some!

When Bush started gearing up to invade Iraq, I was very vocal about the stupidity of that decision.  I had someone disagree with me and the only thing she could say was “I support our troops!”  Really?  How?  By getting them killed?  How does that support anyone?  When you ask people why are you voting for Trump?  “I hate Hillary Clinton.”  Why do you hate her?  “She’s a damn liar.”  What specifically was her lie, please provide detailed evidence and factual proof:  crickets.  If it doesn’t fit onto the bumper sticker they’ve got diddly.

Living for the four word soundbite just makes you a moron.  Why the public continues to do this is amazing me.  No one seems to take the time to investigate whether what they’re being told is real or bullshit.  Politicians know this.  They know that the public won’t verify what they’re being told because they’re either too lazy or more likely too stupid to do it.  This is why you end up with candidates who make ridiculous claims like they saw Muslims celebrating in New Jersey on 9/11, or that 93 million working age people are out of work, that Mexicans are all murderers and thieves or that over 50 million people are driving Mercedes Benz paid for with their welfare checks.

I’ll make you a deal.  If you think all the statements in the previous paragraph are true then send me the data.  If you can prove it, I’ll give you 1 million dollars.  I’m serious.  1 million dollars.  All you have to do is provide to me the government statistics that prove any of those statements are true.  All the data around this is available for free.  I’ll even give you the website usa.gov.  All you have to do is go look it up.  If any of those statements are true, I’ll pay it.  You know what.  I think I’ll get to keep my money.  Anyone dumb enough to think any of this is true is likely too stupid to spell USA. 

Rex

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Politics and the WWF

Oh look what the Republican’s created!  For decades the GOP has made a point to scare the electorate into thinking that at every turn they are being threatened.  Their jobs are being threatened by emigrants.  Their comfort is being threatened by the poor.  Their guns are being threatened by liberals.  Their economy is being threatened by science, and their religion is being threatened by Muslims.  With all the rhetoric and all the imagined threats is it no wonder that in the end what you get is Donald Trump?

What Donald has been doing is nothing more than vocalizing what has been in the hearts, minds, and actions of the worst of the Republican Party.  It’s no wonder he’s been doing so well.  The attitudes and desires that were once spoken behind closed doors are now out into the open for all to see and the party doesn’t like it.  Their shtick has always been to present their ideas in private or hushed tones so they didn’t call attention to the corrosive right wing of the party.  That way they could still enter the Whitehouse doors.  Now it’s like being presented to the gates of heaven and shown all the sins that keep you from going in.  They’re frightened.

Republican leaders are coming out of the woodwork to denounce Trump’s actions.  Not Trump, mind you, just his actions.  All they’re doing is fueling the fire.  Many of them like Paul Ryan can’t seem to point a direct finger at the person causing all the commotion, making statements like “We need to denounce bigotry.”  Ryan and others are just too afraid to step right out and call Trump a bigoted blow-hole with delusions of adequacy.  This is why Trump is killing it.  If he thinks you’re a pussy with zero political abilities and a face like a hatchet he’ll just say it.  And his minions LOVE him for it!

I’ll give you this, Donald knows how to play to the WWF/NASCAR crowd!  Every time he speaks it’s like watching wrestlers throwing barbs and eventually chairs at each other to the sounds of roaring fans.  The difference is, this is real.  Hulk Hogan and The Rock don’t go back into the dressing room and have a drink together.  His fans are the types that will put a bullet in you if they don’t like how you’re dressed.  If he were to be elected the first time he issued in illegal order that the government rightly refused to follow, his people would start attacking Federal establishments with all the glee of the jihadists they so claim to hate.

It’s actually fun for me watching the Republican chickens come home to roost.  They’re paying the price for failing to lead.  Rather than educating their constituency in the realities of the world, they’ve been all too happy following the direction of the fire and reacting after they see which way the wind blows.  Now that the fire has led to the volcano, they’re less than thrilled with the outcome.  The only thing left to do now is to get out of the way and hope that ground rumbling is just a warning and not a full eruption. 
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Bialystock and Bloom Business Model

Can someone help me? I’m trying to find the finance class that tells you how to make a profit by removing the ability to make that thing you sell to make a profit.  Business practices today make me feel like I’m watching a production of the Producers!  Boardroom conversations about profits used to be around strategies for increased sales.  Now they appear to follow a business model orchestrated by Bialystok and Bloom.

The reason to go into business used to be because you had a good or service which the public wanted or needed. Now it appears that the only reason to go into business is to make money for your investment firm.  This is silly.  Make a quality product or service, and you will make money.  The irony here is that making a business for the sole purpose of making a profit removes your ability to sustain either.  However that still hasn’t kept the finance department from making the attempt!

Two years ago Starboard Value suggested that Olive Garden stop doling out so many breadsticks and salad to their patrons. According to them the reason Olive Garden was such a financial disaster was because the restaurant was providing too much of why people went there in the first place.  It had nothing to do with the rest of the food, or the level of service, but it was the breadsticks and salad causing the financial decline.

I have always asserted that you could open a restaurant in an outhouse and do quite well if the food is good. In fact my favorite eatery of all time is next to a packing house, and down the road from the sewage plant.  The smells outside could choke a rat.  However, once through those doors you are met with the aroma of Italian cuisine that likes of which make the Olive Garden smell like a can of SpaghettOs.  I’ve had their phone number memorized since I was 5 years old.  What makes them different?  Quality Food.  Excellent service.  Plain and simple.

What happens in a lot of companies (and not just the restaurant business) is that once they establish a foothold in their industry they look for ways to cut corners. This immediately reduces product quality.  You can only cut so many corners before all you end up with is a scrap of whatever it was you used to make on the floor with no customers to buy it.  Still, that’s what Finance and Investment teams attempt to do.  In an effort to cut costs, they destroy the product that got them there in the first place.  It’s like watching pine beetles go through a forest.  They eventually kill everything that sustained them.

What makes or breaks a business is not the cost of their good or service, but the quality. This is something that doesn’t often show up on a spreadsheet.  Investment firms are so focused on the bottom line they don’t see what was making them the money in the first place.  Too often Finance reaches into the daily operations of an organization and what you end up with are cost cutting measures that remove the reason people purchased your product in the first place.  Any idiot can create a hedge fund, but only a strong focus on quality gives you Berkshire Hathaway.

I don’t just blame Finance. Managers are fully aware that many of these decisions will destroy the business, yet they fail to speak against them.  I’ve worked for countless IT startups that failed their start because someone didn’t have the guts, or professional acumen to illustrate the stupidity of removing the most profitable product feature because “it costs the most to make.”

I’m not saying that an eye on cost is not extremely important. I myself have railed against sales people who think they can sell a product that costs 50k to develop for only 5k.  How is a company to make a profit if you sell your product for less than cost?  Quality costs money.  If all you can do is sell on price, go work at a Best Buy.  Leave the real sales to the grown-ups.  If your sales conversation starts on price then you need to change the conversation.  Give me that old school cold call salesman who could make a living knocking on doors and selling products to people, who 15 minutes earlier, didn’t know they needed what they were selling.  Those are true salespeople.  The rest are just order takers.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again businesses make unimaginable fortunes when they provide products people want to buy. Every company that sets their sites on their investors have limited vision and are only concerned with short-term financial goals.  They’re the modern version of the 1850s snake oil salesman who wants to make sure they’re far away before everyone realizes that miracle ointment they’re selling is really just some high grain alcohol mixed with bullshit.

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Much Like My Marriage

Oh I’m hard on the Christians.  Actually I’m just hard on the ones that think they are Christians.  They think I give them hell.  To paraphrase Harry Truman.  “I don’t give them hell.  I just give them facts and they think its hell.”  Especially since those facts fly in the face of their own prejudices.  It is not my intention to diminish Christianity, however.  Nor do I intend to diminish the tenets of Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism, or any other ism.  I have said for years I don’t have a problem with the church.  I just have a problem with the congregation.  When I perceive someone taint a faith by ridiculous actions or words, I speak out.  And I speak out loudly.

I was raised an Evangelical Lutheran.  What does that mean?  That means my entire religious education was built on the idea that I do not have all the answers.  From my earliest memory I was taught that no one on this earth has the whole story.  Therefore I should keep an open mind when presented with another person’s perspective of God.  This in turn will make my own faith stronger and I will learn how others approach their faith.  To force a religion on others is arrogant.  To do it in this country is criminal.  Therefore when I see people making the attempt, I become quite annoyed. 

Many Evangelical Christians have a revisionist view of history.  For some odd reason they deny the idea that this country was founded on freedom of religion.  They love their Second Amendment so much they almost become orgasmic at its reading.  However, provide them with the first and they become dumbstruck.  Jefferson, Adams, Washington, Madison, Monroe, Hamilton, Mason, Henry, and more wrote extensively in official papers and in personal correspondence about their fear of a government sponsored religion.  Were they Christians?  Some of them…but not all.  However that didn’t mean they wanted the church to be anywhere near governmental decisions.  They had seen all too often what happens when the church starts to drive political discourse.  If you want to see it today…just look at the middle-east.

Religion is a quest for knowledge.  I told someone the other day that too many self-described Christians think they’ve already made the trip and they’ve yet to start the journey.  This can be said of most self-described religious people.  They think the cornerstone of their belief is to force everyone else to follow that belief.  They even try to persuade their government that the only way to survive is to bring in the church.  If you have ever cracked the binding of any history book you can see that the outcomes have always been a disaster.  Always.

Throughout my life I have had the pleasure of meeting truly loving, and faithful people.  There are a few things that have been a constant with all of them.  1.  They could care less that you believe differently than they.  2.  They find forced obedience to their belief system as repugnant as if they were forced to believe another.  3.  Your approval or disapproval is not required.  4.  Their faith required (not recommended) required them to love and honor you regardless of who or what you believed.  And last but certainly not least 5.  Give, give, give, give, and give.  In any way you can…give.  Give of one self to the service of others.  This last one is always the first one to be lost among the “faithful.”

Here’s a test.  If you walk through life thinking everyone is silly, misguided, ignorant, or worse yet, should be imprisoned, deported, or die because they don’t follow your faith, then you don’t have a religion, you have a cult.  That religion you think you belong to has long left you and you have neither the support of your religion, or any God.  You’re just an asshole, no different than the gun toting zealots who behead reporters, rape women, and abuse children all in the name of whatever deity they claim to support.

My own personal religious journey has been an interesting one.  After years of study I came to the conclusion that I don’t need religion.  I believe that we are all connected and that life does not end in this world.  I also believe that the energy that binds us, that thing many call God neither requires, nor desires my “worship.”  It just is.  Just like any physical reaction, how much, and what, I put into it is what I will get out of it.  If I put in hate, jealously, sorrow, fear and negativity into it that’s what I will get out.  However I’ve chosen to do the opposite.  So far my theory is working.  Does that mean I don’t have difficult days?  Nope…and I have some very heated conversations with the Universe when it happens (often in rush hour traffic).  Still…after all these years we’ve come to an agreement, the Universe and I.  If I like what it has in store for me excellent!  If I don’t.  Well…suck it up. 

Much like my marriage.

Love you honey!

Rex