Uncommon Common Sense

Every election is important. This one is off the charts. I cannot lie; I was utterly dismayed by the first Presidential debate. It was ugly and discouraging. The tendency is to blame the candidates, but in truth we are to blame. The fact that we have put ourselves in a position as a nation that we are choosing between two highly inadequate candidates, is our sole responsibility. So, here we are. What do we do now? The choice between these highly flawed candidates is much more clear than one might think. The challenge is seeing through all the smoke and mirrors that is the basis of every political campaign. Aside from the rhetoric and political speech, here are the choices.: 1) The protection of free speech in all its forms: protesting, the press, worship OR use of the cancel culture’s methods to shut down speech, remove differing opinions from college campuses, supporting rioting and looting as a political weapon and shutting down churches in the name of “safety”. 2) The protection of ...

My older brother and I are thirteen months apart. His favorite pastime when we were young was pushing my buttons; I always reacted exactly the way he wanted me to. I cannot count the number of times my mom told me, "If you will stop reacting the way he wants you to, it won't be fun any more and he'll stop doing it." I never could make myself stop reacting and thankfully, we both grew up. Watching the Democrats react to Trump would be hysterically funny if it weren't so blooming dangerous to the future of our country. Trump plays the mainstream media/"moderates"/Democrats/Never-Trumpers like a Stradivarius and they always give him the satisfying hissy fit he wants. Case in point, the postal service and mail-in ballots. Let's talk about the Postal Service and then we'll talk about voting by mail. A) The Postal Service has been losing money like a sieve for decades. Because they are a government-run entity, not a private entity, they lose money with...

 A friend of mine, who has a PhD, posted the following on Facebook last week: "If you have been wondering why posts that share false information about Covid19 keep getting removed - it's because people can literally die because people believe the content of that post. As in dead. So yeah. Thanks tech companies!" After I pulled myself off the floor. We had a discussion on Facebook about his comment. More about this later. This was actually followed by several sleepless nights, when I wondered (again) where our country is headed. Over the last few months, I have watched with anguish as we have, like so many lemmings, allowed our freedom of speech to be curtailed, our businesses to be shuttered, our freedom to worship be eroded and sat idly by while violent marxist thugs have hidden under media cover of "peaceful protests" while destroying city after city. Let us begin with a review of what the first amendment actually says: "Congress shall make no law  respec...

Many of us are turning off the news--despairing at the discouraging headlines. Months of horrifying headlines about COVID 19 and now civil unrest. I have tried to do the same, but have only succeeded in reducing my consumption, not turning it off completely. In the main, it is because I am insanely curious about what is going on around me, but my main motivator at present is my lack of trust, both in the media and in our political "leaders". As Rahm Emanuel famously stated, "Never let a crisis go to waste." Evil people are doing that very thing, today in America. We cannot, we must not ignore it. First, we must clarify some terms. Protesting, is a Constitutional right, ensconced in the very first amendment in the Bill of Rights. I will defend your right to free speech all day, every day, whether I agree with you or not. Criminal activity, however, is not protected speech. When protests descend into looting, vandalism, trespassing, destruction of property, domestic...

Before reading this post, I ask the following: 1) Please set emotion aside for a moment and hear me out. 2) Know that I understand the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic and that there is no such thing as an "acceptable loss". 3) Doctors are amazing people (I'm married to one), but they will of necessity, look at this pandemic differently than most of the world. With those disclaimers, please entertain the following: We cannot, either as a nation or a world, stay shut down indefinitely. Without the life blood that business pumps into our economy, it will shrivel and dry up faster than any of us would have thought possible. The $2 trillion package that was just signed into law demonstrates that more perfectly than any other example I can think of. It is a mind-boggling amount of money, but only a drop in the bucket compared to what is generated daily as we all go about our lives. If we were to try to stay closed for 18 months as some "experts" have suggested,...

I will preface this post with an important disclaimer: This is not intended to be a political post in any way, but with all the social distancing time I've had to think, I have come up with some honest questions that I think need to be addressed. Today may not be the day, but the questions should be answered in the days and weeks to come. Some of these questions may never be answered; some will be over time. A few, I think I know the answer, but they are unprovable. I ask that you at least consider these questions for the good of us all. 1) What are the numbers about COVID 19 telling us and maybe more importantly, what aren't they telling us? Currently, according to the Johns Hopkins tracker, there are 454,398 confirmed cases, 112,581 cases who have recovered and 20,549 deaths. According to everything I have read, there are probably hundreds of thousands of people who have had the virus, didn't know it and have recovered. Until we get to a place that we can test everyone,...

In the aftermath of Mitt Romney's vote to convict President Trump, Democrats, never-Trumpers and main-stream media members have universally praised Romney's integrity. Dictionary.com defines integrity as follows: " adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty." Apparently, integrity needs to be re-defined to conform to Romney's actions. Perhaps when we speak of Romney's integrity, we are referring to his readiness to criticize Trump at every opportunity and then suck up to him in the hopes that he will be appointed as Secretary of State. Do we mean that integrity? Or maybe we are referring to his return to bitterness after not becoming Secretary of State, his ready criticism of Trump and then his groveling for Trump's endorsement while running to become Utah's junior Senator. Perhaps this is the integrity we describe? Maybe we are referring to the fact that many people were leary of Mitt's Massachusetts liberal...