My friend Greybeard over at Pitchpull calls his time on a motorcycle “Two Wheel Therapy”. A long time ago, I used to ride often. I have had the opportunity to retune my chops on a street bike over the last four days, and I gotta tell ya that the phrase is truer now than before. It used to be a novelty transportation, something to bust out on the weekends. Using it to do my job yesterday and today, and getting used to it on Saturday and Sunday, woke something up inside me. I gotta get one of these for myself.

A big THANK YOU to my Pastor, Mike. He is letting me borrow his 750 Shadow to see if it will work for work. For the most part, it will. On the rare occasion that I have to carry a part to a job site, it may pose a problem. It’s not normally my job to take parts to a job site, but once in a while it’s been known to happen. Maybe a milk crate tied to the back rest …

The Road Rhino has been eating up a lot of the discretionary income lately. After the new distributor (computerized, thank you for asking) and finally (finally!) figuring out where all the water was going (not into the oil reservoir, in case you were guessing), it has come to a point where I’m looking at either sinking more money into it and hoping it lasts a while before having to sink MORE money into it, or cutting our losses now and biting the bullet to get another vehicle. (another besides a bike, I mean. that’s a given at this point. just finding the right one, at the right price is the question. if you happen to know of a sub-1000cc machine with most of the road gear already on it for under five grand, let me know)

At the same time, I’ve got to sell the Road Rhino. He’s been a good unit, but it’s time. Anyone interested, leave me a message. 205+ thousand miles and mostly trouble free. Needs to have a new water pump and timing chain. The leak that I’ve been chasing (and, as a result, ended up replacing everything BUT the water pump in the process, including the radiator and all the hosing) is in the water pump housing. The water pump covers the timing chain. Both should be done at the same time, according to the generally accepted wisdom around the cracker barrel.

I’m gonna miss the Rhino. But I’m not going to miss the mileage. (18 downhill out of gear with a stiff tailwind, 17 the rest of the time)

Chat ya later…

Thanks for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, and Wear Red on Fridays!

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I did not write the following piece:

I didn’t writ this, it was written by an old friend Robert Bidinotto. I freely stole it from his Facebook post, but I thought it so important that it should be shared on my Facebook page and here as well. Robert, you done good kid, you done good.

THOUGHTS DURING THE GUN-CONTROL DEBATE: During my days doing investigative crime articles for Reader’s Digest, I had the (dubious) opportunity to saturate myself in case studies of various sociopaths and to read the studies of, and interview, a host of top experts on criminal psychology. After culling through all of it looking for answers as to why these people do what they do, I came to the conclusion that there are these universally present ingredients:

1. Low self-esteem, leading to a “social victim” self-image

2. Cultivating some excuse/rationale for violent retaliation against one’s “victimizers.” (These excuses can be simple and personal, or elaborate and even ideological.)

3. Constant “rehearsal,” through fantasy, about (re)gaining power and control in one’s life, through violence and “revenge.”

4. In cases of serial crimes, a pattern of escalating acts of violence against select targets. In cases of sudden mass murders, a long-fantasized, rehearsed, and planned quasi-”military” strike of “righteous slaughter” against anonymous representatives of the hated “society,” or against some symbolic target group of tormentors, often touched off by some kind of “last straw” insult or failure in the perp’s life.

You see these elements again and again and again. That’s how criminal profilers can so accurately draw up a predictive portrait of some unknown perpetrator in these crimes.

Guns are not the cause of any of this. They are just one means to nihilistic ends. The spree attacker who stabbed 14 people with an Exacto-knife this week says he had fantasized about doing that since the age of eight. Serial killers like Ted Bundy lived in a fantasy world of sadistic porn, their crimes escalated from “peeping Tom,” to stalking, to breaking-and-entering girls’ residences, to violent assaults — then to kidnapping, rape, torture, strangulation, etc., ad nauseum. Neither of these losers used guns.

If you study violent repeat criminals, you’ll find that they are constantly losing themselves in a mental universe of violent role-playing. And violent role-playing games are MUCH more realistic in depicting scenes of carnage and bloodshed — and in stimulating violent fantasies — than shooting at some bland paper target in the controlled environment of a firing range.

Focusing on gun control is entirely beside the point. If these creatures don’t have access to guns, they’ll find another brutal way to strike. Serial rapists and murderers rarely use guns; they prefer more “personal” means of hurting. The worst mass murder in an American school took place many decades ago; the perpetrator was a farmer who used three fertilizer-based bombs to slaughter scores of kids, teachers, and administrators. Ditto, the Oklahoma City bombers.

Feel-good gun-control measures, which only deprive law-abiding citizens of their right to self-defense, are futile, because nihilistic killers, by definition, will NEVER obey any laws, including gun laws. They’ll find other means — bombs, poison, knives, automobiles, airplanes, or simple arson — to slaughter others.

What parents, families, friends, and co-workers should focus on instead are tell-tale signs of any of the behavioral characteristics I mentioned above. Only a small minority of people who exhibit the first three characteristics will finally “act out” their fantasies; but all of those who DO take such violent actions exhibit those first three characteristics.

Sadly, a subjectivist, morally relativistic society where people have been taught that “anything goes” and that the highest value is attaining instant fame and “celebrity,” is a breeding ground for such creatures. And a host of “progressive” intellectuals are only too eager to offer deterministic excuses and legal defenses for them, enabling widespread sociopathic conduct. A society without moral moorings, that encourages and rewards narcissism, is not up to the task of minimizing sociopathy — which is only one step removed from narcissism.

I lifted it from GM Roper over at The Constitutionalist’s Corner. Please, feel free to check out all his work.

Chat ya later…

Thanks for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, and Wear Red on Fridays!

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Know Your History

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Thanks for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, and Wear Red on Fridays!

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My regular readers know that is a clue to run and hide.

In a recent back-and-forth, I used the phrase “Judea-Christian values” in reference to how this country was founded. Naturally, since I was discussing the topic with a liberal, I was wrong, plus he managed to throw a bunch of quotes at me showing that the founders were a bunch of heathens who never set foot in a church.

I’ve been trying to research in my limited spare time (being a Dad for a six year old is very time-consuming) but haven’t gotten very much accomplished. I have dug up some statistics on how much of the background material the founders of this nation used came from the Bible – it’s a little over 35% or so – I think that number might be a little low. I do know that even Blackstone (English common law) drew most of his base for the law from the Bible. Most of the divide between the “liberal” and the “conservative” sides in this nation can, I believe, be illustrated by asking both sides to indicate whether or not they attend church and read the Bible. Yes, there are some conservatives who don’t, and there are some liberals who do, but for the most part you can infer the beliefs of someone by their affiliation with a religion.

Conservatives know that there is only one truth. Liberals make up “truths” to fit the story they want to tell, much like the little kid caught taking cookies from the jar. Actually, I would believe the little kid before I believed a liberal, but there you have it.

I’m going to keep working this theory and pulling numbers together. Hopefully I’ll have something in the next few days.

Chat ya later…

Thanks for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, and Wear Red on Fridays!

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I’m going to link to an article a little later, but to preface that, I want to tell you about a conversation that I was part of after Resurrection Sunday dinner. The host asked if anyone in the room knew how to connect to, or communicate with, those on the ideological opposite side from us. (meaning, conservative, independent thinking, Christians, and lovers of the United States)

We couldn’t come to an answer – it seems the two sides are, in fact, very far apart from one another. And we are there because of the leadership styles since FDR, and lately have been seemingly gleefully pushed the rest of the way by a complicit Media.

And now, from The D.C. Clothesline comes this piece, by contributing writer Jim Copenhaver:

This nation is closer to a Civil War than it has been since 1861.

Scary thought, isn’t it? Especially to those who have seen war and know from personal experience what it is like. If you are older than 35, would you ever have dreamed that one day, in our lifetimes, our country would be reduced to this? Sometimes it makes me want to cry for America. It makes me want to throw a fit and smash things, rage and scream like a wild man. I want to grab my weapons, march to Washington DC, stand up in front of Congress and the president and say, “Now Look, this is the way it is going to be or by God, I will start shooting!”

Yes, it is a scary thought. Is this what we, as a country, have become? Waiting to settle this thing, once and for all, with a willingness to fight with another citizen to finally get your ideas across?

Chat ya later…

Thanks for stopping by, In GOD We Trust, and Wear Red on Fridays!

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