IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling

Inherent Rights

Because all are created equal, and endowed with certain inalienable rights, it takes all to stand for those rights. The moment we allow consciously, those rights to be stolen or trampled upon is the moment that our own rights become violate, our own freedom curtailed, our own futures to be shadowed or snuffed. My rights end where yours begin and yours end where mine begin. All equal, do not tread on me and I won't tread on you. It's really very simple and easy to understand.

Right now I am not sure where the world is going. I'm alarmed at what I see and have seen over the past decade plus. I believe we're on a course, globally, that will end terribly for all humans.

Our governments are out of control, politicians do nothing but lie and mislead, they no longer represent the people but rather nothing but special interests and global elites, all of which could care less about the general state of affairs of everyone else. OR, they use misguided emotionalism to power through laws that are resulting in and will result in further calamity and tyranny.

This is not a left right argument here in the states or anywhere else in the world where people are facing tyranny and oppression, who die by remote control or starve to death as a result of overfed political strata drunk on their own false power. Wedges between ideologies prevent civil discourse, our current trajectory of divergence cannot be altered without integrity and truth returning to front and center. It is NEVER permissible to abuse one group of people for the benefit of another, ever. What is mine is not yours, and what is yours is not mine, we know this truth to be obvious yet we are allowing our political leaders to violate that truth. I should be safe from you and you should be safe from me but yet again we watch as our ability to be defenders of our own safety is violated.

Take off the blinders, realize the road we are on, all of us, not just here in the states but globally.

The hope remains that the millions and millions awaken to realize the terrible future we are all faced with, through sheer numbers of vocal, dedicated, committed citizens of the world united in the cause of liberty, freedom, and inherent rights. If we don't do this, if we simply watch the world and our future burn then we have no one to blame in the end, but ourselves.



That video and the below commentary is from The Natural Rights Foundation.

Human societies are guided and held together by ideas and a shared sense of morality.

When the People lose sight of those foundational principles, corruption and dictatorial power inevitably take root, and once criminal elements have taken control of society it becomes harder and harder to unseat them.

As this process of deterioration progresses there comes a point of no return where real change can no longer be achieved from within the existing system. We've reached that point some time ago. It's time to come to terms with that and adjust our actions accordingly.

We face a situation right now where the electoral process has become little more than theater,and the political awareness of the population has been reduced to petty bickering over emotionally charged wedge issues,all the while those running the show remove our freedoms one by one and draw us ever deeper into undeclared wars of aggression.

The only way that we can change course is by organizing a unified front outside the existing system.
Not as a political party, not as a left wing or a right wing ideological faction, but as a people.

Unified not in protest of this broken and corrupt system but with rather under a set of principles...
principles that will lay the foundation to rebuild on.

Any right that is a true human right is inherent. Such rights are not granted by government, they are not privileges bestowed by society, or created by documents, therefore such rights cannot be regulated, limited or revoked by any such power. Any supposed authority which seeks to strip a Natural Right from the People is illegitimate, and should be dealt with accordingly.

The most common way that rights are subverted is through the assertion of rights which are not rights at all.
There was a time when it was accepted by all that Kings had the right to kill at a whim and to take the freedom and the property of any of his subjects at will. The divine right of kings is a false right. This is obvious to us now. However, each era is blind to its own darkness.

Before we can even begin to understand the nature of rights we first answer one question honestly...
and follow the implications to their logical conclusion.

When... is violence... justified?

It's a simple question, and there is only one sane answer.
The only morally acceptable context for violence is defense.

That answer is often referred to as the non-aggression principle. It's a fancy name for an obvious and simple truth, but simple truths carry the most devastating implications when applied to the real world. 

A small give back

It seems most of us use smart devices these days, in one form or another. Along with all that smartness comes some fragility and I suppose another means for us to add a little something in the way of style or self proclamation.

Enter FUSE, and specifically these products.



If you make a purchase of anything on that page, use AGBWB as your coupon code to receive a 10% discount on your order. None of this is a kickback here, just offering up a discount on their products for readers of American Grouch Backwoods Bum.

Thank You!

Road Weary

Typically my work sees me traveling heavily the first month of each new quarter, moderately for the rest of each quarter. Things changed due to an acquisition late last year and as a result I've been racking up the miles and have had virtually no time outside since early November.

Looks like there's some light at the end of this tunnel, two more weeks of it then some much needed downtime!

One of the interesting aspects of travel across a large cross section of the US is seeing how different people and places are in the same country, sometimes even in the same state. Another aspect, just how differently the fallen economy has impacted people and places. Some seem as they did back in 2007, others are pale shades of what they once were. I'm continually shocked and surprised at how different some places are.

Something else that's shocking to see is how much prices on common things differ or have changed. Part of traveling this much requires keeping receipts and expense logs. As an example, in January of 2009 I was paying between $1.80 to $1.90 for a gallon of gas, now it's over $3.00 a gallon and closer to $4 in some places. Another is milk, I'm a fan and drink it heavily. I was somewhere around $2 a gallon in 2009, it's over $4 now virtually everywhere I go.

When I consider the increasing cost along with the decline both in jobs and quality of jobs I get hit with a stark reality of just how harsh it has gotten in some places. While my company is always hiring I've found that the number of applicants has dropped, along with the general quality of applicants. This to me doesn't quite compute with what I see related to unemployment rates, I would have expected more applicants with higher levels of competency but this is oddly not the case.

Ramble over, here's hoping for some dirt time soon!

Left turn in Albuquerque

I remember watching Saturday morning cartoons when I was a boy. Buggs Bunny was one of them, that wascally wabbit. I don't remember which one of course and I think there were more than a few occasions where he'd pop his head up, look around and say something about making a left turn in Albuquerque, implying he'd gotten lost.



Well I kinda feel like that, sort of. I've been of limited time lately, and most of what I've posted here has been about the recent gun control discussions. Part of my problem is I have a short amount of patience for a lack of common sense and even less for disingenuous bullshit, especially when it comes to carpet bagging politicians with hidden agendas, who incidentally don't even have the spine to call it what it is. I suppose them being directly related to common garden slugs has something to do with that too.

When there is a clear avoidance of facts people should really pay close attention to what's happening. Take the Patriot Act for example, ever a more inappropriately named stripping of civil liberties in the history of this country? The name hides what it really is and if you don't know please take the time to educate yourself. My point is, every time a politician starts talking common good, commons sense, reasonable, rational, well just look the hell out because the bastard is about to drop a safe on you from the third story.

They breath they lie.

SO anyway, my left turn in Albuquerque, over the past several weeks I've been maddeningly focused on this madness mostly because I've got five kids of my own and even beyond my own personal feelings, in my minds eye and my nightmares I see this happening to my own children. I can't stand the thought of it. I live where I live because it has made my children's lives much safer. They are not exposed to the kind of thing that goes on back east, there's not near as much to be concerned about. However, Newtown is a similar sort of place, and for the most part very crime free yet it happened there. And thus the thrust of this piece.

God forbid it ever does, but should this horror come to any school again, I hope some teacher, some principle, someone in that school stands and delivers and kills the bastard before he can kill anyone else. I hope that person is there, and prepared.

This whole mess can be summed up rather succiently from my point of view, or anyone else who is capable of doing what must be done at the moment in which is must be done. If you are one of those people who lacks that then what I am saying is indeed Greek to you and you're probably somewhere that you will not be comfortable.

No matter how much people do NOT want to accept the fact that when it comes right down to it they must be their own first responder, they must be the ones who rise to the occasion, steps to the plate, stands and delivers, for everyone else is STILL a phone call away. 

NO GUNS ALLOWED signs do no stop bullets, nor criminals or madmen hell bent on doing harm. Making heroin and meth illegal sure keeps those drugs off the streets don't it?

Why are the highest murder by firearms rates in the USA correspondingly EXACTLY in gun free zones? Chicago? Really? Sooner or later people HAVE to take their head out of the sand and use logic.

If YOU were standing in Sandy Hook Elementary school when that atrocities of that day began,  if you were in that hallway when he turned the corner, would you want to be armed?

The answer, is yes or no.

Simple isn't it?

And as a friend of mine recently said....


And for those who'd like to have a non-intellectually treasonous discussion...

Let’s talk about how every single mass shooting in the past decade except for one happened in a “gun free” victim disarmament zone. The sole exception was the Safeway Parking lot shooting in Tucson where Laughner was actually stopped by a concealed carry holder who tackled the shooter for fear of hitting innocent bystanders.

Let’s have a conversation about how in Israel the terrorists blow up school busses full of schoolchildren because mass shootings are too damn difficult because the teachers shoot back. Let’s have a conversation about how the “gun free schools act” has done nothing but create shooting galleries of live targets for any and every whack-job out there.

Let’s talk about the fact that in every mass shooting that is answered by deadly force, the average body count is 9 times lower than when the shooter is unopposed until the cops get there. Oh, and let’s talk about how the police and the government you adore so much have absolutely no duty to protect you or anyone else.

Let’s finally admit to ourselves that no matter how good it sounds in theory, Gun Control simply does not work, and have a conversation about real solutions.

Real solutions like repealing the Gun Free Schools Act. Real solutions like arming the 10′s of thousands of teachers in this country who are military veterans. Real solutions like training children how to resist an armed attacker and bringing firearms marksmanship classes back into the schoolroom. Real solutions like insisting that business owners who post no firearms signs be held civilly accountable for doing so.

And while we are at it, let’s also have a conversation about how at the end of the day, there will always be evil, and evil has never been stopped by a sign, or a prohibition, or a law. Evil is only stopped by good men willing to use force to do so.