Funny, I don’t remember President Obama, Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid saying if we wanted to keep our doctors we were going to have to just “pay more” for them. Well, that is, back when they were ‘selling’ this Obamacare “pass-it-to-find-out-what’s-in-it” legislation.
WASHINGTON DC – Rev. Jesse Jackson said Sunday apartheid still exists in the United States as he reflected on Nelson Mandela’s effect on American politics.
“Apartheid remains. Apartheid gaps in poverty, healthcare and education. We’re in the middle of the end of the apartheid struggle now, but it’s just changed phases,” he said on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.”
“For almost 30 years, we had a lead jump on the right to vote and used that right to vote to empower allies in South Africa,” Jackson said. (more…)
INDIANA – An Iraq veteran who thought he was buying an iPad as a Christmas present after responding to a Craigslist posting, has been shot dead in an Indianapolis parking lot by the fake sellers.
New-dad Jim Vester, 32, was lured to an address on Wednesday in the west side of the city and brothers Tyron Kincade, 19, and Tyshaune Kincade, 18, have been arrested after Vester was shot dead leaving behind his one-year-old son, Gavin and wife, Jamie.
In the wake of the senseless murder, nearly 1,500 people have donated $58,000 to a YouCaring.com fundraiser set up by Vester’s family for the man described as a ‘great cook, loving father and faithful man.’ (more…)
In the pictures above you see two white men posing with South African President, Nelson Mandela. Each white man, Bill Clinton and F W de Klerk, was the political leader of a nation at the time Mandela was imprisoned then freed.
So a simple set of social justice questions can be easily established around the timeframe of Mandela’s incarceration and the government of those leaders, and their nations, during the exact same timeframe. Questions – (but don’t cheat):
Question #1 – Which “white” man presided over a nation who, in 1985, used a government helicopter to drop two gel-based explosive fire bombs on a group of blacks – Killing them ?
Gospel Mt 3:1-12 John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the desert of Judea
and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”
It was of him that the prophet Isaiah had spoken when he said:
A voice of one crying out in the desert,
Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight his paths.
John wore clothing made of camel’s hair
and had a leather belt around his waist.
His food was locusts and wild honey.
At that time Jerusalem, all Judea,
and the whole region around the Jordan
were going out to him
and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River
as they acknowledged their sins. (more…)
When Thomas Jefferson was asked to write the Declaration of Independence in late June 1776, he did so in just a few days. The document we know isn’t terribly long, but the draft he delivered to the Second Continental Congress was much longer, and the original draft was heavily edited, revised and diluted by committee. One phrase that was in both the original and final versions is, “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.“
Why did this phrase appear in both versions? Jefferson was a well-read person; his home Monticello was filled with the works of contemporary and historic philosophers. In fact, one of Jefferson’s favorite thinkers was English philosopher John
Locke. Locke originally posited (in “Two Treatises on Government”) the idea that a person’s right to live a healthy life, free to amass and maintain property — “life, health, liberty and property” — is one granted by God. Locke also reasoned that our fates are determined by God; no other individual may interfere with that fate
Locke….cites property as a natural right. Clearly, Jefferson took Locke’s concept of the right to life and liberty and applied it to the fledgling United States and its citizens in the Declaration of Independence.
(https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/pursuit-of-happiness-meaning1.htm)
Ownership of property can be simply expressed as, “This is mine; that is yours” or “This is mine; it is not yours.” The ability to make a distinction between what is mine and what is yours is necessary to individual liberty, and the land surveys that preceded the settling of the the country were the result of a basic truth: if we cannot establish where my ownership ends and yours begins, no one can effectively claim to own anything.
Land surveys were necessary precedent to the Oklahoma Land Rush, necessary to the development of the farmlands of Iowa and eventually, Wyoming ranches – as they moved beyond open range grazing of herds of cattle numbering in the tens of thousands. https://okgenweb.org/~land/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The following is from Story of the Great American West (Reader’s Digest Association, 1977)
Surveyors–Forerunners of Orderly Settlement
The surveyor of the late 1700s relied principally on his compass and chain. The compass, mounted on a tripod, gave the direction of survey lines; the 66-foot chain, with links of standardized length, measured distances. A plumb bob hung from the tripod marked the starting point for measurement. In the field, the surveyor
sighted on some prominent landmark, or his sighting pole, while his chainman measured the distance.
….A well-trained surveyor could get accurate results even with his simple instruments; however, errors often occurred, giving rise to disagreements and lawsuits among later landholders.
Somewhere in our seven hundred acres of pasture was a geodetic survey marker. One day our Dad took us to the place where it sat countersunk in the short prairie grass and gave us a short history of the business of the surveying of the prairies, circa eighteen hundred and something.
Seeing that marker anchored in the sod and trying to understand that it was linked by measurement to every other such survey marker in the west stirred a conscious effort in my thoughts that day, and I tried to peer through the little I understood to understand something new.
I could not comprehend the unknowns or the vastness of the land but knowing all those markers were out there changed my understanding of the bit of prairie on which I stood. No matter how vast our almost twelve hundred acres seemed – it had been measured. That was interesting to think about.
In the spring of 1805 Lewis and Clark went through our neck of the woods as they headed west. Their return trip brought them back to St. Louis on September 23, 1806. Then the government and the railroads geared up for the opening of the Great American West to the pioneers and their plows, and surveying was essential.
Signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, the Homestead Act encouraged Western migration by providing settlers 160 acres of public land. In exchange, homesteaders paid a small filing fee and were required to complete five years of continuous residence before receiving ownership of the land. After six months of residency, homesteaders also had the option of purchasing the land from the government for $1.25 per acre. The Homestead Act led to the distribution of 80 million acres of public land by 1900.
https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Homestead.html
It’s remarkable that the surveying which would become the linchpin of secure land descriptions and the basis for settling and owning land was completed as early as it was. I think that’s quite an achievement no matter how you cut it.
Not all surveying was well done, of course, and there were occasional zippy criticisms of certain individuals published in the local papers which went into some detail about the sloppiness of their work. On October 26, 1877, one such critique appeared in the Weekly Journal in the home town of my husband’s great-grandparents in west central Minnesota.
One J. R. King had done serious disservice to the good citizens of Otter Tail County, Minnesota in earlier days. The writer of this dripping-with-sarcasm piece was not about to let him quietly skulk off and impose his surveying skills on Ramsey County, which includes present day St. Paul.
Consider the utterly civil use of language clearly intended to do serious damage to Mr. King’s reputation in his new environs. Apparently Mr. King was a flat out liar and this well-equipped local wit who knew the whole story made good use of his opportunity to share.
We notice that down in Ramsey County, one J. R. King is running for county surveyor.
Can these things be? And is he really the gentle galoot who, in the high old democratic days before the flood, surveyed some of the towns in Otter Tail county?
Take Aurdal, for instance. A town full of lakes, and with the Red River running through it, in which – as competent surveyors assure us – no foot of meander surveys were made on the ground, although some 40 miles of such appear on the map and of course, were paid for by Uncle Samuel.
When Mr. Jones, who owns a quarter section on the west side of the Red River ascertains definitely that his land is on the east side of the river, and that Mr. Smith owns it, then Mr. Jones swears. There are many Mr. Joneses in Aurdal and profanity is on the increase.
We tremble for the morality of the rising generation in that district.
….and now the writer warms to the revelation of Mr. King’s fraudulent descriptions of woodlands and forest where there was actually a huge lake. I suggest you read this out loud to get the full benefit of the writer’s work.
Over in the northeast part of the town, the township plat and field notes show a fine beautiful tract of land, covered with forests of stately oak and juicy maple, where the antlered deer and the bob-tailed rabbit roamed in peace and security through the undulating wilds.
The surveyor’s notes revel in gorgeous description of the beauty and fertility of this remarkable tract of land, and the minuteness and fidelity of his delineations merit volumes of praise.
At his section corners, he tells us with a truly remarkable precision the size and character of each tree and the exact distance and direction of the same from the section corner.
Alas, that sweet and soft illusion must be dispelled.
William Tell was a myth. John Smith was not saved by Pocohontas and Shakespeare was Bacon. Daniel Webster didn’t say, “I still live.” George Washington could tell a lie, and J. R. King could see him and go one complicated official oath better.
All that beautiful region in northeastern Aurdal is known as BigFish Lake, a deep and beautiful sheet of water, some three miles across. We have no heart for comment.
When that bold surveyor made that comprehensive oath – the pre-curse, so to speak, of many others – he must have been only Jo. King. Which, of course, was nothing to speak of.
So not all surveyors were good guys, and not all surveying was lawsuit-proof or accurate even under the best of efforts, but it was an amazing effort that was necessary to the building of our nation. Skills. Math. Truth. Equipment. Years of effort. Lots of paper and documentation.
It’s good to engage with things that elicit wonder and present mystery. Sometimes the wonder and mystery may rise out of incomplete knowledge that can be corrected by a few years of growing up or reading a book. Sometimes the wonder and mystery can be chased for a lifetime.
It’s not surprising. It’s crap like this MSNBC/Pravda propaganda which infects the minds of Millennials, Twenty-somethings, and unfortunately youth currently in education.
It’s not surprising – but it’s sickening. Really sickening. The sad reality is – in their thirst to mold an agenda into reporting they miss a great opportunity to discuss real principles of freedom. Then again, freedom doesn’t fit within a leftist-minded definition of liberty.
For the institutional left it’s always a mantra: freedom “from” – instead of freedom “of“.
When they use “from” they get to play the victim card and define the acceptable conduct of others. If the left was forced to affirm freedom “of” they would actually have to drop their hypocritical ideology and accept the very tenet of liberty.
…I digress, here’s MSNBC:
I doubt we will see the update to the story mentioned in the mainstream media the same way they jumped full bore to tell it when they thought it was true….
NEW JERSEY – A New Jersey waitress who raked in thousands in donations after claiming a couple didn’t tip her because she’s gay was fired from her job on Saturday.
Dayna Morales, 22, was finally canned from Gallop Asian Bistro in Bridgewater — nearly a month after she made national headlines over what’s likely a hoax.
The restaurant announced her termination on Facebook Saturday shortly after it was revealed she was returning donations from supporters across the world.
“In light of … recent events, both Ms. Morales and Gallop Asian Bistro have made a joint decision that Ms. Morales will no longer continue her employment at our restaurant,” the eatery wrote. “We wish her well in the future.” (more…)
Two Memphis 15-year olds, Derek Cunningham and Corey Sandifer, will be tried as adults for the brutal murder of J. P. Shelley; a General contractor in Tennessee.
The victim, Mr. Shelley, was a father of two, and a general contractor who was at work when two teens robbed him at gunpoint.
According to police investigative reports Mr. Shelley complied with every request they made – yet they shot him in the chest anyway. The circumstances around the shooting point to a specific intent to murder and not just a random robbery, but that consideration is highly uncomfortable for the media to report.
(more…)
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †