Conservative Squid

The First Amendment Part 1

2009-11-21T06:30:00.000-08:00

There is a cross in the Mojave Desert that is covered in a plywood box due to a man in Oregon being offended by it. The cross was erected by World War I veterans with a plaque and stands in the middle of that barren land as a memorial to the men that were lost in that nightmarish war of trenches and gas, of mud and machine guns. These men erected a memorial to their lost comrades in the desert in the 1930's that you have to go out of your way to actually see, but there is a legal battle because the land is now in government hands, controlled by the National Park Service.
So the National Park Service opted to sell the land, an easy fix, but not good enough for the American Civil Liberty Union who has invested millions into this case and wants the government (ie you and I taxpayer) to pay them for their services rather than the quick fix. You see, people have apparently not read the Constitution or the First Amendment yet are so willing to hide behind it to fit there needs. The first amendment does not have the wording "Separation of Church and State" as that was used in a personal letter of Thomas Jefferson not an official government document, and if we were to use every presidents correspondence for official government documents than the good Lord knows what Bill Clinton would have brought into the government.
The First Amendment states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
So what does this mean. Well lets examine the first part:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion
This came from our experiences in England and the Church of England. It prevented congress from creating a Church of the United States and outlawing the Church of England and the Catholic Church. When the Church of England was formed in Great Britain the Catholics (and every other religion) became second class citizens. This clause prevents this from ever happening in the United States.
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
In the United States we had a problem with the early colonies with this one. People leaving because of religious persecution in other countries immediately turned around and persecuted others. After the United States was established, it was the states that were violating this such as the sanctioned persecution of Catholics in the south during reconstruction after the civil war and the prolonged attacks against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) that pushed them to move to Utah (in Missouri it was even legal to kill a Mormon until it was taken off the books in 1976) and have a US Army base built over Salt Lake City to keep an eye on them. The United States was not very good about letting people practice their religions in the past and even now you'll here the term cult to term a group that is misunderstood. Public hysteria has a way of causing problems for people but as long as they don't violate established US law, there should be no problems. Now if a religion forms that is established to have practices that violate US law such as sex with minors, drug use, torture, or any other things that have been practiced in the past and can be thought up, then it needs to be scrutinized and people need to be prosecuted not persecuted. Otherwise, let people be people.
Now does this mean that if people in an office want to hang Christmas decorations they are establishing a religion? Of course not. Neither does bringing out a menorah make me Jewish but I do so for several of my Jewish friends, just as they have Christmas decorations because they're pretty. It's not establishing a religion it's just enjoying the company of one and other. Were those men establishing a Christian religion when they planted a cross for their dead friends in the middle of that desert? No. They were putting in place a memorial for the dead. Lets face it, religion is a part of us, all of us. You cannot deny this. If you are offended be a symbol, whether a star of David, a cross, a representation of Buddha, an ankh, or any of the other various symbols used in worship, then maybe you need to look at your own beliefs a little harder. The stronger your foundation, the less it should be worried by things of the inconsequential.
There should not be lawsuits if veterans build a cross or a star of David to represent fallen soldiers. It should be expected as most service members were either of a Christian denomination or Jewish. Now as service members die more faiths will be represented but most will still be Christian and Jewish. There should be lawsuits if the DMV woman is trying to convert you instead of doing her job not if a neighborhood decides to put up a nativity scene.
As far as the ACLU is concerned, they are the an example of the problems with our health care system, people trying to make a buck off of lawsuits not caring who pays for. In the end, the cost goes to all of us.

A Veteran's Day Present

2009-11-15T03:55:00.000-08:00

At 7:43pm on the 11th of November, 2009, something wonderful happened. A little girl cried for the first time as her eyes were able to see artificial light of the hospital room where she was born as my wife had our third child. But unlike the other two children that my wife has given birth to, her husband was with her as that little child was placed on her chest. For the first time of all my children, 2 with my wife and 1 with a prior relationship, I was able to see my child brought into the world, able to hold her hand, to see her so small it is almost as if you could accidentally break her by the slightest movement. I was able to witness the first cry, the first smile, change the first diaper (before they stink) and even her have fall to sleep in my hands.
When people ask why we have Veteran's Day, I tell them because this is what veteran's are giving up not only risking our lives for our country, but we are putting our lives and families second to each and every one of you so that we may serve you, so we may serve this country of ours.
My eldest daughter was born while I was deployed for Afghanistan as I was part of the initial assault and my youngest son was born while I was defending the Iraqi army command center in south Kirkuk during the first Iraqi election. My deployment from Iraq ended when he was almost a year old and I left when my wife was 3 months pregnant. As for my daughter, I arrived home to see her when she was 3 months old just to be deployed again a couple months later. Meanwhile my wife carried on without me holding down the household away from family while I left her time and time again. The price paid for freedom was paid not only by veterans but by our families as well.
Veteran's Day, I realized all this with one little girl.

Samantha Larsen

7lbs 14 oz.

21 inches

For the first time I have come accepted that being wounded isn't that bad, because I do get small perks such as the little one mentioned above.

Sgt. Joseph R. Larsen
US Army (Retired)

Drive Them to the Edge, then Hand them the Razorblade

2009-10-04T04:38:00.000-07:00

I am a wounded soldier. Like many, I cannot take care of myself yet. It took me a long time to admit this to myself let alone acknowledge that I was no longer the man I was before I left. I walk with a cane now although my doctor still feels that I should use a walker. We made a compromise on a four post cane. I have a traumatic brain injury which sadly means that I there are times that I no longer can remember the names and faces of my friends and family. Sadly, my wife of eight years sometimes looks into the eyes of a man who doesn't know her and is lost in his own house. I get confused but I am better than I was 3 years ago. I speak clearer and can form thought and bring them out without stuttering often and I rarely slur except when I have a headache. But I am still a prisoner of my own house. I don't leave except to go to the doctors and have to even take vitamin D because of the lack of sunlight. I am on pain medication in order to stand, sit, sleep, walk, and anything else because my back is destroyed. I have memory loss, and the memories that am getting back are that of my last 5 campaigns which makes them feel that Post traumatic stress is right up my alley. I hate crowds, dislike being around people and always look for a way out or a way to neutralize any threats. During the bad periods when I am plagued with seizures and migraines, I get more depressed than normal although I always grin and bear it, for the sake of the wife and kids. Thankfully, I'm not yelling as much, but you never know when you can hit a bad spot. I am still relearning my emotions so I laugh when I shouldn't, cry too much, and blow up for no apparent reason.
When I had a surgery at St. Joseph Regional Medical Center in Lewiston, Idaho, I had to update my living will there. A Priest came in and asked me if I had wanted to have a living will just in case something went wrong and we went ahead and went through the paper work how I wanted it. We didn't talk about religion, he just went through the paperwork and asked my thoughts and asked if I wanted my wife's input, which I had her do a lot because this is not a decision just for me. There was no stress, no pressure. Simple facts, yes or no.
The VA implemented a pamphlet especially for people like me, with the top priority being injured soldiers. They had tried to implement it in 2007 but it was pulled because quite frankly, we refer to it as the suicide pamphlet. It too is just a simple counseling, like the one I had before my neck surgery, but instead is degrading. Veterans that read this desire to put a gun to their head because that is how it makes you feel. The pamphlet is called "Your Life, Your Choices" and was written apparently to ease the burden of VA medical care by increasing suicide rates among wounded Veterans. I know that I had the desire because the pamphlet that is given out lists our common injuries and places them as a possibility for the category "Life Would Not Be Worth Living." Such things as "I no longer contribute to my family's well being" is the general consensus among anybody who has to be taken care of, regardless if we are still drawing income. "I am in severe pain all the time, I can no longer get outside—I spend all day at home, I can no longer walk but get around in a wheelchair, I need someone to help take care of me all of time, I can no longer think clearly-I am confused all the time, I can no longer recognize family/friends, My situation causes severe emotional burden for my family (such as feeling worried or stressed all the time, I cannot seem to “shake the blues.”" are all the different categories that I personally fall under for a life not worth living. Thankfully, I can choice choices such as "Difficult but acceptable" and "worth living but just barely" however if you choose more than it asks wouldn't the combination just make your life "Not Worth Living."
For some reason, I needed a drink and I don't drink. This trash destroys people so the government can save money. After the first section, it makes it seem like anybody who doesn't pull the plug if you go into a coma is an imbecile. Worse yet, imagine you had AIDs in the 1980s, the recommendation here is to die. "Imagine that you are very sick and have been told that you will very likely die soon." The answers are: I would want all possible treatments, even though my doctors don't think they will help me, because I would hope for a miracle cure that would prolong my life. Please circle yes Not Sure or no. Remember, by the wording of the question, you'd be an idiot to hope for a miracle cure.
The last section is the choices you make. Do you want IV solutions or antibiotics if you have a life threatening illness? My question is what constitutes life threatening? The flu kills thousands of people a year. If I was to catch pneumonia, would I not be treated? Worse yet, the answers to all of these questions are being stockpiled by government workers into a central file. What happens when you mess up? Do you not treat me?
My fears of the government making mistakes are founded in reality. In Iraq I was injured when a vehicle entered our convoy (we were going approx. 45-50mph) and slammed on his brakes in front of us. At the same time, another vehicle was approaching the convoy from the rear (we were the last vehicle). This is a common tactic to separate our gun truck from the rest of the convoy. Luckily we managed to destroy the vehicle in front and thwart any plans. Two soldiers were injured in the process though. However, the convoy commander, Captain Hoxey, didn't report the incident for whatever reason he had, my belief was incompetence. The only record we have is my clinic record, two days after the fact. No purple hearts even though the other soldier had a stroke due to complications with his injuries. Nothing, because of a lazy, incompetent person.
Another example is when I went to reenlist and found that I had several NJPs (Non-Judicial Punishments) due to the fact that another person in the country of Iraq had the same last name and wasn't performing his job. It had reached my personnel file instead of his although we had different jobs (MOS), Ranks, first name, Battalions, and social security numbers. If this was a completed for, I'd be dead. Thank God for small favors.

Our Friends in Massachusetts

2009-09-24T16:36:00.000-07:00

The phrase "all men are equal but some are more equal than others" definitely applies to democrats where in Massachusetts, legislatures changed the law to keep their citizens from voting in a senator they didn't want. This was the same law they had changed to keep then Governor Romney from choosing a Senator in case Frank-en-Kerry won the Presidency in 2004. The thought that the former governor, Mitt Romney, a republican, could be running for Senate, has got them thinking that the people of the state cannot choose its own Senator is uncalled for. So in order to try to make things better on their end the current Governor Deval Patrick was given the power to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat with the former Democrat party head Paul Kirk. In order to make sure that this will not cause to much of an uproar in Massachusetts, all of the press releases did say that he is a former Kennedy friend, which after all, is enough for them.

Speaking of the Kennedy's, can anybody actually name something that President Kennedy did right?

*There was the Bay of Pigs, a disaster.

*The Cuban missile crisis? He reacted and in the end did what the Soviets had wanted him to do which was to remove our nuclear missiles from Turkey. It was the closest we've been to nuclear war and was the result of the Bay of Pigs. So cause and effect.

*There was the Vietnam War and we can ask the 58,209 KIA and the 1,948 still MIA but it might be easier to ask the homeless. As a nation, a quarter of our homeless is veterans and a substantial number of those are Vietnam veterans.

*He cheated on his beautiful wife with several women including Marilyn Monroe, a huge step up from Monica Lewinsky, but still cheating.

*You could say he got us to the moon because he gave a speech about it, but did George W. Bush get us to Mars. All the Moon landings happened during Richard Nixon's presidency. We haven't had one before or after.

*He backed up the Baath Party in Iraq in order to try and get oil. The Baath Communist Party who's leader in 1969 was Saddam Hussein. Great going.

*He established the Peace Corps. I found one. A neat way for us to put CIA agents throughout the world in the name of helping. I believe they fixed that now.

So since all these people have been riding on the curtails of a dead president that didn't do anything substantial except his family looked good and the press loved them, maybe its time we moved on.

Confessions of a Raciest Un-American Potential Terrorist

2009-09-14T05:40:00.000-07:00

Recently President Obama has had the opportunity to give his speech to congress stating that his health care plan would be more like the one that was being amended in the Senate. Magically they would be able to trim of $100 billion dollars of the initial costs of the bill (taking that money from Medicare) and recover the money from the fraud they haven’t been able to find all these years. The rest of the costs would be shifted on to the insurance companies and not into taxes. It’s funny because regardless of how they try to shift the costs on paper, any basic economic student can tell you that the cost will be shifted to the consumer.
Anyways, it doesn't matter if they think that people should need this, we don't.

When I lived in Ipswich England, I went to the emergency room because I was in shock after being hit by a car. I was placed in a room, alone, for four hours. Thankfully, I came out of it on my own prior to the doctor or orderly even seeing me but while I was unable to move, it was the most frightening experience of my life, and I've been to three different campaigns with the military (one of these multiple times). We do not want this type of health care. Even those "uninsured" are guaranteed life saving care, something that other countries health care services do not.

I don’t agree with the health care bill and unlike most of those in congress, I have actually read the 1000+ pages of it. The things I don’t like about it are plain and simple: it limits choice, warehouses information, drives up taxes and cost for all while reducing the amount of care that is provided and most of all, it will be run by the government. You see, the last statement is the worst. Everything that has been run by the government with few exceptions has been disastrous.
The government is already running three separate health care systems and all are constantly criticized for the care that they provide. As a wounded soldier who is now medically retired, I have had the displeasure of dealing with all three systems, the military medical hospitals, the Veterans Administration, and Medicare. Between the three, there are enough problems that make you wonder if the government cannot run these systems correctly, how on earth does it plan to run a monster of a system that would encompass the whole nation. The answer is simple of course, the people who are trying to pass the bill have never had to deal with any of these systems and are not planning on dealing with the new system either. Welcome to the revolution, comrade. All men are created equal, but some are just more equal than others.

For those of you who have never experienced any of them, I’ll briefly give an account of three years of mine. I have a traumatic brain injury, with seizures and migraines, memory loss and vision impairment from an injury I suffered while serving as a gunner in a convoy in Iraq. To make matters worse, I have seven herniated discs in my neck and back, so bad that I had lost the use of my right leg and had diminished capacity in my right hand and arm. The military which first dealt with me gave me muscle relaxers for the seizures, and when they found the herniated discs, stated that they wouldn’t do anything about them until I couldn’t feel both my legs. This is the care of the military hospitals, it is better to do nothing then to mess up. When I tore the front ligament out of my ankle, the hospital took an x-ray, called it good and now wonders why I still walk with a limp.

The VA on the other hand, is similar to what I witnessed in the UK. Overloaded hospitals, 30 minute maximum appointments and you have to wait at least a month to get an appointment to begin with. It’s not that all of them are incompetent, although some are; it’s just that it’s easier to send you someplace else. When I went to the VA neurologists, I was having 10-12 seizures a day and they sent me to a psychiatrist saying its Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because I just came back from Iraq regardless of the head injury. The psychiatry department sent me back to neurology claiming that it was definitely neurological all the while my wife and kids have to watch as I suffer through all this. Thankfully my commanding officer took pity on us and got a requisition to have a civilian neurologist take a look. After one appointment, I was diagnosed and treated with medication that reduced the seizures to 1 per day. Increases in the medication reduced them further.

After I retired from the military, I was put on social security and Medicare. How people strive to live on this is beyond me as I am trying my hardest to get where I can get off this crap. Medicare is a joke, with benefits being cut by this congress after they claim to be champions of medical reform. Well, reform the medical systems you are already in charge of. Make that your first priority. Listen to the horror stories of the Veterans or as Janet Napolitano calls us “Potential Terrorist Threats.” Listen to the people on Medicare who spend most of their social security buying the drugs that Medicare won’t pay for because we need them in order to stay somewhat human–like. Until you do so, people like me will protest against you. We are unpaid although I’d like to find out how to be paid by insurance companies to say what I think about congress and the president (Ms. Pelosi if you can perhaps give me a contact number since you seem to know about this stuff) regardless if Pelosi feels that protesting against wasteful spending and government intrusion is “un-American.” As far as Obama is concerned, he is wrong, and has been wrong on everything he’s done since he’s taken office from insulting Poland by snubbing them on the 70th anniversary of the start of WWII to destroying our bankruptcy laws when dealing with GM. If criticizing him makes me racist, Charley Rangel or Ms. Dowd, so be it.

The Socialized Firefighter Satire

2009-09-13T02:03:00.000-07:00

A group of people have already made a satire website called Angry Townhall. The purpose of this website is to make fun of people complaining about socialism by saying that we already have socialized fire fighters, why not have socialized medicine. Obviously its not that bad.
As one that has been through multiple government systems and lived in Ipswich England, I can say that the people running the website has no idea what they are talking about. As far as privatizing fire fighting, that is something that has been done in various communities around the country with success. I know its usually done in "Right to Work" states but I suppose that it could be successful to have a company take over that job. As I recalled, payments became similar to insurance payments on property although some companies were selling stock in the communities they protected therefore if they had a good year, they could invest the profits into high yield funds and stockholders make money of the dividends of those funds. Anybody have any experience with private fire fighting groups?
If they are saying that because the government has certain responsibilities that they are supposed to take care of, such as law and order, then that should give them the right to destroy our health care...I'm failing to see the connection. What I do see is a bunch of politicians afraid of losing power and are therefore grabbing as much control as they can. They would like us to be like Sweden (who has been hailed as the beacon of Democracy) with an income tax of 55% and a sales tax of 25% except for food which is only taxed at 13%. This will be the US. A tax for this a tax for that. When I lived in England we paid a yearly tax on the TV we owned (it varied by the number of tv's in the house and whether they were black and white or colour. Kind of disturbing. Now the group of people who got elected because of the wasteful spending in Iraq, have spent more money then the Iraq war had cost, all for what, the good of the elite.
In the story of Job, his property was destroy, offspring killed, and he was infested with boils. Yet through all this suffering he knew 2 things to help him stay strong: he would always have God's Love and he would never would have to deal with the idiots in congress.

Introduction

2009-09-12T22:15:00.000-07:00

There are two of me: the man I once was and the man I am now. The man I once once was had the unfortunate luck of being killed in an explosion in Iraq. With his death went the memory of his time in the navy, the transfer to the army as well as the 4 other campaigns that poor bastard and his family had to suffer through. What he did leave behind was a wife that wonders who this man is that looks like her husband. He left me 3 kids, one born while he was in an undisclosed location, the other while he was in Afghanistan (although I am beginning to believe he might have been in the ocean), the other while he was in Iraq.

This brings me to the other man, the current me. I was born in Iraq in 2005. I have memory problems so I don't remember names or if I had done something. My back had 7 herniated discs but as of May 2009, I had surgery to fix the ones in my neck so now I just have 5. I used to play guitar but I can't use my right hand unless this surgery works miracles. Otherwise I have a Schecter Hellraiser C-1 FR that my eldest son is keeping the dust off until I tell him its his. Now, I get to hear him playing Zeppelin, Floyd, Slayer, Iced Earth, and every other piece of music he can get his hands on.

The goals in my life are simple, to try and regain the life I once had. I am currently trying to walk without assistance. After that maybe I'll try to go a month without seizures. Then maybe, just maybe, I can become something more than the shell I am now. Perhaps...