Sunday, May 31, 2020

Minnesota Gov Is About to Eat His Words on Who Is Really Causing Chaos in the Minneapolis Riots

Riots erupted for yet another night in the wake of the controversial death of George Floyd, who died under the custody of Minneapolis Police. Floyd was arrested over an alleged false document incident but died when now-ex-Officer Devin Chauvin knelt on the back of his neck for nearly ten minutes. Floyd was already in handcuffs and lying on his stomach. His cries that he couldn’t breathe are audible in the ghastly video. All four officers involved in the arrested were fired, with Chauvin being booked on third-degree murder and manslaughter charges. The FBI and the Department of Justice are also investigating the tragic incident. 

This is an outrage. There is near-universal condemnation and there should be expressions of anger and protests over what happened. Yet, what has transpired over the past few nights is anything but a protest. It’s a riot. Looting, vandalism, and mayhem have engulfed the country. Minneapolis, the epicenter for this chaos, has been engulfed in flames. Our own Julio Rosas is in Mill City for Townhall and has documented the conditions on the ground, noting the lawlessness that has created an atmosphere of total pandemonium. Where are the cops? Where is the National Guard? Rosas, who has reported on other protests, including ones with a heavy Antifa presence, said that he’s never seen anything like what he’s witnessed in the Twin Cities. Folks, a police headquarters was torched by rioters. 

Democratic Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, also a Democrat, have been outright disastrous in how they’ve handled the situation. They’ve allowed the city to be ruled by the mob. They’ve ceded parts of the city for them to destroy. It’s been a disaster. Frey even reminded the rioters about social distancing guidelines regarding the coronavirus. And Walz tried to blame white supremacists for being involved in the chaos, a claim that the MN Department of Public Safety could not confirm because it’s not true. Whether it be a pandemic or a riot, the liberal media and their Democratic allies will always find a way to pivot to blame something that they think can be linked back to President Trump or Republicans. In doing so, they create fake news. It’s an election year. Trump looks better than Joe Biden by the day—and these two Democratic clowns in Minnesota can’t get their act together to quell the mob. Yeah, I could see why Democrats would try and get this white supremacist lie going—but it’s still total garbage (via USA Today) [emphasis mine]:

Drifting out of the shadows in small groups, dressed in black, carrying shields and wearing knee pads, they head toward the front lines of the protest. Helmets and gas masks protect and obscure their faces, and they carry bottles of milk to counteract tear gas and pepper spray.

Most of them appear to be white. They carry no signs and don't want to speak to reporters. Trailed by designated "medics" with red crosses taped to their clothes, these groups head straight for the front lines of the conflict.

[…]

The real hard-core guys, this is their job: They’re involved in this struggle," said Adam Leggat, a former British Army counterterrorism officer who now works as a security consultant specializing in crowd management for the Densus Group. "They need protests on the street to give them cover to move in.”

[…]

"There are detractors. There are white supremacists. There are anarchists,"  Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan said Saturday afternoon.

However, a civil arrest list provided by the public information officer of the St. Paul Police Department shows 12 of the 18 people arrested from Thursday through 6 a.m. Saturday were from Minnesota. Five of them are from St. Paul, three are from Woodbury (part of the Twin Cities metropolitan area), two are from Minneapolis, one is from Mankato and one is from St. Louis Park. Four are from out of state and two did not have cities of residence listed.

[…]

Leggat, the security consultant, said intelligence reports from his colleagues indicate most of the hard-core protesters in Minneapolis are far-left or anarchists, and that far-right groups have not yet made a significant appearance. He said looting is typically done by locals – usually people with no criminal record who just get caught up in the moment.

The first sign that this narrative was trash was when Walz’s own public safety department couldn’t back it up. It only got worse from there. At face value, it’s just unbelievable, akin to China’s COVID death toll and infection rate. Walz has been a bumbling clown in this situation and this fake talking point he trotted out only highlighted his failed leadership. It’s a total nightmare in Minneapolis. It’s a catastrophe. Don’t make it worse by making social justice warrior-infused pivots that only lead you to crash into walls. Reality isn’t that easily scaled, circumvented, or flanked, sir.

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Friday, May 29, 2020

MN Sentator Klobuchar unlikely a democratic Veep candidate

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) had a better than expected 2020 run. She wasn’t favored to win at all, but her debate performances allowed her to increase her profile among voters and give her that critical cash flow to survive another day. She dropped out, along with former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg earlier this year in a move that many viewed as an effort to get the centrist Democratic bloc around Joe Biden and prevent a replay of the bloody progressive-establishment war back in 2016. So, is Amy veep material? Not anymore. If she was being considered, it all ended this week.

Minneapolis is currently ablaze right now. Looting is rampant and clashes with police are frequent. The city blew up over the horrific death of George Floyd, who died in police custody after an officer kept his knee on his neck for nearly ten minutes. He died as a result. Floyd was arrested for a forgery charge. It was a non-violent crime, and his death was captured on video. It’s incredibly disturbing and all four officers involved in the incident were rightfully fired. President Trump has ordered the FBI and the Department of Justice to look into this matter. It’s a top priority. The protests are warranted, as is the anger—but not the looting and abject destruction of property. Yet, that’s an aside. What ties Klobuchar to the Floyd incident? Well, she encountered the officer who placed his knee on Floyd’s neck. This officer was involved in a few past shootings, one of which occurred when Amy was a county prosecutor. She declined to file charges against him, or at least that’s how it will be seen as with those outraged over Floyd’s death (via Star Tribune):

    The Floyd case has put the national spotlight back on Klobuchar's days as a prosecutor, particularly as it became clear Derek Chauvin, the officer involved in Floyd's death, was involved in the death of another citizen while Klobuchar was prosecutor. Chauvin was one of six officers who fired on and killed Wayne Reyes in 2006 after Reyes reportedly aimed a shotgun at police after stabbing his friend and girlfriend. While the death happened during Klobuchar's tenure at the helm of the Hennepin County Attorney's Office, the case did not go to a grand jury until after she left the office and became a senator.

    Klobuchar did not criminally charge other police involved in the more than two dozen officer-involved fatalities that occurred during her time as prosecutor. She left those decisions to a grand jury, a practice that was common at the time.

    Klobuchar said in a CNN interview Tuesday that the evidence is "crying out for some kind of a charge" against the officers involved in Floyd's death. Michael Minta, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota who studies political representation and race, said that is a departure from her more cautious responses to past cases.

    The police officer who killed George Floyd was also part of 3 other police shootings of civilians, incl. one while Klobuchar was county prosecutor.

    Klobuchar did not press charges against him, & so many others: https://t.co/iiKPK4UUZ8
    also: https://t.co/T2t1ssHFG7 pic.twitter.com/VW0AkfzJM9
    — Taniel (@Taniel) May 28, 2020

It’s about the perception here. And Klobuchar is already in hot water with black voters over the totally botched prosecution of Myon Burrell, which Cortney covered in February. It’s not a good look and with the Democratic Party so engulfed in racial and identity politics, which is ironic given that with all this talk an old white guy is the presumptive nominee, there’s just no way Amy should even be thought of for VP. Maybe she never was, but if the Biden team wants to get serious, a Rust Belt Democrat would help, not indulge in a nakedly pandering move like picking any black Democrat.
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Why Twitter Censored President Trump's Tweet About The Minneapolis Riots

As we all were last night, President Trump was watching Minneapolis descend into total anarchy. Our own Julio Rosas is there documenting the insanity. The looting has not subsided. The violence intensified. And it culminated in the police headquarters in the city’s third precinct being evacuated, overrun by rioters, and then set ablaze. Police and firefighters were reportedly given orders to stand down. It was chaos. 

The second night of protests was sparked due to the horrific death of George Floyd, who died in police custody. It’s all on video. Floyd, arrested for a false document charge, is seen pleading with officers that he couldn’t breathe. That’s because one officer put his knee on his neck and kept it there for nearly ten minutes. Floyd died as a result. All four officers were fired, and the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating this tragic incident as well for civil rights violations. It’s considered a top priority. Yet, Minneapolis is a warzone. Rosas has documented many protests, some with very hostile crowds, and he said last night that he’d never seen anything like what he was experiencing in Mill City. 

During the rioting, the president said this on Twitter:


During the rioting, the president said this on Twitter:

I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership. Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right.

These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!

Yeah, want to guess why the social media company censored the latter tweet? 

"This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible," it reads. 

The people who are rioting are not there for justice or to support getting justice for Floyd. They’re thugs that are destroying these communities before our eyes. There were fires everywhere last night. Maybe a bit far with the shootings comment, but Trump is president and we have a First Amendment. Also, is the remark "glorifying" or saying what actually happens when looting begins in any situation where riots erupt? It's a bit nit-picky. Yes, Twitter is a private company, though one could easily argue that it’s one that really serves a public utility. I don’t know. If there was something that truly violated the terms of service, maybe I wouldn’t raise my eyebrows here. This isn’t it. And all this did, as Minneapolis burns, is rehash concerns from conservatives that Twitter and the rest of the lefty social media enterprise, is biased and selectively enforces their service rules. 

 
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Thursday, May 28, 2020

10 signs you may not be cut out for IT

It's a tough world out there. Anyone who's ever worked in IT knows just how tough it is. And if you're not totally up for the challenge, there will always be someone else who is. But for anyone considering getting into the world of IT, or for those considering getting out of IT ... how do you know? How can you tell whether you're really cut out for the career that chews up and spits out its young? Well, I have a handy list of signs that maybe IT isn't the best fit for you. But if the signs don't apply and you DO decide to head down the IT career path, I've included a list of helpful resources at the end of this article.

1. You lack patience

Patience is most certainly a virtue in IT. When some problems strike, they strike with vengeance and most often require a good deal of time to resolve. If you are without patience, you'll either give up, lose your mind, or pull out all your hair. But the need for patience doesn't end at dealing with problems. Many times, end users will test your patience more than the technology will. If that's the case, I recommend that you either get away from having to deal with end users or (if that's not possible), steer clear of IT altogether.

2. You have no desire to continue your education

IT is an ever-evolving field and without the desire to continue learning, you're already way behind the curve. This is one of those fields where you must be okay with constantly learning something new. That might mean taking a class or attending a workshop or just hitting the books on your own. But no matter how you slice that education, you must be willing to continue to learn.

3. You refuse to work outside 9-to-5

Technology doesn't adhere to a set schedule. Servers go down whenever they want and business has to go on. So you must be willing to wake up in the middle of the night, work long hours during the week, and work weekends. If you're someone who refuses to let their workweek interfere with their personal life--well, the writing on the wall is pretty clear.

4. You don't like people

Do I really need to expand on this one? Yes? Fine. The reason IT pros have jobs is to support end users--aka people. If you don't like people (and I know plenty who don't), you really shouldn't consider a career in IT. The big irony of this is that I also know a lot of people who have been driven to dislike people because of IT.

5. You give up quickly

How many times have you had an issue really test your abilities? Did you give up or did you forge on until you managed to best that problem? If you gave up, you did so knowing that you left something broken. That is not an acceptable work ethic in IT, and if you're okay with that, it's time to reconsider. Oh sure, there will be times when something is beyond repair or an issue goes above your skill set. But if that's the case, it's your responsibility to replace the broken tech or hire someone in to fix the issue.

6. You're easily frustrated

This is an industry that can frustrate even the most unflappable. But if your frustration boils to the surface right away, you will spend much of your day with high blood pressure. Although IT is a rewarding field, it can also be n aggravating one. If frustration often gets the best of you, you might want to consider a different career.

7. You can't multitask

At any given point in a day, I am doing three or four things at once. Sometimes, this is the only way I can actually get everything done in the required timeframe. If you insist on sticking to one task at a time, IT is going to be a tough trek for you. That is not to say single-minded people can't succeed--but they will have a tougher time than those who can multitask.

8. You have dreams of climbing the corporate ladder

There isn't much room on the ladder within the IT department. If you have dreams of climbing up and perching yourself on top, you might want to consider a different field. Some IT departments do offer promotions, and maybe you can even climb your way up to CIO. But if CEO is in your dreams, IT is probably not the field for you.

9. You hate technology

This one should go without saying, but strangely enough, I know people in the IT field who actually HATE technology. If you consider yourself a technophobe, maybe being around servers, desktops, switches, routers, and other IT-centric hardware isn't the best place for you. Although it's perfectly possible to work in a field you despise, the added level of frustrations you will experience might end your time on this good green Earth earlier than you expected. Take a pass on IT.

10. You turn off your phone at night

This relates to your work hours. Many IT pros I've worked with are on call 24/7. Their lives completely revolve around their networks, and if they weren't willing to have such a life, they probably wouldn't have the jobs they have now. The IT job doesn't go away--it remains in the background all the time, waiting to pull you from sleep, family gatherings, the birth of your first child. If you're one to turn your phone off when you leave work, or you ignore those calls from the office (even when the office is blowing your phone up), it might be a sign that you and your career are not a good fit.

Tallying up the pros and cons

Just because you suffer from one or two of these traits doesn't mean you should give up on an IT career and start flipping burgers. But if you recognize quite a few of these signs, you might want to find another calling.

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Why Everyone Hates IT People

Quick: what’s the biggest bottleneck in your company? Yup, we both know it’s the Information Technology department. Let’s face it, nobody likes IT people. For all of their technical wizardry, IT is where good ideas go to die. We follow their onerous documentation requirements and patiently wait in line through endless backlogs, yet somehow IT still can’t seem to get their work done.

Hating the IT department is a common sentiment in almost every company big enough to have such a group. But the truth is, it’s not the IT people’s faults. In fact, a despised IT department is a symptom of a CEO who doesn’t understand psychology. It is a corporate dysfunction for which management, more than anyone else in the organization, is responsible.

TO CREATE IS HUMAN, TO IMPLEMENT DIVINE

Why does the IT department drive everyone nuts? The answer lies deep in our primal need to contribute to our tribe. As Logan, King, and Fischer-Wright pointed out, the workplace is our modern-day clan. We come to the office with the same mental hardwiring we acquired 200,000 years ago when our species emerged. Back then, tribes with individuals creative enough to make new discoveries survived better than less innovative groups. Today, our workplace is our tribe and our impulse to create is no less important. Evolution gave us the mental machinery to seek to improve the welfare of our social groups through discoveries made by each individual.

When creativity is stifled, we become frustrated, unfulfilled and complacent. Unfortunately, in most organizations, workers blame the most obvious bottleneck, hence, they point the finger at the IT department.

In actuality, the complaints are a result of a broken feedback loop and the discontent can be explained by unraveling the blockages to corporate innovation. Though I have written extensively about how feedback loops and desire engines can be used to design behaviors, the inverse, breaking the reinforcement cycle, can bring the urge to innovate to a grinding halt, and that’s exactly what explains anti-IT-ism.A BROKEN LOOP

Employees today are inundated with messages from management to “be innovative,” “think outside the box,” “spot good ideas when they see them,” and most of all “get stuff done.” Business books and gurus extol the value of innovation and spread the message that only companies who quickly change with the times have a hope of survival. The message to employees is “if you contribute innovative ideas, good things will happen to you and your tribe.”

These messages constitute the cue or stimulus phase of a reinforcement loop. Originally studied by B.F. Skinner over 60 years ago, reinforcement remains a powerful basis by which we learn how to behave. In a successful reinforcement loop, the cue is followed by an action, which then brings a reward. Unfortunately, in most companies, when employees generate good ideas, no reward comes, projects lag, and innovation stalls.

If employees do not receive positive reinforcement for their efforts, or even worse, are forced to comply with endless documentation requirements, long development cycles, and corporate politicking, their natural instinct to contribute shrivels. Creativity soon morphs into dysfunction.

WHERE INNOVATION DIES

It begins with a management team woefully unaware the process is broken. Next, non-technical staff, unable to produce quality output, learn to shirk responsibility as they throw projects over the fence to IT. Unwilling to place blame on management, business staff point the finger at IT ranting about why a project is late, again. Employees begin to see the company not as one, but two tribes. The business people are seen as those charged with generating ideas while the engineers are the methodical implementors, cranking out instructions verbatim.

Everyone suffers from this scenario as members of the IT department are held hostage by endless product backlogs, leaving little room to contribute their own creative wisdom. When faced with a long list of tasks and the manic pressure to complete every request urgently, engineers find themselves plugging away instead of taking the time to understand what’s truly important to the business. This endless, and often mindless, drive to complete the next item on the list isolates engineers from customer-facing employees who could help them better understand what the product actually needs to do for the user. Business people view engineers as lazy code monkeys and engineers view business people as unskilled taskmasters. This familiar pattern perpetuates in-fighting and destroys creativity and initiative.

There are various methodologies for building better technology and companies have experimented with skunk works, incubators, 20 percent time, cross-functional teams, and even software “SWAT teams.” In future posts, I’ll dive into what organizations can do to bring innovation back and help the IT department feel loved again--stay tuned here and subscribe on my blog.

Above all, management must ensure employees are rewarded for their attempts to improve the company. While the reward of social recognition or monetary incentives is nice, often the satisfaction of simply knowing the idea was implemented is sufficient to fulfill our human need to contribute. When good ideas languish in bureaucracy, the feedback loop stops, and so does innovation.

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Saturday, May 23, 2020

Trump Donates His Salary to HHS for Vaccine Research

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany announced Friday afternoon President Trump has donated his quarterly salary to the Department of Health and Human Services in the search for a Wuhan coronavirus vaccine.

"The president, as you are all well aware, donates his salary to various initiatives and parts across the federal government and this quarter he will be donating his salary to HHS, Health and Human Services, to develop new therapies for treating and preventing COVID-19 so we can safely reopen," McEnany said, touting a $100,000 check. "In honor of COVID this time, in honor of those who have passed and the studies underway."

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President Trump announced Thursday flags will be ordered at half-staff in honor of Wuhan coronavirus victims.

In the past, President Trump has donated his salary to the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Veterans Affairs and more.

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Worship Is Essential: President Trump Vows to Override Governors on Religious Liberty

Speaking from the White House Friday afternoon, President Donald Trump announced houses of worship have been classified as essential services by the federal government.

"At my direction the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is issuing guidance for communities of faith," Trump said. "Today I am identifying houses of worship, churches, synagogues and mosques as essential places that provide essential services. Some governors have deemed liquor stores and abortion clinics as essential but have left out churches and other houses of worship. It's not right. So I'm correcting this injustice and calling houses of worship essential."

"I call upon governors to allow our churches and places of worship to open right now. If there's any question, they're going to have to call me but they're not going to be successful in that call. These are places that hold our society together and keep our people united. The people are demanding to go to church and synagogues, go to their mosque. Many millions of Americans embrace worship as an essential part of life. The ministers, pastors, rabbis, imams and other faith leaders will make sure their congregations are safe as they gather and pray. I know them well, they love their congregations, they love their people. They don't want anything bad to happen to them or to anybody else," he continued. "The governors need to do the right thing and allow these very important, essential places of faith to open right now, for this weekend. If they don't do it, I will override the governors. In America we need more prayers, not less."

A number of Democratic governors around the country have continually limited and cracked down on religious services, even while congregations practiced social distancing. Some pastors have been told their rights have been "suspended" under stay-at-home orders.

Throughout the course of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, Attorney General Bill Barr has filed a number of legal suits against local governors infringing upon religious liberty.
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Friday, May 22, 2020

Democratic Party = dictatorship (don’t vote democrat)

 


Their Lenin statue is already here.

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Sunday, May 17, 2020

Confirmation: Chinese Officials Told Labs to Destroy Coronavirus Samples

Multiple government agencies from various countries, including the United States, have concluded that the coronavirus started in a lab in Wuhan. The Chinese regime did everything in their power to cover up the virus, including gagging medical personnel and reporters that were trying to sound the alarm. It was believed that the laboratories were destroying samples of the Wuhan coronavirus to cover up the country's responsibility for the pandemic. 

Chinese officials confirmed that labs were told to destroy samples of the coronavirus. China’s National Health Commission official Liu Dengfeng, however, says the labs destroyed the samples, not to cover up their culpability, but “for pandemic prevention and control, which also played an important role in preventing biosafety risks.”

“If the laboratory conditions cannot meet the requirements for the safe preservation of samples, the samples should be destroyed on the spot or transferred to a professional institution for safekeeping,” Liu told the Wall Street Journal. 

United States officials, including Attorney General William Barr, have repeatedly said they believe China destroyed samples to cover up the fact that the virus started inside their country. Liu said that claim "takes facts out of context with the aim of intentionally misleading people."

During a press conference on Friday, Liu said “national-level professional institutes” worked around-the-clock to determine what was causing the illness, the South China Morning Post reported.

“Based on comprehensive research and expert opinion, we decided to temporarily manage the pathogen causing the pneumonia as Class II – highly pathogenic – and imposed biosafety requirements on sample collection, transport and experimental activities, as well as destroying the samples,” Liu said.

China has repeatedly lied to the world about the Wuhan coronavirus. Not only did China deny scientists and researchers from being deployed to help control and contain the virus in the outbreak's early stages, but China also waited almost a week to alert the world to what was happening. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping personally asked World Health Organization Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to delay publishing vital information about the Wuhan coronavirus. The WHO parrotted Chinese talking points and repeatedly told the world that the virus was not transmissible from human-to-human contact.

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Cuomo Defends Nursing Home Policy

New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo is under fire for his disastrous policy of sending elderly Wuhan coronavirus patients to nursing homes. President Trump even approved a temporary hospital at New York City's Javitz Center to house and treat coronavirus patients. The president also sent a floating hospital packed with emergency supplies to New York to make additional space. But with a fawning press behind him, Gov. Cuomo decided in all his wisdom that elderly people, sick and contagious with the Wuhan coronavirus, should be sent instead to nursing homes full of other elderly, vulnerable people. The policy went on for weeks. The press was probably too busy looking for bad news about hydroxychloroquine to question the governor's deadly directive. 

"He worked it out so we always had available beds. Nobody was deprived of a bed or medical coverage in any way," Gov. Cuomo said on Sunday in defense of his nursing home policy. "And still, people died. Still, people died. Older people, vulnerable people are going to die from this virus. That is going to happen despite whatever you do. Because with all our progress as a society, we can't keep everyone alive."

A March 25th state mandate required nursing homes to admit suspected or diagnosed cases of the coronavirus. The ill-conceived mandate even prohibited nursing homes from requiring a coronavirus test for incoming hospital transfers. Cuomo only reversed the policy after mounting criticism earlier this month. 

"The way this has been handled by the state is totally irresponsible, negligent and stupid," Elaine Mazzotta, who lost her mother from a suspected COVID-19 infection at a Long Island nursing home, told the Associated Press. "They knew better. They shouldn’t have sent these people into nursing homes."

NPR reported last month that more than half of the COVID-19 deaths in New York state happened in nursing homes. NPR also analyzed data from 11 New York nursing homes with the highest number of deaths and found the majority of those nursing homes had a disproportionate number of minorities.

While the governor was telling young, healthy people to save lives by staying home, his administration was sending coronavirus patients to nursing homes. In April, Cuomo responded to reopen protesters by saying it was "no time to act stupid." He should have followed his own advice.

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Thursday, May 14, 2020

Tim Walz

  1. Tim Walz is a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives, representing the 1st district of Minnesota.

    Background

    The son of a public school administrator and community activist, Congressman Tim Walz was born in West Point, Nebraska on April 6, 1964. Raised in a rural community, Walz spent his summers farming with his extended family. In 1982, Tim Walz graduated from Butte High School along side his 24 classmates.

    Walz enlisted in the Army National Guard at the young age of 17, serving as a member of the Guard for twenty yeaars. After high school, Walz worked a number of odd jobs before accepting a temporary teaching position at the Native American Reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. It was his experience at the Pine Ridge reservation that convinced Tim Walz to follow his father’s lead and become an educator.

    Prior to his retirement, Tim Walz was the highest ranking enlisted National Guard soldier in southern MinnesotaPrior to his retirement, Tim Walz was the highest ranking enlisted National Guard soldier in southern Minnesota. In 1989, Walz earned a B.S. in social science education from Chadron State College in Nebraska. That year he earned the title of Nebraska Citizen-Soldier of the Year.

    After 24 years in the Army National Guard, Command Sergeant Major Walz retired from the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion in the spring of 2005. Prior to retiring, Walz served overseas with his battalion in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.[1]

    Harvard and China

    With his teaching degree complete, Harvard University offered Walz an opportunity to gain a new perspective on global education by teaching in the People's Republic of China. Working in China during 1989-1990, Walz was a member of one of the first government sanctioned groups of American educators to teach in Chinese high schools.

    Following his return, Tim Walz seized the opportunity to develop a program of cooperation between American and Chinese students. Walz established a small business called Educational Travel Adventures, Inc. through which he conducted annual educational trips to China for high school students. The business includes a scholarship program that allows students to travel and study in China regardless of their financial situation.

    Walz has also served as a visiting Fellow of International Relations at the Macau Polytechnic University, a position that "helped develop his knowledge of China’s unique international status".[2]

    Service

    Upon his return to the U.S. in 1990, Walz served full-time in the Army National Guard. He subsequently accepted a position teaching and coaching in Nebraska where he met his wife, Gwen Whipple. In 1993, Walz was named the Outstanding Young Nebraskan by the Nebraska Junior Chamber of Commerce for his service in the education, military, and small business communities.

    Married in 1994, Tim and Gwen Walz moved to Mankato, Minnesota two years later. The couple accepted positions teaching and coaching at Mankato West High School where Tim taught until his run for Congress in 2006.

    Tim Walz’s inspiring approach to teaching has gained him recognition as the 2002 Minnesota Ethics in Education award winner, 2003 Mankato Teacher of the Year, and the 2003 Minnesota Teacher of Excellence. Walz completed his master's degree in educational leadership in 2001 and is currently working on his doctorate at St. Mary’s University in Winona, Minnesota.[3]

    Congressional Delegation Visit China and Tibet

    November 14, 2015 Press Release:

    Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson, Alaska – Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi today issued the following statement after leading a historic Congressional delegation to Tibet, Beijing and Hong Kong:

    TIBET:

    “Our delegation was grateful for the opportunity to travel to Lhasa, Tibet to observe, learn and listen about life on the Tibetan plateau.

    “We engaged in candid talks with the Secretary of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), Chen Quanguo; Vice Party Secretary of TAR, Baima Chilin; and Party Secretary of Lhasa, Qi Zhala regarding the importance of respecting Tibet’s autonomy, its ecology, and the human rights and religious freedom of its diverse people.

    “Ours was the first Congressional delegation to enter Tibet since the 2008 unrest marked by protests, demonstrations and violence. The delegation recognized China’s commitment to building infrastructure across China, including in Tibet, and addressing climate change. We expressed concerns regarding freedom of religion and expression for the Tibetan people; the preservation of Tibet’s unique cultural, religious and linguistic heritage; and diplomatic and public access to Tibet.

    “We also conveyed to the Chinese government officials the strong, bipartisan support the Dalai Lama enjoys in the Congress of the United States and among the American people.

    BEIJING:

    “In Beijing, the delegation met with the Premier of the People’s Republic of China, Li Keqiang; National People’s Congress Chairman, Zhang Dejiang; and National People’s Congress Vice Chairman, Zhang Ping.

    “The delegation and Chinese officials discussed the importance of building upon President Obama and President Xi’s agreements on climate change, protection of cyber space and countering the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

    “The delegation reiterated the imperative of respect for religious freedom and expression in Tibet; autonomy and democracy in Hong Kong; and respect for human and women’s rights across China. The delegation also expressed specific concerns related to the recent arrest and detention of human rights lawyers and activists.

    “At Peking University, the delegation participated in a climate change forum with students who shared their determination to address the climate crisis.

    HONG KONG:

    “While in Hong Kong, our delegation met with Hong Kong Chief Executive C.Y. Leung and discussed the imperative of preserving Hong Kong’s autonomy and the importance of the US-Hong Kong bilateral relationship.

    “The delegation also met with Pan-Democratic, Labor and Liberal Party legislators. Our discussions with these legislators, civil society activists and student leaders, focused on the imperative of preserving Hong Kong’s autonomy, advancing democracy, and protecting the rule of law and human rights.

    CONCLUSION:

    “Our purpose for this trip was to deepen our understanding, increase our mutual respect and further strengthen US-China ties. Throughout the trip, we engaged in respectful and candid discussions on issues of importance and look forward to continuing our dialogue.

    “The delegation is grateful to U.S. Ambassador Max Baucus, US Counsel General Clifford Hart, and the US country teams in Beijing and Hong Kong for their leadership and service.”

    In addition to Leader Pelosi, the Members of the delegation are:

    • Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA), Co-Chair, Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission; Member, Agriculture Committee, Rules Committee
    • Congressman Tim Walz (D-MN), Armed Services Committee, Agriculture Committee, Veterans Affairs Committee; Congressional-Executive Commission on the People’s Republic of China
    • Congresswoman Joyce Beatty (D-OH), Member, Financial Services Committee
    • Congressman Alan Lowenthal (D-CA), Foreign Affairs Committee, Natural Resources Committee; Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission
    • Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA), Budget Committee, Oversight and Government Reform Committee; Congressional-Executive Commission on the People’s Republic of China[4]

    Wellstone connection

    Wrote Jim Hightower in the Austin Chronicle, December 22, 2006;[5]

    One group that is doing a great job of applying organization to agitation is Wellstone Action. Named for the legendary progressive senator Paul Wellstone, this group holds intensive training sessions around the country to hone the political skills of potential candidates, campaign workers, and citizen activists. Called "Camp Wellstone," these sessions empower regular folks to act on their progressive principles, to challenge even the most entrenched political establishment … and to win.
    Begun in 2003, Wellstone Action has been educating and motivating a whole new generation of grassroots leaders who are not beholden to money interests, not tied to old-line political hierarchies, and not afraid to offer a new politics based on ideas and ideals. And now, graduates of these citizenship camps are running winning campaigns all across the country.
    In the Nov. 7 election, Camp Wellstone alumni ran for local, state, and federal offices, and 78 of them were elected in 18 states. They will now be state senators, country commissioners, secretaries of state, and even members of Congress – three Wellstone grads (John Hall of New York, David Loebsack of Iowa, and Tim Walz of Minnesota) were elected to the U.S. house this year. In addition, one of Wellstone Action's trainers, Keith Ellison, was elected to the house, becoming the first Muslim to serve in Congress.

    Tim Walz team 2010

    David Richard Gilbert-Pederson October 27, 2010:

    Timoteamoo.PNG

    With Susy Bates, Andrew Mahowald, Anja Kresojevic, Alexis Pennie, Em Rose, Katie Troyer and Sarah Clarke.

    Minneapolis Riots

    In the wake of the Minneapolis riots in May 2020, Keith Ellison held a press conference on May 30 with other "community leaders" where he supported the people who were ostensibly protesting the death of George Floyd, and claimed outside elements were responsible for infiltrating the [6]

    "People that are trying to tarnish the reputations of the noble protest for justice are out there trying to mix in with the crowd so that people don't just say 'oh look all those protests are bad, their cause can't be just, they're just out there causing trouble.' ...We know that the noble, just aims of the protestors are righteous and good. But we also know that some evil elements are literally defusing themselves with the protest to destroy and cause arson so the whole community has a low opinion of the protest. Because they are not for justice for Mr. Floyd - They're against it!"

    From the article:

    "Joining Ellison was a long list of community leaders, as well as Gov. Tim Walz, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
    Some were visibly shaken as the gravity of this week’s events became clear.
    “They’re not part of our state, and they’re coming from the outside,” Klobuchar said.
    Other speakers who came together included Rev. Alfred Babington-Johnson; Mary Merill; Robert Liligren; Lul Osman; Clarence Castile; Imam Asad Zaman; Bo Thao-Urabe; Justin Terrell.

    The community leaders denounced systemic racism that they say have long contributed to inequality and tensions, and said outside anarchists were intent on causing destruction.

    “We cannot watch our brothers being murdered and, then, on top of that, watch our communities being demolished and then trying to blame us,” said Osman.

    Emilia Gonzalez Avalos, executive director of Unidos MN, a nonprofit, spoke about how minority business owners on Lake Street, the heart of the Minneapolis Latino community, sought to defend their livelihoods.


    Politics

    On November 7, 2006 Tim Walz won election to the United States House of Representatives. He defeated six-term incumbent Gil Gutknecht by a margin of 53% to 47%. On November 4, 2008 Walz was re-elected overwhelmingly in the traditional swing district held by Republicans most of its existence.

    Tim Walz represents Minnesota's 1st Congressional District which includes the communities of Worthington, Mankato, Albert Lea, Austin, Rochester and Winona.[7]

    Committees

    Walz is a member of the House Agriculture Committee, the Veteran's Affairs Committee and was recently named Vice Chair of the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, of which Tim is also a member.[8]

    Supported by Council for a Livable World

    The Council for a Livable World, founded in 1962 by long-time socialist activist and alleged Soviet agent, Leo Szilard, is a non-profit advocacy organization that seeks to "reduce the danger of nuclear weapons and increase national security", primarily through supporting progressive, congressional candidates who support their policies. The Council supported Tim Walz in his successful House of Representatives run as candidate for Minnesota.[9]

    Planned Parenthood

    Walz received $5000 in lobbying funds from Planned Parenthood in 2008.

    Lobbied by communist Mark Froemke

    Minnesotans were well-represented at the June 25, 2009 Washington DC rally for health care reform. Among the union members urging Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Rep. Tim Walz and Rep. Collin Peterson to support health care reform that will "offer quality affordable health care to America now" were: Linda Slattengren, president of MNA, Laura Askelin, president of SE MN ALC, Mark Froemke, president of the Western Minnesota ALC and Tim Lovaasen, president of the CWA State Council.[10]

    Netroots Nation

    At the 2011 Netroots Nation conference the LIUNA sponsored a Fight Back for Good Jobs rally featuring LIUNA President Terry O’Sullivan, Van Jones, Sen. Ben Cardin, Rep. Keith Ellison, Rep. Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor R. T. Rybak, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and other political, business and community leaders.[11]

    ARA endorsement, 2014

    The Alliance for Retired Americans Political Action Fund endorsed Tim Walz in 2014, also 2012.[12]

    On CAIR

    "The years you have spent serving our community and defending civil liberties are an incredible accomplishment. Thank you for the wonderful work you do in Minnesota and across our great nation.”

    Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) (October 2017).

    Staff

    As at April 18, 2011, the following had worked as staff members for Tim Walz:[13]

    External links

    References


  2. Tim walz for Congress, official bio

  4. Tim walz for Congress, official bio

  6. Tim walz for Congress, official bio

  8. [1]

  10. Hightower Report The Nobel Prize for Greed; and Camp Wellstone Winners BY JIM HIGHTOWER, FRI., DEC. 22, 2006

  12. After night of looting, arson Minnesota officials, community leaders urge people to stay home (accessed May 30 2020

  14. Tim walz for Congress, official bio

  16. Tim walz for Congress, official bio

  18. CLW website: Meet Our Candidates

  20. Minnesota AFL-CIO blog, Minnesota Labor Leaders Lobby for Health Care Reform, Submitted by jhayssen on June 30, 2009

  22. Talking Union, Lots More Union Events at Netroots Nation, Posted on June 13, 2011 by dsalaborblogmoderator

  24. PAF

    26. Legistorm: Tim Walz (accessed on April 18, 2011)

 

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Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Chairman Mao's Spirit Comes to Dallas

I think I understand now how the Chinese felt under the reign of Chairman Mao. I actually watched a nice lady from Dallas last week be prosecuted for giving haircuts.  Shelley Luther, who was trying to earn a living for her children by doing an honest day’s work at her business, Salon a la Mode, was arrested and prosecuted for that villainous act. Sitting in the courtroom of Dallas County District Judge Eric Moye, she was asked by counsel why she defied economic lockdown diktats issued by the government by opening her business. She replied, “Because I had no other choice. Because I couldn’t feed my family.”

What a heart-rending response. Like something out of Dickens. Judge Moye wasn’t moved by Ms. Luther’s pathos. In a courtroom diatribe, the smug, sanctimonious judge with job security (unless Dallas voters wisely turn him out of office in the next election) lectured Ms. Luther: “Your actions were selfish. Putting your own interests ahead of those of the community in which you live… [T]hey disrespected the executive orders of the state, the orders of the county and this city.”

I think we should all be nervous when an American jurist excoriates an American citizen for “disrespecting the executive orders of the state.” Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, surely used similar language when addressing fellow Germans in the 1930s.

And “selfish?" By working to provide for her family, her employees and her community, and risking prosecution for defying a temporary restraining order preventing her from opening her shop, Ms. Luther was anything but selfish.

But it got worse. We should sit up and take notice whenever a judge does the following: He told Luther that he would consider levying a fine against her instead of sending her to prison if she would apologize and not reopen her shop until the government deemed that heretical act permissible. Ms. Luther bravely refused to apologize and was sent to jail.

Forcing an act of contrition out of a defendant for defying “executive orders” (not laws) under threat of jail time is, or should be, a breathtaking turn of events in America. Rather than simply ruling that she had been in violation of those “executive orders,” issuing her a fine of a certain amount for every day that she was in “defiance,” and moving along, this poor excuse for a judge – and poor excuse for an American citizen – sought to compel this woman to utter words indicating obeisance to the state. Such a repellant action, particularly as a consequence of defying constitutionally and scientifically dubious orders of “The State,” is antithetical to what the Founders of our great Republic envisioned when they established a Constitution of, by and for the people.

As I heard the chilling words of the judge demanding an apology from this courageous woman, the Cultural Revolution in China came to mind.

The Cultural Revolution occurred in the 1960s under the leadership of Mao Zedong, head of the Chinese Communist Party, and a psychopath if there ever was one.

In an effort to “purify itself of saboteurs and apostates,” in the words of the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos, Mao’s regime enacted paroxysmal savagery on the population of China, executing or driving to suicide 1.5 million of its own citizens. Two hundred million people were brought to the point of chronic malnutrition by the devastating impact Mao and the Chinese Communist Party’s policies had on that nation’s economy. Twenty million people were uprooted from cities and sent to the countryside to till the soil and an estimated 36 million were persecuted.

The horrors of that period of Chinese history cannot be understated, or easily grasped, with Mao mobilizing the youth of the country – his Red Guard – to unleash horrific cruelty. Many in the Communist Party itself were targeted. The toll on China’s intellectual class and the “bourgeoisie” was perhaps the most brutal. Teachers, doctors, landlords and others deemed by Mao to be deplorables and threats to his reign were dragged before their neighbors to be humiliated, beaten and executed. Friends, children and spouses of the condemned were encouraged to take part in their persecution, or risk facing their own demise.

And here’s the reason I bring this up: A hallmark of this horrific treatment of those Chinese whom the government designated for destruction was forced apologies from the victims. Apologies from a coercive state fond of issuing “executive orders.”

I am not of course equating America in 2020 to China in the throes of the 1960s Cultural Revolution. However, we should be concerned by indicators large and small that the United State, as sophisticated and democratic as it likes to think it is, could end up in the same place. Small indicators like a judge coercing an apology from an American citizen for trying to feed her family or otherwise risk jail time. And large indicators, like much of America’s population effectively under house arrest and much of its economy locked down on the rationale that it can thereby mitigate a virus that is already “in the wild,” apparently having already infected, without their being aware, a huge percentage of the population.


The insanity must stop. When we see YouTube removing videos featuring highly credible, knowledgeable doctors and scientists – like Daniel Erickson, Artin Massihi, and Scott Atlas – because they happen to hold opinions that differ from the government’s received wisdom, we should, again, sit up and take notice. These are not the actions that should occur in a free, robust democratic Republic founded on the principle that ideas should be debated passionately and without fear of censorship. Such things occur in tyrannies.

While history is replete with brutality by many nations, a Chinese parallel seems particularly apt, since China gifted the world with the current pandemic.  And I little doubt that Chairman Mao would smile upon Americans with authoritarian impulses, like Judge Moye, the overlords at YouTube, and Democratic governors across the land who insist on continuing enforced self-isolation for their citizens and destroying their economy in the process.
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Coexistence with China or Cold War II?

Under fire for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump, his campaign and his party are moving to lay blame for the 80,000 U.S. dead at the feet of the Communist Party of China and, by extension, its longtime General Secretary, President Xi Jinping.

"There is a significant amount of evidence" that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab, said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week.

Trump himself seemed to subscribe to the charge:

"This is worse than Pearl Harbor. This is worse than the World Trade Center. There's never been an attack like this... It could have been stopped in China. It should have been stopped right at the source."

There is talk on Capitol Hill of suspending sovereign immunity so China may be sued for the damages done by the virus that produced a U.S. shutdown and a second Great Depression where unemployment is projected to reach near the 25% of 1933.

The Trump campaign has begun to target the Democratic nominee as "Beijing Biden" for his past collusion with China and his attack on Trump for "hysterical xenophobia" when Trump ended flights from China.

What is the historical truth?

On China, Trump is the first realist we have had in the Oval Office in decades. But both parties colluded in the buildup of China as she vaulted over Italy, France, Britain, Germany and Japan to become the world's second power in the 21st century.

Both parties also dismissed Chinese trade surpluses with the U.S., which began at a few billion dollars a year in the early 1990s and have grown to almost $500 billion a year. Neither party took notice until lately of our growing dependency on Beijing for products critical to our defense and for drugs and medicines crucial to the health and survival of Americans.

The mighty malevolent China we face today was made in the USA.

But what do we do now? Can we coexist with this rising and expansionist power? Or must we conduct a new decades-long Cold War like the one we waged to defeat the Soviet Empire and Soviet Union?

The U.S. prevailed in that Cold War because of advantages we do not possess with the China of 2020.

From 1949-1989, a NATO alliance backed by 300,000 U.S. troops in Europe "contained" the Soviet Union. No Soviet ruler attempted to cross the dividing line laid down at Yalta in 1945. Nor did we cross it.

East of the Elbe, the Soviet bloc visibly failed to offer the freedoms and prosperity the U.S., Western Europe and Japan had on offer after World War II. America won the battle for hearts and minds.

Moreover, ethnic nationalism, the idea that separate and unique peoples have a right to determine their own political and cultural identity and destiny, never died in the captive nations of Europe and the USSR.

China today does not suffer from these deficiencies to the same degree. Unlike the USSR, China has four times our population. Where the USSR could not compete economically and technologically, China is a capable and dynamic rival of the U.S.

Moreover, if we begin a Cold War II with China, we would not be starting with the advantages Truman's America, undamaged at home in World War II, had over Stalin's pillaged and plundered land in 1945.

Where ethnic nationalism tore the USSR apart into 15 nations, today's China is more of an ethno-nationalist state with Han Chinese constituting 1 billion of China's 1.4 billion people.


There are millions of Tibetans, Uighurs, Kazakhs in southwest and west China, and tens of millions of Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Falun Gong and other religious minorities. But China is unlike the multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual Moscow-centered and Russian-controlled Soviet Empire and USSR that shattered after 1989.

China's weaknesses?

She is feared and distrusted by her neighbors. She sits on India's lands from the war of the early 1960s. She claims the whole South China Sea, whose waters and resources are also claimed by Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan.

The peoples of Hong Kong and Taiwan fear that Beijing intends to overrun and rule them.

Even Vladimir Putin has reason to be suspicious as Beijing looks at the barren but resource-rich lands of Siberia and the Russian Far East, some of which once belonged to China.

China is thus a greater rival than the USSR of Stalin and Khrushchev and Brezhnev, but the U.S. is not today the nation of Ronald Reagan, with its surging economy and ideological conviction we would one day see the ideology of Marx and Lenin buried.

Three decades of post-Cold War foolish and failed democracy-crusading have left this generation not with the conviction and certitude of Cold War America, but with ashes in their mouths and no stomach to spend blood and treasure converting China to our way of life.
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Sunday, May 10, 2020

Why John F Kennedy died

What John F Kennedy did in 1962 meant the death. Yes he ordered the blockade in the Cuban missile crisis, but there were Soviet submarines with nuclear tipped torpedo involved.  Kennedy ordered the US Destroyers to throw hand garnades into the water to bring up the Soviet Submarines. The lead Soviet submarine captain was going to use the nuclear torpedo.  Soviet Subs have a Soviet political officer and a KGB agent on board.  The Soviet political officer on the lead submarine had to talk the captain out of launching the torpedo on a US aircraft carrier in the blockade which almost happened. World War III happening.
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Saturday, May 09, 2020

We should save more

You should read 1932’s A Bubble that broke the world by Garet Garrett. It’s a primer for our age explaining how central banks contributed to the debt driven up to to the 1929 stock market crash and great depression. You can learn about stocks deterioration before hitting rock bottom. Central bankers were pushing on a string like in 1929. The more debt that is made, the more unproductive the debt becomes. That’s not popular. What is popular is the magic money tree, because a country that prints its own money so the stimulus packages that are printed in US and Europe are going to give headaches later on. That leads to deflation. The only way out of it is to get the Americans savings up dramatically. The reason why we made out of World War II depression was Americans savings were 25% highs increased by wartime rationing and income gains from exports and World War II. The Great Recession caused by Wall Street had done sometime to Main Street is fresh in people’s minds where Wall Street got a huge bailout allowing for quick recovery and few were sent to prison. There is a huge disconnection between the two. There is 30 million jobless on main street after 6 weeks. The ones lucky enough to have jobs are seeing decrease in wages. There is a general feeling of anxiety across the country. Meanwhile the stock market had its best time in 33 years. This leaves the financial sector immune from bankruptcies and layoffs that happens to mainstreet corporate america. If the federal reserve is going to inject trillions of dollars into capital markets like in 2008, it will only benefit the better off segments of American society. The longer this exists, the greater the conflict between rich vs. poor, corporations verses individuals, current vs. future generations, connected vs. alienated. The federal government could look at morale hazard or any risk of future financial stability infecting the real economy. If we only accept that everything will be favor with anybody that is already privileged, nothing will be accomplished. The rich have this idea that the rest of the country is depended on them and not the other way around. The solution is for the government and private sector to find balance.

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Why Linux is better then Windows and Mac OS X from my experience

I want to say Linux reigns supreme over Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Mac OS 10.9 and FreeBSD. I had Debian in high school Linux +. RHEL in 2004, OpenSUSE in 12th grade. Then I was introduced to Knoppix in 2005 Linux+. Ubuntu in 2007, Fedora in 2008 Linux+, Cent OS from 2012. FreeBSD in 2012. In the beginning with Windows XP, I dual booted Debian with Windows. Windows blue screen of death crashed and then I used the NTFS-3g driver to get stuff off Windows in Linux until 2010. I stored my MP3s on a “MP3” partition I used with Partition Magic and later G-Parted so I wouldn’t lose that partition. In 2013, I changed the mp3 partition from a NTFS file system to EXT4 file system. I kept my mp3s and photos on DVDR so I could retrieve all of them after my operating system crashed or my hard drive was fried.tu Beginning in 2014, I realized that an old Ubuntu OS can survive six years with some kernel updates and that I wouldn’t lose my mp3s on the EXT4 partition, because my computer was just like a old Apache web server! The Only other OS that lasted from 2015 since Mac OS X 10.9 where the hard drive says I used for 2 months total uptime and 500 starts. My Linux I used from 2014 says the hard drive was used for 1 year 10 uptime and 4442 startups. In the linux, the sometimes file manager crashed, but not the OS. Windows XP, Windows Vista Windows 7, Windows 8.1 would freeze up completely after 18 hours. I used stream ripper to stream Shoutcast onto the hard drive in Windows where after 18 hours, Windows XP or Windows Vista would have a frozen screen. I don’t get viruses in Linux. I don’t get Trojans in Linux. I remember getting viruses or Trojans on Windows and having to reformat the hard drive, reinstall apps, and mp3 files totaling 6 hours. Windows sometimes installs viruses with Windows updates. Windows 10 does timentry while linux doesn't. I had virtual machines in 2012, but sometimes the save state of the images failed and the operating system on that image cold booted. I still wanted windows to play Windows PC games so I kept it updated to Windows 10. Windows 10 has Windows explorer crash. Windows 8.1 always seemed to freeze from PC Games and Youtube videos! Windows 10 isn't that stable. There's a reason why hospitals are using Windows 7 and Windows XP. When you repair Windows 10, the Windows Update takes 12 hours during the re-install. This software for my Linux called PlayonLinux installs a lot PC games from the 2000s. My 8-core Intel Mac with Mac OS 10.9 became a photography, retro videogame emulator and mp3 storage. I wanted a iphone since 2015, because then I have imessage, and 5 years of OS updates. I got an ipad, because I thought it was going to be a Nintendo 3DS like with mobile games. I played Poker, Solitaire, Super Mario Run, Mario Kart Tour and Pokemon Go on the ipad so far. PC-BSD 10 worked great, had OS stability, but the files were obsolete within months and no updates. Android phones slows down or have performance problems after 2 years. I had experience with FreeBSD 8.2 to FreeBSD 12.1. Then PC-BSD only had months before the upload respiratory with the current latest software version was broken with my operating system. Linux updates its repositories for 4 years, then you can update Firefox and libreoffice manually for additional 3 years. PC-BSD wouldn’t dual boot with Windows unless it had Unix File System and not ZFS file system. My guess is FreeBSD beats Windows, because Playstation 4 beats Xbox One in sales. Linux is free because 1000s of people submit code every year, Microsoft uses it to run Microsoft Azure. It's free because the Linux Organization is backed by big corporations like Microsoft, IBM,Intel, Google, Samsung, Vmware, there is freedom with what you want to do with the OS. Linux users had a grudge against how exe files where downloaded, because their terminal works 100% of the time. A single command will update everything you have installed to the latest features. You can update whenever you want or never. It has live kernel updates that only require a reboot, but reboot when you want to. Linux can run on supercomputers to a toaster. You can install Linux on updated laptops or the Raspberry Pi. On a catastrophic event, Linux will probably keep running. The drivers are open source too in Linux so they will be supported long after the manufacture discontinues support. Because there is 1000s of eyes on the code, vervalance is better. KDE and Gnome have desktop themes that can make the desktop more Windows-like or Mac-like since KDE 3.5 in the mid- 2000s. If you like the terminal a lot, you can use X-Windows, the most basic desktop environment. Since all the GNU programs are in the same folders, distribution hopping can be done. If you want to be most secure, you can run Tails Linux off a USB and use Tor browser. I don't check my email constantly, because the ROI is better then immediate response. The video editing in KDENLIVE and photo editing in GIMP is better then Photoshop and Power Director. The hours doing stuff is cutdown. If I move a lot of files, I'll use Crusader in Linux. Windows works 1 way. Mac OS works 1 way. You just accept their limitations.

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Wednesday, May 06, 2020

Five things I hate about retail



Managers: they are directly influencing if you hate your job. If you have any fun at work. Many people at corporate say work isn’t supposed to be fun. Fun is possible. I’ve done it before. I can be a hard worker but have fun at the same time. When I’m having fun, a lot gets done, the customers are happy because they see you’re happy, and a better work place environment for everybody. A positive manager can change the entire atmosphere of a store. I would hate the manager that would give us busy work. Then another manager comes up and says, that busy work I’m doing, I shouldn’t have done that. Then I say the other useless manager told me to set the tvs like that. And what the hell. They would yell at us for existing. They would nitpick anything they could say. I get if I’m not supposed to talk if there is customers around, but if there are no customers around, then what is wrong with that? You don’t need to helicopter around the departments to make sure people aren’t talking. I have things to do, I don’t need stupid busy work.


#2 is customers who are barely below managers. The customers can make or break my day. Managers are number 1 because it’s guarenteed that they will be there again whereas the customers are random bag. There are really cool customers that understands what my job is, that I’m a human being and treats me as such.. They treat me with respect, they care about my opinion. A terrible customer will come in and act like everything I said is a lie. Why don’t the customer google it before coming in before that’s how you’re going to treat me. Depending where you work depends on the frequency, and at Circuit City and the gas station, this was moderate. There is constantly rude people coming in the store, not believing what I say, not beliving things are out of stock, things you show on a computer and ask for a manager, they’re looking to get me into trouble, they’re cussing me out. They’re going to make my day miserable. That’s why customers are near the top of the things I hate for retail. Customers look down on you, even if the customer is unemployed. It screws with my mentality and flushes self esteem down the toliet.


Third, when a customer gets close to an associate like me I’m supposed to acknowledge them. This is like a NPC in Elder Scrolls V or Final Fantasy. “How are you?” “How can I help you?” Its a corporate direction, but its the wrong corporate direction. Corporate always seem like they’re non-humans like they’re out of touch! They think certain types of marketing will work, when they don’t? Circuit City went bankrupt in 2008. They think acknowledge people will make them buy stuff like calling them guests make them feel more welcome to which is kinda creepy. Corporate is a weird overlord that you never really see. Its text on a page 9 times out of 10, and I need to follow it blindly or suffer severe consciences. They could tell you a lot of crazy stuff that you’re not supposed to be doing during Covid 19.


Scheduling. Most people who are temporate workers don’t get guaranteed days off. When I get days off, they’re not together. I never get that relaxation period where I fully decompress. It’s like Sunday. I can’t stay up late. I have to worry about the next day. I can’t really relax during the day. Saturday is great. I can go outside on Saturday. I can do whatever I want. I can stay up late. Friday is a close second. I can stay up late on Friday. I’ll never fully relax unless I have Saturday and Sunday off. If I was part time, I don’t know the hours every week at Circuit City. It takes a lot of time and effort to get a full time job at Circuit City. They cut it close to forty hours a week so they don’t have to give me benefits. Corporate does a lot of stuff so I don’t get benefits. There are a lot fo people in retail over 26 that need health insurance benefits, because they’re not on their parents insurance anymore. There are a lot of elderly who work at Circuit City who work there due to health care.

Number 5 is the dread that I’m never going to get out of retail. The likelihood that this job will be my job forever. I would go home, drained, not wanting to do anything, just die on the couch and play videogames! Ignoring my voices that this could be my job forever. This is when at Circuit City, I was surrounded my middle age employees and elderly working there for 15+ years. If I have any of those 20 year pins, I’m screwed. I lost the game theory of life and there is no do-over. If you’re in retail for 20 years, I feel for you. I have a college degree. Without a college degree in the 2000s, I could still feel the dread of staying in retail forever.

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