My advice to Trump ……. Broker a deal.

Now we’ve had our three debates, we are settling into the winter season before the first caucuses and primaries. You tout that you are a deal maker. You say that you will be a great leader for this country. You say that you will be a great world leader. Your first goal should be to become the leader of the GOP. You need to step up to the plate, broker deals with your contenders, and get them to fall in line behind you. You need to listen and address their concerns. You’ll probably have to kick some money to them for their campaign debts if they have any, and show us that you can take charge of the GOP and set its course. By the time the first caucus in Iowa happens, you should have a majority of your opponents out of the race, backing you, especially if you are a deal maker as you claim. I have little doubt that you are the deal maker you claim to be, but it’s show time.

You also need to do something about the GOP leadership. If you want to be president and come from the GOP party, you need to take charge of it. You need to do some back room dealing to get someone other than  Reince Priebus as chairman and you need to call Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan (if he indeed becomes Speaker) to your Trump Towers for meetings, and broker deals with them to support you, and start working on policy that you’d like to see them work on while you are going through the process of being elected. You claim to be a great leader. Then you already know this is the route you need to take. Start leading!

Here are my thoughts on your major contenders in the race;

Dr. Carson – Nice guy. What position could you offer him in a Trump administration where he would feel like he’s using his God given talents? He’ll be a tricky one to appease. I’m sure you can figure something out as Dr. Carson is a very intelligent man and you do seem to have some nice rapport with him.

Jeb Bush – Well, let’s face it. The Bush’s are powerhouses in the Republican Party. You’ll probably have to appease them. Maybe an ambassadorship to Mexico or some important South American country? Maybe a cabinet post where he can feel important without having much influence on America? If you don’t appease Bush and his family, they will work against you behind the scenes. It’s no different than how Obama had to handle Hillary.

Chris Christie – If there ever was a good candidate for Attorney General! The only problem is that he’ll go after states where there’s legal marijuana and that isn’t popular. Of course, as leader of the GOP, you could push for a party platform change and push for the feds to get out of the marijuana business altogether and leave it to the states like alcohol. Christie seems like a straight shooter. The only reason he’d go after marijuana is because he feels he needs to follow the law. Christie a good man, one you should utilize in your administration. He’s just not right for president. He could do the job, but he’s not the best option.

Ted Cruz – Now there’s a man that would be loyal to you and serve you well. Being a Texan, he’d be good in your cabinet, dealing either with energy matters, or financial ones. But, there is a better candidate for financial matters…..

Rand Paul – He would make a great Secretary of the Treasury. He could then audit the Fed and help get America financially strong again. Financial matters are the Paul family’s strong points.

Carly Fiorina – If you didn’t broker a deal with her, it might look like you don’t appreciate women. She might make a good Ambassador to the United Nations as she is quite articulate, and would do a great job representing America on the world stage.

Mike Huckabee – Here’s a guy you should seriously consider as your VP. I have another candidate that would also work well as your VP, but Huckabee is very Reaganesque and would appear great on camera. He is also highly intelligent, very articulate, well liked, and he won the Iowa caucus in 2008. He also has experience dealing with the Clintons. He’s very popular in the South.

Marco Rubio – Ambassador to Cuba. Need I say more?

Bobby Jindahl – He’s also a really good guy. To be  honest, he’d be a good guy to take over Reince Priebus’s position in the party. He’s young. He’s a hard worker. I think it would be a great position for him if he’d accept.

Rick Santorum – What to do with Rick? Does it matter if you appease Rick? He does have some pull with the social conservatives. It would be better to have him on board than not. I’m sure you can strike a deal with him.

Rick Perry – Yes, Rick is out of the race, but he was a very good guy. He was a very successful governor in Texas and his talents should be utilized. If you didn’t use Huckabee as a VP, Perry would also be good in that position. Perry is probably the most like you out of all of the other Republican candidates, at least in personality. Where I think Perry would work best though is as Secretary of Defense. Perry has bonafide military experience as a commissioned officer in the United States Air Force, and seeing that the future of defense will be in air power, including drones, he would be a great fit.

The rest of the candidates are such small potatoes that if you get a majority of the ones listed above, the others will fall in line. Jeb is your biggest concern right now because he has all that establishment money behind him. It’s one thing to beat him, but if his people are unhappy, they will do everything in their power behind the scenes to destroy you. You’ll probably have to also meet with all the movers and shakers behind the Republican party, including the Koch Brothers, and assure them that if you’re president, they’ll still be rich. They just won’t be able to control politics for awhile from their office in Wichita, Kansas. They’ll have to run for president themselves, like you, or else mind their own business.

Granted, I’m just throwing out options regarding the candidates above, but I’m serious when I say that you should be working right now to build a coalition. The mainstream media and the democrats are counting on the Republicans to tear each other to shreds over the nominating process. Just like what happened at the final Republican CNBC debate, wouldn’t it be nice if the Republicans would work together instead of against each other? I’ve said it before – you claim to be the deal maker. Then make it happen! Show America that you can do what you say!

Hurricane Patricia…..my memory of Hurricane Isabel

Living here in Iowa, we rarely make acquaintances with Hurricanes. If we get any association with a hurricane, it generally comes from those that land in Texas, get into the jet stream, and dump a lot of rain on Iowa as a tropical depression. Even then, that’s a rare occurrence as the jet stream usually grabs hold of those systems and kicks them east into Illinois and Indiana instead. Usually the greatest effect from any hurricane in Iowa is that it puts our own weather into a holding pattern for a few days.

Hurricane Patricia  is in the news today. They say it’s about to hit Mexico and is currently the strongest hurricane on record in the western hemisphere. I have been reading stories about the evacuations and preparations going on in Mexico right now and one thing about the stories reminded me of my one true experience with a hurricane, Hurricane Isabel in 2003. It’s that it’s already raining ahead of the hurricane in Mexico.

I was on my way to Williamston, North Carolina in mid-September of 2003 with a load of kosher beef trimmings out of the Agri-Processors plant in Postville, Iowa. There in Williamston was a hot dog plant that made hot dogs from these trimmings. The weather was beautiful September weather when I left Iowa. I spent the night around Louisville as I always did on the first night. The next day I remember I took the southern route to Williamston which took me through Knoxville, Tennessee and across I-40 through North Carolina. This is as opposed to the northern route which took me across I-64 from Louisville through Charleston, then down through West Virginia, Virginia, and into North Carolina. I had some bad luck the previous time through Charleston with traffic that stopped abruptly in front of me and allowed my load to slip off of the pallets. Why Agri-Processors never shrink wrapped the cardboard combos to the pallets is beyond me, but that load had to be hand unloaded and they were not happy in Williamston.

As I was travelling across North Carolina, it was the evening of the second night. I had to deliver the next morning. It started raining. I was east of Greensboro, actually east of Burlington, heading for the Durham/Raleigh area where I’d catch Route 64 and head east. This area was under intense road construction at the time and I was in a construction zone, doing 55 MPH. I came over a small hill and there was a Cadillac in my lane with a flat tire. They couldn’t pull over, so they were driving about 15 MPH. I had to slam on my brakes. I had nowhere to go. The shoulder had been replaced with a cement barrier and there was very thick traffic on my left. I knew it wasn’t good. While I didn’t hit that Cadillac, I knew the load in the back probably wasn’t on the pallets anymore. I found a truck stop and went to bed for the night.

The next morning I woke up. It was cloudy. That morning, the news was that Johnny Cash and John Ritter had passed away. I’ll never forget it because John Ritter reminded me of my father. In fact, he was only born one day before Dad. I also listened to WSM out of Nashville at the time. They were on my Sirius Satellite Radio (although I don’t think they are anymore). They were playing a lot of Johnny Cash tunes. Sure enough, I got to Williamston and the load had shifted off of the pallets. The guy looked at me and told me that he wasn’t going to unload this one. He handed me a fork and told me it was my job this time.

I unloaded 40,000 pounds of beef trimmings by hand. It took me over 4 hours! All I had was a food grade pitchfork! The unloading guy would bring me a plastic tote and I would fork the meat over from the combo into his tote. I was still in relatively good health at the time. It was the last time that I recall doing that level of labor in my life. Only a year later I would start becoming pretty ill. I remember when the load was unloaded, it was afternoon. I pulled away from the dock and had to change clothes as I was soaked to the bone from sweat and I had bits of meat on me. I felt very ill as I wasn’t used to working so hard. Truthfully, I am surprised I didn’t have a heart attack. Thankfully, I had quit smoking a year earlier.

My next stop was up in Severn, North Carolina, up by the Virginia border. I had until the next morning, so I left Williamston. It was cloudy and there were rain squalls at this point, but nothing serious. I drove up Highway 17 and caught Highway 13 which took me up to Suffolk where I knew there was a small truck stop where I could spend the evening. Just north of the Highway 17 & 13 split, on the north side of Windsor, I came across this peanut place that I had passed on previous trips, but never had the time to stop. Since I had the time, I wheeled in there. The place is called Bertie County Peanuts, and they have a website online. They are a small outfit, about the size of Krob’s in my hometown of Walker, Iowa. There’s a cotton field across the road. I sat inside there and visited with the equally inquisitive employee and spent about an hour or so at the place. The guy was even nice enough to walk me across the road to show me the cotton field and explain how cotton grows, and how they pick it. I ended buying a satchel of peanuts from the guy. He told me that all the peanuts in the store taste terrible because they aren’t refrigerated. He said that peanuts have oil in them and that if you want the best tasting peanuts, you had to buy ones that have been kept cool immediately after roasting. His were kept in a cooler and I can attest that his tasted far superior to anything I’ve ever eaten from a store. I left there and got up to the little truck stop in Suffolk, Virginia

There is a television station around Suffolk called WAVE. I will never forget that as I thought of a tidal wave and felt that if a large wave ever struck the area, they’d be the aptly named station to watch regarding the event. Their news was wall to wall that evening regarding the impending hurricane, Isabelle. It was still a few days out, but was already a Category 5 storm. It was still cloudy and the radar showed bands of rain from the hurricane starting to make landfall, even though the hurricane was still a long ways out. They said that it was about to start raining, and stay raining. Before dark, the rain came and never abated during the rest of my time in that area.

I awoke the next morning and it was certainly raining. One thing about the rain out on the east coast that I noticed is that it’s not a cold of a rain the way we get here in Iowa in September. It might have been a product of a more southerly latitude, but the rain wasn’t cold. It was warm and humid, and raining like crazy. It would soak you to the bone. It created light fog conditions and it was hard keeping my windows clear. I learned a long time ago that cracking your window does more to keep your windows clear than the defroster alone does. After a quick bite to eat, I left along U.S. Route 58 heading west, then caught Virginia Route 35, and headed south through Boykins, Virginia, and down to a business called Resinall at Severn, NC, just across the border from Virginia. It was raining cats and dogs there. I backed up to the dock and waited to get loaded. After awhile, nothing was happening, so I went inside. A “gentleman” inside informed me that they could smell “something” in the trailer and saw what looked like dried blood on the floor. Indeed, there was some dried blood on the floor, but it didn’t smell that bad to me. There wasn’t much blood at all. The guy told me that they would refuse to load me unless I went somewhere to wash out. Fair enough.

Then began a long process of trying to find a place to wash out. It was decided that I was to go to Emporia, Virginia and wash my trailer out, then return to load. So, off through the rain I went to Emporia and there I had the trailer washed out. On the way back, I heard a lady honking her horn at me in Boykins. It seems my door had come unlocked and was flapping about back there. God bless her! Someone could have gotten hit by that door. I got back to Severn and they proceeded to load me. I will say this, these guys were arrogant pricks. They wouldn’t even come outside to tell me that they wouldn’t load me the first time I was there. I was supposed to “figure it out” I guess when nothing happened after an hour. They must have thought that I was supposed to sit there and watch them, so that’s what I did the second time and the jerk on the forklift kept whistling, “If I only had a brain” from the Wizard of Oz, as if I was stupid. Anyhow, they loaded me with pallets of raw pine tree resin and I went to the peanut place in town to scale myself and realized that I was too heavy on the nose of the trailer. No matter how forward I moved my tandems, I couldn’t make it work. Trust me, I stood in that bone soaking rain and tried! So, back to Resinall I went!

They were not happy that I needed the load reloaded and redistributed. This time they told me that if I needed reloaded, it would cost me. Pricks! So back to the scale I went and it was loaded really heavy on the tandems. I stood out there in the pouring rain, beating on those pins which hold the tandems in place, and slid the tandems all the way to the rear of the trailer. I was still over weight on the tandems. I knew these guys were messing with me now. They went from one extreme to the other. I figured I only had a few scales to cross, so I’d try and hit them at night when they’d be closed. Off to the truck stop in Emporia I went. I still remember eating a seafood buffet and being surprised at the nearly 10% sales tax that I was charged there. I went back out to my truck and did some paperwork. It was just starting to get dark. I watched as a truck with a load of pipe was leaving the truck stop and was forced to slam on his brakes as a car came zipping over the hill. The pipe on his trailer slid to the front and hit his headache rack. Sadly for him, his headache rack was attached to the tractor, so he was now unable to turn his truck. He had to back up in a straight line (which he was thankfully able to do) and then he had to unhook his trailer. As I was getting ready to go to bed, there were forklifts starting to show up to work on his load. I then went to bed. It was still a constant rain.

I woke up very early the next morning. It might have been 2 or three in the morning. The truck whose load of pipe had shifted forward was now gone. He must have gotten it all figured out and got on his way. It was still raining, dark and gloomy. I left the truck stop and headed north up to Petersburg, then Richmond, Virginia via I-95 and then grabbed I-64 and headed west. Out past Charlottesville, there is a section of I-64 like no other interstate that I have traveled before. Due to the mountains, trees, elevation, and other factors, there is a considerable amount of fog in this area. There have been several deadly wrecks along this stretch, all attributed to poor visibility due to fog. For this reason, they installed lights into the roadway of I-64, like an airport runway. This particular morning, the interstate was lit up because of the rain and fog, and I got the pleasure of driving down the interstate this way, the only time that I had traveled this stretch with the lights on.

By the time I reached West Virginia, the rain was breaking up and by the time I got into Kentucky, the sun started coming out again. By the time I got home, it was typical fall like weather back in Iowa. It was sunny, dry, and cool. The load that I had on had to deliver in Des Moines and I had a few extra days before my delivery date, so I stopped at the house. The hurricane made landfall while I was sitting in my easy chair back home in Wadena. Isabelle wreaked a lot of havoc on that area. The main culprit was all that rain and flooding. They had problems with sever flooding all the way into West Virginia, where I had been only days earlier. Thankfully I got out of that area before the bulk of the storm hit, but I do remember that while I was watching television back in Suffolk, the night before I loaded in Severn, Isabelle was a Category 5 Hurricane, but was still a couple of days out at least. Yet, it was raining.

I delivered my load to Firestone in Des Moines and I told them that they were lucky to get their shipment as the place I had loaded from was getting smacked around by that hurricane. The guy shrugged his shoulders. To him, Severn, North Carolina could have been on another planet for all he was concerned. He was busy, working, and the weather was beautiful outside! I had experiences like this a lot when I drove semi. Like Mary Poppins, I popped in to and out of people’s lives and their parts of the country. Now that I’ve sat here to home for about 8 years, I try and remind myself that what I see on the news is reality for someone out there, far from me. For those poor people in Mexico, I can empathize with them. While I have never sat through a hurricane while it has hit, I have seen what it’s like in the days leading up to one. It’s miserable and it’s wet! So when they say that it’s raining in Mexico while they prepare for this Hurricane Patricia, it reminds me of that time I had just a fleeting moment with Hurricane Isabelle in 2003.

Two Months Benzo Free

I took my last dose of poison on the morning of August 13th, 2015. I had been on Xanax, .25mg, twice a day for about 6 months. I had taken it as needed for about two years before that. I had mainly used it to help me sleep on stressful nights. I wish I had never taken it at all.

My withdrawal has been a difficult one for me. I spent the better part of the first month off of the drug stuck in bed. I was sick like I have never been before. Not even during my worst infections that I have had have I been as sick as I have been since discontinuing Xanax. Even at two months off of the drug that was legally prescribed to me, I suffer withdrawal symptoms. Just late last week I had a rough night where my heart was racing, my body hurt, and I was sweating profusely. I barely slept. Even today I feel the effects of withdrawal.

In the first days, I suffered from everything under the sun. The worst withdrawal problems were the insomnia with adrenaline rushes. It would make my heart race and I felt like I was dying of heart failure. I sweat terribly and had really terrible bouts of depression and anxiety. I was a mess. I take that back. Even a mess looked good compared to what I was. I was beyond a mess. Slowly, I have transitioned to a phase they call “windows and waves”. This is where I feel fairly normal – “windows” – and then go back into benzo hell – “waves”. These windows and waves come and go at whim. It’s like being locked up by a serial rapist and he can come and go and rape me at whim. I have no control over when I am attacked. I do not know when my predicament will end. I have been told, and have faith, that it will end someday. I pray for that day.

Some of the early symptoms have quieted down to the point that I can tolerate them, or they visit so infrequently that I don’t think of them often. No longer do my eyes roll uncontrollably in my head. I can watch television again without it making sick, most of the time. When I’m in a  bad wave it still bugs me. Light doesn’t bother me as bad, but there are days where it does. Bright sun in the evening still pesters me. My computer monitors are still turned down to dim. The incessant vertigo has left me for the most part. Sometimes I still get it when objects move when I don’t expect them, or when riding in the van. In the early days, it was there 24/7. The heart attack sensations rarely happen anymore. Late last week my chest hurt in that bad window, but it didn’t last as long or as badly as before. I’m hoping it never returns like it did previously. The insomnia is much better for the most part. I still have some issues with it, but I always have. Part of it is that I sit at these computers or watch television late in the evening. I should learn to shut these things off a 8 o’clock and find something to do that doesn’t involve artificial light.

I’m not having the deep depression or the really bad anxiety attacks anymore. Knock on wood! I’m not getting as many muscle pains or cramps as I had in the early days. I still get some, but not to the extreme level they were at. My brain isn’t quite as foggy. I’m not having trouble finding words like I did in the early weeks. I’m able to write much better. I also noticed in the early days, if I tried to write something like this, I would start to feel the benzo dogs come attack me. Just trying to slice a tomato sent my body into attack mode. I can now slice a tomato without feeling like hell! I’m still not to 100%, but I am better.

Like I said, I am still sensitive to bright light. I wouldn’t dare want to be around a strobe light. If I get tired, my vision sort of washes out. I find that closing my eyes and leaving them closed for awhile helps. I am sensitive to sound. I now sleep with ear plugs in. KinDee assures me she’ll wake me up if the smoke alarm were to go off. When the kids fight and quarrel, it makes me feel icky, but not as bad as it did in the early weeks. I’m still having digestive issues. My stomach is all messed up and I have a constant pressure behind my sternum. I also get short of breath easily, and I don’t like that too well. I get a bad ringing in my ears. Some days it’s better than others, but when the benzo dogs drag me into another wave, it’s generally pretty loud. I get really strange headaches. They are intense pain that makes me feel sick and feel like a stabbing in my head. Ibuprofen nor Tylenol touches it. Neither does closing my eyes. It’s something I am forced to endure. I still get muscle pain and aches, just not as bad as I did weeks ago. My stomach really is messed up. I feel nauseous a lot. My intestines aren’t right either and I’m eating yogurt and taking it easy on them. The emergency room doctor that I saw weeks ago told me that our guts are full of serotonin and benzo receptors and that it was normal to have a sick stomach. Ugh! It’s one of my worst symptoms as I write this. I too hope this will pass.

I’m sure I’m missing out on many of the things that are bothering me right now. Sufficed to say, I’m far from being 100%, but I’ve come quite a ways since I started my journey. I remember that back in the first week or two of my journey, I didn’t feel hunger, tiredness, the urge to urinate, or do other bodily functions, or even thirst. I felt like a zombie. I had to force myself to drink and eat. I took a cup and said to myself that I needed to drink that amount for the day. My urine was really dark there for awhile. I actually lost 80 pounds! I know it doesn’t look like it, but that’s what the scale has told me. I’ve been a sick dog.

I know a lot of you have prayed for me these past few months and I want to thank you for it. I want to ask for your continued prayers as I’m by no means out of the woods yet. From everything that I’ve read, I’m looking at a journey that is two months at best, and in many cases, lasts up to two years, or longer. As I’ve pointed out, tomorrow marks two months. I’ve probably got up to 22 more months ahead of me, but hopefully, with God’s Grace, and your prayers, less. Thank you again for your support.

I’ve changed my mind……………

Let’s see, 7 years ago I would have been 32 years old. Since then, I’ve lived a lot of life. As with most people, my thoughts on some things have changed. I wasn’t really into family history as deep back then. My father in law was still alive. I wrote a piece stating that I only wanted to live long enough, then die before I got too old and lonely. You can read about it here: http://ericdurnan.blogspot.com/2008/03/live-just-long-enough-and-prosper.html

I pointed to my maternal grandmother who was only 67 years old when she died. I spoke of how she was lucky that she never had to bury any of her children or watch her siblings die. I hereby take back those words. Life experiences have changed my mind on the matter. Since then, my health has gotten far worse and there have been a couple of instances where I felt near death. I learned rather unequivocally that I wanted to keep living. I thought of my children living life without me. My youngest is now 8 years old, but even the thought of another 15 years on this earth seems too short. In fifteen years, I’ll be about 55 years old. Think of how much life I would be giving up if I died then! My grandfather, whom I mentioned in the original piece, died 5 years later. If I hadn’t of had those 5 years, I would have missed out on some very special bonding with him. I have learned that even though your peers may be dead, you are still worth something to the younger generation. It’s worth sticking around and seeing what happens.

If I live to be 67, the age that my grandmother died at, I would live until the year 2043. By contrast, if I live to be 90 years old, I will live until the year 2066. That’s a 23 year difference. That’s enough time to see a grandchild go from being born to being a 23 year old. Think of how much influence I could have in the life of that young soul! If that grandchild lives to be 90 years old, then I’ll be remembered by someone on this earth until the year 2133! Fancy that! They say you’re not truly dead until the last person who remembers you dies. Those extra 23 years on this earth are worth it.

I have a new philosophy about life. I think of life in 30 year blocks. The first thirty years should be for building your life. This includes getting your education, picking a profession, getting married, and starting your family. The second 30 years should be spent living your life. These are the years where you take what you built in your first thirty years and care for it, and expand it. These seem to be a person’s prime years. These are the years that you invest in your family. These are the years where the older generation starts passing on and the younger generation is being raised. This is where your family is a blend of old and new, but gradually becomes more new than old.

The last 30 years of one’s life, from age 60 through 90 ought to be spent winding down, tying up loose ends, and preparing to leave a legacy behind. These should be the years where you plan on retiring, paying off your mortgage, and taking some vacations. The older generations in your family are for the most part gone and there are more young ones being born to your children and grandchildren than you can keep up with. You should be a wise sage and offer advice to the younger generations if they ask. You should be there to help your children out with their families if they need it. Invest in your grandchildren as their parents are probably too busy to spend as much time as you can with them. I think the bond between a grandparent and grandchild is a very special one.

Anything over 90 seems to be gravy, however, it has been my experience that those who get over 90 years old lose touch with the youngest in their family. My grandfather lost track of how many great, and great-great grandchildren he had. However, that’s not to say that he didn’t serve a purpose in life after 90. He was still there for me, his grandchild. I loved my grandfather very much and those last few years of his life were very special to me.

So, starting this year, I have started praying to God that I live to at least be 90. That is my prayer. I’m not even half way there yet.

CBS and their “Gun Control” Agenda

I saw this hit piece on the CBS Morning News the other day. To drum up sympathy for what is tantamount to gun confiscation, they did this story on two police officers who were shot nearly point blank range and lived. They want to sue the gun shop where the weapon was sold. CBS twists this piece and almost pushes the viewer to feel sympathetic towards these two who were shot and angered towards the irresponsible gun store owner. They then go on to tack on a narrative at the end that Hillary Clinton is pushing for measures that would allow people who are affected by gun violence to sue gun store owners and gun manufacturers. What a twisted piece of shit. I will straighten it all out for you, then I ask that you watch this piece and just witness how twisted it is.

First – In this instance, a gun store owner was breaking the law by selling firearms to people who were not allowed to purchase them. The laws that were on the books were not being followed. Even with tougher gun laws, if someone decides they aren’t going to follow the law, tougher laws won’t deter them. It only serves to deter those who are law abiding.

Second – How can what happened to these two be compared to what has happened to all the people affected by the horrible mass shootings? In almost every case, the guns used in those mass shootings were obtained legally. Placing a waiting list on gun show sales would not have prevented a single one of these mass shootings. Not a single one! Yet, this is what Clinton, Obama, and the rest of the gun opponents are pushing for. Hell, the gun used against these two cops was obtained through a store, not a swap meet.

Third – Clinton would open the door for people like these cops to sue the gun makers as well. This would only serve to drive the cost of business so high for gun makers that they would go out of business and gun opponents know this. What if General Motors or Ford was allowed to be sued by those whose loved ones were killed by a drunk driver? Can you imagine? Do you think they would be able to stay in business long if they were able to be sued every time someone misused their product? Should Energizer be sued for their lithium batteries being used in the manufacture of methamphetamine? When people misuse a product, there is only so much a manufacturer can do except go out of business, which affects those who use the product the correct way.

As a student of history, I’ve seen this tactic used before. When people are afraid, they are more apt to let the government regulate. Once the government regulates, it hardly ever reverses itself. Remember my example of the automobile above? Let’s look at it’s history as a fine example of this.

When automobiles came out, they were considered by some to be tremendously dangerous machines. Horses hand minds of their own and it was pretty hard to drive a horse straight into a tree or into someone’s home, yet, with an automobile, if you weren’t careful, you could do just that. People were running into things and crashing in ways that were seldom seen with horses. As automobile speeds intensified, the wrecks only grew worse.

Automobiles were also louder than your typical horse and horses were easily spooked by them. In the United Kingdom, they passed a series of laws which curtailed these new fang-dangled machines called “The Locomotive Act”. Many of these curtailments made their way to the United States along with “Red Flag Laws”. These were all laws created in a knee-jerk reaction to automobiles which many found to be scary.

Now, you and I take automobiles for granted and can chuckle at some of these old, archaic laws, but many of the restrictions and overbearing regulations remain to this day. Among them are vehicle registration, license plates, and driver’s licenses. Even automobile insurance came out of this early era of automobiles. Before the automobile, generally speaking, it would have been unthinkable to require someone to possess a license to operate a horse, or for someone to purchase registration for their horse and buggy. It’s my understanding that some of the very large cities did this, but mainly for those who were in the business of carrying passengers or freight, known as chauffeurs. But for common folks like you and me, if you owned a horse and buggy, nobody was going to give you a ticket for lack of registration or license.

Imagine if we had today’s mind-set back then. If we would have allowed people to sue automobile manufacturers for misuse of their product, I dare say that we may not have the luxury of owning our own automobiles like we do today. They would be very rare and expensive, even more so than they are now. No, back then I doubt most common people would have even thought of suing the manufacturer for misuse. People back then seemed to have a little more common sense than people do today, but even with that being said, they did allow for all those regulations, which stick with us even now, and in the case of a driver’s license, it has become something even greater than what it was originally intended to do. Today’s driver’s license is a de facto national ID card assigned by the state, but to federal standards. Your driver’s license photo is stored in a database as a mugshot, even though you have done nothing wrong. Programs are out there that can pick you out in a crowd. This is why they don’t allow you to smile in your driver’s license photo and why it has a plain blue background. Do you see how laws meant for one reason can lead to unintended consequences? This is why allowing the federal government any more control over guns is a scary thought, much scarier than the thought of the wrong person having a firearm.

In fact, if people were to familiarize themselves with firearms, like they have with automobiles, I think we’d see a whole new approach towards firearms from the public. Firearms, like the automobile, in the wrong hands, can kill and hurt people. We’ve seen what happens when someone decides to plow their car through a crowd of people. People drive into crowds regularly, yet we don’t hear about it as loudly as we do when guns are involved. In 2003, George Weller drove his car into a crowd at the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market and killed 10 people and injured 63. Just this summer a man decided to kill people with his car and yet, there have been no calls to ban the automobile, or for tougher restrictions on them. This is because we are around cars everyday and they don’t instill the same fear into the population the way that guns do. Whether it be a gun or an automobile, in the wrong hands, it is deadly. What defense do you have against a man who decides to run you over with a car? If you’re lucky, you can jump out of the way, but many times, there is very little warning when someone runs you over. With a gun, there is very little defense unless you are armed too. Most of these mass shootings have taken place in places that are gun free zones.

So, when you watch this piece, or listen to the whole gun control argument that will take place for the foreseeable future, remember, a lot of what gun opponents are pushing for wouldn’t have changed a single thing about the mass shootings that have happened. They are playing upon the general public’s fear of firearms. They are counting on the general public to react based upon emotion and not facts. Hit pieces like this from CBS will become more and more common, and just work people up into a greater lather. No government that operates in a manner that oppresses its citizens wants an armed citizenry. None. Go read what the founding fathers said about firearms, and not just the Bill or Rights, but in their writings. Thomas Jefferson was a strong proponent of people having firearms and he even advocated for the citizenry to rebel against the government every so often.

Our generation is soft. Over time we have been put to sleep. The government will not protect us. We need to protect ourselves, and that starts with an armed citizenry that is able to respond rapidly to sick minded individuals who choose to kill innocent people. I’m all for properly training people and making sure that firearms get in the hands of well qualified individuals. I’m also for making sure that firearms are stored safely in order to keep them out of criminal’s hands. However, this is not what Hillary intends to accomplish by allowing people to sue gun makers. No, Hillary and those like her want to disarm America, but they don’t have the guts to come right out and say it. They have no trouble pointing to other countries who have essentially done this and stating that this is what they want American to look like.

 

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Tougher Gun Laws are not the Answer

I would like to have Obama tell us specifically what stronger gun laws would have done to prevent what happened in Oregon, or any of the other shooting tragedies. Stronger gun laws would not have stopped this guy. Murder laws certainly didn't. We don't have a gun problem as much as we have a problem with mental health and morality in this country. This guy was angry with religion, which is also a problem that has been stirred up lately in this country (as has the race issue)....

There are certain things that I have learned to be truths in my nearly 40 short years on this earth. They are:

1. We all make time for our priorities.
2. People who crave power, seek it.
3. People who are hell bent on destruction will find a way.

What happened in Oregon and the other mass shooting places all touch a little bit on each of those truths.

Dorothy Christen

Dorothy Christen passed away the other day. I heard she had a brain aneurism from which she was unable to recover. Sadly, it’s a reminder of how quickly any of us can be taken away. I sit here on my little corner in Wadena and watch the world pass outside of my window. Just from my perspective, I was able to see how large of a part that Dorothy played in our community. I am a writer and felt compelled to send a letter to the editor of our local papers. Hopefully you’ll see my piece in next week’s paper with her obituary, but in case you don’t, here’s the letter that I submitted:

Dear Editor,

My wife informed me that Dorothy Christen passed away this morning. It comes as a shock as I remember seeing her alive and well during our parade just a little over a week ago here in Wadena. It reminds me how fast people can be taken away.

Dorothy’s death is a tremendous loss to our community. When it came time to decorate by putting flags up on the poles in town, I would see Dorothy out there helping. When the Legion or Fire Department would have events, Dorothy would be there. Every Christmas, Dorothy would be there with Santa Claus for the children of our town. When our church here in town started having Awanas for the children, Dorothy was there. Dave and Dorothy were some of the most recognizable features in our parade every year. There would be Dorothy, riding on some contraption that her husband Dave would dream up! When my wife needed help with our sewing machine, Dorothy was there, patiently willing to help. When anyone got sick in Wadena and needed medical help, Dorothy, as a first responder, was there. When children were in need, Dave and Dorothy took them in as foster parents.

I’m sure I’m only scratching the surface of those things which Dorothy did for our community. Those are the only the things that I was able to witness as I sit here on my little corner in Wadena. It’s my understanding that Dorothy did a whole lot more for the greater community. George Jones used to sing, “Who’s Gonna Fill their Shoes”. I think of this song when I think about Dorothy’s passing. She will leave behind some very large shoes to fill in our little town. Her loss will be sorely noticed in this community. My wife and I send our condolences to her husband Dave and the rest of Dorothy’s loved ones.

                                                                                                                                Sincerely, Eric E. Durnan, Wadena, Iowa

 

Here is video from our parade on the 20th of September, a mere week and a few days before she died.