Bundy’s Race Comments Are Major Screw-Up: Whatever Goodwill He Had Built Up Went Out the Window and He Won’t Get It Back

Clive Bundy decided to discuss race relations following his victory against federal agents who were sent to rustle his cattle, and managed to turn many sympathetic people against him in the space of a few short minutes.

What an idiot.

Captains Who Abandon Ship Before Every One of Their Passengers is Accounted For Should Be Charged With Crimes: Recent Cruise Line/Ferry Disasters Had Captains Who Left While Leaving Passengers to Their Fates on Sinking Ships

I do not expect captains of stricken ships to go to the bottom of the ocean with their vessels, but they should be leaving their ships on the last lifeboats, or jumping into the water along with the passengers that they’re responsible for.   In two major passenger disasters, the captain of the Costa Concordia and the captain of the recent South Korean ferry abandoned ship before all hands and passengers were safely off.

The captain of the Costa Concordia abandoned ship and refused an Italian Coast Guard order to re-board the ship and take charge of the evacuation of the rest of the passengers.  He was charged with crimes by Italian authorities.  The captain of the South Korean ferry left on the very first lifeboat.  Authorities are seeking his arrest.

Some other examples of captains evacuating themselves before their passengers (credit to Wikipedia):

• November 12, 1965: Captain Byron Voustinas of the SS Yarmouth Castle
• April 7, 1990: Captain Hugo Larsen of the Scandinavian Star.
• August 3/4, 1991: Captain Yiannis Avranas of the cruise ship MTS Oceanos.
• January 13, 2012: Captain Francesco Schettino of the Costa Concordia.
• April 16, 2014: Captain Lee Joon-seok of the "Sewol ferry." The Captain and all of the crew (except one) escaped first, abandoning nearly 300 junior high school students to drown.

Some examples of captains going down with their ships, or choosing to stay aboard when they realized there were people still on board (credit to Wikipedia):

• September 12, 1857: William Lewis Herndon was in command of the commercial mail steamer Central America when it encountered a hurricane. Two ships came to the rescue, but could only save a fraction of the passengers, so Captain Herndon chose to remain with the rest.
• April 15, 1912: Captain Edward Smith was in command of the RMS Titanic when it struck an iceberg. Smith knew within minutes that the ship was doomed and did all in his power to prevent panic. Smith did not survive the sinking. As the ship went down, Smith was seen walking towards the bridge, only a few minutes before it and the rest of the ship's forward superstructure were engulfed by the sea.^[3] When the ship's lamp trimmer Samuel Hemming entered the bridge seconds after Smith was seen walking towards it, he found the bridge apparently empty.^[4] There are conflicting accounts of what happened to Smith: Some, including second radio operator Harold Bride,^[5] claimed to have seen him jumping in the water, or in the water swimming either toward a lifeboat or near the capsized collapsible lifeboat "B," while others claimed he committed suicide by shooting himself.^[6] Others including first class passenger Robert Williams Daniel said that Smith entered the wheelhouse on the bridge and died there when it was engulfed.^[7][8] The actual fate of captain Smith will probably remain uncertain.
• February 7, 1943: Commander Howard W. Gilmore, captain of the American submarine USS Growler (SS-215), gave the order to "clear the bridge," as his crew was being attacked by a Japanese gunboat. Two men had been shot dead; Gilmore and two others were wounded. After all others had entered the sub and Gilmore found that time was critically short, he spoke his last order: "Take her down." The executive officer, hearing his order, closed the hatch and submerged the crippled boat, saving all of the crew from the attack of the Japanese convoy escort. Commander Gilmore was never seen again, but the submarine made repairs and returned to battle. Gilmore received the Medal of Honor posthumously for his "distinguished gallantry," the first submariner to receive this award.
• October 29, 2012: Captain Robin Walbridge of the Bounty, a replica of the HMS Bounty, stayed on the ship until it capsized during Hurricane Sandy. Fourteen crew members who made it to life boats survived the sinking of the sailing ship and were rescued by U.S. Coast Guard helicopters. Walbridge's last known words were to his crew: "Abandon ship."^[9]

In the case of the USS Growler, the captain sacrificed himself to save his crew, hence his Medal of Honor.  Smith of the Titanic and Walbridge of the Bounty sailing replica were heavily criticized for their command decisions prior to their ships going down, but they still stayed aboard their sinking ships.

The captains of the South Korean Sewol ferry and the Costa Concordia could have chosen to stay on board until the last minute, before jumping into the water or being rescued by local Coast Guard and military rescue crews. They chose to save their own skins.

Some thoughts:

--All cruise line and ferry crews should speak a common language.   On too many cruise ships (all of them?), the crews can’t understand the captain or officers because they speak their own languages.   In worldwide aviation, English is the spoken language.  This should be a cruise line standard as well. Crews and officers need to be able to communicate with each other instantly, and not just through a translator, IF they’re fortunate to have one on board.

--Captains need far more training than they currently get.  It might be better if captains have a naval background and possesses the military ethos on their responsibilities to their passengers and crew.

--Captains are not bystanders when a disaster strikes aboard their ship.   They need to do their duty and save the lives of others, AND STAY ABOARD THEIR STRICKEN VESSEL to do it.

Something has to change.  I hate hearing stories that captain and crew abandoned ship and left passengers behind when a disaster at sea strikes.  That isn’t right, and no amount of apologizing by the dishonored captain or crew members will be sufficient to make up for their bad decision making, or for the people who die because the captain decided to save his own neck and then watch his own ship sink from the safety of a life raft.

Harry Reid Needs to Retire: He’s Acting Like Nevada’s Emperor over the Bundy Ranch Situation Instead of Acting Like the Senate Majority Leader and Dealing With More Pressing National Issues…Get With the Program, Reid, or Get Out of the Way!

Harry Reid is up to his eyeballs in the federal government vs. Nevada rancher situation, calling the civilian militias “domestic terrorists” and vowing that the fight “isn’t over.”

Get real, Reid, and do your job.  You’re not the Nevada Emperor, and not a particularly good Senate Majority Leader either.   Either do the job your Nevada constituents (including Clive Bundy) elected you to do, or retire. 

This situation was created by the Obama Administration ignoring legal protocol and going over to a direct armed confrontation, which brought the armed civilian militias out in droves to stop the federal rustlers.

The Obama Administration is at fault here.  

Reid needs to start acting like the Senate Majority Leader and get off his high horse, or retire.  The militias are playing him like a drum.

Obama Administration is Provoking a Domestic Uprising With Their Stupid Cattle Round-Up: They Need to Stop Sending Police, K-9 Units and SWAT Teams to Handle Arguments With Farmers and Ranchers

The civilian militias are having a field day, with the latest domestic blunders by President Obama and his Senate lap-dog, Harry Reid.   And the liberal media outfits aren’t covering any of it either.

The latest incident happened in Nevada, where federal officers and local police began rounding up cattle belonging to a local rancher.  The feds were claiming that Clive Bundy owed over a million dollars in grazing fees and brought in two hundred armed agents to rustle Bundy’s cattle.

Out came the militias, who were, of course, armed to the teeth, and a standoff ensued, with both sides pointing guns at each other, and several highly publicized confrontations being filmed in front of (conservative) news crews, and by private citizens, who almost instantly posted their videos to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The feds backed off, but vowed to win in federal court.  That’s probably where this situation should have gone first.  Again, the Obama Administration seems hell-bent on short-cutting legal procedures.

In the meantime, now they have emboldened civilian militias looking for the next fight with federal government forces.   Thanks a lot, President Obama.   What’s next, a civil war when a state government refuses to enforce a federal law?  Sounds like a remake of Bleeding Kansas in the works.

Veteran Politicians Being Driven Out by Gridlock: Good, It’s About Time! Now Maybe Their Replacements Will Be Willing to Negotiate More Than Their Incompetent Predecessors

A lot of career or long-term politicians have decided to retire at the end of the term; the gridlock that is the hallmark of several sessions of Congress is said to be the reason for the frustration and decisions of some to retire.

GOOD!

If they’re not part of the solution, then they’re part of the problem. 

I don’t care if my state loses the chairperson’s position on this committee, or that committee.  It’s worth losing those politicians who hold those positions, if we get someone in there who is at least willing to talk to others.  Our current Congress doesn’t do enough talking; they refuse to meet with their political opponents to arrive at a deal.

As things stand, the only way that Congress can get anything done is if one party controls both houses of Congress.   It shouldn’t be that way.  

With recent debates on the budget and the debt ceiling, we’ve seen politicians make statements to the media about their positions on the debate, and then no meetings for weeks and months on end, until a week or two before the money is set to run out for the federal government to operate.  That doesn’t include Congressional paychecks, mind you.  Then there’s a flurry of meetings, like someone flipped the switch to the “Congress ON” setting.   They should have been meeting weeks and months prior, and hammering out a deal. 

Perhaps the next Congress should pass a law stating that their paychecks should be affected by the presence or absence of a budget agreement.   No budget=no pay.  After all, they force other federal employees to not get paid if there’s a shutdown.   Why shouldn’t Congress play by the same rules?

That’ll get them motivated to reach a budget deal much quicker, instead of shutting the government down.

So, to the Representatives and Senators who are retiring because they’re “frustrated,” bye bye.

Mozilla CEO Forced to Resign Over Donation to Anti-Gay Marriage Proposal in California: That Isn’t Right—ALL People Should Be Allowed to Exercise Their Freedom of Expression Regardless of Issue

A dating service called OKCupid recently asked Firefox users not to use the browser to access their site because of Mozilla’s CEO donating money to an anti-gay marriage proposal in California.  It started a firestorm, which lead to the CEO of Mozilla stepping down (?)  to defuse the situation.

Mozilla did not stand their ground for freedom of expression and their CEO was shown the door.

I do not support Mozilla’s spinelessness and hypocrisy on their statement of freedom of speech and equality.  Mozilla has shown that their statement only extends to certain individuals, and not all individuals, such as their ex-CEO. 

I don’t care about the ex-CEO’s politics or if he supported this or that or the other thing.   He can support whatever cause or political agenda he wants, with his vote or with his money, the same as anybody else, and the same as those who were opposed to Proposal 8.

I’m rethinking my use of Mozilla products over this situation.  If I can find a viable alternative that I like for Firefox and for Thunderbird, I may well take them.    That’s very unfortunate because I really like both products and Mozilla as a whole, until this scandal hit.

I’m very unhappy with Mozilla.  They should amend their statement to be not as inclusive as it currently is.  They’ve demonstrated that they will not support some legitimate forms of speech, such as monetary donations to anti-gay marriage proposals in the state of California.

I also think that the decision of the California state government to publish the names of donors to Proposal 8 is an obscenity.   If I want to support a particular party or proposal as a private citizen, it’s my right to do so, privately and free of threats of retaliation and harassment from any village idiots.   There’s at least one web site in California that has posted locations on maps of people who supported Prop 8, and harm has come to some of them.

Mozilla needs to decide which side it’s on, and California needs to stop the voter and donor intimidation.

United States Should Reverse its Decision to Give Up Internet Controls: U.S. Will Do a Much Better Job of Maintaining Internet Freedom of Expression Than Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran, and Other Nations Who Lock Up Their Own Citizens For Saying What’s On Their Mind

President Obama made a major mistake in giving up control of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which controls how users can access websites all over the world.

It’s not too late to reverse this decision.   Until every nation on the planet guarantees freedom of speech to their citizens, and establishes a history of respecting those rights, AND stops locking up those same citizens for daring to disagree with their governments, we have no business surrendering control of it to any international body.

American ingenuity and treasure was spent on creating the Internet, and it should rest permanently with the same department in the United States government that it has been with so far.

The Democrats talk about having an Internet free of government control, and that’s fine and dandy if all world governments agree to the same thing in a legally binding contract.   I don’t see us agreeing with Russia, Iran, China, or other regimes that have poor records on free speech.

Congress needs to reverse this decision before it’s too late.   The last thing we need is Vladimir Putin or one of a dozen despots around the world to decide that they want to shut down sites that report on what they’re doing.  Information is power, and these leaders who desperately want control of the web know it, and fear it.

That’s reason enough to keep the controls under U.S. jurisdiction permanently.