Day 300 (Are We Being Deceived?)

Recently my wife and I had a discussion regarding the Occupy Wall Street situation. There have been many other similar protests that have started around the country as well, but I'll try to put some focus on this OWS. Over time we have seen the erosion of our economy and our culture - some over a period of time, so as not to be noticeable; others more overt. One thing is for sure, I no longer think our current leaders are reliable nor trustworthy. When you look back in history, British economist John Maynard Keynes held an economic theory that, basically, believed a government could spend its way out of an economic slump... much the way our politicians are doing now - also the way Roosevelt did before... as did Mussolini.

When it comes to OWS there are so many facets to the web (source of funds raised, support groups, etc.) that it's becoming increasingly difficult to keep them all in line. Recently there were a couple young men from Cairo that joined, "in solidarity", the OWS movement. This was recently reported by Israel National News. They were part of what became known as the "Arab Spring" - the trouble is, most of those Middle East protests had The Muslim Brotherhood backing them. Also reported by INN back in early September was on how the "Arab Spring" could end up being bad - very bad - for Israel.

This also hold true when Marwan Muasher , a Jordanian, is speaking in support of the Muslim Brotherhood - and also is endorsed by George Soros. According to Matthew Vadum in his article on the Human Events website, Soros provides funding for the Open Society Institute and the Tides Foundation, as well as the Alliance For Global Justice... the organization that is now (coincidentally enough) handling all the donations that are coming in to support OWS.

In this day and age (and with the rampant corruption in our government - in ALL parties) I support the idea - as well as the actual execution - of protests... as long as they are truly against what has been going on. To protest against Wall Street is the same as protesting (nowadays) the government. The only difference is your expecting one facet of the entity to come to your aid to battle the other facet of that same entity! What it comes down to is this: certain people (inside AND outside our government) are pulling the strings in order to get the masses to do what they want, a.k.a. Hegelian Dialectic. If we don't take a real stand against ALL politicians, the result could be a grotesque Socialist/Communist/Fascist hybrid - trust me, the fuel economy on that hybrid really sucks.

Day 284 (Onward To Pine Bluff)

James and I left from our company's terminal in Madison, IL this afternoon, and are making our way to Pine Bluff, AR for a delivery tomorrow morning. By tomorrow afternoon James should be going through the process of his final evaluation and getting his own truck. When he first started with me - just a little over three weeks ago - he was pretty shaky (and quite nervous) with his backing skills. Now, though he may still be a little nervous, he is a bit more confident and his skills have improved. Over time he will overcome that nervousness, but hopefully not to the point where he begins to get complacent... which could (and most likely would) lead to an accident.

The purpose of being a driver trainer (which should be applied into ALL careers) is to show others the tools we have available, and how to utilize them... in other words, how to be successful in what we do, and to ALWAYS strive for excellence. We can never be PERFECT (if you claim to be perfect, I challenge you to walk on water), and many of us cannot be the BEST... but we - simply by applying ourselves, and using the proper "tools" for our chosen career paths - can be EXCELLENT. Hard work and perseverance is what it takes to become excellent and successful. If they were around today, people like Milton Hershey (Hershey chocolates), Walt Disney (the Disney empire), and - as of recently - Steve Jobs (Apple and Pixar) would agree... not to mention the additional factors of Vision and Passion that are also mixed into the fray.

Vision & Passion mixed with hard work and perseverance... a concept that appears to be lost to the clowns at OWS.


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Day 282 (OWS = Socialist Inaction)

For a couple weeks now we have seen this Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement playing out in the media... kind of. For the most part, what has been publicized about this "protest" is the police brutality. What is talked about were these cases of brutality, mainly from videos posted on YouTube, but how much credence can we really put into such videos? With current events being what they are, even YouTube videos that "document" social unrest have to be taken with a grain of salt. Keeping that in mind, U2's Bono was way ahead of his time when he wrote, "when fact is fiction, and TV a reality" (from the song "Seconds" on the 1983 album War).

Though the OWS movement doesn't have anything "official", they do, however, have certain "proposed" list of demands that some would like to see met. An acquaintance of mine, whom I know through Twitter (now no longer an active account), Facebook, and the posts on her website, Jillian gave her view on yesterday's post, which, unlike most of those actually taking part in the OWS "protest" in NYC, was thought out... well thought out.

However, what makes me shudder is how OWS - should they succeed in whatever it is they want - will affect the Dagny Taggarts, Francisco d'Anconias, and Hank Reardons of today... even more chilling is how the work of Ayn Rand has become almost like an outline or a blueprint for this "new and improved" society which they have envisioned... only for them to (once they get what they want) propel it to one that's an Orwellian perversion. Though we have a plethora of media sources (not just network news) to refer to, we must still scrutinize most of what we see. For example, yesterday there was an article in the U.K.'s Daily Mail which tells of how OWS has created such an increase in the accumulated waste on the streets (it was Sunday, so sanitation workers and garbage trucks will not be running), even showing images... to include a picture of a "protestor defecating on a police car." Is this a legitimate story? Are the pictures authentic, or have they been "doctored"? Too many people take what is in the print media, or on the evening news as fact... If you don't believe me, try arguing the existence of UFO's with someone who gets their news from the magazines found in the check-out isle at Walmart. What has become fact is that a large portion of the news that is "fed" to us has some sort of slant or bias already "pre-loaded" (at this point, you may have those words of Bono's echoing through your head). When we lost the likes of Walter Cronkite and Edward Murrow, we also lost true, unbiased reporting. I could still take issue with this, but I'm going to leave this picture at face-value:













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