Brian T Shirley

Brian T Shirley
Jokers Wild, Atlantis Resort

Thursday, September 26, 2013

If The Government Breaks, We'll Have No Place To Stay!

The government meltdown......, I mean shutdown looms over us like a huge "Who Cares" sign. Anything that disrupts our over sized, overspending, inefficient Big Brother is fine with me. We MUST start putting The USA first, as whole, over our political ideologies and parties. Truth and common sense should be our barometer, not political correctness! Here's my latest from "Truth be Told" for The Weekly Telegram!


         Truth Be Told: If The Government Breaks, We'll Have No Place To Stay!
 
Watching our esteemed elected officials argue about the pending government shut down reminds me of children on a playground. "He hit me first!", "They won't let me play!", or "I know you are, what am I?" are phases these people could say and fit right in with the way they are acting on this and many issues. I see all this and I'm struck by a simple truth, they are a reflection of the people who voted for them. WE are really the problem, WE have put ourselves and our country in the situation!
 
If you do not vote, then none of this is your fault, you are excused. As a matter of fact, go somewhere else, we really don't need you.  Now, on to the voters, the people who caused all this. WE have put ideologies, political parties, or race above the well being of the USA as a whole for way to long now. Here's the most recent, easiest example of this on a national level that is based on facts. If you can't accept this example, then you are practicing exactly what is causing the stupidity we see in Washington. Here we go.
 
 A majority, that's around 90%, of black voters voted for President Obama. You can say " Well. white people voted republican,blah, blah,blah", but the fact is that  a good many white people voted for Obama, that's a part of why he got elected. That's not the debate here anyway, this is an example of a segment of society that did not care about the country as a whole, just themselves. That they may be justified is not up for debate here either, this is just an easy example of the problem. We have to vote for people who care about ALL people! We are voting for  what I call "Segmentists". These are folks who put people in segments, i.e. blacks, gays, Christians, Pro-choice, etc. and pander to these segments separately. Then they get their votes by hitting the key issues of each segment and keep themselves in power by pitting the segments against each other when necessary. They actually paint certain segments of the USA as evil or bad to keep their hold on that power, that's where the EVIL is.
 
There are some simple ways, in my opinion, to fix the voting public and ultimately The US Government as a whole.
 
1) Put the good of the country first in the functions it was meant to serve. That's, protecting our nation, making sure our economy is vibrant, our environment is clean and the infrastructure is up to date. NONE of these should be subject to ideologies, ALL should be subject to COMMON SENSE!
 
2) Get rid of POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, replace with COMMON SENSE and GOOD MANNERS!
 
3) Try to solve problems in the community at a local level first, don't rely on Washington to solve all the problems. As a matter of fact, don't rely on the government to solve any of your problems or take care of you at all. Be an adult!
 
4) Immediately decrease the size and scope of the Federal Government, there's way to many people wasting our money who need to get out of our pockets and get a REAL JOB!
 
5) WE all have a causes we feel are important and there is discrimination in this country, in this world as a matter of fact. Some of these problems can be solved without the government being involved, we have to quit thinking that Washington is the only solution.
 
 Example: Gay marriage. Marriage itself should have never been the government's business. Marriage is between a man, a woman and God, as I believe. Some people believe differently, that's exactly why the government should stay out of it. If two men can find a church to marry them, oh well, what can I do about it. I may not agree with it, but that's between them and God. All we have done is given the politicians another issue to divide and conquer us with. If we, gay, straight, indifferent, were to look at a candidate and say, as a whole, "We don't care about Gay marriage, we want you to cut government waste, get rid of useless programs and do not pass any more laws. Can you do that? There's things we can handle on our on as a matter of fact, we'll let you know when we need you.".  Then the politicians would realize that we know where the power is at and the veil has been lifted.
 
Truth be told: WE are the government, let's start acting like it!
 

Friday, September 20, 2013

The Struggle Against Evil Never Ends!



This post was written after the Naval Yard shootings in Washington and before the shootings in Chicago. The circumstances were different, the results the same, innocent people gunned down. We can stop what happened in Chicago, I know it sounds harsh, but if we outlaw gangs and their members, problem solved. Gangs serve no good purpose, let's deport their asses and let them be "Bad" in the Middle East somewhere. The case in Washington is a much harder to respond to. This will take a national and ultimately worldwide change in the way we behave as humans. My prayers go out the victims and their families in these trying times!





                                         Truth Be Told: The Struggle Against Evil Never Ends!
 
 
  My heart hurts seeing the footage of the Naval Shipyard Shootings. I could barely watch the reports on TV or listen to the updates on the radio. Then comes the pundits and politicians pushing their agendas behind this terrible incident before the first funeral for any of the victims. The people on both sides of the equation as far as gun control goes, make me sick. If they really cared they would shut up and give the families and the nation as a whole time to heal. But hell no,can't let a tragedy go to waste! I started to read a new story about Obama's reaction and it just made me ill. He started talking about how HE had personally done all HE could do and it was now up to Congress to push Gun Legislation through and BLAH, BLAH,BLAH. 
 
I lost someone close to me because of a gun and I've also lost work in my career because of having a gun in my car glove compartment to protect  myself. I've seen both sides of the issue, up close and personal. When are people going to realize that there is EVIL in this world and you have to fight that! If Assad's troops killed thousands of unarmed civilians, with or without chemical weapons, that's EVIL!! If a sect of a religion teaches it's people to strap bombs to themselves and kill as many people who don't agree with them as they can, THAT'S EVIL! If someone walks into a workplace and carries out what just happened Monday, that's EVIL. We have to fight against this and always have. We have history books filled with examples of these things and we never learn from them.
 
 It's part of human nature to react and embrace, if you will, the negative. This is where it starts, I believe. People get depressed and isolated. They shut themselves off and live in their own little world. We are an isolated society now, we don't know our neighbors like we used to. We don't help strangers anymore and the news reports are mostly of negative events. WE are the biggest problem! We feed the machine that incubates Evil, turn away God, or for non-believers, goodness and ask "Why did this happen?".
 
The problem is easy to identify, the solution has eluded us for ages. I'm putting this all in a nutshell because this column has to be a certain length. Why do we have Police Officers? Because there's humans out there that will not follow the law. There's the problem, people who can't stop being thieves, rapists and murders. People who are Evil! I'm not talking about people who steal because they're starving or who kill in self defense or for revenge. I'm not going to debate mental illness either, how do we know that some mental illnesses are not a manifestation of just being a huge piece of human garbage?  Let's use common sense, that would be a huge giant leap forward in itself.
 
 I pray for those family members of Monday's shootings in their intense pain. Their loss is heavy. It's just as heavy as the pain of families that have loved ones taken away that the news does not report.
 
 Until we really change fundamentally as humans, Evil will always be among us. The type of change needed should be a start of the discussion. Truth be told, Evil has always been here since man has been here and it seems it always will be.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Putin Punts The Ball, Obama Sits The Bench!

The latest post for my column "Truth Be Told" for Will Roberts' Weekly Telegram. Here's a little inside info for you folks to chew on. Will thanked Johnny Hotshot and myself for our posts this week as we were doing our segment "Pros & Cons" for his radio broadcast, very nice I thought. Then I saw on twitter where Will tweeted my column (the one you're about to read) and remarked that "Truth Be Told Throws a Ball Below the Belt". Oh well, that's showbiz folks!
 
        
                              Putin Punts The Ball, Obama Sits The Bench!
 
There are moments in time that can define or at least give us a glimpse into the soul of our elected officials. These are moments where all the politics, semantics and personality are pushed to the side and the REAL person shines through. I know there are Bush haters out there and even though I voted for the man twice, I was very disappointed with some of the things his administration did. I will say though, that what president Bush said as he stood near the rubble of the world trade center nearly twelve years ago, made me proud to be an American and glad I voted for the man. It may sound cliche, but it’s the truth and since the word “Truth” is in the title of this column, that’s what we’ll deal with here.
 
 Someone shouted out to President Bush as he was making his remarks about the cowardly terrorists who brought down those towers. Bush responded ” I hear you, the world hears you, and (as a fevered pitch arose in the crowd) the folks who brought down these towers will hear from all of us soon!”  The crowd erupted. No Bush hater will ever take that moment away from me, they can’t lie about it and they can’t decrease the effect it had and continues to have on my soul. It bonded all of America together and made us one in the blink of and eye. For that moment, and many times during the healing period from this tragedy, we were Americans. No color, sexual orientation, ideology or class mattered. We were AMERICANS. Bush rallied us as a nation! Since then, we have fallen into war with ourselves!
 
The only time Obama has shown passion and gotten a crowd excited, is when he is pitting us against each other! Doesn’t anyone, even blind Obama followers see the difference? Obama likes to quote Reagan and Lincoln. Did not Lincoln say “A house divided cannot stand”? It just struck me the other day during all the 9/11 remembrances, now to include Benghazi, that Obama has not shown himself to be a worthy International leader at any point during his two terms. He has apologized for this country, he has complained about what he has been called in this country to other nations and now he has been made to look like a fool by his adversary in Russia. “We’ve got Snowden, Na,na,na,na,na! OK, I’ll broker a deal to get those bad old weapons for you from Syria, you just sit right there and tell your congress to hold on a minute.”
 
We have not heard any kind of update about what happened in Benghazi and when I hear what he said now about finding the people who KILLED 4 Americans, frankly it sounds uninspired. No passion or sense of urgency in the least. Obama sounded like he was aggravated that he had to talk about it, like the deaths of these men was more of a nuisance. Now, the latest foreign policy gaffe with Syria has convinced me this President is in way over his head. No matter how this comes out, his “leadership” has been weakened and not just to those of us who did not vote for him. People who really look at TRUTH, must see how weak this “Nobel Prize Recipient” is . This is his moment in time that no one can take away. No spin doctor, no progressive lawyer speak, no blinded Obama follower who refuses to look at facts, can take the truth of this moment away from me, the disgrace I feel for having this man in office. He pointed at the world and said ” This is your RED line, not mine”. He threw the world under the bus to protect his legacy, how sick is that?!
 
Truth Be Told, we don’t have  a quarter back for a leader, we have a water boy!

Friday, September 6, 2013

Syria Crosses The RED Line, The World Holds It's Breath!

This is the latest post for The Weekly Telegram in my column "Truth Be Told". I know this situation in Syria is not an easy fix and there are so many different opinions on this. My debate on Will Roberts' broadcast this week on this subject was more heated between myself and Will, than the roving radical himself, Johnny Hotshot and I. As I've said before, these posts are anywhere between 300-500 words and that is not enough to fully vet any deep subject such as I have tried to tackle with this column. I try to hit it quick, get my point across and hope I make some sense. We'll see how this works out and I may be proved wrong, but I do stand behind my gut instinct on this one.


 First off, who drew the RED line? Do you draw it? I didn’t. Did Congress, or America at large? How about the International community or The UN, or some guy in France? One thing’s for sure, Obama, our esteemed “Leader” did not draw it. He has nothing to do with any of this. Hey man, it’s not his legacy on the line, it’s everyone else in the world’s problem. It’s the American people’s fault, we give lip service to this “humanity” stuff. Why should he care, over here he gets called names he can’t say in Sweden out in public.
 
 This guy doesn’t just stick his head in the sand, he digs a hole and jumps right in, smiling and sticking his tongue out! He’s not the only one showing huge ineptness in this bizarre, theatre of foreign policy suicide. Nancy Pelosi sounds like Porky Pig during one interview trying to speak to why we should bomb Syria. The next interview “Mimi” tell us about a conversation she had with her 5 year old grandson about this situation that would raise the eyebrows of Henry Kissinger! John McCain does not think the proposed response is not broad enough, and The President, the guy who has his hands covering his ears and is yelling “La,la,la I can’t hear you” should have more options. John Kerry looked like a prisoner being interrogated at the latest hearing and could barely look Rand Paul in the eye during Rand’s questions. Kerry wants to “Slam the door” on the option of having boots on the ground, but wait, it turns out he wants that door left cracked a little, just in case. Lindsay Graham, well, never mind. I live in Chas.,SC, by the way, I heard a sound bite from my Graham on this subject and I had no idea what he was talking about, it really was convoluted.
 
We should have had a plan in place to deal with this a year ago. It’s simple, he crosses the line, a predetermined response is swiftly carried out by a broad coalition of countries who agree with the action. This is a disaster and it’s getting worse with the passage of time. Assad is now hiding the offending weapons among the public. Obama and Congress looks like a bunch of idiots who can’t get their story straight. Nancy’s grandson made better points than she did, make him minority leader immediately! I say minority leader until he get’s about a week of experience, then it’s Speaker of The House for him! People who were against invading Iraq, now show their hypocrisy, and the same goes for the folks on the other side of the fence.
 
What’s the end game in this? If we’re not removing Assad, what is the “punishment’? Kerry said Assad would definitely use the weapons again if we did not strike. I think he’ll use them again even if we do. This is a horrible situation for the innocents in Syria and the bumbling way this is being handled will make it worse. This just shows very poor leadership across the board in Washington on foreign policy. These idiots should be swept out of office and a new bunch given a chance. They just can’t seem govern effectively when all they are worried about is holding on to their power. Truth be told, a strike on Syria now would just make things worse, bebebebeb That’s all folks!!!!