Practice hope. As hopefulness becomes a habit, you can achieve a permanently happy spirit.
Norman Vincent Peale
Tweet of the Day
I was encouraged to see John Locke trending. Unfortunately, it has to do with progressives making fun of a CSPAN caller: founding father?— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) June 23, 2016
No, John Locke wasn't American. But his ideas heavily influenced the Founding Fathers, e.g., the Declaration of Independence, 5th amendment— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) June 23, 2016
The lower court ruling that Obama overstepped his authority on immigration was sustained by SCOTUS, a victory for the rule of law.— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) June 23, 2016
On the other hand, the principle of equal protection suffered a blow in SCOTUS upholding the UT affirmative action decision.— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) June 23, 2016
We in the US pro-liberty movement welcome a British vote for #Brexit. Britain can't compete with a super-bureaucracy around its neck— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) June 24, 2016
With 42% of the vote in, #Brexit is winning 51-49. The margin seems to be expanding from 0.2% at the 30% mark.— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) June 24, 2016
With over 72% of the vote in, #Brexit leads by 3 pts. It all depends where the remaining votes are, but Remain is running out of ballots.— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) June 24, 2016
And with just over 20% of the vote outstanding, #Brexit leads by 3.2%; it would take an unlikely supermajority for Remain to pull it out.— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) June 24, 2016
BBC has already called the victory for #Brexit. Congratulations to the British people for taking back their freedom from Brussels.— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) June 24, 2016
When Police Pull You OverI would like to think that Obama's obnoxious opposition helped make a difference in #Brexit's victory. He'll have his ObamaTantrum, so what?— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) June 24, 2016
For the PDF file script mentioned in the video, click here.
Fortunately, I've had a good driving record over the years. There are a couple of times I've been pulled over. In one case, my folks had flown to visit a brother about an hour drive away from my suburban Chicago apartment. The folks wanted to have dinner with me once during their stay, so I did a roundtrip to pick them up; we ate at a BBQ place near where I lived, and then I was driving them back, running roughly the speed limit on I-55S in the second/inner right lane. I noticed but didn't pay too much attention to a pulled-over motorist on the side. Apparently the trooper gave him the okay to reenter traffic, when the [expletive deleted] literally jumped lanes in front of me, traveling below traffic speed. Thank God for great reflexes; I immediately slammed on the brakes, virtually standing on them; I literally saw his rear inch within a yard or so of my front bumper. I came within a split second of dying, along with my parents, by incomprehensible driver behavior. AND I GET PULLED OVER. I feel like I'm in an alternate universe. This guy had just broken all the rules in the driver handbook, and I'm being stopped. He kept me waiting for about 10-15 minutes. Finally, the trooper came up to my window and said, "I bet you're wondering why I pulled you over." Duh! He explained it was his fault for letting the driver back on the road, and he was afraid I would have a case of road rage and chase the jerk; he wanted to make sure the driver was out of sight before letting me back on the road. Actually, all I thought was that I was almost killed, along with my parents, in a car I was driving. All I cared about was getting my parents safely back to my brother's house.
In the second case, which I've mentioned once or twice before in the blog, back in 2001 I was working on an upgrade project in a county west of Milwaukee. At the time I was still living in Santa Clara, CA; the SW Chicago IT consulting company said they would pay for one month of travel expenses and I would have to relocate. So I had made arrangements to move at the end of the month; on the 23rd, 2 days before a 3-day move-out weekend, the project VP from headquarters announces to me I need to have a new upgraded EBS database up and running by the end of the month, so he would win brownie points with the county clients. (Ir was NOT a contract deliverable.) Basically that meant I had a week, and it was impossible to do without working through the weekend. I explained I had given notice at my apartment, had movers scheduled, my car relocators, etc. I couldn't get the VP to back off; [If he had mentioned this 2 weeks earlier, I could have phased it in my schedule.] I called the company president who had recruited me, hinting I might resign over this, but the VP was his business partner, and I wasn't going to prevail. I had no choice but to reschedule things, which took hours. In fact, my CA landlord had already rented out my apartment.
On top of everything else, I hadn't known about one thing. There was a county fair going on that weekend which meant all the local hotels, including the Best Western where I had been staying all month, were filled. I used an Internet service and thought I had managed to book a hotel room at a Travelodge about a mile away. In the fine print, there was a note that reservations weren't guaranteed. I was so preoccupied with the test upgrade that I didn't know a cancellation email had gone to my personal email account Friday afternoon. I think I ended up leaving the courthouse around 10PM, dead tired and hungry. It took 15 minutes or so for the Travelodge to tell me I didn't have a reservation, and no, they couldn't refer me. So I came out thinking I needed to head I-94E to Chicago. Now basically the left-turn lane I needed had an island divider parallel to the Travelodge, which meant I had to cross the highway and then backtrack to hit the exit from the other direction. And that's where I got in trouble.
It turned out the the first lighted intersection past the highway where I took a U-turn (and there was NO traffic from the other direction) was a block away from the local police station and there was a police car sitting there. I honestly didn't notice any U-turn prohibition, and I was unfamiliar with the area. It suddenly registered on me that the police car following me onto the off ramp to 94E was actually chasing me down, so I pulled out to the shoulder. And I could tell immediately he was agitated, like he thought I was trying to evade him by going onto the interstate. He's screaming about the U-turn, and ro be honest, I don't get why he's reading me the riot act over a safe U-turn with no opposing traffic. I guess he realized that I was a stranger driving a rental car and let me off with a warning, but so help me, if I got caught so much as jaywalking in the near future, my ass would be in jail. Me, I was tired and I had no idea if or when I would find an empty hotel room. The last thing I wanted was to risk a second pullover on the way to Chicago, so I drove like a granny. (I think I finally found a room at a Holiday Inn Express around midnight.)
Bad Day For Equal Protection at SCOTUS
Facebook Corner
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| via Pro-Life Libertarians |
Trump is more of a libertarian than Johnson is and has a better chance
I think the OP is being sarcastic because otherwise, he's a lunatic. Trump is anti-immigrant, anti-trade; he loves the police, wants to bomb the families of terrorists; he wants to punish companies that invest overseas. He refuses to reform entitlements, wants to nationalize healthcare. He has an inflated view of the powers of the President.
Trump has no chance; Johnson has issues, e.g., with Nazi cakes, but almost across the board he improves over Trump. The GOP nominated a fascist; I'll be damned to reinforce the economically illiterate xenophobes.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Lisa Benson via Townhall |
Whitney Houston (with Mariah Carey), "When You Believe". One of my all-time favorite hits and duets.
