Why do actors think being famous makes them any more qualified than the American public to have the answers to our political issues? Is it because they pretended they were a politician in a movie once? A more confusing question is this… why do people listen to them and think they are experts? Come on! In January of 2016 I had brain surgery. I SURE wouldn’t have let George Clooney do the surgery just because he was a doctor on ER!

Don’t get me wrong. I love to watch an actor do what they do best… act. They can act like they are teachers, or cops, or firemen, or even astronauts. They can act like anything. THIS DOESN’T QUALIFY THEM TO BE THOSE THINGS! They can study real hard and learn as much as they can about the part they are playing. They will probably know MUCH more about what they are playing than I do, but it still doesn’t qualify them to actually do it in the real world.

Now I’ve heard actors insult half the country because they think they know more about how everyone should vote than the “little people” in the middle of the country. Well I’ve got news for these actors… those “little people” actually know how to do something. A trade skill, a business specialty, or basically whatever it takes to put food on the table for their families. You, however, don’t know how to do ANYTHING except act like you are doing something. That’s it. You’ve proven nothing else to us.

Remember that last paragraph is not aimed at ALL actors, just those that insult and deride anyone disagreeing with their world-view. I know none of them will ever read this, but it’s aggravated me for years and I wanted to get it out there in the open to discuss.

Now finally I want to thank all of you other actors. You know… the ones that don’t try to insult us or ram your beliefs down our throats. You are the way actors should be, and trust me… the country thanks you for letting us enjoy your work without having to hear that we are stupid for not having the same political views that you have.

WARNING & DISCLAIMER: In this post I may mention some “racially charged” terms. I am in NO WAY using them to describe anyone or label anyone with these terms. It is simply hard to discuss some aspects of racism without using the terms. Having said this, I hope I don’t offend anyone. Remember, This is a discussion. I will not refer to ANYONE (other than maybe myself) by a racial slur.

So. I sat and watched a montage of clips where liberals were saying the Tea Party was nothing but a bunch of racists. Some even said the Tea Party was a racist party. Now I’m not going discuss how many people in the Tea Party are racists, but I would like to know what percentage of a group has to be a certain thing before the whole group is considered that thing. Is it 10%? 25%? 50%? Technically it would have to be 100% for you to be able to call the group as a whole that, right? So the KKK would be considered a racist group because, face it… it IS a racist group.

But let’s not get that extreme. Let’s talk about everyday life and labels we as a country apply to groups of people. Let’s get the “N word” out of the way first. I personally believe that there is no excuse to use this word simply because of the history of HOW it was used… NOT what it “means”. The “N word” as a word is simply a bastardization of several languages’ words for “black.” in Spanish and Galician it’s “negro”, in Catalan it’s “negre”, in Esperanto it’s “nigra”… All of these are derived from the Latin word “nigrum” and they all simply describe a color. It has nothing to do with people. And even in the “pure” language form it is still an acceptable word. If it wasn’t would we have the United Negro College Fund? It’s when it was changed specifically to make it a hateful and derogatory term against an essentially helpless people that it became wrong. And in my opinion it doesn’t matter WHAT color you are, it should not be used.

It’s interesting how words get their meaning, isn’t it? Did you know that originally a “red neck” was a poor white farm worker that couldn’t find work anywhere except manual labor in the fields? Picking cotton, planting, plowing, whatever was available…. sometimes working side by side with freed slaves? They wore tough long sleeve work shirts and overalls and the only place they got sunburned was on the neck. Most of the time they were proud to have work, just like the blacks they worked beside were proud to have work. Remember, this was a rough time in the south. Today, we ALL know what a redneck is…. you hear it and think mullets, house trailers, 4x4s, and cases of beer every weekend. But usually the TRUE rednecks still work hard at jobs that, while much better than the original “rednecks”, is still considered lower class. Remember, I’m speaking in general here and while I’ve been called a redneck before, I’m technically a hillbilly, which is a totally different post so we’ll leave it for later.

So let’s get to a VERY misunderstood term. I would be willing to bet that 90% of the people using the term and even the people being CALLED this term do not understand where the word comes from. Before we talk about the word itself, let’s talk abut the cowboys that still have farms in central Florida. Unlike what we normally think of when we picture western cowboys, they don’t use dogs to herd the cattle. They ride their horses and they carry whips. When they want the cows to change direction they crack the whips so the cows shy away from the noise and go the right direction. Locally in central Florida they are known, not as “cowboys”, but as “crackers”. Let’s go back several decades… on most farms utilizing slave labor they ALSO had someone on a horse carrying a whip… and although they might be called “foreman” or “boss”, the slang for this person was “cracker.” Personally, I find it extremely offensive to be called a cracker. When someone does that they are inferring that I am so racist that I would be the one on the horse whipping the slaves.

Now, if you are still reading, and I haven’t offended you, I’d like to make some suggestions and statements.

First… AS LONG AS WE CONTINUE TO CALL THEM “RACES” SOMEONE IS GOING TO TRY TO WIN!

Second… Let’s just quit referring to ourselves as Irish Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans (Although that one almost makes sense), and start calling ourselves AMERICANS. Let’s stop calling ourselves White, Black, Hispanic, etc. and just call ourselves PEOPLE. Is that asking too much?

Ok… now the Political Correctness and Other Assorted Stupidity. Recently I posted the following on Facebook while I was working and copying some files…

You can’t legislate morality
You can’t legislate common sense
You can’t legislate work ethic

I am so tired of hearing that the rich must pay their “fair share” that I want to puke. Let me put this into perspective…

1: At the end of the school year let’s take 40% of the grade point away from the top 10% of the student body and give it to the bottom 50% of the student body. After all, it’s not fair that only the ones that are the smartest and work the hardest get all the good grades.

2: At the end of the season let’s take 40% of the wins away from the top 10% of the college football team and give those wins to the bottom 50% of the teams.

3: Let’s take 40% of the stock shares away from the richest 10% and give them to the poorest half of the country. After all, they should be able to have stock, too.

4: While we’re at it, let’s take 40% of the land away from the wealthy land owners and redistribute it.

5: And while we’re talking about fair… I want to be in the Olympics, so let’s figure out a way that only have to run the 500m race while the athletes that worked and trained so long run the 1000m race. I’m slow and overweight, so it’s only fair that I get special treatment.

6: There is no number 6

7: Let’s redistribute the credit scores. Let’s take points away from those people who have worked to pay their bills on time and have built up a good credit score and give those points to the people that don’t make their payments and have bad credit.

OR…. since you CAN’T regulate Morality, Common Sense, or Work Ethic. Let’s try this…

1: If a child has a failing grade, call it what it is. If they are special needs, get them help. If they are lazy, make them take the grade over again. Maybe a little embarrassment from being held back will motivate them!

2: Well, that’s just silly. But it does make a good point.

3: Hey… we’re already doing #3 in a different way… we’re making rich people pay a MUCH higher percentage of their income in taxes and then giving it to tens of millions of people. Why don’t we quit doing that! Let’s require the unemployed to prove they are trying to get a job before we get them a single check. Let’s also take the billions we spend totally supporting them and set up vocational/technical schools to teach them a new skill. Require that after a certain time on unemployment or you forfeit your checks.

4: OK… forget that one too, again… it was just silly.

5: LIFE ISN’T FAIR! You don’t get a trophy from your boss for failing an assignment “just because you participated!” Quit training our kids to expect the real world to work that way. I knew before I was out of grade school that the world was one huge competition after another. If you want to win… or at least not lose all the time… you had to work hard and get better at what you did. And you weren’t give respect until you earned it!

6: There’s not a number 6, remember?

and finally:

7: If you’ve got bad credit because you over-extended yourself and lived beyond your means… well… STOP DOING THAT! Either that or you can always vote Democrat and hope the country doesn’t run out of money before you die. I wouldn’t bet on it, though, if we continue to be ran by a man that thinks you can fill up a swimming pool by taking water out of the deep in and pouring it into the shallow end.

To sum up: Why did I write all this? It’s simple. I’m copying a huge file up to the server and it’s taking a while and I got bored. So all I ask is…
1: Share this. Spread the word and see if people will read it
2: Quit passing laws that protect people from themselves
3: Sorry… the file just finished copying. I’ll talk to everyone later…. bye.

One of the things I (sarcastically) suggested was this…

5: And while we’re talking about fair… I want to be in the Olympics, so let’s figure out a way that only have to run the 500m race while the athletes that worked and trained so long run the 1000m race. I’m slow and overweight, so it’s only fair that I get special treatment.

Imagine my surprise when I see the following headline on the news tonight…

A California youth football league is fining teams if they win by more than a certain margin

Yes, you read it right. They are fining the coach $200.00 if his team wins by more than a certain margin. This is supposed to promote sportsmanship. My NON-sarcastic response in my post was…

5: LIFE ISN’T FAIR! You don’t get a trophy from your boss for failing an assignment “just because you participated!” Quit training our kids to expect the real world to work that way. I knew before I was out of grade school that the world was one huge competition after another. If you want to win… or at least not lose all the time… you had to work hard and get better at what you did. And you weren’t give respect until you earned it!

OK… So I didn’t nail it completely but I ALSO said…

2: At the end of the season let’s take 40% of the wins away from the top 10% of the college football team and give those wins to the bottom 50% of the teams.

If you add the two together, you’d think the California Athletic Association was reading my Facebook posts!

Welp… I’m finished now, Hope I didn’t offend you, but I’m not going to lose sleep over it. If you are the type that wants to be offended, you’ll find something up there to offend you. Trust me, I’ve had plenty of reasons to be offended over the years. It doesn’t pay. Usually the person that offends me doesn’t even know it, so the only person it affects is me. If you know me at all, you know I’m not the type to want to offend people, but I AM the type that doesn’t mind sharing my beliefs and opinions. Hopefully some of you will comment on this TASTEFULLY and RESPECTFULLY. I hope I showed taste and respect while discussing some touchy subjects, so please do the same if you reply.

Michael

Let’s jump right into politics! I saw something very disturbing in the last couple of days. Two items that really made me stop and scratch my head. One was a government program that was looking into infertility problems with same sex couples. Another was a government program to study how voice changes effect transgendered individuals’ self esteem. Now both of these items were given a LOT of money from the government (read “our tax money”). So I started looking around trying to verify this and I couldn’t do it. What I DID find was a list of government programs that, frankly, makes me sick at my stomach that I am having to pay for. I’m just going to list a few of them here with some quick comments on them.

• Protecting a Michigan insect collection from other insects ($187,632) <- Really? a collection? Not even live insects?
• Developing a program to develop “machine-generated humor” in Illinois ($712,883) <- You’ve got to be kidding me. Do we REALLY want our computers pulling pranks and cracking jokes?
• Studying why deleting a gene can create sex reversal in people, but not in mice  in Minnesota ($190,000) <- ok… do we really have a lot of mice wanting to reverse their gender?
• New jumbo recycling bins with microchips embedded inside to track participation  in Ohio ($500,000) <- Why don’t we have people who’ve learned “empty” from “full” to work collecting the recycling? Half a million dollars for “Smart Trash Cans”?
• 18 North Carolina teacher coaches to heighten math and reading performance ($4.4  million) <- If they can’t do the job, fire them and hire someone who can! Don’t spend millions on people that should have learned this BEFORE they got their degree!
• Retrofitting light switches with motion sensors for one company in Arizona  ($800,000) <- I have no comment. That’s just stupid… and WE PAID FOR IT!
• Removing graffiti along 100 miles of flood-control ditches in California  ($837,000) <- hey… save the money and put the people serving community service out doing it!
• Producing and transporting peanuts and peanut butter in North Carolina  ($900,000) <- Ok… these are getting too stupid for comment… I’m just going to list the rest of them without comment.
• Elevating and relocating 3,000 feet of track for the Napa Valley Wine Train in  California ($54 million)
• Professors and employees of Iowa state universities voluntarily taking early  retirement ($43 million)
• Missouri bridge project that already was full-funded with state money ($8  million)
• University in Oklahoma sending 3 researchers to Alaska to study grandparents and  how they pass on knowledge to younger generations ($1.5 million)
• Bridge built over railroad crossing so 168 Nebraska town residents don’t have to  wait for the trains to pass ($7 million)
• Beautification of Los Angeles’ Sunset Boulevard ($1.1 million)
• New spring training facilities for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies  ($30 million)
• Putting free WiFi, Internet kiosks and interactive history lessons in 2 Texas  rest stops ($13.8 million)
• Road signs touting stimulus funds at work in Ohio ($1 million)
• Researching how paying attention improves performance of difficult tasks in  Connecticut ($850,000)
• Fire station without firefighters in Nevada ($2 million)

Ok. That’s just from one list I found from the 2010 budget and this doesn’t even touch things like the national endowment for the arts. Listen… if you are an artist and you can’t sell your art… go get a REAL job and do your art as a hobby. I don’t see a “national endowment for the web developer” anywhere!

Now being serious, a lot of the things I found are not necessarily bad things. But they ARE bad when our tax money has to pay for them. And for Pete’s sake, get it right… welfare is NOT an “entitlement,” its a program for giving you something you’ve not earned. Social Security IS an entitlement because you paid into it your whole life and you are ENTITLED to it. These seem to be very small numbers compared to our debt, but this is just a short sampling. There are THOUSANDS of these stupid programs out there.

Don’t take my statements to mean I am cold or heartless, but there is a difference between giving a hand up and giving a hand out. PBS and NPR are another couple of things that need to be axed, in my opinion. They are always doing telethons to raise money for PBS, but still get money from the government. If they can’t pay their way, they should restructure, or close the door. I actually had a liberal friend tell me one time that it should be a crime for sports figures and entertainers to make more than $100,000 per year. She said that anything over that should be taken from them and given to the poor.

So all men are created equal? That might be so, but their situations are certainly not equal. Let’s not kid ourselves, some people have it easier than others. Some are even smarter than others! That’s not fair! Well, folks, no one ever said life was fair.

Now I don’t believe in ranting about stuff without giving a solution. It might not be perfect, but I won’t be one of those people that whines and complains without suggesting changes, so here goes…

Let’s throw out the whole tax code. Now bring in a new flat rate tax that only starts at a minimum yearly income. Let’s call that, for ease of computation, $20,000. So as long as you don’t make more than $20,000 you won’t pay a dime in taxes. At $20,001 a flat rate of 10% kicks in and there are no deductions. It’s pulled out and placed in an escrow account with every paycheck. Now comes the fun part… when you fill out your taxes you just put your income, and then you have the option of checking a box that says “[ ] Let the government disburse my taxes”, or a box that says “[ ] Use my taxes for the following” then list every program that receives government money. Those that don’t want their money going for  “Studying why deleting a gene can create sex reversal in people, but not in mice  in Minnesota” can leave that unchecked and not a penny of their money will go toward that program. TADA! A democratic way for everyone to “vote” on what government programs get money. Remember… I’m not talking about Social Security, that’s an entitlement, not a hand-out. I wouldn’t even mind a three or four tiered rate system… like 2.5% for incomes from $20,000 – $40,000 leading up to the 10% rate on anyone earning over $100,000. Anyway, explain to me why this wouldn’t be fair? Because it would put all those tax attorneys out of business?

Let the Counter-Point and Discussion Begin!

intro…

I would like to start by explaining the “Mountain Top” part of my blog title. I don’t imagine myself a “guru” or some wise man sitting on the top of a mountain delivering wisdom to those who take the time to climb the heights and listen. It is much simpler than that, but I really need to fill in some back story to really get the idea across.

some back story…

Having been raised in a small town in Arkansas, and living the majority of my life in that same small town, I was imprinted early with certain “facts” that have shaped my philosophy and determined my basic outlook in life. At the same time these values were being built into my personality I fell in love with technology. For close to three decades I have been working in some area of computing or another, and most of those years I worked for myself. Needless to say when on a conference call with potential clients I have a built-in handicap that must be overcome… and that’s my marked southern accent. So one day my phone rings and I notice it is one of my service clients calling. This particular client just loved to poke fun at my accent, so I decided to have some fun and answered the phone “Hillbilly Programmin’! How can I hep ya?” After about 20 seconds of silence I hear about 6 people burst into laughter. The client was calling to add me into a conference call with AT&T because AT&T was interested in using my software to do the fulfillment for their “Friends & Family” referral program. We did actually land the contract, but to this day there are people who were on that call (including at least two vice presidents) that know me as either the “Mountain Man” or the “Hillbilly Programmer.” I am just an ordinary guy with some things I want to say, and since I’ve been called a Hillbilly I thought the title would be a nice play on the idea.

keep reading… I’m getting to the point… like “who am I?”

I would like to think I’m an intelligent person, and the tests I took in school used to tell me that this was true, but tests don’t mean a lot and life has a way of quickly showing you just how stupid you are when you get thrown into the real world thinking you know it all. I am a conservative Christian, the husband of a VERY tolerant wife, and the father of two amazing young men. In my life I’ve worked in factories, I’ve worked construction, and, while running my own businesses, have worked for some of the largest companies in the world. During all of this, though, the best compliment I ever received from any client or employer was when I was told I had the best work ethic of anyone they had ever had work for them. This takes us back to the previous idea of early development. If someone asked me what single thing that my father taught me that has had the most influence on my life it would be “give a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.” He always told me that if I didn’t do that it was the same as theft… I might as well be stealing money from my employer/client. That’s enough about me for now. Trust me, if you follow these posts for long, you’ll learn a lot more about me in the future.

so… just what is this blog going to be about?

That’s a good question! I really don’t know. I’ve spoken with a friend of mine who has agreed to post “counter-points” to my ramblings. I don’t want this to become just another “right-wing rant” blog. This friend of mine can introduce himself (if he is still wanting to give this a go), but I will tell you that while I am primarily a conservative he is primarily a liberal and while I am a Christian (or attempt to be one), he is… well… I’ll let him explain it. I personally think he falls into the agnostic camp, but I’m sure he will correct me. A lot of you probably know him, so when Tom Black posts on here, everyone welcome him.

are you going to allow comments and, if so, what are the rules?

Yes, we’re going to allow comments. The rules are simple… be civil, be respectful, and don’t attack other people because of their beliefs or their stands on a particular subject. If you aren’t capable of intelligently DISCUSSING your position on a subject without resorting to attacks, then frankly we don’t want to hear from you. We are going to be discussing everything from politics to science to religion. Everyone is welcome to comment, but by commenting you accept the fact that if you ARE disrespectful or attack other people your post will most likely be deleted with no notice and no explanation. I would also ask you to keep the language down to a PG rating. Again… you should be able to get your point across without resorting to foul language.

so… what now?

Introductions and Ideas. Introduce yourself and let us know what topics you would like to discuss. We’re going to try to put up a post every week at first. We may change to more or less frequently after we get a feel of how things are going, but I think that weekly is a good start. I’ve already got some topics lined up I want to discuss such as Gun Control, Immigration, Universal Registration, The Tax System, and many more, but I really want to hear from you., so spread the word that we’re out here and start letting us know what you want to discuss.

Thanks, Michael McGaha