Let the Truth be Know

I'm very happy that the second of the Boston bombers has been captured and thankful for the brave men and women who worked tirelessly and selflessly to bring about the capture.  I have avoided watching much news about it, however, and completely avoid any of the social media posts because the facts are not yet fully know.
I'm disgusted with those in the media and those who seem to be in the business of inventing news spreading what they think, guess or make up from thin air, and calling it news.  In doing this, confusion results.
"There has been an explosion." "...two."  "...three."   "oops, only two."
"Subject in custody." "...ooops...."  
You get my thinking here?
Everybody is an expert, so who can be believed?  Please folks, before you start disseminating news, make sure it's news--not conjecture.  Tossing out speculation in a form indistinguishable from fact might make you fell important, but it does no one any good.

Let's Think About This!

Make no mistake; President Obama is not my favorite president--probably the least favorite of my life; but when he's acting like any other president, we should not draw a negative conclusion from it just because of the personalities involved.   My gripe is the facebook posting making a connection between the death of Chris Kyle, a man who by all accounts was a military hero and died under tragic circumstances, and the death of Hugo Chavez, a head of state--as unpopular as he may be with most of us.

Under normal circumstances, the non-service connected death of a veteran is not newsworthy on a national scale; but the celebrated sniper was well known and his untimely death made headlines nationwide, if not internationally.  Rarely if ever does the President take any special note of such events.  Unfortunately, veterans, old and young, decorated and non-decorated, die every day without any presidential note.  

However, Chavez was the leader of a nation within our own hemisphere.  It is both custom and common decency to send a delegation to pay respects for such a person--even if he did state his hatred for our own nation.  

For what it's worth, Chris Kyle was laid to rest with the ceremony that should be accorded a hero.  There is at least one easily located picture with military personnel lining the fence around the cemetery.  He was buried as and will be recalled as a hero for many years to come.  

Hopefully--though history suggests otherwise--Chavez will become nothing but a blip on the chart of Venezuela's list of leaders.  He's driven the country into a steadily worsening position and into greater debt, all the while bleeding the economy to fatten his own position.  The free world will recall him for what he truly was, even if the people of his nation do not.  

Neuter the Geldings

A couple years ago, I heard a fellow at Iron Sharpens Iron talk about how we "neuter the geldings, then tell them to go forth and multiply."  It was a great quote and a good message, but I can't recall who the guy was.  As I searched for the quote on Google, this popped up: http://www.fathermag.com/005/FredReed/.  Though I can't agree with all of it, a lot of it is dead on.  In the name of equality, we've been killing off real men. Oh, we've still got lots of adult males; but where are the real men?  We've sacrificed them on the altar of equality.  The melding of gender identity is killing us.
Before going any further, let me firmly say that I have no problem with successful women, I've worked for a few over over the years.  Two of them did well; one was pretty bad.  The ratio is about the same for the men I've worked for, so there's nothing to be drawn.  The good women bosses I've had were women first--real women!  They were wives, mothers, etc-- and bosses second.   They had nothing to prove, and were  good at what they did.  The one who had something to prove was so intent on making a point that she never was much of a boss.  (I have to qualify this--I currently work for one of the good ones.)
But I digress--back to the topic of men.  Our culture has ever so so steadily reduced the value of manhood.  All too often the strong ones are usually shown in a bad light, they're evil in some way or incredibly stupid.  There always has to be a woman to keep them in line.
 The other all too common image of a man today is one who is perfectly dressed, perfect in form, has no callouses, nothing rough or tough about him.  He's without strength, without character. He might not be a total wimp; but he's rapidly on the road to it.  He also seems to need a woman to keep him in line, or at least straighten him out when he messes up.  In either case, a man is never capable of properly  raising a child without a woman's help.  
Happily for me, I've had some good role models.  Men who knew what it was like to sweat--not just at a gym; men who could think for themselves, knew what was right and kept their word--even when it was costly to them...the real stand-up guys we could learn something from. Some of them even reared kids successfully without a woman around.  There are still such men around, but they're getting scarce.  Young men would do well to search out such men.
Our culture is suffering for lack of real men--and real women--those truly understand what manhood and womanhood are all about.  Don't be misled by what the media tosses at us as men and women.  The images are skewed at best, outright lies at worst.

Email stories

I'm often barraged with emails sent by well meaning people who don't stop to really read or think about what it is they're passing along.
I got one a while back, from someone in the medical profession no less, claiming the information came from a report out of "John Hopkins University" I'm not really that well schooled as to medicine, but long ago I learned that it's "Johns Hopkins," Johns having been an old family name or something like that. Nearly all the content of the missive had been around for years, and been debunked by either Snopes.com or Truthorfiction.com long ago. The rest of it was so hokey it screamed fake; yet it was sent on.
Others emails are a bit more difficult to debunk, but a few minutes of work will usually take care of it. Some of them are gut wrenching stories about a sick or injured child, a family in need, things like that. Some of them are even true, or at least were, but are generally inflated, and often so old that the sick child has recovered, and is now a married adult, or the family tragedy is long past! Some take on a religious slant, often about taking God out of our culture. Though the point is often valid, the stories are usually patently false.
It is particularly bothersome that most of these emails seem to be of interest to those on the conservative side of the political spectrum. I fear that those on "our side" of the political house who don't either take the time to do the research and thus pass on this drivel are merely fueling the fire of the liberals who deride us for being ignorant and naive.
So, let's pay attention to what we're sending on, huh? I don't send on anything I can't verify, or at least qualify as true to the best of my knowledge--I don't even read a lot of it. That means I just trash much of what I get. If it's not worth verifying, it's not worth passing on. Spreading false information only weakens the impact when we're right