A new word to classify HUMANS soon and going forward.

SHEEPLE

More and more I am starting to realize the effect our enviornment has on us. Due to most technology we are all going to be SHEEPLE. The most recent example
I can list is GPS. What happened to figuring out your position based on landmarks or stars? Believe it or not it's good to get lost sometimes, you find hidden treasures that way. . . . . I am sure this subject will come up again so for now I am spent. My patience is taken up completley from a buisness event in progress.

GREAT READ

OK, it is long! But read 5 paragraphs, and you'll be hooked.Agree or not, but be honest enough with yourself to read it all!

This Texas lawyer, himself recipient of an Honorary Degree, is obviously opinionated, but to say what he does, in a commencement address a couple ofweeks ago, in front of a class of Texas A & M graduates, and especially thefaculty, is amazing. I would have loved to have been there just to see thefaculty reaction.

Commencement Address (Texas A&M).

This should be considered must reading for every adult in North America. It is extremely rare that anyone speaks the truth like this at any College or HighSchool Commencement Address.

Neal Boortz is a Texan, a lawyer, a Texas AGGIE (Texas A&M), and now anationally syndicated talk show host from Atlanta. His commencement address to the graduates of one of this year's A&M class is far different from what either the students or the faculty expected. His views are thought provoking:

2008 COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS: TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

"I am honored by the invitation to address you on this august occasion. It's about time. Be warned, however, that I am not here to impress you; you'll have enough smoke blown up your bloomers today. And you can bet your tassels I'm not here to impress the faculty and administration. You may like much of what I have to say, and that's fine. You will remember it though. Especially after about 10 years out there in the real world. This, it goes without saying, does not apply to those of you who will seek your careers and your fortunes as government employees.

This gowned gaggle behind me is your faculty. You've heard the old saying that those who can - do. Those who can't - teach. That sounds deliciously insensitive. But there is often raw truth in insensitivity, just as you often find feel-good falsehoods and lies in compassion. Say good-bye to your faculty because now you are getting ready to go out there and do.These folks behind me are going to stay right here and teach.

By the way, just because you are leaving this place with a diploma doesn't mean the learning is over. When an FAA flight examiner handed me my private pilot's license many years ago, he said, 'Here, this is your ticket to learn.' The same can be said for your diploma. Believe me, the learning has just begun.

Now, I realize that most of you consider yourselves Liberals. In fact, you are probably very proud of your liberal views. You care so much. You feel so much. You want to help so much. After all you're a compassionate and caring person, aren't you now? Well, isn't that just so extraordinarily special. Now, at this age, is as good a time as any to be a liberal; as good a time as any to know absolutely everything. You have plenty of time,starting tomorrow, for the truth to set in.

Over the next few years, as you begin to feel the cold breath of reality down your neck, things are going to start changing pretty fast... including your own assessment of just how much you really know.

So here are the first assignments for your initial class in reality: pay attention to the news, read newspapers, and listen to the words and phrases that proud Liberals use to promote their causes. Then, compare the words of the left to the words and phrases you hear from those evil, heartless, greedy conservatives. From the Left you will hear 'I feel.' From the Right you will hear 'I think.'From the Liberals you will hear references to groups -- The Blacks, the Poor,The Rich, The Disadvantaged, The Less Fortunate. From the Right you willhear references to individuals. On the Left you hear talk of group rights; on the Right, individual rights.

That about sums it up, really: Liberals feel. Liberals care. They are pack animals whose identity is tied up in group dynamics. Conservatives think -- and, setting aside the theocracy crowd, their identity is centered on the individual. Liberals feel that their favored groups have enforceable rights to the property and services of productive individuals. Conservatives, I among them I might add, think that individuals have the right to protect their lives and their property from the plunder of the masses.

In college you developed a group mentality, but if you look closely at your diplomas you will see that they have your individual names on them. Not the name of your school mascot, or of your fraternity or sorority, but your name. Your group identity is going away. Your recognition and appreciationof your individual identity starts now.

If, by the time you reach the age of 30, you do not consider yourself to be a conservative, rush right back here as quickly as you can and apply for a faculty position. These people will welcome you with open arms. They will welcome you, that is, so long as you haven't developed an individual identity. Once again you will have to be willing to sign on to the group mentality you embraced during the past four years.

Something is going to happen soon that is going to really open your eyes.You're going to actually get a full time job!

You're also going to get a lifelong work partner. This partner isn't going to help you do your job. This partner is just going to sit back and wait for payday. This partner doesn't want to share in your effort, but in your earnings.

Your new lifelong partner is actually an agent; an agent representing astrange and diverse group of people; an agent for every teenager with anillegitimate child; an agent for a research scientist who wanted to makesome cash answering the age-old question of why monkeys grind their teeth.An agent for some poor demented hippie who considers herself to be a meaningful and talented artist, but who just can't manage to sell any of her artwork on the open market.

Your new partner is an agent for every person with limited, if any, job skills, but who wanted a job at City Hall. An agent for tinhorn dictatorsin fancy military uniforms grasping for American foreign aid. An agent formulti-million- dollar companies who want someone else to pay for their overseas advertising. An agent for everybody who wants to use the unimaginable power of this agent's for their personal enrichment and benefit.

That agent is our wonderful, caring, compassionate, oppressive government. Believe me, you will be awed by the unimaginable power this agent has:power that you do not have; a power that no individual has, or will have.This agent has the legal power to use force, deadly force to accomplish its goals.

You have no choice here. Your new friend is just going to walk up to you,introduce itself rather gruffly, hand you a few forms to fill out, and move right on in. Say hello to your own personal one-ton gorilla. It will sleep anywhere it wants to.

Now, let me tell you, this agent is not cheap. As you become successful it will seize about 40% of everything you earn. And no, I'm sorry, there just isn't any way you can fire this agent of plunder, and you can't decrease its share of your income. That power rests with him, not you.

So, here I am saying negative things to you about government. Well, be clear on this: It is not wrong to distrust government. It is not wrong to fear government. In certain cases it is not even wrong to despise government for government is inherently evil. Yes ... a necessary evil,but dangerous nonetheless .... somewhat like a drug. Just as a drug that inthe proper dosage can save your life, an overdose of government can be fatal.

Now let's address a few things that have been crammed into your minds at this university. There are some ideas you need to expunge as soon aspossible. These ideas may work well in academic environment, but they fail miserably out there in the real world.

First is that favorite buzzword of the media and academia: Diversity! You have been taught that the real value of any group of people - be it a social group, an employee group, a management group, whatever - is based on diversity. This is a favored liberal ideal because diversity is based noton an individual's abilities or character, but on a person's identity and status as a member of a group. Yes, it's that liberal group identity thing again.

Within the great diversity movement group identification - be it racial, gender based, or some other minority status - means more than the individual's integrity, character or other qualifications.

Brace yourself. You are about to move from this academic atmosphere where diversity rules, to a workplace and a culture where individual achievementand excellence actually count. No matter what your professors have taught you over the last four years, you are about to learn that diversity is absolutely no replacement for excellence, ability, and individual hard work. From this day on every single time you hear the word 'diversity' you can rest assured that there is someone close by who is determined to rob you of every vestige of individuality you possess.

We also need to address this thing you seem to have about 'rights.' We have witnessed an obscene explosion of so-called 'rights' in the last few decades, usually emanating from college campuses.

You know the mantra: You have the right to a job. The right to a place to live. The right to a living wage. The right to health care. The right to an education. You probably even have your own pet right - the right to a Beemer for instance, or the right to have someone else provide for that child you plan on downloading in a year or so.

Forget it. Forget those rights! I'll tell you what your rights are! You have a right to live free, and to the results of 60% -75% of your labor. I'll also tell you have no right to any portion of the life or labor of another.

You may, for instance, think that you have a right to health care. After all, Hillary said so, didn't she? But you cannot receive healthcare unless some doctor or health practitioner surrenders some of his time - his life -to you. He may be willing to do this for compensation, but that's his choice. You have no 'right' to his time or property. You have no right to his or any other person's life or to any portion thereof.

You may also think you have some 'right' to a job; a job with a living wage,whatever that is. Do you mean to tell me that you have a right to force your services on another person, and then the right to demand that this person compensate you with their money? Sorry, forget it. I am sure you would scream if some urban outdoorsmen (that would be 'homeless person'for those of you who don't want to give these less fortunate people a romanticand adventurous title) came to you and demanded his job and your money.

The people who have been telling you about all the rights you have are simply exercising one of theirs - the right to be imbeciles. Their being imbeciles didn't cost anyone else either property or time. It's their right, and they exercise it brilliantly.

By the way, did you catch my use of the phrase 'less fortunate' a bit ago when I was talking about the urban outdoorsmen? That phrase is a favorite of the Left. Think about it, and you'll understand why.

To imply that one person is homeless, destitute, dirty, drunk, spaced out on drugs, unemployable, and generally miserable because he is 'less fortunate'is to imply that a successful person - one with a job, a home and a future is in that position because he or she was 'fortunate.' The dictionary says that fortunate means 'having derived good from an unexpected place.' There is nothing unexpected about deriving good from hard work. There is also nothing unexpected about deriving misery from choosing drugs, alcohol, and the street.

If the Liberal Left can create the common perception that success and failure are simple matters of 'fortune' or 'luck,' then it is easy to promote and justify their various income redistribution schemes. After all,we are just evening out the odds a little bit. This 'success equals luck' idea the liberals like to push is seen everywhere. Former Democratic presidential candidate Richard Gephardt refers to high-achievers as people who have won life's lottery.' He wants you to believe they are making the big bucks because they are lucky. It's not luck, my friends. It's choice.One of the greatest lessons I ever learned was in a book by Og Mandino,entitled 'The Greatest Secret in the World.' The lesson? Very simple: ‘Use wisely your power of choice.

'That bum sitting on a heating grate, smelling like a wharf rat? He's there by choice. He is there because of the sum total of the choices he has made in his life. This truism is absolutely the hardest thing for some people to accept, especially those who consider themselves to be victims of something or other - victims of discrimination, bad luck, the system, capitalism,whatever. After all, nobody really wants to accept the blame for his or her position in life. Not when it is so much easier to point and say, 'Look! He did this to me!' than it is to look into a mirror and say, 'You S.O.B.!You did this to me!

'The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms.

Some of the choices are obvious: Whether or not to stay in school. Whether or not to get pregnant. Whether or not to hit the bottle. Whether or not to keep this job you hate until you get another better-paying job. Whether or not to save some of your money, or saddle yourself with huge payments for that new car.

Some of the choices are seemingly insignificant: Whom to go to the movies with. Whose car to ride home in. Whether to watch the tube tonight, or read a book on investing. But, and you can be sure of this, each choice counts. Each choice is a building block - some large, some small. But each one is a part of the structure of your life. If you make the right choices,or if you make more right choices than wrong ones, something absolutely terrible may happen to you. Something unthinkable. You, my friend, could become one of the hated, the evil, the ugly, the feared, the filthy, the successful, the rich.

The rich basically serve two purposes in this country. First, they provide the investments, the investment capital, and the brains for the formation of new businesses. Businesses that hire people. Businesses that send millionsof paychecks home each week to the un-rich.

Second, the rich are a wonderful object of ridicule, distrust, and hatred. Few things are more valuable to a politician than the envy most Americans feel for the evil rich.

Envy is a powerful emotion. Even more powerful than the emotional minefield that surrounded Bill Clinton when he reviewed his last batch of White House interns. Politicians use envy to get votes and power. And they keep that power by promising the envious that the envied will be punished: 'The rich will pay their fair share of taxes if I have anything to do with it. The truth is that the top 10% of income earners in this country pays almost 50%of all income taxes collected. I shudder to think what these job producers would be paying if our tax system were any more 'fair.'

You have heard, no doubt, that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Interestingly enough, our government's own numbers show that many of the poor actually get richer, and that quite a few of the rich actually get poorer. But for the rich who do actually get richer and the poor who remain poor ... there's an explanation -- a reason. The rich, you see, keep Speaking of the poor, during your adult life you are going to hear an endless string of politicians bemoaning the plight of the poor So, you needto know that under our government's definition of 'poor' you can have a million net worth, a $300,000 home and a new $90,000 Mercedes, all completely paid for. You can also have a maid, cook, and valet, and a million in your checking account and you can still be officially defined by our government as 'living in poverty.' Now there's something you haven't seen on the evening news.

How does the government pull this one off? Very simple, really. To determine whether or not some poor soul is 'living in poverty,' the government measures one thing -- just one thing. Income. It doesn't matter one bit how much you have, how much you own, how many cars you drive or howbig they are, whether or not your pool is heated, whether you winter in Aspen and spend the summers in the Bahamas , or how much is in your savings account. It only matters how much income you claim in that particular year.This means that if you take a one-year leave of absence from your high-paying job and decide to live off the money in your savings and checking accounts while you write the next great American novel, the government says you are 'living in poverty.'

This isn't exactly what you had in mind when you heard these gloomy statistics, is it? Do you need more convincing? Try this. The governments own statistics show that people who are said to be 'living in poverty' spendmore than $1.50 for each dollar of income they claim. Something is a bit fishy here. Just remember all this the next time Charles Gibson tells you about some hideous new poverty statistics.

Why has the government concocted this phony poverty scam? Because the government needs an excuse to grow and to expand its social welfare programs, which translates into an expansion of its power. If the government can convince you, in all your compassion, that the number of'poor' is increasing, it will have all the excuse it needs to sway an electorate suffering from the advanced stages of Obsessive-Compulsive Compassion Disorder.

I'm about to be stoned by the faculty here. They've already changed their minds about that honorary degree I was going to get. That's OK, though. I still have my PhD in Insensitivity from the Neal Boortz Institute for Insensitivity Training. I learned that, in short, sensitivity sucks. It's a trap. Think about it - the truth knows no sensitivity. Life can be insensitive. Wallow too much in sensitivity and you'll be unable to deal with life, or the truth so, get over it.

Now, before the dean has me shackled and hauled off, I have a few random thoughts.

* You need to register to vote, unless you are on welfare. If you are living off the efforts of others, please do us the favor of sitting down and shutting up until you are on your own again.

* When you do vote, your votes for the House and the Senate are more important than your vote for president. The House controls the purse strings, so concentrate your awareness there.

* Liars cannot be trusted, even when the liar is the president of the country. If someone can't deal honestly with you, send them packing.

* Don't bow to the temptation to use the government as an instrument of plunder. If it is wrong for you to take money from someone else who earned it -- to take their money by force for your own needs -- then it is certainly just as wrong for you to demand that the government step forward and do this dirty work for you.

* Don't look in other people's pockets. You have no business there. What they earn is theirs. What you earn is yours. Keep it that way. Nobody owes you anything, except to respect your privacy and your rights, and leave you the hell alone.

* Speaking of earning, the revered 40-hour work week is for losers. Forty hours should be considered the minimum, not the maximum. You don't see highly successful people clocking out of the office every afternoon at five.The losers are the ones caught up in that afternoon rush hour. The winners drive home in the dark.

* Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.

* Finally (and aren't you glad to hear that word), as Og Mandino wrote,

1. Proclaim your rarity. Each of you is a rare and unique human being.

2. Use wisely your power of choice.

3. Go the extra mile... drive home in the dark.

Oh, and put off buying a television set as long as you can. Now, if you have any idea at all what's good for you, you will get the hell out of here and never come back."

FIRE!!

Today we had a fire drill in our building. I work in a 15 story building and I am on the 10th floor. It was interesting to me to see the reaction of some of the co-workers on my floor. I will get more into that in a minute; first let me give some background on the full situation.

Yesterday I received a call from the admin on our floor asking me if I would be a Fire Warden. (This was in response to an email sent to her from the building management about a fire drill going to take place on Tuesday) Now having been in a position in the past to coordinate an entire 43 floor building evacuation, I knew she wouldn’t get many volunteers to assist her so I accepted. She was surprised that I said yes and that she would bring me a vest. Later that afternoon I got the vest and minimal instruction on the duties.

Around 3:00 p.m. she sent out an email with the directions for the staff and the murmuring started. On the diagram indicating the meeting area there were two ways to locate the correct place to congregate. (A number and a dashed trail to follow) The murmuring was about how the map was hard to read and they didn’t know where to go. I didn’t find one person who could think past the number and just follow the dashed trail.

All of that was yesterday prior to me leaving the office, so this morning I figured I would print out maps and highlight the route to take if you were located on my floor. (For the common sense inept) I also made a personal list of who I was responsible for getting out. When the time came for the drill I can honestly say that most of the people left in ample time. I was disappointed when 2 of my co-workers wouldn’t leave. One wanted to complete an email and the other wanted to wait for the person that was completing the email. This has become such an issue that in our building the fire Marshalls are fining those employers whose employees are not participating.

I understand that Fire Drills seem to be mundane and un-important but look back that those who went un-prepared and remember how they fared. Another issue I have with people who wont participate is that if I am floor leader and you are dragging your feet, not only are you risking your life but you then place mine in danger if there were a real situation happening.

If you don’t like fire drills look at them as an opportunity to get away from your desk. Or treat them like you remove duct tape and do it quickly to get it over with. I will end my lengthy rant for now, just please remember that your actions in these situations effect others.

DRIVERS!!

Ok ...............so now for post number 2. My lovely wife an I recently took a trip through several mid-western states and I noticed more of what I call a growing epidemic in the country. From my title I am sure you can guess the subject of my frustration. Since this is obvious or should be I will try to make this post short. . . . . so here are a few items that in my opinion should be steadfast rules. 

1. The LEFT lane is for passing ONLY. (if you want to cruise use the frontage road or hang behind the pro already cruising the slowest in the right lane. 

2. Ladies, please put your makeup on at home if you are the driver on your commute. I understand you want to look your best but how good can you look swerving in  and out of lanes while you are applying mascara.  

3. For the love of all that is holy, people, the lines are painted on the road for a reason. If you cant color within the lines don't pick up the crayon. 

Now I could go on with more but I am skeptical that much good would come of it. I feel that the skill of driving will only continue to suffer with the many distractions we all have in our daily lives. Cell phones, Makeup, breakfast and other things we place priority over then the most important task at hand - DRIVING. 

Intro Post

So welcome to The Dead Horse. This will be a blog of rants and possibly some raves. I chose The Dead Horse as a title since I am sure we all have had the same thoughts and I am sure you have heard them somewhere but we seem to never get anywhere on the issues. So I figure whatever I say here will be just like beating a Dead Horse, it wont get up and go anywhere. If by chance my posts move you to action or maybe expand your box ….well at least something was accomplished.