Open Thread

So, what's on your mind?

Here is your chance to opine within the parameters listed below:

Over A Year To Go

The fundamental transformation of America

Just three of the consequences of twice electing to the Oval Office Barack Hussein Obama.

1.  The Affordable Care Act

2.  The Dream Act.

3.  Net Neutrality.

Commenters, feel free to add to the list.

Again!

(Two posts today.  Please scroll down)

Snowing here in the D.C. area — once again, more than the weathermen forecast!

This is the Year of the Snow Dragon (with thanks to FreeThinke for emailing me the image below):

SNOW DRAGON

Allah's Identity

Please take a few moments to watch Allah NOT same as the God of Jesus, Moses, Abraham:


IQ al-Rassooli is a our guest this week on The Gathering Storm Radio Show.

The Contentious Online World

One of my favorite sections of the Washington Post is "John Kelly's Washington."

From John Kelly's recent essay "Why do nasty online comments get us so riled up? It’s literally in our DNA":

...Saber-toothed tigers are rather thin on the ground anymore, so we don’t need that reflex that enables us to instantly aim our pointy stick at an approaching threat or muster the quick burst of energy required to help us run to safety.

And yet that response is still there, buried deep in the recesses of our brains. But about the only time I feel those hormones surging through my body is when I’m about to send an ill-considered e-mail message or Twitter post. Someone trolling us on social media is as close as any of us get to the stress of a predator bearing down on us on the veld....

What effect does all this contentious have on those of us who spend so much time in the online world? John Kelly states the following:

At first, I thought that my analogy — Twitter flames are today’s saber-toothed tigers — might be a little far-fetched. Then I talked to Johannes Eichstaedt, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. A thought-provoking paper he co-wrote was just published in the journal Psychological Science. By crunching data, Johannes and his collaborators were able to show that areas of the United States that express high levels of negative language on Twitter — tweets filled with expletives and hate — correlate with areas of the country that have high levels of heart disease.

This doesn’t mean that Twitter trolls are dying of stress-induced heart attacks, rather that everyone who lives in a hotbed of negative emotion is affected by the overall angry vibe.

The link between stress and heart disease is well known. “We now think of chronic stress as a chronic upregulation of the sympathetic nervous system,” Johannes said.

When deployed only occasionally and as originally intended, the fight-or-flight response is a good thing. It improves your odds of surviving an attack or lifting a car off a trapped child. But being repeatedly washed by adrenaline and cortisone can damage the arteries.

Twitter, angry e-mails, noxious online comments: These can all raise the blood pressure. Of course, humans have been arguing with one another for millennia. What’s different about the digital age is that now we do it with strangers over the Internet....

So, why do we continue to spend so much time in the online world? As rational creatures, we must know that too much time in the contentious online world is bad for our mental and physical health!

Today is my sixty-third birthday, and I'm going to treat myself to some time away from the contentious online world:

The Pacifist Solution To The Islamic State

WC, Infidel Bloggers Alliance's Midnight Rider, and I discussed this on The Gathering Storm Radio Show on February 20, 2015. Must-watch video!  Even if you don't particularly care for Bill O'Reilly.

SPEW ALERT!

The Indomitable Human Spirit

(If you must have politics, please scroll down)

Despite forty-eight years in a nursing home, Paul Smith, who has cerebral palsy, perseveres (hat tip to Farmers Letters):


Learn more about Paul Smith HERE.

Open Thread

So, what's on your mind?

Here is your chance to opine within the parameters listed below:

We welcome civil dialogue at Always on Watch. Comments that include any of the following are subject to deletion:
1. Any use of profanity or abusive language
2. Off topic comments and spam
3. Use of personal invective
Note: comments consisting of blog gossip will be deleted as soon as an administrator of this blog becomes aware of such comments.

A link to get this thread started...New woes for HealthCare.gov: Wrong tax info sent out [nearly 1 million affected].

Right Now

(Scroll down for politics; active thread below)

In reference to the winter blast here:

Record lows today, several inches of snow expected tomorrow.

The Coming FCC Regulations

 As I understand the matter, these regulations will take effect on February 26, 2015. According to Hot Air, these regulations will result in new taxes, a slower Internet, and fewer choices.

 From the above link:

Recommended Reading

See Homeland Security Committee Chairman: Radical Islamist Extremism “Spreading like Wildfire” (dated February 16, 2015).  Belies Obama's statements about Al Qaeda and ISIL being on the run, huh?

Earlier today, before I saw the above article, I said this at Freethinke's blog:

Paris, Then Copenhagen

THE "RANDOM" PATTERN

Paris, France, (January 7, 2015): The offices of Charlie Hebdo, noted for satiric cartoons lampooning Islam, were attacked.  Two days later, an Islamic terrorist attack was perpetrated upon a Jewish deli. Sixteen killed, twenty-two wounded in these attacks.

Copenhagen, Denmark (February 14, 2015): A café hosting "Freedom of Expression and Art Blasphemy," a free-speech seminar, was attacked. At this seminar, cartoonist Lars Vilks was scheduled to speak; he may have been the primary target of the Islamic terrorist, who fired as many as 200 rounds. A few hours later, a Jewish cultural center (a synagogue) was attacked.  See the Daily Mail for more information. The suspect, on a watch list, apparently lived in the Nørrebro District of Copenhagen. The Nørrebro District is poly-cultural; a significant portion of those living there are Arabs, Turks, Pakistanis, Bosnians, Somalians, and Albanians. Two dead, five wounded in these attacks.

Following the attacks in Copenhagen, Infidel Knight, a commenter at Weasel Zippers, made the following comment (lightly edited):

Hey, America!  Take a real close look at what's going on. Europe rolled out the red carpet and encouraged Muslim immigration. Um, we've been doing the same. Vastly accelerated since 2009.  Imagine that!  Our borders are wide open. Good thing Muslims are so law abiding; otherwise, they might cross through. We're actually allowing American citizens who've gone and trained with these rabid animals to come back into America as if they had been on a trip to Disneyland. Where I come from, you go train with the enemy in a time of war,  you are the enemy and a traitor!

Islam's history is utterly irrefutable.  What we see from afar now, soon we'll see and feel here. It's simply unavoidable. Islam was conceived and born for one purpose: conquest and submission. What we face is the ultimate "death match." Either we or they will die, they've decided this. We get no voice or vote in this matter.  Mohammed and Allah have decreed it so.

Infidel Knight then posted the following excellent video — an important reality check:


The 2008 version of the film Fitna:

Islam is the trigger for these "random" attacks upon freedom.

Musical Interlude

(If you must have politics, please scroll down)

I'm longing for spring! We're enduring a brutal cold snap right now — after such a warm day only a week ago (70 degrees then).

Ottorino Respighi's The Birds.


About Respighi and The Birds

Valentine's Day Weekend: A Love Story

(If you must have politics, please scroll down)

Please read the story at the link below.

Marriage: Caldwell and his wife spent nearly 56 years together and he has found comfort in his daily routine since she passed away

Link: Strangers shovel snow so that an 82-year-old man can deliver a daisy to the bench dedicated his wife of 56-years

Love: Bud Caldwell, 82, has been taking daisies and a few pennies to a bench in Wisconsin every day for the past two years to honor his late wife

Did he give his wife flowers while she was living? I'd like to think that he did.

Good advice for life — something that Cubed, a blog friend of mine emailed to me the sudden loss of her husband of many years:

"Cherish your beloveds."

How Government Works

Title of the display at Cotton Ginning Days in Dallas, North Carolina (October 11, 2014): Scale Model of the US Government:


From the YouTube blurb:

It is powered by a 1920's vintage hit and miss engine, and doesn't do anything except make noise and lots of lost motions.

Yep. That sums it up exactly.

Midweek Humor

(If you must have politics, please scroll down)

One of my Facebook finds:

Islamic Terrorism And Denial

One of my Facebook finds and, sadly for America and the rest of the West, accurate (Click directly on the image to enlarge it):

And one that I found last week at Z's site (Click directly on the image to enlarge it):

Bobby Jindal is a refreshing reality check for the above....Jindal: “The Medieval Christian threat is under control, Mr. President”:

“We will be happy to keep an eye out for runaway Christians, but it would be nice if he would face the reality of the situation today. The Medieval Christian threat is under control Mr. President. Please deal with the Radical Islamic threat today.”

Reminder:

The Inquisition over four centuries killed fewer people than the radical Muslims killed in one day on 9/11

Sunday Humor

(If you must have politics, please scroll down)

How Mr. AOW and I felt for some ten days when we had the flu last month:

What a miserable malady!

To top it all off, one night Mr. AOW rolled out of bed at midnight (not hurt, fire department came right away to get him up off the floor), and a few days later I slipped and fell on the ice. I'm still hobbling around.

Amnesty Bonuses

From the Weekly Standard: ‘Amnesty Bonuses’ in Tax Code: Illegal Immigrants to Receive Earned Income Tax Credit: Could cost ‘more than $24,000 to those who receive deferred action’.

Excerpt below the fold (emphases mine).

Measles Outbreak (With Addendum)

Babies are supposed to stay in the nest!

Five Infants From Palatine Daycare Center Diagnosed With Measles

Fatal Stupidity

Surreal.

Police: Massachusetts girl dies during head lice treatment:

...The little girl’s scalp was covered in mayonnaise and a plastic shopping bag was placed over her head, a common home remedy for head lice. The girl was left unattended and apparently fell asleep, allowing the bag to slip down over her face, suffocating her....

The child was eighteen months old.

The title of this blog post refers to the parent — not the child.

Tales From The Classroom

("Tales from the Classroom" is a feature posted occasionally here at this blog.  All tales are true and present matters about which I have personal knowledge.  Note: If you must have politics, please scroll down to other posts)

Over the Christmas break, each of my British Literature students independently reads a classic work from English Literature. Then the students submit a written book report and present an oral book review to the class.

I strive to assign each student a book that fits that student. Criteria: book that the student has never before read except in a very simplified edition, student's reading level, student's interests, student's personality. This year, I had two misses, both of them students new to the homeschool group I teach. One student really disliked 1984, which he found too negative. The student who read The Picture of Dorian Gray didn't care much for her assigned book, either; she said, "The book gave me nightmares."

This year's list of books read, with the student's grade level in parentheses:

Message From The Queen

From Michael Yon's Facebook page comes this bit of satire:

A MESSAGE FROM THE QUEEN

To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. (You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

Musical Interlude

Felix Mendelssohn's Venetian Boat Song No. 2 Op. 30 No. 6, a musical selection to dispel this winter's day:

FEATURED QUESTION: Science

(This FEATURED QUESTION stuck here for few days. Please scroll down for other material)

According to this source, the following are the greatest inventions in history: the wheel, money, the television, the Model T Ford, the internet, the modern computer, the steam engine, the telephone, the printing press, and the jet airplane.  Inventions can be defined in several ways, including "labor-saving devices."