I wrote this as a comment in Ammoland, a far right-wing weapons dealer rag, but I doubt they will post it.  I want to save it since I think it expresses some of my views about as well as I am likely to express them.

"It would help your case if you avoided the snide derogatory and personal attacks and stuck to the issue at hand.

As far as interpreting the second amendment, Notice the first few words: "A well regulated Militia," .  Now you have to deal with the meaning of "well regulated". 

Does that mean the reserves, police, army?  What group are you a member of that regulates how and when you may use your weapons?  If you are NOT part of a law enforcement group, or lynch mob for that matter, then you are not part of a Militia.  The Militia in colonial days were part time law enforcement but most of their time was spent plying their wage earning trades.  But when acting as a Militia they were organized along military lines.  Basically, they were a posse.  It would be easy to argue in court that the 2nd amendment requires anyone owning a gun to be a member of an organization that trains you in it's use, teaches discipline, emotion control and to follow orders "of your superiors" (I actually have heartburn with the quoted part).

The constitution (including amendments) leaves a lot of lee way for interpretation in it's wording.  It is a vision statement but leaves a great deal to the interpretation of the population based on current attitudes.  Unfortunately we are living in yet another age of fear.  The terrorists have won another battle, changing the emotions and way of life of the population in general.  They managed to create a great divide in our population when we should be building on our strength, looking outwards, expanding and teaching the ideals of the constitution to a world culture.

A little about me:
1 - I consider myself a Centrist with slightly left leanings.  While I am registered as a Democrat I vote based on issues, how the candidates express themselves, and when I find it, their actual record. 
2 - I'm an immigrant and naturalized citizen.  When you grown up with first hand accounts and some experience of other governments you really appreciate the government and opportunities in the USA.  The USA is my country by choice, not accident of birth.
3 - I just applied for my HQL license.  Not sure I will buy a handgun but I am chafing under the restrictive laws of my state.  Yes, many Democrats don't like the gun laws when they are overly restrictive and frankly, stupid.  And many own guns.  Highly restrictive (stupid) laws actually support totalitarian government by giving tools to officials who want to harass individuals."
Hmm.....  Since this does not agree with Ammoland and the author's extreme right view point I suspect that this will NOT be posted.  Isn't it wonderful that we live in a country where the owners of Ammoland can make that choice?

Sadly, I read an article before the elections that stated that Hillary Clinton would be considered a successful President if elected not because she was really good but because she was riding a wave of economic growth that would last through 8 years of her presidency. Yes the economic grown and bull Market have been going a record 9 years (started early during Obama's tenure....) but the forecast still predicted further growth. OK, that forecast was wrong about Hilary becoming President... but I am now hearing market forecasts that are downgrading predictions - thanks partly to Trump's Tariffs. Trump has already started strong-arming the Federal Reserve to stop the scheduled (planned) interest rate increases because of the worsening economic forecasts. They actually had a multi year schedule for rate increases because of strengthening economic forecasts .... but those forecasts are being trashed.... 2 years into the Trump presidency.

CSC rating 40% of the employees as not fully meeting expectations

I posted this in bizjouinal comments on the story about CSC rating 40% of the employees as not fully meeting expectations.   http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/blog/fedbiz_daily/2014/04/what-csc-s-bell-curve-for-rating-employees-means.html
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I have a problem with politically incorrect wording here... "...40 percent of employees evaluated to not fully meet their job expectations."  means that CSC considers 40% of their employees to not be doing the job they are paid for and to not be worth keeping.  To me that speaks badly of management.

When such large numbers of employees are under performing I have to think that management cannot motivate the people that are working for them.  A large part of the worker population can be expected to simply do their job and this part is necessary for the company success.  I am talking about jobs such as  existing long term projects where people are deeply immersed in the particular custom technology or people in operations doing backups and just keeping the same unexciting but necessary processes running.

This approach is short sighted.  It builds unsustainable growth followed by a crash.  GE also has an A, B, C rating system where C players are required to improve or expected to leave.  This drove GE stock value to new highs in the 1990's, followed by a crash they still have not recovered from.  People that were good at switching departments and networking stayed, regardless of their real technical or business competence.  People that stayed in the same job for a long time got weeded out even if they were really good at what they were doing.

Manager don't want to admit they made a mistake when they hired someone new.  They need to give them "a little more time" and won't give a low rating to the new person.  In a quota system that means an old timer getting their work done gets low rated.  If a manager admits to making mistakes they are not "A" managers.

This also smacks of very little carrot and a LOT of stick.  If managers don't know how to nurture, grow and motivate their employees then the managers are incompetent.

Instead of down rating and insulting large numbers of employees I think CSC should institute an intense management training program.  Managers should be required to take graded employee management, motivation and telework management classes and pass with an A.  (I will leave it to the managers to argue whether class grades should be on a curve or an absolute scale.)

I do not work for CSC.  I did in the 1990's and thought highly of the company and still have CSC stock in a 401K.

Beep at Speed Cameras

I started Beeping when I pass a speed camera.  Not an angry Lean on the Horn Trumpet or even a full blown Honk, but a little Beep.

I started doing it out of frustration in the hope everyone else would start doing it and the residents would insist the city remove them.  But it turns out to serve as a learning tool and reminder where the cameras are. A little Beep adds a physical action to the mental note of where the camera is.  I've been doing much better avoiding camera tickets.  And the beep makes it fun going past cameras.  It is now a little game.  It's one type of challenge when I am following a line of cars going slow and another challenge when I am the leader of the pack... :)

I do have to admit that some speed cameras make sense - like the one when entering the town of Damascus that gets people to slow at the town edge or the ones in front of schools.  But others, especially the portable ones seem like speed traps set up to generate $$.  Damascus put a portable camera at the extreme border of the town, right were the speed changes from 40 to 30 next to a wooded stretch.  Being a portable camera box it is small and unobtrusive.  An outright speed trap.

I know, technically I should drive the speed limit, but how many people do?  Big brother is watching and I can't afford repeated $40 tolls on my commute.  I respect the ones by schools and really key locations, but the ones on open clear roads that invite you to speed piss me off.  I've been tempted to throw things at them, even fantasized about getting a BB gun to shoot at them.  A Beep relieves my anger and frustration but is not a physical destruction of property.  And it reminds me, slow down here.

Fire Congress and the Senate, Vote against the incumbent.

Fire Congress and the Senate, Vote against the incumbent.

I don't mean vote against Republicans.  I mean vote against every current incumbent.  Change the entire membership of Congress and the senate.

Our lawmakers are holding the American public hostage.  They don't care that they are harming individuals and the entire population.  A minority is trying to force their view point about Obamacare on everyone else.  They are refusing to accept hat Obamacare was voted in by a majority.  They are refusing to allow it to become active, then fix the parts that are not working while keeping the good parts. And they are refusing to abide by the fundamental American concept of majority rule.

You have to also wonder if this is not really an attack on Obama to discredit his presidency, and if so, why the hatred?  Obamacare is a actually modeled on a Massachusetts health bill created by republicans.  So why are republicans against it so vehemently?  Why damage the entire American economy? Why hurt the most vulnerable, the single parents and low income families that are living paycheck to paycheck?

Frankly I am angry at our Congress and Senate.  It is not just the Tea party but the whole kit and caboodle. The American people need to send our political leaders a message.  You work for us.  You have a duty to do it in a moral and fair manner. You have a duty not to hurt people.  And you have to work to the Spirit of the Constitution, not just the letter.

The wonderful thing about our country is that our votes do count.

If you really hate what our federal lawmakers are doing tell them and show them.  Like any corporate boss, we need to watch what our employees are doing and if they screw up and don't do their job, fire them.

Tell your friends to ask themselves, are they happy with our lawmakers?  If not, fire them.

You may have to wait for the next election so also work on your memory.  It can be 6 years before the current senator comes up for Re-election so make sure you remember a long time...

If we all vote against the incumbent for 6 years we will have a clean sweep of our lawmakers and send a very powerful message that Congress and the Senate will remember, at least for a few years....

Swithced to Sprint

So, I just witched cell service providers to Sprint.  One reason is that an old family friend is an independent Sprint dealer.  The other is that they have the best price for unlimited data service and I wanted not to worry about surfing too much.  My old service provider was AT&T where I had a discount for being a (former) GE employee.

So... my fear that Sprint would not work at my house is gone.  Service connectivity is just fine including the data link.  Even when I am in parts or Monrovia that have a weak signal the 3G data link is good.  3G speed seems reasonable.  In 1999 my work gave me an on-call phone and the Sprint service did not work at my house.  They had to switch to Verizon.  Times have changed. :)

The negative difference I see between Sprint and AT&T is that Sprint Customer Support is less than customer friendly.  I applied for a discount as a Government worker and the online process did not work.  They have @fda.gov as the email address for FDA but FDA has been using @fda.hhs.gov for the past 3 years.  When I called the first line person was friendly but helpless.  She got a supervisor and he was a bit curt.  They would not check into fda.hhs.gov or correct the fda.gov issue.  He insisted that I fax or "upload" the form and proof (paystub with critical info blacked out or ID).

Turns out that the upload process is pretty broken unless you do things "just right." and of course "the form" cannot be downloaded in an easy to use format but is a mess in the only format that seemed to work well and was supported - .txt.  The upload system kept giving me file format error messages telling me to use .doc or .jpg or .txt - when I was.  I finally stuck the .jpg file into a word document with a .doc extension and changed the "form" from Sprint.jns.txt to Sprint.txt.   Yup, it got real picky about the number of dots in the name.  Just a very tedious process that I can see a lot of people giving up on even though it is a 15% discount.

The whole process has left a bad taste in my mouth about Sprint Customer Service.  AT&T technical service is not that great and they have metered data service and more $$ but their customer service has usually been very good.  Sprint better step up.

Oh, the Samsung Galaxy S III I got is impressive.  Just don't overload it with music and run out of memory.  It is my first Smartphone but even my daughter was impressed and she had an iPhone 6 years.  I do find the applets primitive compared to laptop functionality but the laptop just does not feel comfortable in my pants pocket.  And the GS3 has a better camera. :)

Update:  The Sprint version of the Galaxy S III does NOT work in Europe and cannot have a different SIMM inserted - there is no SIMM card. :(

I am also tired of Android Apps insisting on having access to every function and secure area of my phone even if the app does not need those functions... And I am tired of custom apps for specific web sites having such limited functionality that I have to revert to the browser.

1.4 year update:  Sprint has 4G in unexpected spots but not many and it does not seem much faster than 3G - in this case SLOW.  Most of the time my signal strength is poor and often my friends with AT&T and Verizon get a decent signal while I get one unusable bar.  A text message might get through.  The unlimited Data feature is proving to be more marketing promise than useful service.  Whether 4G or 3G surfing is slow and I don't see much difference in speed.  As a result I am using a tiny amount of data per month - well under the typical 1-2 Gig that would be included with basic data service with AT&T or Verizon.

Right now my plan is to seriously look at other providers, most likely AT&T or Verizon, when my contract is up.
- Yup, with Verizon since 2015.  Need to put dates on these posts.  They really need to bring back the "Can you hear me now?" guy because I am finding a surprising number of spots where I get no signal.  On the other side, there are places I get a weak signal when my friends with AT&T don't.