Is There A Solution For Censorship Of Views On The Right By Social Media?

Every Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question: Is There A Solution for Censorship Of Views On The Right By Social Media?

The Razor: Yes my solution is to stop using them completely. I deleted my Facebook page years ago and don’t regret it. Twitter is moronic and masturbatory. All the others have limited utility.

If conservatives publicly left these platforms they would turn into boring echo chambers for the Left – and that’s pretty much what they are today.

So why even bother?

I’ve been playing around with technology since I was a kid. I once thought there wasn’t such a thing as too much technology, but then I tried buying a book on my Kindle and was told that I had already purchased it. Not only had I bought it, I had evidently read it – and I had almost no recall of it whatsoever. That’s when I switched back to buying books. I learned that we have reached a point where technology is like everything else: 95% of anything is crap. We now have to make some conscious choices how we use it, not just stare at our phones and walk blindly into traffic.

At heart I am still a technophile – but there are clear limits. I’ve learned that social media is neither: it’s anti-social and it’s not really media either.

I just got back from Costa Rica, a family vacation at an all-inclusive resort (not the way I usually travel).

The restaurants were filled with people taking pictures of their food and posting them on their FB pages or Instagram feeds.

People were also posting pictures of themselves on the beach or at the pool – likely to their friends and families back home with tags like “Wish you were here.”

It’s a form of bragging – some call it “humble-bragging” – and like all bragging ill mannered.

As a kid growing up in the 1970s I remember how painful it was sitting through the slide shows and 8mm movies taken by friends of the parents.

It was painful then – and it’s still painful now.

We need to stop living in an alternate reality where we are the center of the universe and we think people care what we ate on vacation.

They don’t and we need to stop thinking they do. What this superficial liking and thumbing-up or what-have-you is doing is superficializing our relationships. Instead of meeting our friends face to face and having them ask us about our vacation, we send them pics on Facebook which they “like” for politeness or in the hope that you will do the same to their vacation stills on their next vacation. It’s eroding our communication – and fundamentally our trust, the very foundations of our human relationships.

So there are better reasons to bail on the social media than left-wing bias. If we value our relationships it’s time we put down the damn phones and meet our friends for dinner, or visit the sister we haven’t seen in a few years. That physical interaction is priceless whereas what we have today with social media is about as worth as much as a million likes: absolutely nothing.

Rob Miller: I've never used social media for much more than building my traffic and always gave sites like Twitter and Facebook the bare minimum of info they required. I've never been the sort of person who wants my entire life online. Lately of course, those particular channels are far less effective, and I spent a bit of time messaging my followers on both channels advising them to directly follow my site, which many of them were doing anyway.

While I've discovered other channels and methods to boost traffic, the fact remains that there are very popular web portals that lean Left and promote those views while censoring views on the Right. Even Spotify linked up with the infamous Southern Policy Law Center to target artists with conservative views and vet content for political correctness, although they later reversed themselves, it seems, after serious backlash from subscribers.

Andrew Breitbart (Z"L) famously said that politics is downstream from the culture. As with many other things, he was completely right. While we can boycott platforms that censor views on the Right and who promote Leftist ones, that's only half the battle. Like it or not social media is an important part of the culture, and one that can't just be ignored in the battle of ideas. The real trick is to go on offense and beat the Left at their own game. That's exactly how Breitbart,FOX News and talk radio carved out niches for themselves. There's no reason the same thing can't be done with social media, where victory means building better more interesting platforms where free speech is encouraged to compete. One site that is doing exactly that is Gab, a Twitter competitor that allows 140 characters and freedom of speech. They're relatively new but growing by leaps and bounds as Twitter fades slowly but surely. There's no reason the Right can't create their own social media. Gab is doing it.

Dave Schuler: I suppose making assault or battery perpetrated against Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin misdemeanors punishable by a $5 fine is out of the question?

Not using Facebook, Google, etc. is the obvious answer but, sadly, it's insufficient. It wouldn't be effective. Starting their own Facebook, Google, etc. is another obvious but inadequate response.

The only thing I can come up with is to make their business model unworkable. "Personally identifiable information" means data that could be used to identify an individual. Make PII the property of the individual whom it's about. Make it illegal for someone other than the PII's owner to sell it without the explicit, personalized assent of the owner on a per-incident basis.

Laura Rambeau Lee: The Left considers any conservative viewpoint to be hate speech that must be silenced. They have managed to shut down discussion of any opposing views on our college and university campuses. Students become hysterical and protest anyone who attempts to speak about conservative beliefs and principles. Those working at companies such as Facebook have come out of this collegial environment and fervently believe in the right of free speech – unless they disagree with what the speaker has to say. Progressives have been working for decades within our education system indoctrinating our youth and it is not going to be easy to turn it around. They have all but destroyed our Western cultural traditions and beliefs. They mock family, faith and patriotism. Those of us who are students of history are seeing a repeat of what has happened over and over again, particularly in the last century, as this evil ideology takes hold in our own country. Is there even a possibility for a middle ground where we can work together? I would like to believe so, but the left seems to have taken hold of the Democratic Party and platform. It also appears to have infiltrated the Republican Party as there are very few true fiscal and social conservatives in the party. In addition the unelected bureaucratic elites in government are extremely progressive in their beliefs for the most part and are working towards a more socialist government and egalitarian society. The fact that a majority of our youth today believe socialism is a good thing should scare us all. We are on the verge of losing this battle to the left.

For one thing, we must get involved in our public education system and insist our school curriculum presents unbiased materials. We must insist on teaching civics and classes such as Americanism vs. Communism that many of us were taught in high school. Many public schools today teach American history only from the Civil War forward. We should be teaching our history from the very beginning of our founding, particularly the concepts outlined in the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.

As far as social media, it will require a lot of pressure from conservatives to change their policies. There does seem to be a growing backlash against political correctness from more people every day as the left is more out in the open and outrageous in their hysteria (which I believe comes from fear of hearing the truth) against opposing viewpoints. We should not tolerate the bullying going on in the name of free speech and expose it when we see it. We must keep talking and writing and sharing our values and viewpoints so that others will hear and hopefully come to understand the dangers of the left as much as we do. We have to utilize these social media sites to our advantage as much and as best as we can. It is up to us to expose evil whenever and wherever we see it.

Well, there it is!

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The Beginning Of The End Of British Justice

Britain, once the champion of the rule of law and due process no longer is, and it's official.

Tommy Robinson is a well known journalist and activist who opposes the Islamization of the UK.

Yesterday, he was video taping and adding commentary outside the courtroom where one of the three trials is being held for the Muslim sex grooming gangs who raped and forced over a thousand girls into prostitution. This is something the authorities were fully aware of but only chose to take action against when coverage of what was going on finally shamed them into it.

Just so you understand what I'm talking about, here's a list of the defendants and the crimes they have been charged with:

First Trial

Amere Singh Dhaliwal, 34, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., is accused of 54 charges, including 21 charges of rape and 14 charges of trafficking with a view of sexual exploitation. Dhaliwal is accused of charges against eleven different girls from 2004 to 2011.

Irfan Ahmed, 32, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with nine offences including making an indecent image of a child.

Zahid Hassan, 28, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with 20 offences including six charges of raping a girl aged 13 or under.

Mohammed Kammer, 32, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with two offences including rape of a girl under 15.

Mohammed Aslam, 29, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with two offences including rape of a girl under 15.

Abdul Rehman, 30, from Sheffield, South Yorks., was charged with seven offences including raping a girl under 15.

Raj Singh Barsran, 32, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with three offences including sexual touching of a girl over 13.

Nahman Mohammed, 31 from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with three counts including trafficking a person for sexual exploitation.

Zubair Ahmed, 30, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with two offences including raping a girl under the age 15.

Hamzha Saleem, 37, from Old traddford, Gtr Mancs., was charged with three counts including human trafficking

Second Trial (Scene of Robinson's arrest)

Mansoor Akhtar, 25, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with three offences including attempted rape of a girl under the age of 13.

Mohammed Asaf Akram, 31, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with 14 offences including four charges of raping a girl of thirteen or under and one charge of threatening to kill.

Wiqas Mahmud, 36 from Huddersfield, West Yorks.., was charged with three offences of rape of a girl under 15.

Nasarat Hussain, 28, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with five offences including rape of a girl under 15.

Sajid Hussain, 32, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with five offences including rape of a girl under 15.

Mohammed Irfraz, 28, from Huddersfield, West Yorks.., was charged with eight offences including false imprisonment.

Faisal Nadeem, 30 from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with three counts including raping a woman 16 or over.

Mohammed Azeem, 31, from Bradford, West Yorks., was charged with three offences including rape of a girl under 15.

Zulquarnian Dogar, 29, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with two offences including sexual touching of a female aged 13 or over.

Manzoor Hassan, 37, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with four offences including inciting the sexual exploitation of a child aged between 13-17.

Third trial, set to last for six weeks.

Niaz Ahmed, 53, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with three offences including sexual assault on a female.

Mohammed Imran Ibrar, 32, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with four offences including arranging the commission of a child sex offence.

Asif Bashir, 32, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with five offences, including three counts of raping a woman 16 or over.

Everton la Bastide, 50, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with two offences including sexual touching a girl of 13 or over.

Saqib Raheel, 30, from Dudley was charged with two offences including trafficking for sexual exploitation.

Usman Khalid, 29, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with three offences including assaulting a girl under 13.

Aleem Javaid, 27, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with two offences including supply of a class B drug.

Mrs Naveeda Habib, 38, from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged on one count of neglect of a child.

Mrs Shahnaz Malik, 55 from Huddersfield, West Yorks., was charged with one count of neglecting a child.

Look at these names and the crimes they've been charged with. Given Britain's present state of affairs, would they ever have even been charged and prosecuted unless the evidence was overwhelming? I doubt it.

And now back to l'Affaire Tommy Robinson. What he was doing was standing outside the court dealing with the second trial, and commenting on the trial and what it meant, something quite appropriate since he was one of the first to report originally on the Muslim Sex grooming gangs and demand the UK do something about it, years before the British police took action.

There were only a few people standing outside the court. Things were quiet.

Then a large police van pulled up, and 7 police mobbed him without warning, arrested him for 'disturbing the peace' and threw him in jail. In less than six hours, he was sentenced to thirteen months in prison.



This was done without his lawyer receiving notice or having time to prepare any defense.

Even worse, the judge, one Geoffrey Marson QC, ordered an Orwellian media blackout - which resulted in British media and online publications deleting their articles from the web covering Robinson's arrest...just as they have been ordered not to publish anything regarding the trials. If you live in the UK, you probably will not be able to read this article online.



If this sounds familiar, it's exactly how Hitler and Stalin acted and how other totalitarian governments still act today - a sudden arrest, a quick 'trial' if you can call it that and an equally quick imprisonment without even a nod towards due process. An enemy of the State has been identified and removed and all mention of him or what happened to him is now forbidden.

When Tommy Robinson's lawyer (his solicitor in BritSpeak) finally got an opportunity to speak to the judge after Robinson had already been sentenced and whisked off to jail, he told the judge that a thirteen month sentence of this kind was tantamount to a death sentence, since Robinson was well known, Britain's prisons are filled with Muslims and there have been attempts on his life before. Judge Marson told the lawyer that this was the concern of the prison, not him and threatened Robinson's lawyer with contempt when he attempted to reply.

There are two things going on here. First, Tommy Robinson is being set up to be an example to others. And second, it's obvious that this judge and those giving him his orders want as little coverage of these horrendous atrocities as possible, knowing how it could outrage the British public and awaken them. And it's obvious that the plan is to give a number of the defendants light sentences or even acquittals...without too much attention or media coverage of it.

I don't think it's coincidental that Theresa May's new choice for Home Secretary to replace Amber Rudd was none other than Sajid Javid, a Pakistani Muslim. The Homer Secretary, of course, oversees immigration and citizenship for the UK as well as policing and matters of domestic security. So Robinson's arrest and sentencing may well have been part of an order from upstairs to start cracking down more severely on those not on board for the New Order in Britain.


At that, the British Establishment might have gone just a bit too far this time. There have been massive protests  over this Stalinist conduct, although British media is not reporting them or publishing any commentary on either Robinson's arrest or the rape gang trials. Even some on the Left who ordinarily are the polar opposite of Robinson politically are smart enough to understand what's going on here. Not only that, but if Tommy Robinson is murdered in prison, it could turn him into a martyr and might be just enough to awake the sleeping Lion at last. There are a number of things the British people can do to take back their country, and this just might be a catalyst.

Tommy Robinson is by no means a perfect human being. He's committed a number of stupid acts in the past including some football hooliganism and been justly punished for it. But this is something different. It's the unwarranted political prosecution of someone who was committing journalism. Will those outside of Britain who claim to be all for defending freedom of the press make this a cause celebre'? I doubt it but I am perfectly willing to be pleasantly surprised.

We'll see...

Forum: Does Faith In G-d Bring Common Sense?

Every Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question: Does Faith In 
G-d Bring Common Sense?

Doug Hagin:Maybe it takes a healthy amount of common sense to have faith in God? Common sense often requires not over-thinking things, and accepting simple truths. many Atheists have that problem it seems. So, does faith bring common sense? Or is it required before faith? Hmmmmm


Patrick O'Hannigan:I do think that faith in G-d brings common sense, and although I haven't heard Dennis Prager's argument for that, he's a man who does his homework. The question reminded me of an old book by Catholic apologist Frank Sheed. After 50 years of streetcorner preaching (among other endeavors), he wrote "Theology and Sanity," which was first published in 1946, and is luckily still in print. If I remember his thesis correctly, Sheed said that it took sanity (for our purposes here, common sense) to recognize a higher power.

Mainline Christian theology teaches that the Holy Spirit is one of three divine persons in the trinity that is G-d, and ascribes to that generous personage (often described as "the love between the Father and the Son") seven gifts. Those gifts (wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord) read like common sense writ large.



Rob Miller: I have to say, I like Laura's approach a great deal as always. Before you can say whether faith in G-d brings common sense, you need to define what common sense is, n'est pah? Her definition of it as rational thought or right reason is excellent but it seems it works only so far. After all, look at what passed for common sense even a short time ago and how that has changed 180 degrees now to the point that many of us might find it ludicrous. How many times have you heard people of a certain political persuasion use the words 'everybody knows' as a serious argument or a means of ridiculing or demeaning others they disagree with? As someone whose name I can't recall once said(Cal Coolidge? Will Rogers?) the thing about common sense is that's it's very uncommon. My point is that common sense is a loaded term that means different things to different people. Just as everybody imagines they have a sense of humor, they also imagine they have common sense, no matter how inane their opinions and actions are. Bookworm's erudite example of 'Gaia Worship' in our universities is a fine example of how 'common sense' ain't what it's cracked up to be.

So in trying to peel this particular orange, my first thought is that belief in G-d can give you a kind of common sense, but that depends on how you approach it. Some hideous things have been done and continue to be done in the name of faith. The adherents of belief systems that that tolerate and even promote such behavior as showing 'faith' certainly consider what they're doing to be common sense. The proof that it isn't common sense can be seen in the retribution and end results of such behavior. There are numerous examples.

On the other hand, if you have faith in G-d and it means that you adopt a moral code that demands you respect and attempt to act with decency towards all people and even the animals G-d created, not just the members of your particular denomination, that is very different. If you also acquire a desire to live in accordance with His Divine Plan and do so to the best of your ability out of respect and gratitude for His blessings, then I'd say you're truly on the way to...yes,right reason and common sense! But the moral code I spoke of is imperative. It gives us a roadmap towards successful and happy living, which of course, is the ultimate in common sense, yeah?


Bookworm Room:What an interesting question. I'll try to avoid simply repeating Dennis Prager, whose marvelous exegesis of Exodus I just read.

The Bible spells out an ordered world, with a single ordered intelligence behind it. This differs radically from all other faiths (at least the ones of which I'm aware), which are predicated on chaos. Think of the Greek, Roman, Druid, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian pantheons, all of which have irascible, child-like, selfish, divine beings randomly creating and destroying their way across the universe. Likewise, all animist faiths are predicated upon assigning little chunks of meaning to everything and, again, endowing their many divinities with some of humanity's worst traits, including a striking lack of logic.

The same lack of logic applies to the Gaia worship that now controls so much of the Left. At its worst, it's simply animism and paganism all over again, with an angry Mother Nature continuously punishing humans. In that vein, while I though Disney's Moana was a visually gorgeous movie and Lin-Manuel Miranda's music lovely, it too preached the most primitive, unscientific Gaiaism to children.

Even when Gaia worship purports to be scientifically based, it lacks any common sense or logic. The fact that the whole climate change theory functions only by falsifying data bothers no one, because the data is merely a prop for the faith, in much the same way chicken or goat entrails would be for the pagan seer. Understanding that also explains why, no matter how often the data is proven false, the faithful are undeterred. "Global warming" doesn't work? Then "climate change" will? With that kind of divinity in charge, every thing -- heat, cold, wet, dry, etc. -- proves that the climate change divinity is firmly in control. That kind of thinking is downright hostile to common sense.

Today's hard science also defies logic, at least when it comes to our universe. I believe in evolution and the Big Bang to the extent that hard facts, and intelligent inferences, indicate that they are reasonable theories. I don't believe in them as matters of faith. And most importantly, I don't believe that the Big Bang is truly the beginning, because common sense says that something had to precede the Big Bang. For a long time, though, science insisted, against all common sense, that nothing preceded the Big Bang.

That lack of common sense has become too painful, however, so scientists are now positing all sorts of things such as endlessly repeating universes, black holes reborn, etc. Occam's Razor says that the simplest answer is the best and, ironically enough, common sense seems to say that, given the vastness and complexity of the universe, and given that humans are hardwired for God, may God is the answer.

I've sort of wandered around here, but I do believe that a book (that is, the Bible) with a completely coherent vision about the universe, about man's place in the universe, and about man's relationship to God and to other men, is a necessary foundation for logical thinking -- and common sense, after all, is nothing more than baseline logic. All other theories of the world are predicated upon the random and the magical, both of which are the antithesis of common sense.


David Schuler: G. K. Chesterton said that the first effect of not believing in God is to lose your common sense but I'm not sure that's quite right. He also called tradition "the democracy of the dead". We are not the only people to have lived, indeed, our little lifespans are only a tiny slice of the entirety of human experience. When you don't believe in God you cut yourself off from the vast trove of traditional wisdom, the distillation of that experience.



Laura Rambeau Lee:Let’s define common sense as rational thought; or right reason. Humankind existed thousands of years before the written word allowed us to communicate with one another beyond our families or tribes. If one believes in the Biblical tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they lived in a paradise where everything was provided for them. They wanted for nothing. But they did the one thing G-d told them not to do. Eve was tempted by the serpent (Satan) and she ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Becoming fully aware and conscious she convinced Adam to partake of the fruit so he too would become aware. This consciousness is the spark of divinity we have all been endowed with by our Creator. This was the true beginning of mankind’s relationship with G-d. Whether one believes in the story or not, at some point we became sentient beings. And so in our conscious state we innately understand right from wrong and good from evil. Over time and out of trial and error and experience arose common sense. By the time G-d gave his commandments to Moses and his people they were already understood even if they were not commonly practiced. Common sense is right reason and is how we bring order out of chaos. It is how we structure our lives and our societies. But taking the next step, if we know right from wrong and good from evil, we have to question what makes us choose to be a moral and honest person and live our lives seeking a path of virtue, honesty, and goodness. Of what benefit is it to us? The answer is G-d. Our better selves strive to please our Creator. Perhaps the question should be does common sense bring faith in G-d? I believe it does.



Well, there it is!

Make sure to drop by every Monday for the WoW! Magazine Forum. And enjoy WoW! Magazine 24-7 with some of the best stuff written in the 'net. Take from me, you won't want to miss it

Forum: Have You Ever Had A Dream Come True?

Every Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question: Have You Ever Had A Dream Come True?

Doug Hagin: I have been in love and, well am still single, so that sums up how those dreams turned out. I would add, however, that my niece has been a blessing which is unmatched. So, no complaints.

Puma By Design: Have I ever had a dream come true?

Let’s see here. Where do I begin?

My response is likely not in the sense that the question may have been posed but yes, I have had dreams come true, a few of which I wished would not have.

There was a time that I would rather not see what’s coming until I accepted the fact that God has a way of preparing us in advance for what is heading our way, good or bad. Acceptance, faith and prayer diminished the dread and may have even played a role in how events later transpired.

Since today is Mother’s Day, what continues to come to mind is a dream that I had nearly 40 years ago.

While sleeping, imagine suddenly finding oneself sitting up in bed in a room surrounded by light and clouds (no I wasn’t drinking). A door opens, two strangers enter each holding a child swathed in white cloth. In the background, one hears the melody, “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

It is at this point that one of the strangers turning toward me hands me a baby bundled up in a light blue blanket with the shape of a lion made of blue satin sewn into the blanket. I recall thinking to myself, “A baby boy. This is my son.”

The following morning, I told my husband about the dream and that we were going to have a baby. This would be our first. Several months later, that dream would become a reality. Cool right? Except God forgot to warn me about the 5 ½ months of morning sickness. Ugh!

I told everyone for nine months that I was having a boy. People thought I was nuts or assumed I had a sonogram. I did not and when I looked upon my son for the first time, I recognized him as the baby in my dream.

I never discussed the blanket or the melody in my dream but when we arrived home from the hospital, my sister gave us a musical baby lamb that she had purchased from Hallmark. When wound up, the musical lamb, as it slowly moved its head from left to right and back again, played a soft melody of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

A few weeks later, my husband’s aunt gave us a beautiful baby blanket. It was blue and had a lion made of blue satin sown into the blanket.

I gave the lamb to my sister some years later when she had her first child. As for the blanket, my son brought my grandson home from the hospital 12 years ago wrapped in the blue blanket.

I can’t end this without saying that my son was the first male born on my side of the family in 28 years and the first male born on my husband’s side of the family in 32.

Today is Mother’s Day, one of those holidays during which I reflect on such moments.

David Schuler: No. My dreams have all fallen flat.

Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well.

Rob Miller: Yes, definitely. Although sometimes not exactly the way I expected! Case in point...my dream from the first time I picked up a guitar (I was maybe 10 years old) and heard that lovely sound was to be a musician, and given the times, that progressed to the dream of being a real rockn'roll star.

Well, that one came true, sorta. I learned to play pretty well, was able to make a decent living playing, got to tour and to experience that life style and indulge in some of the usual fantasies guys have about that sort of thing to a certain degree. I also met a number of wonderful people as well as some real jerks, and like that old country song says, I've got my stories to tell. But the catch was that I had to put up with playing music I didn't particularly care for the majority of the time. I was, in effect, a hired hand which was not exactly what I had dreamed of. Eventually it got pretty stale.

I also dreamed of having a true love, a woman who would love me for myself and be my life's partner. That one happened, although not in the way I expected and certainly not at a time when I was looking for it. I'm still married to my beloved today, and she also gave me wonderful children, another dream I had that came true.

My dream of having my own business and being independent came true as well. After I got sick and tired of playing on commercials for used car lots, supermarkets and such, I went through a series of jobs and experienced what a lot of people do, that feeling of being tied down and under someone's thumb without making the money I wanted to. After getting fired from the last of these, I befriended an Israeli contractor who was working on my house and got him a couple of jobs. He referred me to another Israeli friend of his who had a mortgage business and told me it was commission only, but maybe I could make some money. Real Estate and mortgages was the last thing I planned on doing, but after I closed my first deal and got that first commission check, I realized that I could make a living at it and that Israeli broker became one of my mentors, teaching me the business.After 3 years with him I realized it was time to take my shot, got my broker's license and set up my own RE business. As nervous as I was in the beginning, it worked out quite well.

Were there dreams I had that didn't come true? You betcha. But overall, the Almighty has blessed me and given me what I really needed and seen to it that I didn't obtain the stuff I thought I wanted that wouldn't have been so good for me at all. I'd be embarrassed to tell you what some of that was! And He also blessed me by having me work for what I wanted.

Bookworm Room: I have never had a dream come true but, as I get older, I’ve learned to view the blessings in my life as if they were dreams come true — which is pretty much the same thing, isn’t it?

Laura Rambeau Lee:Interesting question since as far back as I can remember I’ve not been much of a dreamer. To be honest I never had much time to dream. Becoming a divorced single mom of a two year old daughter at the age of twenty-five, I set my sights on raising my daughter and improving our lives setting one goal at a time, meeting that goal, and setting the next. I had attained a modicum of success in my career, my daughter had graduated high school and was attending college, and I had resigned myself to the possibility of remaining single for the rest of my life. Then I met my future husband, who had been widowed at the age of forty-two. We are truly soul mates and I feel blessed to have found such a good man to spend the rest of my life with. Our life together is a dream come true of a dream I never dared to dream.

Well, there it is!

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Trump Nukes The Iran Deal!!!

It’s about time. The Iran Deal has to be one of the most maliciously stupid foreign policy moves in American history.The president’s move was not unexpected by yours truly.

President Trump was quite clear that this was a one sided deal, and as we’ve recently learned, not one Iran was following anyway. The president said that he would re-impose all of the sanctions on Iran that had been lifted under the 2015 deal by Obama, not just the ones facing an immediate deadline. And President Trump also signaled clearly that he is dropping the big one as far as sanctions go …heavy sanctions on Iran’s central bank in a move that would seriously effect all those juicy trade deals the EUrines made with the ayatollahs as well as Iran’s oil exports. Basically, it would mean countries have to make a choice of dealing with Iran or dealing with the US. The EUrines will moan, complain and stamp their feet angrily, but they will eventually have to comply. They simply have too much to lose otherwise.

Iran’s President Rouhani knows exactly what this means, especially given Iran’s already struggling economy. Appearing today in Tehran, he said that Iran will “continue to seek engagement with the world.”

“It is possible that we will face some problems for two or three months, but we will pass through this,” Rouhani said.

What Rouhani fears is regime change by the oppressed Iranian people, and what he  is counting on is that the EU will make some sort of separate deal with Iran that will keep trade relations going. In fact, France’s Macron, the UK’s Theresa May and of course,Germany’s Angela Merkel held a private conference after Trump’s announcement. They all still think they’re dealing with Barack Hussein Obama, apparently. President Trump is more than capable of applying sanctions on any company trading via Iran’s Central Bank and making it stick, and I’m certain that either the president or Secretary Pompeo are going to make that quite clear to the parties concerned.

Our president inherited two major national security problems from his spineless 3 predecessors. He’s already started to clean up North Korea. Iran will be next, although I doubt they’ll be smart enough to do it peacefully, through negotiations. And anyway, why trust the Iranian Regime after the repeated lies we’ve been told? They simply aren’t to be trusted, as they’ve proved over and over again.

Iran deleda est, at least the current regime.

Forum: Was Kanye West Correct In Saying 400 years of Slavery Sounds Like a Choice?

Every Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question:Was Kanye West Correct In Saying 400 years of Slavery Sounds Like a Choice?


Don Surber:Hahaha.

No.


Rob Miller: For once, I and the always scintillating Mr. Surber disagree!

I actually dealt with this issue here and anyone who questions the following statements is welcome to read the article itself.

First of all, slavery in America was primarily white slavery until the mid to late 1700's for reasons I clearly explain. Importing slaves to America from Africa was prohibited and essentially over in 1804. And black slaves in America were freed at the end of the civil war in 1865, so that makes the period of black slavery at most 100 years or less, not ‘400 years.’

Second, !865 to 2018 works out to 153 years, but blacks were not subject to slavery during those years. And I utterly reject the stance that bigotry or even segregation constitutes ‘slavery.’ Most ethnic groups have gone through similar challenges and overcome them, just as many blacks have.

Physical slavery is obviously not a choice. But embracing a slave mentality, where the mind embraces certain concepts that keep people dependent and unfree certainly is a choice. That's exactly what Kanye West was talking about. He wasn't wrong.


Laura Rambeau Lee: After his initial Tweet Kanye West clarified his comments, saying he knows "slaves did not get shackled and put on a boat by free will." His greater point is why are blacks still talking about slavery in America today? And why do so many blame their problems on the suffering of their ancestors? Sadly we know they have been manipulated by progressives and Marxists, mostly in the Democrat Party, to feel victimized over this American “shame”. Our public education system does not permit slavery to be taught in a proper context; in American history or in the global history of humankind. Many of our ancestors have been slaves, or serfs, or indentured servants, whether Black, White or Asian; Christian, Jewish or Muslim. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they understood that the intention of the Founding Fathers was to end slavery in America within a generation of winning its independence from England? Wouldn’t it be eye opening to realize that America is the only country in human history that engaged in a Civil War for the purpose of ending slavery? And wouldn’t it be enlightening if African Americans saw the Democrat Party for what it is; the party of the Ku Klux Klan and Woodrow Wilson’s segregation laws in 1914; the party of Lyndon B. Johnson whose Great Society created so much of the misery we see in black communities today; and the party that fought every civil rights act our country passed.

If West’s words caused one fan to open their eyes and really try to understand the history of slavery in America, how it began and encompassed all races of slave and slave owners, then good for him. It is going to take African Americans to reach other African Americans. Today we are seeing many more speak out and challenge the narrative of those who seek to keep African Americans from knowing the truth and giving them a chance to reach their full potential as free individuals. So many people on the left, in government and in the media, are calling him derogatory names and saying he is mentally ill. These personal attacks are straight out of the progressive playbook and should be called out as such. Although I am not a fan of Kanye West, this conversation will hopefully continue and for that he deserves our support.

Well, there it is!

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