The hot topic in the news right now is “Income Inequality” – the gap in incomes between the very top earners and those at the very bottom. And yes, the difference is indeed staggering. While millions of Americans are just getting by, a relatively few earn more in a single year than most families could spend in a lifetime. The “Occupy Wall Street” protesters and others think this is abominable. But is it really?

First, let’s talk about some of the reasons this extreme gap in incomes exists. Many on the bottom rung of the income ladder believe that the folks at the top got there by a combination of sheer luck and unfair advantage. There is certainly a ring of truth to the luck factor, and in rare instances perhaps someone got a break or two that wasn’t really deserved. But in most cases extreme wealth is created in the United States when someone with a great idea takes advantage of the opportunity of a lifetime, working mind-numbing hours to make it happen. Is that really a bad thing? In my opinion, no.

In America, the wealthy among us help support the lifestyles of the poor. Now you might be thinking “What kind of lifestyle does one living below the poverty level have anyway?” A good question to be sure, but ask most anyone living in North Korea, Cuba or rural China that question and they’ll probably say “One that I would LOVE to have!”

To be pefectly clear, living in relative poverty in the United States is no fun, and I’m not saying those folks should be happy about it. What I AM saying is trying to “fix” that “problem” by taxing the daylights out of the wealthy would do more harm than good. Like it or not, the wealthy “1%” as the OWS folks like to refer to them provide most of the jobs that the rest of us hold. Take away their rewards for achieving success and they’ll stop providing those jobs. After all, if the government slapped a huge pay cut (tax hike) on you would you still be willing to work just as hard on YOUR job as you do now? Probably not. I know I wouldn’t.

We Americans also have a huge “middle class” consisting of people who aren’t poor or rich, but somewhere in between. In every country where  the government has tried to wipe out income inequality, the middle class has virtually disappeared. A tiny portion of the population at the top became fabulously wealthy while the other “99%” fell into abject poverty. Real poverty, not what we Americans consider poverty to be. Is that what we want for our country? I don’t think so.

Capitalism, even with all its warts, is still far and away the fairest, most effective economic system ever tried for creating wealth and enabling a decent lifestyle for ALL the citizens. Yes, some will fall through the cracks. That’s where friends, family, churches, and to a certain extent the government should step in and lend a helping hand. And they do it pretty effectively in my opinion. But it never works out very well for the masses when a government tries to lift the poor by soaking the rich. The middle class always sinks into poverty right along with the those who are already there.

Be very careful all of you OWS’ers. God help us all if you ever get what you’re asking for. I would much rather live within the “99%” here in the good ole USA than the “99%” in some of the “fairer” nations around the globe.

Photo courtesy of Kay Pat.

Although I haven’t purchased a newspaper in years, I’ll occasionally pick one up when I see it laying on a table somewhere and check it out. Since I only read the good news and skip the bad, it usually takes just a minute or two to make my way from cover to cover.

Lately I’m finding find that I don’t read much of the paper at all because in most cases I have already read the stories online the day before.

By their very nature, unless they put out a special edition to get a jump on a major breaking story, newspapers publish old news. Most of them are only published once a day (during the overnight hours) which means that any news that breaks after the deadline won’t make it into the paper until the next edition is published. This process used to work just fine for the publishers because that’s what the readers expected, but not in today’s Internet world.

Thanks to the net, news stories are now published in real time by a plethora of “new media” sources. Nowadays one can choose between any number of bloggers, online news aggregators and the online divisions of traditional news outlets themselves to get their news within minutes of when the events take place, complete with virtually real-time updates as the events unfold. Those among us who still depend on printed newspapers for their news surely find themselves woefully behind their contemporaries when it comes to staying up on current events.

More than a few folks still take the Sunday paper strictly for the coupons, but even they are beginning to find that those same coupons are available online, free for the taking. All they have to do is print them out on their own computer printer.

Newspapers are getting ever more expensive to print and deliver even as subscriber bases are shrinking. To compensate, they do what any business would do – they raise their prices. Unfortunately for the publishers, that model is unsustainable because few people are willing to pay higher prices for an item that diminishes in real value each and every day. I predict that it won’t be long before the printed newspaper goes the way of the rotary telephone, and in my opinion the world will be a better place for it.

Every time I walk into a post office or other government building I see signs or stickers letting me know that guns are not allowed on the premises. And every time I see those signs or stickers I just shake my head and wonder how the powers that be can be so clueless.

Let’s think for a moment just exactly what those “No Guns Allowed” emblems actually accomplish. First of all, they ensure that law-abiding citizens who obey the rules and have no intention of harming anyone will enter the building unarmed. A good thing you say? No, it really isn’t.

When law-abiding citizens leave their weapons at home or in their cars in order to comply with the law before heading into a building, that simply ensures that the only folks inside that building who are carrying a weapon are the very ones who would use it to injure or kill someone.

As a case in point, let’s consider the now infamous Virginia Tech shootings. If at least one of the law-abiding students or faculty members on the scene that day had been carrying a weapon, odds are that the death toll would have ended up being  two or three people instead of the better part of three dozen. The fact that everyone in those buildings except for the shooter  had obeyed the law that morning by leaving their weapons at home ended up costing 20-odd innocent lives. Likewise, the very presence of a sign banning guns in post offices ensures that someone intent on “going postal” will be able to do so in spectacular fashion.

More recently my home state of Virginia made it legal for people with concealed weapons permits to carry their weapons with them when they went into bars. Those opposed to the move predicted that murder and mayhem would rule the day once “guns and alcohol” were allowed to mix. Well, long story short, it didn’t. As a matter of fact, the number of violent altercations in bars actually decreased in the state during the year following the passage of the new law. Why? Because even someone who is drunk to the gills will think twice about starting something with someone who just might be carrying a gun to use in self-defense.

It’s really just a matter of common sense. Those who intend to use a gun to commit robbery or murder will simply ignore a sign stating “No Guns Allowed” and walk right in armed to the teeth with no fear of being stopped before the criminal act has been completed. After all, why should he have such a fear when he knows ahead of time that there will be nobody on the scene equipped to take him out once he starts shooting?

Emotionally, the idea of gun control makes perfect sense. After all, no one wants to see innocent people lose their lives at the hands of a deranged shooter. But logically it makes no sense whatsoever. The only proof we need is the simple fact that violent crimes always go up in a jurisdiction every time gun control laws are tightened while they decrease when similar laws are relaxed or abandoned altogether. Emotions deceive. Statistics don’t.

On June 24, 1974 a now-famous article in Time magazine quoted a number of “experts” who were predicting that the earth was heading into a new ice age. And the evidence they presented was impressive indeed: Unprecedented droughts in some parts of the world, the largest floods since Noah in others, chaotic weather events far and wide and a decades-long cooling trend over the entire planet. And the worst part? The horribly destructive cooling trend appeared to have no end in sight!

If all of that sounds surprisingly familiar to you, it should. Why? Because the very same “body of experts” who predicted back then that we were all facing a grim future of bitter cold, ice and famine are now sounding the same shrill alarm about the perils of “global warming”. In other words: same problems, different cause.

The term “global warming” was jettisoned after the “experts” lost all credibility due to the revelations of the fraudulent research and collusion they were practicing (not to mention the public’s ability to simply look out the window and see snowfall after snowfall piling up on the ground). But you have to give those folks credit – they simply will not give up. And why should they? After dropping the label “global warming” and replacing it with “climate change”, how could they possibly be proven wrong? After all, the earth’s climate has been “changing” for eons, and it’s certainly not gonna stop any time soon. But here’s a news flash for the alarmists: Climate changes are perfectly normal occurrences in nature, and there is nothing we could do to prevent them (even if it was in our best interests to do so, which it isn’t).

The fact of the matter is that the earth’s climate goes through cycles of heating and cooling, heating and cooling, heating and cooling… We have had at least two ice ages that we know of, and probably more. And there will likely be another one coming sooner or later. What caused all of that ice to form in the first place? Global cooling. And what caused most of it to melt? Global warming. In other words, climate change!

A particularly humorous episode that brings the folly of all this global warming nonsense to light occurred not too long ago. It seems that an airplane that had been missing in Antartica for decades has turned up beneath a patch of melting ice. The climate change experts were all over it of course, claiming that the fact that enough ice has melted to reveal that plane proves that the earth is heating up. But when you think about it, all this episode really proves is there was just as little ice sitting on that part of Antarctica decades ago as there is right now. Otherwise, the plane could not have been sitting where it was – it would have been sitting on top of all that ice, not under it!

The reality of “climate change” is that it is indeed real – and 100% natural. Our planet’s climate is in a constant state of flux, heating up and cooling down, then repeating that cycle at various intervals. The activities of man have nothing to do with it. But the very existence of the “climate change” industry (funded by millions of dollars per year in grant money) depends on making the public believe that we really are causing it. And perpetuating that fraud has become a pretty difficult thing to do in recent times. The straws the “experts” have left to grasp at are becoming ever weaker and fewer in number.

I grew up in a rural area where most everyone we knew heated their homes with firewood. Back in those days firewood was dirt cheap even if you had to buy it, but most everyone around owned a plot of “woods” where they could simply cut what they needed for close to nothing. It’s hard telling how many cords of wood we burned over the years, but I can tell you that it was a bunch!

These days most folks have electric heat pumps or oil stoves in their homes, but there are still a few fireplaces and wood stoves that see at least occasional use. The going rate for a pickup truck load of firewood in our local area seems to be around $75, and I suppose that’s a bargain when compared to what it would cost to pay for enough electricity or heating oil to provide the same amount of heat.

With prices that low I can certainly understand why some folks still choose to heat their homes by burning wood, but what I can’t understand is why some of them choose to buy their wood in small bundles. Nowadays most any grocery store has a stack of bundled firewood sitting out front, with each $4.00 bundle consisting of just 4-6 “sticks” of wood. When I first saw the huge rick of wood sitting outside our local Food City a month or so ago I thought to myself “They must be kidding themselves. No one would be silly enough to pay upwards of $1 a stick for firewood!” Well, apparently I was the one who was kidding myself because as of last night there were only a couple of bundles left!

I’m guessing that the people who buy their firewood by the bundle aren’t really using it to heat their homes. If they did they’s surely go broke in a hurry. No, they’re probably using it to light up the fireplace every once in a while just so they can enjoy the sight, sounds and smell of a real, honest to goodness wood fire. I’m also guessing that the good folks who cut, bundle and sell all of that firewood to the stores are laughing all the way to the bank.

Well, the comfortable days of autumn are no more. Winter has arrived here in southwestern Virginia, and today’s high temperature was barely above frigid (at least it felt that way). We even had a few snowflakes mixed in with the rain last night. Oh well, we knew it was coming, but cold weather always seems to arrive way too soon for my taste.

To add insult to injury, this weekend also marks the end of Daylight Savings Time – which means starting on Monday it’ll get dark long before the clock on the wall says it should.

I truly love fall because of the moderate temps and amazing colors, but if it were up to me we’d just skip winter and head right back into spring! But alas, it isn’t up to me so I’ll just slog along for a few months until the crocuses and tulips pop up through the snow. Now that’s a sign of changing seasons that I love!

Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes when the President of the United States decides to pay a visit to your neighborhood? Watch this video and prepare for a shock (and possibly even a temper tantrum):

After incumbent Lisa Murkowski lost the Republican nomination for her Alaska senate seat to Tea Party favorite Joe Miller, she refused to bow out gracefully and endorse him in the general election. Instead, she selfishly decided to run as a write-in candidate (good luck with that Lisa!). The result was this hilarious ad (it was NOT created by Mr. Miller’s campaign). Watch it and see if you agree that it could quite possibly be the most amusing - and most effective - political campaign ad ever written…

A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that nearly 20% of Americans believe President Obama is a muslim instead of a christian. Of course the liberal media were quick to insist that those folks are wrong in believing that, but are they? Watch this short video and decide for yourself…

The Democrats in Washington currently have total control of our federal government, and they certainly aren’t shy about using their stranglehold on power to ram through legislation that the majority of the American people do not want and the Constitution simply doesn’t authorize. Do you agree with them or President Reagan? Please watch this short video and decide for yourself.

If you agree with Reagan, please pay a visit to your designated polling place on November 2 and send Obama, Reid, Pelosi and the rest of the arrogant Dems a loud and clear message.