IS ISIS ISIL - A Possible Threat

Take 100,000 fear-vacant warriors motivated by a irresistible desire to die for God.  Add 21st century weapons and military equipment captured from America and Russia, millions of rounds of ammo. RPGs, hand launchable anti-aircraft missiles, and high tech logistical and surveillance gadgets.  Throw in the purpose that this chosen group has been commissioned to complete God's mission to convert or eradicate every human on the planet.  Then fund this group with $2 billion in captured, extorted money and gold.  Give them a recurring income of $1 million a day for the foreseeable future.

Better yet, give them the motivation of hatred for all things that do not comply with their purpose and the command from God to kill all who do not comply with God's law.  Consider the fact the people who suicide-bombed the World Trade Center killing 3000 innocent people, filmed the grisly be-headings of Westerners, dragged murdered Westerners bodies through the streets, and have murdered and bombed thousands of innocents around the globe, fear that this group is too extreme in their cruelty.

Mix success in capturing the needed territory to form the caliphate that can succeed in accomplishing the mission of religious world dominance, becoming the catalyst to recruit thousands more death-centered "folks."

Now, rather than picturing a bunch of wild-eye bearded robe and turban-donned Arabs brandishing Kalashnikovs, dancing around a flaming American flag, picture a well-equipped computer paneled Command, Control, and Communication Center with the best purpose-driven terror-strategists in the world, reviewing completed missions, wrapping up current missions. coordinating ongoing battles, planning and staffing near-future missions, and working long-term on how to best rule the vast population and diversity of the planet.

"Here's your sign." - Bill Engvall

WalMart Cultural Escapade

The deterioration of decorum in public conversation since the filthy speech movement, when nine protesters in 1965 on the Berkeley California campus decided to ratchet up Mario Salvio's claim that political speech cannot be barred from campus, resembles Detroit.

The concept of the most vile of terms, the most assaulting of insults, just short of battery, words that can pierce through convention, decorum, decency, and expectation and wound a man's sense of honor, no longer exists.  Addressing these wounds would require a response, at the very least verbal, and quite often, physical, but with these words as a part of everyday atmosphere, their power has faded.

The local WalMart has a separate Liquor Store, at which you can get your booze, but also checkout your other stuff.

We were buying my weekly 1.75 liter bottle of Old Number 7, along with a few other WalMart staples in the little Liquor Store by the checkouts.  A fat lady in her 70's, melting over and around a store-provided scooter, was having trouble getting her credit card to go through.  Blaming the WalMart system, she gathered up her stuff and putted off to another register in the hopes that the WalMart system would be different, over there.

Looking for a Friendlier POS

That simple-minded freshman that wrote the F-Word on a piece of cardboard and sat down on the steps of the Student Union in 1965, embarrassing the original Free Speech Movement folks, started the demise of the power of cursing.  The blades began at this point to blunt, but nobody, especially this freshman, had any idea how common these words would become in public language.

Behind us in the checkout line was an overweight young white woman I put at about 30.  She resembled Calamity Jane in the Deadwood profanity-laden series from HBO. And we soon discovered that the vocabulary of the two shared certain aspects.   She could not speak without using a the F equivalent of muckin.'  The self proclaimed third generation welfare recipient was accompanied by a future fourth in the form of a young boy about three and a girl about four years old.  Also peeking from behind her was a quiet mixed race teenage girl.

Calamity Jane - HBO Series Deadwood

In a calm and everyday tone very similar to giving direction to the correct aisle to toilet paper, the young lady explained, "That muckin' lady told us to muckin' come over here to check the muck out. They said if we didn't have no muckin' produce, to try the muckin' <...> liquor store."  At the end of the last curse, a neutrino of light crossed a dormantly corroded synapse ignited by a dying ember of ancestral convention.  It created an instant of surprise in her eyes, but it was gone as soon as it appeared.  She, for an instant, looked a bit frightened as if a never experienced emotion took over her self control and it frightened her.

She was looking at us as that blip hit her face as though our presence elicited some sort of guilt to a long forgotten sin. Ours was not a look of judgement to her,  but we may have had our mouths open.

"I don't muckin' think they know what the muck they are muckin' doing," she stated with authority making it quite clear that her supervision at a managerial level would operate a much tighter ship.

Most of the students at Berkeley opposed having dirty words in public and supported the administration on this. Mario Savio considered this a distraction from the dignity of free speech, and the guy who wrote the word on a piece of cardboard and held it in front of his chest, becoming the most successful radical of his time, will hopefully be forgotten.