Christmas and New Year Greetings

Well, the joys of traveling to the East Coast include those of having much to do, so I apologize to my dear readership for being away for so long. Between the San Francisco Zoo tiger maulings and the lady who flew into the Bay Area with a particularly resistant strain of TB, the news has kept the West Coast on pins and needles. Not to mention that we enter into 2008 without Benazir Bhutto, who died earlier this week after a bombing in Pakistan.

I sincerely hope that those of you who celebrated Christmas had a very merry and blessed holiday, and a joyous New Year to you all. I will be flying back to the West Coast on January 4, so look for some fresh 2008 posting after then. I will, however, leave you with some information that is proof that there is a generous person with the last name of Hilton still alive. See you in the New Year!

Ron Paul's $6M surprise

As the holidays bear down on all of us, probably bringing all kinds of holiday cheer and stress, the last thing you probably want to read about is anything about the Presidential elections. Alas, the first primaries are coming so soon! There's less than a year until the United States chooses a new President, and there are plenty of options, so I suggest you start here.

One of the reasons Ron Paul is so newsworthy is partly because of three words: no income tax. He made quite a splash a few months ago with suggesting this and also pledging never to raise taxes (who says they would?), but that wasn't the least of it. According to Wikipedia:

Paul has been described as conservative, Constitutionalist, and libertarian.[2] He advocates an attenuated, non-interventionist foreign policy, having voted against actions such as the Iraq War Resolution, but in favor of force against terrorists in Afghanistan. He favors withdrawal from NATO and the United Nations. Having pledged never to raise taxes, he has long advocated ending the federal income tax and reducing government spending by abolishing most federal agencies; he favors hard money and opposes the Federal Reserve. He also opposes the Patriot Act, the federal War on Drugs, and gun control. Paul is strongly pro-life, advocates overturning Roe v. Wade; and affirms states' rights to determine the legality of abortion.[3]

I'm not sure about the whole NATO/United Nations thing; the one thing that this country needs is better foreign policy. But guys like him and Mike Huckabee are making a huge run and putting pressure on the other Repubs, notably Guilani and Romney. I have a feeling that this time around, America is going to be shouting for some "different" politicians than your average cookie-cutter pol in tailored suit and red or blue tie.

Well folks, it's off to the East Coast for me. I'll be blogging from a snowy location, don't worry, but I'll be out of action for the next couple days.

Broken Homes

I know I am probably preaching to the choir by even giving this article attention. Oh, but the joys of pointing out the American dream of keeping up with those so-called Joneses! That family who lurks on every residential street, sneaking ways into making you feel like a cheapskate, even though our credit limits are bursting and our subprime mortgages are skyrocketing.

Let me give you a little glimpse into my life right now. Before we moved to California, we owned a Pontiac Sunfire and a Buick Century (which is fitting, because its namesake just about reflected its age). The Century had been declared totaled in a low-speed crash, but was still drivable. The last time I drove it was to the junkyard, where it spewed white smoke the whole way. I had to nearly rip the rusted bolts to get the license plates off. And now, ever since I paid off the Sunfire, the two front window motors have busted (the passenger window is not rolled up all the way and is therefore taped), and someone stole my license plate, so now I have the new one taped in my back window. It has paint scrached off where my husband accidentally brushed a concrete barrier during an ice storm in Rochester. It got a flat tire last month, has milk stains from where Rach spilled her bottle, and is now considered the winter beater. The strap that keeps half the exhaust attached broke, so any time I hit a speed bump, the exhaust pipe bounces uncontrollably.

We live in a two-bedroom apartment that kisses 101 (main interstate to San Francisco). It's loud and dirty with the car pollution. Other people in our apartment complex drive Porsche, Mercedes, BMW and rotate brand-new cars into their lease schedule every year or so.

And you know what? Who cares? Does anyone get to take their fancy cars to the grave? Will we get to listen to our iPods in the afterlife? Good golly Ned. This is the plague that has snatched our middle class into a sickening spiral of spending: Even the feds tell us that more spending is good for the economy. But the uber-rich aren't spending their money in stores on stuff that is going to depreciate after two years, so you can leave out those spenders. It's the low and middle classes that are being called on to open their wallets, only because the ultra-rich know how to use their money in a way that will MAKE MORE OF IT. MORE MONEY. Not more STUFF. Why do you think the Spice Girls got together to do a reunion tour? I bet none of them knew what investing their money meant, then said "Oh, bollocks! We better go do a reunion tour." (That kind of thing happens more often than you think.)

Look, the famous are mostly like us low and middle class folks: They still have to work for their money. If they stop working, they money stops coming in. Maybe they'll float for a while, but when all is said and done, they work for their money. Money doesn't work for them. It's sickening how we put these folks on a pedestal and long after their riches. They're no different in their spending habits.

All right - so the point is, the Millers have a dreadful $50,000 in their HELOC (home-equity line of credit), which is simply debt; no savings to speak of, not even in emergency funds or college funds. When you look at the bottom line, the father is earning six figures, and their output is more than that! Spending more than six figures in Utah! And these people are supposed to be teaching the next generation that having the newest toy is the way to earn prestige, pride and satisfaction? How about constant disappointment at being outdone all the time, feeling the need to catch up constantly?

I... I just don't know. It's one thing to take out a huge loan or credit advance to try to do something on your own, but it's another to just nickel and dime yourself out of a decent retirement. This poor guy is never going to get to retire. Do they know that Social Security will probably run out by the time they're eligible? And why, oh WHY is someone who is nearly half their age outraged by their short-sightedness? They're not doing the kids any favors by buying expensive cell phones. Eventually they're going to be put in nursing homes, and their kids are going to go into all sorts of debt paying for that because they have no savings. And don't get me started on what would happen if these folks won the PowerBall. They'd be dead broke in three years, maybe less.

I'd say that about 90% of the population fall into this category, this category of "spender." That includes Hollywood darlings and Wal-Mart creepers alike. As I've mentioned in the past, being smart with money means you're going to need to learn how to live with old things and make them last. Spending money on depreciating items will just destroy the value of your dollar. Can we suck up our pride for once and learn that some sacrifice now might pay off in the future? (Maybe it's just easier for me to tell my kid to knock it off with the spending habits. She's not going to absolutely DIE if she doesn't have her designer clothes.)

Sharp[ton]'s Container

CNN has reported that The Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the several Democratic Presidential hopefuls from 2004, is outraged that a federal probe is being opened to investigate that particular Presidential bid, including subpoenas to 10 of his associates for financial information from the bid, some of his for-profit businesses, and even personal financial information from Sharpton and his spouse. A hearing is set for the day after Christmas.

Sharpton, apparently, is angry about the whole thing, saying that it was "suspicious" that a probe was being opened so shortly before another Presidential campaign, and also because of his involvement in the Jena Six case, among others.

Can someone clear up when Sharpton hasn't been angry about this kind of thing? Anyone? The guy makes his living and his place in the spotlight by getting angry about all sorts of grave injustices, but this, I'm afraid, is quite a stretch, even for the Reverend. First: Since when has Al Sharpton not been involved in anything that includes a racially charged case or event? He's all over the news when blacks are at the injustice of the American system. He's on the news all the time. I doubt this is why the feds opened an investigation about him; the FBI and IRS are notoriously pokey about these kinds of things, and they've probably been tailing something suspicious since Sharpton abandoned his bid. It's not because you support the Jena Six, Reverend, I can tell you that much.

Second: You're not the only one who has been questioned about your Presidential bid, sir. Former VP Al Gore was grilled by Justice Department lawyer and released this transcript. Heck, even if Sharpton were elected President, the amount of federal probing going on should tell him that he is not being profiled - some of the most notorious investigations did indeed involve the Top Dude in the White House which, last time I checked, has always held someone white in color.

So, Rev. Sharpton, please don't flatter yourself too much. We all appreciate what you are doing to promote the equal treatment of blacks in this country, but blowing your top while promoting that agenda is unnecessary and, quite frankly, tiring and nearly cliche.

In possibly related news, I wonder if more black men took this kind of initiative to instead turn the finger inwards, just once in a while, to examine how they might help the civil rights agenda. (I'm not saying all black men are irresponsible babydaddys - take the tone of the article into consideration.) Everyone would do good to examine their conscience every once in a while, for sure, not just blacks. But the fact remains that there are going to be just as many people angered by Sharpton's outbursts as helped by it. Can we all find common, peaceful ground someday in which to start a discussion? Mudslinging never did anyone's campaign any good, Presidential or not.

Outcast by Absolution

Only more heartbreaking than the fact that a 13-year-old girl took her own life when bullied by her supposed MySpace boyfriend is the fact that there was an adult who knew what was going on.

Lori Drew was a woman who probably had a lot of the things that middle-aged women expect to have: a husband, a family with the obligatory two children, a middle-class house on a road with an idyllic name in a neighborhood where kids know each other and neighbors wave as they pick up their morning paper or go for a jog. A life, it seems, that any 40-year-old woman might have dreamed when they were a teenager.

Yet now, that woman has been (voluntarily) confined to her home, for it seems that due to her actions, or non-actions, against a cybermystery boy named "Josh" has created the social version of excommunication: Lori Drew's house has been marked with the so-called X as the media swarms like black flies, searching for a juicy tidbit, while neighbors themselves have been either avoiding the whole issue or, to even add more drama, have been hearing about the acts of hatred upon the Drew household. Bricks through windows, changing their phone greeting, candlelight vigils in front of her house remembering Megan, you name it - they are being preyed upon as she had known that her child had preyed upon an innocent teenager.

The story goes that a teenage employee of Drew's, and her daughter, wanted to concoct a false profile on MySpace and pretend to be Megan's boyfriend, and Drew knew about it, but warned to only send "nice messages" to Megan. Since when do middle-school kids do that? What teenage child knows better than to even think that making up people on the Internet in order to gain personal access to another teenager's life?

What fascinates me most, however, is the role of the two mothers: Lori Drew and Tina Meier, Megan's mom. While Lori Drew allegedly knew of the messages that "Josh" was sending to Megan, Tina Meier was busy telling her daughter to not spend so much time on the Internet, and reiterating this directive when "Josh" started sending nasty messages and finally told Megan the world would be better off without her.

This last act of parenting was Tina Meier's regret: Megan was found hanging in her closet soon thereafter. There was nowhere to place the blame. Prosecutors are not bringing charges. Megan put blame equally on everyone, probably figuring there was no one left to love her. Megan had depression, but she had suffered from it for years. Tina Meier figured to take the blame herself, since any kind of damage to child, no matter how great or small, is naturally taken on by the parent, whether those around them are aware of it or not.

So vigilantes are placing the blame as a smashed window in Lori Drew's house, taking the steps that the government refuses to (as there was no law truly broken) and playing the act of a kind of social police (decency police? moral police? What's the best word?). What a study of human nature! We have taken advantage of our innovative minds by creating lives isolated by our jobs, houses and cars, and yet still operate as a pack, lashing out against those that fray the delicate social weave that we still are required to tend. Tina Meier says she couldn't care less about what is thought of Lori Drew, and she is right to ignore the woman, especially if she were to have any chance to heal from this tragedy. Where her parenting mistakes have mistakenly, indirectly, caused the suicide of a child, Lori Drew is now truly an outcast, not imprisoned by a judicial system, but one much crueler and unforgiving.

Spell it like Fergie: D.U.H.

Welcome readers - as is with every Christmas season, I've very nearly lost my head trying to get it all together. As my little family unit celebrates our Christmas the weekend before trekking back to the East Coast for the holidays, I have been operating on the fact that Christmas 1 starts on Decemeber 15, while Christmas 2 starts on the 23rd (with Spencer's mom and stepdad), and Christmases 3, 4, 5 and 6 on the 25th with my parents, Spencer's dad, my mom's family and then my dad's family. Yes. I have to count Christmases. I count myself blessed (no sarcasm - I really do).

Anywho, let that be my pitiful excuse for my edition of D.U.H. (Don't Understand How [this made the news]) in my blog. I might bring it back from time to time; this way, though, I do all the research and bring you back headlines that would, for lack of a better term, allow you to pull my brother's famous *headdesk* move and shout the above acronym in frustration. Or, if you're less bananas than I, mutter it under your breath and move on to better things.

All headlines are hyperlinked for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

Stallone says filming 'Rambo' was dangerous (MSNBC)

Lawmakers upset over reports of sex, shoplifting by pages (CNN)

Man makes record books for distance thrown in car accident (not exactly duh, but yikes) (Fox News)

Romney vows to defend all faiths (BBC America)

Honey See, Honey Do

As I mentioned in my previous post, for us adults, most of our carefree days are taken up by such small details as work, bills and mortgages/rent. And for you parents out there, your carefree days are probably completely gone for the next couple decades. Because when I got pregnant, holding that stick with two lines back in 2004 after a night of general drunken fun, I had to drop everything I was doing - drinking, going to the smoky bars - and start to learn what was going on with my body. All of a sudden, my body didn't care much about me, as I found out after those first 14 weeks of nausea and only eating mashed potatoes and dill pickles. My body only cared about the little human it was manufacturing, a little bean of a human that eventually grew into a beanstalk of a girl, gently breaking my skin into little rivers of reddened stretch marks and making my butt and boobs sink into the swamp. (Yes, Monty Python fans.)

But then I found an online community at iVillage, a group of women who were all expectant mothers, due in May 2005. Can you imagine? Dozens of pregnant women talking about the most incredible, disgusting, scary things that would probably send college students home to Mom and Dad, vowing never to look at the "perks" of college life the same way again, if they truly knew what pregnancy would do to a woman's mind. Women talking about how garlic can prevent a yeast infection if placed, um, at the source of the problem. (Ew.) Women who, by May 1, were dying to have baby out and asking if nipple stimulation was really the way to go to jump-start labor. (Um.) Teenage moms who had absolutely no knowledge of what was going on and eventually made iVillage their gynecologist, mother and Divine Intervention source. (Yikes.)

To be fair, I came away with 10 other women from that group who were quite sane-minded and we have our own little group, and there were plenty of other sane women. But for every woman with her head screwed on right, there was someone else waiting to stoke the fires of unfriendly controversy, to bear the claw of catty misconception, or wave the flag of self-righteousness.

But then once those little squirts were out of the womb, I remember a different conversation that wasn't all that gross - honey. As some you might know, honey is considered dangerous, nay, even poisonous, to babies under 12 months of age because of the risk of botulism. Some mothers were concerned about eradicating allergies in their babies, because local-made honey has all the local pollens in one convenient bottle, thereby allowing the body to build up immunity. Their doctors would wag their fingers and tell them absolutely not, until that first birthday, and then they would beg someone in the iVillage community to tell them that it was probably worth the risk.

But now, what with all the hoopla about those children's cough remedies and how they actually might be dangerous for children under six years of age, a study by my alma mater found that honey is actually a better OTC (over-the-counter) solution to suppress cough. Perhaps it's the sugary sweet, thick-coated relief that it provides for a raw throat and chest; perhaps it's the antioxidants and antimicrobial features that helps heal things quicker. Nonetheless, it's a sigh of relief for most parents who don't like pumping unnatural remedies into their kids and might want to try honey as an alternate the next time Junior starts hacking.

Granted, those parents who also view immunizations as "unnatural remedies" and refuse to immunize their kids are threatening the return of such devastating diseases like polio, but there's a reason why I don't frequent that mommy's place in iVillage any more. Alliances, enemies, trolls, and women shoving garlic in places other than their mouth. It was just too much. Even for a woman.

Gone Phishing

...but instead of bringing in the catch, someone else is yanking it away. I usually don't like to kick off the month with a PSA, but the Internet sure is slippery, like our scaled friends of the sea.

I had my first official experience with a phishing site today. Luckily, they did not get away with my information this time - but I changed my password nonetheless, since I did click on the link. A fellow MySpace friend had posted a comment with a broken link, and usually, when people do that, it's a cutesy graphic denoting the particular special holiday of the month or wishing me a Happy Birthday or some other nice gesture.

But when I clicked on that comment, it directed me to the MySpace login page. Now, I know that those cutesy graphics will usually direct me to their homepage of their origin, but then I noticed that I was directed to a site called www dot myspacei dot com (this is so no one clicks on it through this blog). See that itty bitty change in the domain name? That's so a hacker can trick you into putting your login information and use your account to post nasty pictures and make generally boozy, frat-like comments on your bulletin board and gather your personal info, among other things.

So, be mindful of what you click, and don't take anything at face value. Nothing like a good ol' dose of reality to remind us of the days when things were innocent, carefree, and only had the daunting task of counting down the days to when Santa would leave a load of gifts under the tree.

Santa is a Double Entendre

So, you've probably heard it by now. Political correctness has reached into the folds of every religious, political, social and ethnic scenario, but it hits especially hard when the Christmastime standby for children, Santa Claus himself, is caught in the crossfire.

The Daily Telegraph reports that Westaff, a firm who recruits - well, among others - Santas, has instructed Australian Santas to replace "ho, ho, ho" with "ha, ha, ha," citing that the firm is fearful that the former term will scare kids and even imply a derogatory phrase to women. What is interesting to me is that news.com.au reports nothing about the derogatory undertones, and even the BBC has relegated this story to their children's version of their site, with no mention of women of ill repute.

Oh yes. But in America, dear readers, someone saw the words "derogatory" and "ho" in the same sentence and, while perusing CNN and FOX news, it seems that the fact that Westaff has mentioned its PC fears are being gobbled up greedily by our equality-crazed society.

The fact that I just wrote "equality-crazed society" makes me laugh, because not to mention the fact that no one has dared venture into the realm of a white guy saying "ho ho ho" was derogatory, or the fact that black rappers get away with it (and the women in their music videos seem to even like it!), we are indeed a long way off from everyone being "equal" here. But, there is a story for everything, so where does "ho, ho, ho" even come from?

From Wikipedia, a note about Santa Clause's American origins:

Later popularization was L. Frank Baum's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, a 1902 children's book. Much of Santa Claus's mythos was not set in stone at the time, leaving Baum to give his "Neclaus" (Necile's Little One) a wide variety of immortal support, a home in the Laughing Valley of Hohaho, and ten reindeer which could not fly, but leapt in enormous, flight-like bounds.

This probably doesn't explain the origin of ho, ho, ho, but I thought it interesting nonetheless. In fact, I haven't been able to find where the phrase comes from yet.

What is most interesting, however, is that Santa himself based on several different stories and figures, but primarily based on the Christian figure St. Nicholas. Earlier parallels of similar figures from German and Dutch folklore also can be seen in our modern-day Santa. Even according to the Dutch, we're pronouncing it wrong: It should be Sinterklass, which in turn is a further different pronunciation from Sint Nicolaas. (Reference)

The fact remains, then, that the term "ho, ho, ho" is likely very much a modern take on Santa Claus, something that has not been around for ages. In fact, Santa's elves, his reindeer and his handmade toys in his shop are very modern ideas. It's all part of the Santa evolution, so to speak.

I do want my kid to know about Santa, but I also want to learn where Santa really came from, his roots in history and not just learning about him from Christmas cartoons and commercials. Maybe that makes me a spoiler of the Christmas spirit... but I disagree. Who really knows the spirit of Christmas? I mean, how did Christmas become the secularized poster holiday of the year? Anyone look into the origins of Valentine's Day? How about St. Patrick's Day? Even Easter has been bitten by the consumerism bug.

Look, as much as it will pain people for me to say this, there are a lot of "secular" holidays that we celebrate that do not have secular roots. Before we jump into the huge debate pool about why we're stealing away "ho, ho, ho" from Santa Claus, maybe we should figure out everything else we've stolen away from him in the past first. And that's about, oh, two centuries' worth of origins and folklore to get through.

Safety in Death II

Riley's mom's attorney has given her side of the story of what happened the night Riley died. IF the story is true, I have these thoughts:

1.) Zeigler was not Riley's father, yet was beating her for not saying "please," "yes sir" and "no sir."
2.) Trenor did not step in to defend her child.
3.) The fact that Zeigler was supervising his wife's disciplinary measures perhaps put Trenor in a compromising position: a position to RUN AWAY.

This, my friends, is the kind of corporal punishment that should be taken care of by our government. Not for parents who slap their kids' wrists when they are caught stealing candy out of the cookie jar.

Get OUT of my home!

I often wonder what would happen to our country if we started surrendering many of our rights to the government to police for us. Like raising our kids. I bet the government can do it better than I can, for sure! (Please do note the sarcasm in these words.) I bet it would take care of the illegal immigration debate, for one - no one would want to come here if that were the case.

Yet here is a print article, and a video of the interview with the nurse who convinced a Massachusetts state representative to introduce the bill to ban corporal punishment - in other words, this bill includes spanking.

It was one thing for the Patriot Act to let the government come in and listen in on our phone calls. Even if you have nothing to hide, I don't live here in America so they can take away my privacy. But it's quite another when someone wants to decide what I can and cannot do with disciplining my child.

Spanking has been a controversy among parents for ages, so I'll state this: Spanking is rare but necessary. I choose a time-out (which she utterly hates) over spanking, and I've never used an instrument such as a belt or a paddle. But some days, they need that snap back to reality, a bit of a sting to get them back in the moment, not just to "sit and think about what they've done."

Rep. Jay Kaufman mentions in the video that "it's not about criminalizing behavior; it's a matter of changing our behavior." Ah, but you are suggesting to criminalize behavior, and using the money from the fines to build a public awareness program to educate the public. Doesn't that seem backwards to you, folks? Let the parents break the law first, make them pay, and THEN tell them how to discipline their kids the "right" way. Make the kids get a spanking first before we tell them what the parents did wrong!

But laws tend to suppress behavior which usually morphs into another. Tax law is probably a classic example. Everyone who knows tax law knows there are ways to build up your capital without paying taxes on it. There's all sorts of loopholes in those thousands of pages; it's just a matter of knowing how to get through them, and the smart ones manipulate the system to their advantage legally. I don't even want to know what kind of punishment some parents might come up with for their kids without touching them. Are they going to pass a law stating what we can and cannot say to our kids, too? How about only certain times when we can ground them or take away their Nintendo?

Yet the FOX news article says that Rep. Kaufman is not taking a stand on the issue. Well, Rep. Kaufman, if you're going to let your left hand do one thing while your right does another, then let me know when you sync up, and I'll listen to you.

The nurse who convinced the proposal of the bill, Kathleen Wolf, even asserts that a small "swat on the seat" is not abuse. But the bill bans all corporal punishment. Look, I know I just wrote about Riley and the horrors of abuse at the hands of her mother and her mother's boyfriend. The systems in place to protect kids from abuse is overburdened and the reports of abuse have apparently skyrocketed (no numbers provided by CNN). Public education is a good start, I suppose, but is no one listening to these people when a "crime" has to be committed FIRST before they bother to educate others? Who gets to be the poster child for this kind of bill? I feel sorry for the one who does.

What I'm interested in is if Massachusetts actually passes this bill into law. How will this be enforced? Will the police be given the right to enter a home without due process to inspect our children for bruises? What if my kid just fell down the stairs? Does that give DSS or the police the right to whisk away my kids at the slightest cry, even when I caught her doing something wrong? What will the judicial system have to say when a DA is ready to prosecute the first parent under this law, setting a precedent for all cases to follow it? That, to me, is even scarier than the bill passing into law. What will happen to parents who are rightfully, safely, disciplining their children and yet are put on the same pedestal as those who killed Riley?

These are the questions we need to ask before any law goes into effect. That's what the three branches of government are here fore, checks and balances. But I don't need Big Brother in my home making sure I raise a law-abiding American citizen who will obey tax law without a slap on the hand or on the butt.

Safety in Death

Try to remember a time when you were very young, and unbelievably scared of something or someone. Maybe you were scared of hats or helmets (I was). Or spiders. Or your scary-looking cousin, or the old man down the street who murmured to himself.

Now imagine that fear, and put it in place of your mother. Most of you love your mothers, I'm pretty sure, so having an unbelievable fear of your mother is probably something you can't imagine, but just try. Imagine your mother as a single teenage mother living with her boyfriend, a gargantuan of a male with a pockmarked face.

Then imagine your mother and her boyfriend beating you with belts. Holding your head underwater in the bathtub. Picking you up by your hair and throwing you across the room, letting your head smash on the ground. What pain, what fear do you think you might experience? Pain and trauma enough to kill you.

Oh, and by the way, you're only two years old. Imagine your vocabulary only a hundred words or so, barely able to form sentences, let alone run very far on your tiny legs.

This is most likely what happened to Riley, a toddler with a ringlet-framed face and daughter to teenage mother Kimberly Dawn Trenor. Authorities believe Riley was discovered in a Galveston waterway, stuffed unceremoniously in a box after her death with severe head trauma. The DNA tests continue to confirm her identity, but a confession from Trenor about the abuse and death makes the story all more horrific for the girl formerly known as "Baby Grace."

We have read the travesties of what happens when sex offenders get their hands on young girls, and what happens when mentally sick mothers murder their children. But at the hands of such abuse and torture... even the most fastidious of heart would gulp in fear. I, personally, nearly vomited at the account of the end of this little girl's life.

I have a two-year-old daughter with blonde ringlets. Maybe it's just a natural reaction from a mother. But the fact is, it makes it that much easier for me to envision just what happened according to that affidavit, and how little toddler bodies are so hearty and fragile at the same time.

My wishes for what should happen to the two people being held in custody are not proper to print here. In all honesty, if the father and grandmother who loved Riley so much were standing by, and that Riley could have had a love-filled life with either of them but did not because of the custody ruling (almost always goes to the mother with visitation rights for the father; exception of Spears, Britney), then Riley's fate was probably doomed to begin with as soon as the custody battle began.

The boyfriend, Royce Zeigler, apparently attempted suicide soon after the murder. Pity. He was probably ashamed of what he would have seen of Riley in the afterlife and chickened out.

Now Riley is safe in death. Let's hope neither Zeigler nor Trenor are safe in the bowels of American justice.

Spendthrift

There are plenty of Facebook groups that don't get my attention, but some of them, like this one, are centered around a day or event, and since the Christmas season is nearly upon us, perhaps we should take a closer look.
Buy Nothing Day is exactly like it sounds – on Black Friday, masses of people gather to show that they have taken a stand against the mindless American consumerism that has swallowed the season, and prove that the same fate will not fall on their wallets. It’s the one day to not spend, but instead to think about it.

Well, I think they’re doing plenty of thinking on this topic. I started going through some of the pictures posted, and the conversations that were initiated below them. I started recognizing a lot of the liberal type folks who I went to school with, the English majors who do a lot of reading, writing and thinking (unfortunately, sometimes in that order). Artsy folk, some would say. They throw around authors’ names like Chomsky and suggest you read up on them sometime before you dare engage in any kind of conversation with them.

Ugh. Nothing like someone throwing around their academia roots to make you feel like crap. But this isn’t about what was being said, wholly, in this non-buying group; it was the conversation that followed between my husband and me over an IM conversation.

I was especially intrigued by one gentleman’s comment that if America’s economy and dollar were to crash, there would be a lot of Wal-Mart dependent addicts that would know nothing about sustaining themselves. Then I started thinking about the independent business owners in the country, the modern-day tradesmen of our time. These people have navigated Big Government and figured out ways to do their own taxes, find their own insurance coverage, hire their own workers. Those are the kind of people who, after enough sweat and blood, figure out how to manipulate the system to their advantage. A very small amount of these guys get rich in the end, regardless of the status of the economy. They can’t lay themselves off; they figure out how to float.

So, thanks to these independent entrepreneurs who figure out the system, do we owe our gratitude or scorn? In one way, these people (like The Donald, for instance) have built up their businesses and figured out ways to function in a system with ever-changing constants. It’s like trying to solve a math problem when the value of ‘x’ keeps changing. That takes an amazing amount of work, talent, a little luck, and a lot of contacts in the Blackberry. These people, believe it or not, have invested insane amounts of money and time and sanity, sacrificing everything except the oxygen in their lungs, to become who they are today. They build corporations that provide jobs and benefits to huge amounts of people, encouraging others to work hard and enjoy their money earned.

But, do we scorn these people who build businesses that encourage the rest of America’s bell curve into the corporate middle class, earning money that they will spend on things that provide absolutely no return, mere status symbols, who take that money and recycle it back into the huge corporate world? Do they prey on our vanity and entice us with their merchandise, telling us the only way we can ever be better in this world is to buy their brand?

One thing about this is interesting, indeed: If everyone had the guts to sell their home, exchange their cars for a winter beater, go into debt by taking out a business loan, move far away from home and invest in thousands into tools and office space just to further their own lives instead of being dependent on Big Money, then what would happen to our capitalist society? As the Buy Nothing Day folks see it, capitalism encourages the mindless, relentless advertising to buy product that gives nothing in return, and we need to sit down and think about the effects of that over-consumption.

Well, what if everyone stopped “buying" stuff and started “investing” in their education in order to learn terms such as "assets" and "liabilities?" Sometimes it's as easy as buying a book or a CD and listening to what these rich folks have to say. What if we snuck out of the work week mentality and started using our weekends to learn and not just go buy beer or go car shopping? What if we started thinking about the reasons why terms like J.O.B. (Just Over Broke) exist? What if we learned that we don't have to buy a bigger house with our raises, just like everyone else does?

Blame who you want. It’s scary what kind of cattle mentality has been bred into the American Homo sapiens.

A Beacon of Truth

I found this interesting group on Facebook just today. It had me wondering - is Facebook really following me all over the Internet by using their Beacon feature, tracking my personal purchases, and publishing a story in my News Feed that I just bought "x" or "y" on a website? Yee-ikes. That's not cool.

But the thing is, I just ordered my Christmas cards on Winkflash, and a story didn't appear in my News Feed. Likewise, I bought a custom template (backwards, I know, but trust me) through Dimpled Bottoms Designs, and no story in my News Feed. Are these guys just trying to get our goat?

Well... you guessed it... there are two sides of the story. Instead of jumping on the bandwagon, I did a quick Google search, and found out that while it's true that this Beacon feature is an "opt-out" instead of an "opt-in," I wondered which websites were exactly affiliated with the feature.

Turns out there are 19 websites. NINETEEN. Out of the millions on the web, there are 19 websites that will offer you to publish a story in your News Feed. There are several ways to opt out of the story publish to your News Feed, but allegedly they are hard to see and use. Allegedly, because I haven't tried it. To save you the trouble, here are the websites that are currently affiliated with Facebook's Beacon feature.

Nineteen. Well, I can do better than harassing Facebook to change their Beacon feature. None of these companies are going to get my business until they decide to un-affiliate themselves from the Beacon feature. Passive-aggressive, perhaps, but I already belong to enough FB groups than to join one with a boring name and administered by no other than a spokesperson for MoveOn.org.

So, Facebook has discouraged me from giving my business, and eBay gets to keep my dormant account until notified otherwise. Two birds with one stone, and I actually did something about it instead of following everyone off the Beacon's cliff. Maybe not so passive-aggressive after all.

Work the chain gang or else!

This is something I've already talked about in "Bureaucracy's Earache," but apparently, self-employed folks who don't have access to group health care are not the only ones seeing the gaping holes in the system. Unfortunately, it's having more repercussions for the men and women who are losing limbs in Iraq.

Wounded military members are coming home to the VA, for sure, but there are some spooky stories out there about the red tape fight that goes on. One soldier claims that after he lost part of his brain in an attack, the VA classified it as only 10% rating for disability, and attributed 80% for facial disfigurement. Another claims that the VA told him his injuries (sustained in Iraq while driving a truck) are not service-related.

Then I found this tidbit in Reader's Digest (o Mother of all Bathroom Reading!):

Since then, however, members of Congress have courted the vet vote by defining the law much more generously. Now a veteran doesn't have to prove that military service caused his disability, only that it appeared or got worse during his service. So if you develop diabetes while stationed in Germany, you're covered for it, for life. Veterans don't even have to show that the condition has affected their ability to earn a living.

Well, this discrepancy would have been helpful to present to Congress, allowing that Mr. Crowley got his facts right. Because of this fact, he says, is why hemorrhoids are getting a whopping $14 million to 120,000 vets, and others are getting benefits for contracting STDs (most definitely NOT service-related) and hypertension:

According to a 2003 Congressional Budget Office report, almost 300,000 veterans get disability payments for conditions that are "generally neither caused nor aggravated by military service." The annual price tag for these cases is $970 million.

At least the VA is covering some of the sick folks in this country. Apparently you need to be spic-and-span to even get individual insurance. It's been a month since I submitted my paperwork, and now they want even more health records from me. Now I don't even know if I want to be insured by these guys, especially since I found out that California is an "all-or-nothing" state for coverage: If they don't want to cover you for anything, any little thing at all, they'll just deny you coverage. No pre-existing condition rules in place there. Great.

No question, the repercussions of covering those who were legitimately injured in Iraq will reverberate for many years to come. There are soldiers coming home, some in their early 20s, with major physical and psychological damage. Between this and Medicaid preparing for the baby boomers, I have a feeling the system is going to crumple up for us working folk, especially those on the periphery by working on their own.

An interesting blog entry I found last night embraced all the ill-will I have towards the system, but the comments left were even more interesting. Not only were people sympathizing with the situation, but some interesting "solutions" came up. Workarounds, if you will. Like joining a local Chamber of Commerce. Or getting a Sam's Club membership. Looking at http://www.nase.org/.

So maybe this isn't the end of the journey, even if I get the Big Red X on my application. But it's very clear by some of the comments that our neighbors up north (and even one from Norway)are enjoying the fact that they can pay more taxes in order to have health insurance, always. At this point, if there weren't such a taboo on raising U.S. taxes, maybe I'd pay for a little help, too.

I don't want to even START on the benefits that our government employees receive. Someone should plant themselves in the audience and ask these guys: "So, you think you have an answer to health care? Tell me, what benefits are you getting right now, and would you give those up benefits in order to take advantage of your own health care plan?" You all know what the real answer would be.

Flaunt it if you've got it

All right, guys, I know I'm on a posting spree today - but this stuff drives me nuts. I do not agree that police have killed unarmed black men, okay? We'll get that statement out of the way before I proceed.

An 18-year-old man was killed in New York. The man's mother called 911 and in the background, he was screaming that he had a gun. When police arrived, apparently, he was holding an object under his shirt and started to approach police. Police told him to stop and he refused. After 20 rounds were fired at the man, the weapon turned out to be a black hairbrush.

What buggered me about this article was that they interviewed a gentleman who was a neighbor to the 18-year-old man who was killed. He says:

Another neighbor, Wayne Holder, said police should be required to see a weapon before opening fire on a suspect. "At least see a gun before you start to discharge it," Holder said. Police "don't even have to see it, [if] they think you got one, you're going to get shot."

Wow. That is some backwards logic. There is a reason that police ask you to put both hands up. Who hasn't thought of the whole conceal-gun-in-pocket-and-shoot ploy? Yea, everyone thinks that will work. Concealed weapons are the reason why we have to take our shoes off at the airport. Concealed weapons are the reason why we get patted down at the courthouse. Concealed weapons are the reason suicide bombers are successful. Look, I'm not saying the police are right 100% of the time. But they and the military are in no danger of taking over our streets! (See Pakistan and Musharraf; Cuba and Castro.) So why is it that it's unfair to our police to protect themselves under a very important assumption when it is a life and death situation?

The fact that this guy was shot at 20 times is very concerning to me. The fact that Mayor Bloomberg and Rev. Al Sharpton are involved are not surprising. But the fact that people think that forcing a suspect to show they're actually armed, especially when they have proof that the kid confirmed that suspicion over a 911 call, is foolish and dangerous to our police forces. It's not the solution to the bigger problem - and what is that, exactly? Racism? A lack of cultural sensitivity training? That's a whole different bag of frozen peas, people, but I certainly know that visual evidence of a weapon will not save lives on either side of the police tape.

Welcome to Politics, Kid

Poor girl. I'd almost think that this should be news, but in reality, who would be surprised? When public image is the only thing worth to Presidential hopefuls, I'm sure they don't want someone to pull another Kerry-esque risk and have another Tasering incident at their rallies. I'd bet my winter beater car that they all do this.

Anonymous Friend

An Anonymous Friend has made the front headlines of CNN with the title: "Rust Belt City gets $100 million anonymous gift." Fox News has this story, and even the AP picked up on it.

What's the Rust Belt? Ever hear of the Pittsburgh Steelers? It's a clue. About two hours north of where the Three Rivers meet, there's a smaller town located on the southern shore of Lake Erie bearing the same name. Erie, according to CNN, used to be a bustling industrial town but has seen an increase in the poverty level, that over the national average, and resorted to promoting themselves as a tourist town, complete with brand-new casino. (Of course, they wouldn't mention that it has one of the most popular parks in state, that there is an unbelievably low costs of living, and that the housing market has nary been affected, unlike the poor folks in California who were living on doomed subprime mortgages. A city were the Colts' Bob Sanders made his beginnings, where Tom Ridge comes from, where Sharon Stone grew up near.)

Erie papers carried this news nearly a month ago. It's that long ago that Erie (and probably surrounding areas) knew about this act of kindness and incredible generosity. The original article ran on October 6, and Sharla Bordin of the Erie Times-News reports:

An anonymous donor has made history in Erie County.

The Erie Community Foundation has received $100 million from the donor, the largest charitable gift ever received by an Erie County organization, foundation President Mike Batchelor said Friday.

The gift also is believed to be one of the largest anonymous contributions to a community foundation in the nation.

"It will literally change our community forever," Batchelor said.

Most people in Erie probably want to know who made the donation, but feel it's nearly sinful to ask who. The person specifically asked to remain anonymous, as well as their association to Erie, and if they are even alive. Some have theories as to who it is.

No matter who it was, it was a spectacular amount of money, an act of generosity that made history across the nation. Someone who so dearly loved Erie, this little Rust Belt City That Was.

Race, thy name is charged (but not too much)

You know, there's a lot of bad stuff going on in the world today. Other than the atrocities going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, there's our environmental worries, everything that we're ignoring between Israel and Palestine, the 2008 presidential election campaigns, and the dominance of the New England Patriots (ok, just kidding on the latter). But what keeps catching my attention between these news-saturated events are the smaller ones that pop up from time to time involving nooses and the "N" word.

Ah, yes. Remember Don Imus? Michael Richards? And now, Duane "Dog" Chapman? The Jena 6? Boy, that's a lot of racially-charged stuff going on in the U.S.

I was curious to see what BBC said about Dog; I searched their entire site and only this came up. I searched CNN, and got this, as well as several videos. Not to say our friends across the pond don't have their own reports of racism, as well as most every other country in this world.

So, dear friends, this issue of racism does not revolve around Dog (or any white man using the "N" word), or even Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (or any of our admirable black leaders). This is nothing new to the world. Actually, replace the word racism with discrimination, and you'll see that even the issue of racism does not revolve around itself. Being racist is only part of the problem. It's a problem that we all have, in one way, shape or form. Did you ever make fun of the fat kid at school when you were younger? Did you ever talk behind someone else's back (otherwise known as gossip)? Do you purposefully avoid the homeless on the street?

You know what? I've done those three things; I'd be a fool not to admit it. And 99.999% of the readership has done at least one of these things in their lifetime. Admittedly, I don't make fun of obese people any more; I'd much rather talk about my health issues than gossip these days; and after living/visiting in many big cities, I try to carry change and dollar bills with me now. But we are all afraid of someone because they are different from us - not the collective "us," but you and me as individuals. We all have our fears about differences. I know there are women out there who are afraid they would not love their children if they were born mentally retarded. I know some women choose abortion after finding out the baby has the trisomy-23 gene. It is fear that drives discrimination because we like the comforts and belonging we were afforded when growing up.

Discrimination is a constantly simmering pot, just under the skin of every human on this earth - but it's directed at all sorts of people. The obese, the dwarfs; the black, the Chinese; the Hindus, the Muslims; the gays, the lesbians. Black people are not the only ones discriminated against, and I think some people in this country resent the fact that they currently get the most attention in this country when it comes to matters of discrimination. No one gets on CNN when they call someone a towelhead, runts, and "yo mama" jokes (and those are the mild insults, to take into account that this is somewhat of a family blog). Even when these insults are used, they're usually used incorrectly.

People can be changed, though. I know that for sure. I will leave you with these thoughts, however:

"Of course, America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up."- Oscar Wilde

"No one can be as calculatedly rude as the British, which amazes Americans, who do not understand studied insult and can only offer abuse as a substitute."-
Paul Gallico, US writer

To wear or not to wear, Part Deux

Remember the whole flap about Sen. Obama taking off his American flag pin? Well, it looks like there are some people trying to catch him again in his "non-patriotic" self.

This is why things taken out of context run rabid in our free press, by the way.

There is a video/snapshot being circulated via email of Sen. Obama at a steak fry in September with Sen. Clinton and Gov. Bill Richardson. The picture shows Clinton and Richardson with their hands over their hearts, while Sen. Obama has his at his sides, appearing as though they are looking towards the American flag. Yet the email alleges that at this point in time, Sen. Obama "refused" to say the Pledge of Allegiance or place his hand over his heart.

Ah, the power of photos, right? They're worth a thousand words? But not a thousand sounds. Sen. Obama responded, rightfully frustrated, "During the Pledge of Allegiance you put your hand over your heart, during the National Anthem you sing." Yes, in that photo at that point in time, they were singing the National Anthem. And he's right. You see folks at the baseball games respectfully remove their hats during the Anthem, and some place their hand over their hearts, but usually they're just singing the lyrics off the Jumbo-Tron while a virtual flag flies in the background. But remember in kindergarten, every morning, you had to get up out of your seat and stare at the American flag posted front and center over the chalkboard, and hold your heart and say the Pledge?

Yes, it seems the most important things we learned were in kindergarten.

Look Both Ways

Remember, today is the end of Daylight Saving Time. Look both ways before you cross the street, because you're more likely to get hit by a car at dusk than before the change. (I'm just happy for the extra hour of work I can do tonight.)

If it's sexy, they will come

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was once quoted as saying that if being environmentally friendly was going to be successful, one had to make it "sexy" and attractive in order for the general population to pick up on it. And he's right, of course. Our hunger for more things and status and bling and the comments like oh-my-God-where-did-you-get-that will only be satiated when Mercedes makes their vehicles hybrids and Calvin Klein uses green energy to produce and deliver everything straight off the runway. Without using carbon credits, Mr. Al Gore, you silly man.

But the real point is that you have to make lots of things sexy for them to become mainstream. You say I can make my own web page, populate it with all things me, and people will come admire it?! MySpace and Facebook, welcome! You mean I can post videos of myself and earn instant viral fame?! YouTube/GodTube/YouPorn, my savior! (Yes, YouPorn really does exist. Yikes.) You mean I can actually learn to be grammatically correct and feel like I'm rubbing elbows with the stars at the same time?! It really does exist!!

My sister-in-law was recently voted by some friends on Facebook to Most Likely Correct One's Grammar, and both of us know where to stick our apostrophes. It seems there is a small movement to get Americans to care about their dangling participles and remember when to use to/two/too. See also Truss, Lynne: Eats, Shoots and Leaves; Grammar Girl; Grammar, Dr.; Grammar Aquarium, The; Grammar Blast; Grammar Bytes; Go Fug Yourself (Lohan, Lindsey). It probably seems ridiculous, but they're out there. No matter what, there is still that tiny movement of people who are silently correcting your storefront windows that say "Come Get You're Free Sample Today!" and loathing the fact that your "apostrophe's" are given possession when they only deserve a bit of plural healing. Let's face it, America has turned into a bunch of grammar slobs, and not to mention the fact that no one has yet made dieting and exercise sexy enough for us to become at least less fat than our First World country counterparts. We like vice. We like torture. We like cheating and guns and big scary vehicles with loud, rumbling, sexy engines. The movies give it all to us; you don't see Mr. and Mrs. Smith driving Prius hybrids as a getaway car, do you?

So, does this kind of "sexation" of the uncool appeal to our deepest, darkest selfish needs? Of course. We all just want to fit in, and being part of the so-called Grammar Police is only a term of admiration from others who just want to forget the sentence diagramming they did for an entire year in 8th grade. But don't worry. Once some of us admit that being green really is sexy and cool, we'll be sitting in the heart of America with the coasts coming closer than ever, bumming cigarettes and smoking them as though we're being watched through a lens, reminiscing about the good ol' days when LA use to shine brighter than the sun. Because that was the cool thing to do.

Allow me to clean that up for you

These kinds of people are why my generation, and Rachel's generation, have to pick up the slack and "save the planet" from imminent warming dangers.

Neighbors in Atlanta are arguing over a man's right granted by the county to erect a 45-ft. high wind turbine on his property, at the price of $15,000, in order to curb his dependence on fossil fuels. Angry detractors have placed signs such as "Trees: Yes, Towers: No" in front of Curt Mann's property, blaming zoning officials for siding with Mann and damaging the historic preservation of the neighborhood, which boasts nearly century-old homes and trees.

I love history in its principle. It is the only reason any of us has made it to this moment in time, and although I find it deadly dull to study, there is something to be said for listening to a grandmother talk about the way things were decades ago, or researching how technology has evolved over the years. It teaches us our mistakes and we use it like a compass, pointing us in the right direction when we can't find our way through new terrain.

But. BUT. It is frustrating when humans fall victim to the folly of wishing for no change, for resisting against forces that require us to keep up, forces that sometimes we pushed into motion but now are unable to stop or even slow down. I do not care for people who cry when their neighborhood landscape is marred by a man's attempt at using nature's other resources to make a better future for his kids, and to adapt to the inevitable: that the fuel our Earth has fed us will run out. That the globe is warming at an alarming rate, perhaps faster than it should be, even if we were on the natural evolution for a warming planet. Watching the polar bears suffer from ice melting. Watching our oceans rise, perhaps threatening coastal cities (New Orleans is too obvious: New York City! San Francisco!) and permanently altering the Earth landscape.

Some argue that Earth is on its natural warming trend, that it goes through cycles of hot and cold, and we're just witnesses to a phenomenon that will happen no matter what. But this is supposed to take hundreds of years. We're measuring changes over the last 50 years - a sliver of time, a mere millisecond in the Earth's lifetime.

And you people are worried about your Victorian houses. A shame. I like me a good Victorian house, for sure, but modern times are everywhere. Why not admire the beauty of the mix of the historical and the modern in one landscape? Why not be thankful for the piece of history that you own, and yet realize that it was the very thing that helped your neighbor point himself in the right direction for what is so desperately needed? When Ford rolled his first car off the assembly line, no one had any clue that the thing spewed toxic gases and would eventually force today's car companies to wonder what we have built our lives around?

All I know is that, when my daughter is my age, what will the landscape look like? Will New Orleans be destroyed for good by then? Will San Francisco and Oakland be half-washed into the ocean because of an earthquake that shook the ocean with a record-sized tsunami? Will New York be a wading pool? The lives of coastal peoples all around the world could be, well, not. Look at Indonesia and the Indian Ocean earthquake that spawned the tsunami that destroyed the lives of thousands. In two decades, what will my daughter's generation have to think of? And will they have the luxury of arguing over their Victorian-era houses' livelihood then?

I think my generation's actions now will prove the answer for that question. I can only hope we point them in the right direction.

Happy Halloween - Get your shakes in now!

Yesterday there was a 5.6 magnitude earthquake about 15 miles inland of San Jose. Darn it, we missed it - shopping for pumpkins about 30 miles south of here, we missed all the "excitement." Ironically, for some reason, I was looking around online the night before about what to do in an earthquake; then my aunt had a dream that California was rocked by an earthquake. Which it was. Which panicked my parents.

But wait! An aftershock of 3.7 just rocked my computer desk and rattled the doors. I'm surprised the 5.6er didn't tip the CD case over, because the 3.7 was enough to rock me around in my chair a little. California, it is a-tremblin'...

Open Wide, Phelps!

I nearly clapped my hands upon reading this, a breaking news item on Halloween Day, forcing a church to pay millions of dollars to a man whose son was killed in Iraq after they had picketed the funeral with signs such as "God Hates Fags" and "God Hates America." Remember, this is the church that inspired the bike-riding group Patriot Guard Riders to shield mourners of the the anti-gay church headed by Rev. Fred Phelps and his two daughters. This church has been finding as many military funerals as possible, arguing that the deaths in Iraq are punishment for the military's policy of "don't ask, don't tell" regarding gays in the military.

I could pick a million holes into this kind of rhetoric, but I'll save my breath by saying the following: God cannot hate America, especially when America is a land created by man-made borders, and therefore does not remove the individual calling we all have to love each other; and that it is not right for humans to pass such hateful judgment on others. God calls us to judge each other based upon law that is set forth to protect others, but he does not call a church to spread hate, which is why it makes this all the more sweeter (fitting because it is Halloween) that American justice has been served piping hot to a group of hatred-filled bigots who forgot what human decency was.

Considering many people in my family and close friends have been in the military or law enforcement at some point (Army, Navy, Marines), this kind of defense is why I am thankful to live on soil that lets me believe what I want without fear of persecution. I pray every day that the rights given to me simply by God and by birth are not taken away, and these men and women are defending this land and answering my prayer every day. Sure, this country has a load of other problems that I would prefer to live without, but if I had to choose, I would choose this again and again. We often forget how much free will has been given to us, not as a privilege, but as a God-given right in this country, and these men and women have shown bravery in places we didn't expect. But then again, that's what it's all about, isn't it?

I'm from Pennsylvania, and I know what these biker guys and gals look like up close. They're tough, they're authentic, and they're mostly veterans who survived Vietnam, Korean and Desert Storm wars. I wouldn't want to get near this at all.

So to the Phelps family, I sincerely wish that, for your sake and mine, that your hateful actions will remind you that free speech is a right, yet using it in a manipulative fashion will make you pay. Literally. And if God so hates America, then take your American church right on out of here and go somewhere else, because based to your theory, He might hate you, too.

Matters of Inversion

My grandmother sent me something very interesting today, asking me to "snope out the details." What I found was more disturbing that I bargained for.

"This should bother everyone. No matter the politics!! You will not see this heart-stopping photo on the front page of the NY Times or on the lead story of the major news networks. The protestors put up the Mexican flag over the American flag flying upside down at Montebello High School in California .

"I predict this stunt will be the nail in the coffin of any guest-worker/amnesty plan on the table in Washington . The image of the American flag subsumed to another and turned upside down on American soil, is already spreading on Internet forums and via E-mail. ; Pass this along to every American citizen in your address books and to every representative in the state and federal government. If you choose to remain uninvolved, do not be amazed when you no longer have a nation to call your own nor anything you have worked for left since it will be 'redistributed' to the activists while you are so peacefully staying out of the 'fray'. Check history, it is full of nations/empires that disappeared when its citizens no longer held their core beliefs and values. One person CAN make a difference. One plus one plus one plus one plus one plus one......... The battle for our secure borders and immigration laws that actually mean something, however, hasn't even begun. PASS IT ON"

I looked into this and found out that this email is "true," but it "lies by omission." There are several facts that are not in included that should clarify what happened.

In March 2006, about 1,000 students from neighboring school districts El Rancho (Pico Rivera, CA) and Whittier Union (Whittier, CA) walked out and protested in front of Montebello High School in Montebello, CA, unfairly attaching the innocent high school's name to this incident. Montebello students were on lockdown during this time because it was quite a rowdy crowd. The Montebello High School website offers the explanation here, near the end of the page. This memo MUSD school employees received describes the incident in further detail.

Snopes offered this article and clarification here.

Unfortunately, I also found a website that incorrectly reports the details, saying that Montebello students marched out in protest. This is not true, and I was horrified that there are seemingly "dependable" news sources publishing this thing, where others can take and reproduce on web forums, further perpetuating the mess.

However, these pictures are 100% authentic, as are the students who so foolishly tied their mugs to this abomination. Apparently, one single student from the El Rancho district was punished, but there are no details as to who it was or what their punishment was.

I would feel comfortable sharing these pictures, but there needs to be a better explanation with it. It lacks details, such as saying "the protestors," who could be anyone, but unfairly ties Montebello students with this label. Montebello students were known to march out in protest of immigration legislature, but they were only a handful, and they did not cause a commotion or doing something illegal. Yet another reason why I worry about some of those in the generation behind me representing "civil discourse" in all the wrong ways - it brings to mind Andrew "Don't Tase me, Bro!" Meyers and the like.

Senator Kerry, meet Brother Discourse

I love the fact that I live in a country where civil discourse is legal, but you have to use it correctly. If your civil discourse is laced with profanity and involves calling law enforcement "bro," then surely you won't be taken seriously. Alas, should I fear our country's future that people like him are the next generation to carry a war-torn, baby-boomer-laden country forward? Watch the video and decide for yourself.

At the very least, two law enforcement officers can return to their jobs knowing that they did the right thing.

Sweetness

Hershey's (the chocolate company) is moving some operations down south to Mexico. I was discussing it in an email with my grandmother, who asked me to confirm the story before she sent it out to her friends. As you all know, once I start writing, I can't stop, and these words came out:

"Well, I first checked out Snopes, and the email is only partially true. It is true that they are opening a plant in Mexico, laying off about 3,000 Hershey's workers, and closing the plant in Canada, but they're not shutting down the U.S. operations *completely.* They'll still be working here. It's just that they're doing what everyone else is doing by outsourcing some of their labor to cheaper labor sites (Mexico and South Korea) to cut down operations costs, and likely phase out the powerful U.S. labor unions, although they'd never say that out loud! If you'd want to spread the whole truth, I would pass this article around instead. Click here for the story.

More from the horse's mouth, here is a press release about Hershey Mexico acquiring one of Mexico's top confectionaries back in 2004. In truth, Hershey Mexico began operations way back in 1969. We've probably been eating chocolate made in Mexico at one point or another for nearly 40 years. So I am really not surprised that after acquiring confectionaries in Mexico and South Korea that they decided to move some operations down south. Click here for the story.

Ironically, the plant that is suffering Hershey's cuts by the end of the year is located in Oakdale, Calif. Sounds like some of the immigrants here may want to think about returning home if they want to keep their manufacturing job :-( that article can be found by clicking here.

Even more ironic is that the world's melting pot is now handing out jobs overseas and enticing workers with good jobs at a fraction of the cost that an American would require. Considering the power of the American dollar is sinking fast, we are going to be seeing a lot of this happen more often, especially with companies that most people think are truly "all-American." You have to wonder what the powerful U.S. corporations are thinking about this immigration hullabaloo... it's as if they're saying 'Don't come to us - we'll come to you.'"

So if you want to boycott Hershey, buy Dove. I don't know where their chocolate comes from, though.

If you feel guilty about eating chocolate at all, this will make you feel a little better about it.

Four Siblings stuck in the Family Tree

One Christmas morning in 2006, my grandmother gave a gift to her three daughters: a series books about birth order. Aunt Kim got the firstborn; my mom Debbie, the middle child; and Aunt Lisa, the baby of the family. I've never seen three grown women open those books up and giggle like a gaggle of schoolgirls reading about themselves and each other, passing the books around, pointing at each other and laughing about "that is EXACTLY what you are!" Although Uncle Skip is truly the oldest in the family, he was born much earlier than Grandma's girls and the only boy, and so had established himself as the oldest sibling but, well, he was the only boy, and so it's a little different for him. (Yes, sometimes, gender is a difference we must all accept, no?)

My mom's kids are similarly set. Three girls, one boy. I'm the oldest, technically, but only by 14 months. My brother and I might as well be fraternal twins, as we basically went through high school and college together, and he was a similar role model to my younger sisters. But then there's the trifecta of Weindorf sisters, the first, middle and last. So you can understand why this article intrigued me on CNN.

Granted, this study was conducted in Norway and had only male subjects. But it suggests that firstborns have a higher IQ later in life than their younger siblings. Maybe there's some truth to it. But then I started reading the "professional advice" that was given in raising each of the kids, and some of it was just plain ridiculous. Not to mention that there is too much advice running around, and that most parents don't allow themselves their gut instinct to take over some of the childrearing and depend on pure STRANGERS to help raise their kids, but that's quite beside the point right now.

I had to disagree with a lot of their "advice." For starters, they suggest saying to an oldest sibling that they have to "set an example" for their younger siblings puts too much pressure on the eldest and is discouraged. What kind of responsibility, then, are they supposed to have? Of course they're supposed to be an example. Everyone sets an example to someone. Kids really do need that kind of responsibility to grow up into responsible adults. This kind of information being perpetrated throughout our society is generating dependent kids and "helicopter" parents. I personally find that kind of behavior, like bringing your mother to an interview, deplorable.

Then I look at my family. My parents always made sure I was the best example to my younger siblings. My parents had us so far apart, though, that I don't think they had a problem with giving more attention to one sibling than the other. Maybe I'm wrong because I never noticed. Once I graduated high school, started college, and got engaged, I'll admit I probably took up a lot of my parents' time. My brother probably enjoyed that, only because he liked to make sure he kept his end of the bargain by keeping his room (sort of) clean and doing his chores, but then was pleased as pie to stay in his room and feed his fish, read, and play his games. Once Tim got out of his colic stage when he was, say, a few months old, he was pretty easy to raise.

Then my sister came along, and she was like the Tasmanian devil in the family. She had the most spunk, enough for all of us combined. She took the tricycle for a ride down the basement steps and probably sat in the ER and timeout for the most time out of all of us. While my mother and I, when I was 16, would have screaming matches in the kitchen that would fizzle just as quickly, Cindy had a glowing ember that would more or less spark a just few times a month. And then the baby, Sara, 12 years my junior, is about to get the house all to herself. Tim and I left home very soon after graduating from college, and Cindy's less than a year away from moving to North Carolina with her beau. Sara was a huge surprise for my parents, but probably the most pleasant and laid back. Everyone at school likes her. She loves sports and keeps busy. She rarely needs discipline and has a big heart (sometimes too big). We joke that my parents go too easy on the baby, but she really is a good kid.

As for the IQs, we've never taken an IQ test. So far, all of us have gone to local (Erie) colleges for education and have done quite well. We all had honors classes and graduated near the tops of our classes. But Cindy was the valedictorian at college, not me, and Tim graduated summa cum laude with 3.999998 GPA or something like that. I was somewhere in the top 10%. And Sara's doing a fine job, too, so what's a few IQ points? None of us want a piece of paper from a college to do the talking for us. We can prove ourselves just as well, thank you very much.

Go AWAY, Britney

Please, leave us alone. Now. I mean it.

All of these articles, plus more, have come from People in the last week. I think I counted about 10. She needs to pull a La Lohan and disappear in Utah for a few months so we can forget about her, so she can forget about herself, and she can learn what it means to be benevolent to her own kids instead of pulling a hit and run in the middle of her sorry mess. It's people like her that I have to try to explain to my kid someday that these people are not role models, REALLY, it's just the damn paps shoving the idea down your throat and hoping you are hungry enough to swallow.

Considering we're the unhealthiest country around, that's not too far-fetched.

To wear or not to wear?

Lou Dobbs has written an editorial that defends the reason why he still wears his American flag lapel pin - full article is here.

He defines the controversy around why people are wearing these flag pins as pure "lunacy," and I agree with him on that. Yet again, the pols in this country are nitpicking everything apart to pieces, throwing mud while dodging it at the same time. It never ends, does it? And of course, it doesn't help that this kind of debate has been sparked in both wartime and election time in this country, especially when a Presidential hopeful has put away his lapel pin, and Dobbs has blasted this gentleman's choice and reasoning for doing so.

Sen. Barack Obama has put away his pin and reasons that his words will suffice as defining him as an American. Dobbs counters that this is "arrogant" and Obama is "horribly mistaken." Then there's Katie Couric, who takes exception when Americans use the flag to refer to us as "we," even though we are all Americans here and what singly does unite us is the soil we live on.

All right. Couric and Obama have their points, but I think Couric is ridiculous to say that we can't refer to ourselves as "we" when there is clearly something that unites us all in this country. Further, I believe Obama's quest for being an American versus wearing it on his sleeve is a very fine goal indeed. Show us how to be a patriot by doing and saying, and not by sticking a pin and saying "NOW I'm an American! Found the missing piece to the puzzle, finally!" It's as if by wearing these pins, the journalism and political communities are saying "Look at ME, DAMN IT, I'm a freaking AMERICAN! That's RIGHT! This is BETTER than my damn passport, beeyotches, so stick that in your pipe and smoke it!" I'd rather not that be the message conveyed.

Dobbs points out that he also disagrees with those journalists who say the absence of the pin indicates neutrality and utmost objectivity. I must agree on this point. To quote Lewis Black, take a globe and look at it - "See? Countries!" To bear an American flag is to assert your citizenship to one of the many on this globe, but not to wear it doesn't take away my citizenship, and certainly will not take an American's objectivity away. It's in our blood, in our money, in our homes. For Pete's sake, we're watching American news while eating our American dinners in our American homes and working in our American jobs while paying our American taxes. The absence of a pin isn't going to change where we were born and raised or our "American-ness."

Let's face it, guys, whether Obama wears his pin or not, he still an American citizen, for crying out loud. And so are the journalists who don't wear their pins on the air. Further, I find it laughable that our country is so mired in its own culture and not more attentive to others, that we could dare question someone's objectivity on the basis of a pin. How many Americans have truly bothered to research and truly understand Islam? How many know that Ramadan is about to come to a close this week? How many truly know about both the advantages and issues of socialized health care and bilingual countries? You only have to look north to our neighbors, and even then, our American eyes are so short-sighted that we can't get past our own TVs.

But here's my beef, and it includes Mr. Dobbs: This whole issue with the pin is the high school equivalent of who was and was not wearing their school colors on pep rally day. Those who were wearing neutral colors were cast aside and questioned, even though it didn't change the fact that they were still going to the high school. Wearing the American flag pin has turned into a popularity contest, the ultimate trend to be in on, the accessory one should never leave their house without. Again, let's reflect on what Lewis Black says about this war: Just because you are not for the war, it DOES NOT mean you are for the other side. Just because you don't wear your flag pin DOES NOT mean you're for the other side, Mr. Dobbs.

Now that Obama has been questioned as not being "black" enough, and Hillary has been questioned as not being "female" or "feminine" enough (whatever the HELL that means), now we're questioning our candidates and pols as being "American" enough. How many levels of femininity are there? Or blackness, or American-ness? Has anyone counted? Can we pay some scientists to look into this, please, and clear this up once and for all?

Perhaps it is time for us to look at the globe, then, and see that there is one single thing that unites us all - our species, our humanity. The very essence of what and who we are are the very things that make us all connected in some way, even when we set against each other in war. There are no levels of humanity, unfortunately. Even if you're born in America, there's no on stopping you from obtaining citizenship in Canada or elsewhere. But once a human, always a human.

And if you're not wearing a pin, I promise to keep my nose clean, and yours too, of course. Just because Obama isn't wearing his pin does not mean I may or may not withhold my vote from him. I'm more interested in seeing what he does and not what he wears.

Man on trial for feeding homeless en masse

If I'd known it was illegal to feed the homeless in Orlando, I would have been proud to stand on trial, too. Here's the story in its entirety, courtesy of WFTV.com. Go ahead and read; I'll wait.

Incredible. I cannot believe that Orlando has an ordinance like this. Granted, I could probably think of a few reasons why this is so, but that doesn't excuse the fact that there are poor people who depend on the generosity of others for their livelihood.

I decided to research this ordinance further. Then I found this on the ACLU of Florida site, which apparently, only a year ago, it was legal to feed the homeless *twice* a year (and as we all know, we can live on eating only once every six months).

From the looks of it, Orlando has a long history of anti-homeless ordinances, including laws against panhandling. Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel had it right when he wrote this little op-ed.

We are called to feed the homeless and clothe the naked, but in this day and age, all people in America have the means to break the cycle of poverty. As a nation, we need to figure out how to do it, instead of throwing the homeless in jail for a night because they were panhandling, and then letting them out a few days later, only to be back to no home, no money, no means of feeding themselves.

I found another article from the Associated Press that sums up the actions of the ordinance here, begining with this opening sentence: "ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - City officials have banned charitable groups from feeding homeless people in parks downtown, arguing that transients who gather for weekly meals create safety and sanitary problems for businesses."

Ah yes. Those dirty, disgusting homeless people slopping their wares in public places. How dare they un-beautify the city of Orlando! Have they no shame?!

Well, it's not just happening in Orlando, apparently. Last August, a report from The New Standard covered the disturbing trend, which includes Las Vegas passing a simiar ordinance, with a related article here. If you're a law buff, the relevant Orlando ordinance text can be found here:

So let's sit and think for a minute. It's very possible that these people on the City Councils are embarrassed that millions of people visit their cities every year and are met with the sight of those in more dire need. Perhaps they are thinking of their tourist appeal, which I am quite sure they are. Businesses are embarrased by the fact that homeless peddle at their street corner or near their storefront. Many people wonder what happened that put them on the street. Can't they get a job somewhere?, they wonder.

Yet our attitudes towards the American homeless are getting more and more crass, as they seem to arrest our nation's development and advancement. Yet it is this very active development and advancement that leaves the weakest behind, instead of including them in this network, this opportunity, this nation under God.

But there's a fine line between letting those live their own life and helping others in need, because invariably, there will be those who always milk the system, which angers me even more, these people biting the hand that feeds you (or attaching like a leech to the hand that feeds you until running it dry and dead). I believe there are some good people in our goverment(s) that really do want to help, but we're doing it all wrong. Electronic food stamps are a currency that shouldn't exist; why can't we find a way to enter the homeless into our working system? Are the pork barrelers in D.C. too concerned with their own private needs that we can't figure out a way to enable the homeless to work for themselves, to give them a way to not be shoved into smaller and smaller spaces as we did with the Native Americans?

Being homeless is not a crime. We need to stop treating it that way and get these people off the streets by allowing them to begin working for themselves again. And I do agree that perhaps it would be an unnecessary burden for the government to force private businesses to hire at least one homeless person each, so how about the government offering their available jobs to the homeless? By using the system that has abandoned them, perhaps this is the answer to empowering these people again.

I found an interesting blog, called the 13th juror, and it's written by a woman who is a poverty lawyer. Check it out here .