March 8, 2011
Where do I start?
The Center for Science in the Public Interest is threatening to sue McDonald’s restaurant if they don’t stop putting toys into their Happy Meal. WTF? These people, whoever they are, are equating the happy meal toys with candy from child predators! What????
Number One: This still being America, it is MY decision and MY decision alone what my children eat. If I don’t want them to eat a Happy Meal I will tell them NO myself. I don’t want or need your help to do it. Rest assured, The Center for Science in the Public Interest…….I got this.
Number Two: Who the hell are you anyway? I never asked some random anonymous group you to represent my public interest. I can handle that quite well all on my own, thank you very much. I’ll be doing that right along with deciding whether or not my kids can have a Happy Meal!
Number Three: Butt the hell out! Here’s an idea…..how about you concern yourself with kids who have no one to make that decision for them? How about you take your “science in the public interest” and use it for some real public interest? You can use all of your influence and backing (from God only knows where) and fix the foster care system in this country. Or you can use it to try to infuse some common sense into politics, like maybe instead of forcing people to purchase medical insurance, you can set it up so that those of us who are free Americans can decide for ourselves if we WANT to buy insurance. Oh wait…..That’s the opposite of what you do, right?
Number Four: Who told you what the public interest is? I don’t recall having a vote as to what my public interests are. And I can promise you this: it will be twenty years after the end of the world before I let some random group whose aims and goals I know nothing about, decide anything for me.
Number Five: What science? Who are the “scientists” who are providing you with your information? Is this real science or junk science? Or is it maybe science of the “let’s see how many dumb asses we can get to back this lame idea without thinking about it” variety?
Number Six: What ever happened to parents making the decisions for their children? That is our JOB! We decide what we are going to allow. You can’t legislate stupid out of the world. If we could, YOU would be the first to go!
*sigh*
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Posted by thought4food
November 14, 2008
After the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, four unidentified students at North Carolina State University spray painted racist comments in the “Free Expression Tunnel.” The students admitted to doing it and the university police, state and federal authorities have not charged the students with any crimes at this time.
However, students at the university are calling for a “Free Expression Tunnel Hate Crime Act” in order to prevent/punish actions of this kind in the future. The NAACP are also calling for “Hate Crime” legislation.
I find this entire incident disturbing on several levels:
1. Does anyone else find it screamingly ridiculous for them to want to censor comments made in the “Free Expression Tunnel”? Name it the “Free Expression, But Only If You Agree With The Majority , Tunnel.” What kind of idiot thought bitching about what was written in a tunnel with that name was a good idea? If the tunnel is NOT for free expression, don’t name it that.
2. No one reporting on, commenting about, or involved with this stupidity has yet mentioned that elephant standing in the big, fat middle of the “Free Expression Tunnel.”
3. I dislike the entire idea of a “hate crime” being legislated differently than any other crime. What this boils down to is that people want to legislate thought and feeling. When a citizen of this country can be prosecuted for what they think, we have ceased to live in America.
What ever happened to agreeing to disagree? Every time someone with a different point of view speaks out, people want to run to the legislature to have a law passed against it. We have come to the point that we believe we have a right NOT to be offended by what we consider wrong thought.
Now, let me just say that I totally think that what was written was reprehensible. It shows the ignorance, intolerance, and stupidity of the individuals involved. That’s my personal opinion. They wrote their personal opinion. I, for one, don’t want to limit they’re ability to express their opinion because when I’m successful at doing that it opens the door for someone else to limit MY ability to express my opinion. I feel that I have that right because I still live in America (for now, anyway). One of the foundations our country was built on was that of free speech for every citizen.
I do like the NAACP’s idea of diversity training. But, again, that’s just me. If I choose to become an informed, educated, sensible human being then that’s my right. If you choose to remain an ignorant ass, that’s your right.
I have a very personal reason for not wanting this kind of hatred to spread. I wish people could get over the idea that the melanin levels in our skin mean something about our character. That’s my own personal little pipe dream. As long as we have people who’s self esteem is only raised by lowering someone else, we’ll have people who dog out others for whatever reason they can find.
I think we need to lose the Law Mongering mentality and grab a clue here. Our new President-elect is a man of mixed race! The majority of this nation elected him. People will grouse and fuss and argue and bitch about him just like they have every other president we’ve ever had. The Bush’s were dogged out because they were Texans. President-elect Obama will get dogged out because he’s mixed. Learn to live with it.
One last thing: Be careful what you wish for. All of these laws that people want to make up concerning “hate crimes” can’t be implemented to cover only what YOU want them to mean. Eventually each and every one of you who want them will be subject to them yourselves. Then YOU will be the one who can’t say what you think or believe or feel.
At that point you will no longer live in the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave”.
2 Comments | America, Crazy, Crime, Law, Legal, life, news, Rights, Seeing Red, Thoughts | Tagged: "Free Expression Tunnel", censorship, Hate Crime, idiots, NAACP, NC State University, Racism | Permalink
Posted by thought4food
October 4, 2007
I watched the news today and saw a story about a foster child being sent into court ordered risk of child abuse. I have first hand experience with exactly this issue. It is both astonishing and sickening how many people will blindly send a defenceless child into danger simply because the letter of the law says to do so. It sounds eerily similar to the Nazi’s claiming that they were only following orders.
In the case of the foster child, he is 2 years old and has lived with the foster parents virtually his entire life. His parents have lost all parental rights and the foster parents want to adopt him. The birth father, a convicted pedophile who is a Mexican national, stated in court that when released from prison he intends to return to Mexico to live with his mother. His birth mother never showed up for the hearing.
However, before the foster parents can adopt him the state must try to find a blood relative who is willing to take him. After a 2 year search, the mother of the pedophile finally agreeed to take the child. Yes, this is the same woman that the pedophile father will be living with when he gets out of prison. In another country. Where the United States, the birth country of this 2 year old child, will have no jurisdiction. And the state is actually defending their position of sending this AMERICAN child there and not letting him be adopted here by the only family he has ever known.
He will be taken away from the only parents he has ever known and sent to a country he has never seen to live with people he doesn’t know, who speak a language he doesn’t understand. And why are they even thinking about doing this? Because the stated goal of Social Services Departments in this country is to keep families together. NOT……I repeat NOT the welfare of children. Look it up.
If this isn’t a case of court ordered child abuse I’ll kiss your ass on the courthouse square at high noon.
Did you know that if you have a child crossing a county line for visitation and they are abused, if you do not see the abuse yourself, and there is no physical proof of abuse, you cannot report it in your county? Because YOUR county doesn’t have jurisdiction in any other county. Think about that for a second. This means that you have to literally stand outside the windows on the sidewalk peeking in and witness the abuse yourself in order to report your child being abused in another county. Scary isn’t it?
Can you imagine what it would be like for a child to be sent into another country? No offense to Mexico, I happen to love that country. The fact that it’s another country just makes it exponentially more likely that he’ll be lost.
We wonder why people are so much more violent than they were in the past. It isn’t the availability of guns. It isn’t violence in movies and on TV. (although it might have something to do with the JackAss movies and Bam, but that’s another blog) It isn’t even drugs. For the most part those things are all symptoms and tools. Until children are big enough to DO the things that catch our attention, we allow the most atrocious things to happen to them and we hide behind the letter of the law like that makes it alright.
It took My Dearest Husband and I years of anguish and pain, along with the help of an incredibly wonderful counselor who was willing to actually DO something, to finally get our daughter out of a sentence of court ordered child abuse. And now we are seeing all the unfortunate effects of the time she spent in that hell. She will never be who she could have been if there had been more people like her counselor. She will never be the happy, light hearted little munchkin she was the first time I saw her. With alot of hard work, she CAN be a fantastic, wonderful, caring, happy woman. Unfortunately, she will have to fight a fight she had no business having to fight. She should have been protected. She wasn’t. She was tossed under the wheels of the bus by the Social Services system who believes that the law is more important than the well being of children and that blood is more meaningful than love to a child.
What the hell are we thinking?
3 Comments | Abuse, America, Blog, Blogging, Blogroll, Child Abuse, Children, Court, Crazy, Daily Life, Family, Guilty, Help, Home, Kids, Law, Legal, life, Random, Reminiscences, Rights, Seeing Red, Teenagers, Thoughts, Trial, True Story, Uncategorized, Whining | Tagged: adoption, blood ties, Child Abuse, court ordered child abuse, DHS, family law, family ties, foster parent, Nazi, protecting children, social services | Permalink
Posted by thought4food
October 3, 2007
Kennedy Assassination
I don’t want my mysteries solved. I want to ruminate about them over a nice hot cup of java on crisp Sunday mornings while I’m sitting on the porch swing with My Dearest Husband watching the sun come up over the valley. It gives us something to really sink our teeth into without getting too full, if you know what I mean.
Like, I prefer the lone gunman theory for the JFK shooting. I’ve seen alot of stupid fast shooters in my time. It would be just about like Lee Harvey Oswald to be one of those gun nuts who put in enough hours and had just enough natural ability to pull that off all by himself. If you’ve ever been all hyped up on the A-line you know how things just seem to move in slow mo while everything is happening, while in reality it’s all moving in hyperspeed. If Oswald happened to be in just that frame of reference, he could have pulled it off easy. All by his lonesome.
My Dearest Husband prefers the group theory. More to keep the argument going than any firm belief in it I think.
We went to Dealey Plaza in Dallas, stood on the grassy knoll, actually stood on the X they have marked on the road where Kennedy took the shot. Kinda creepy how it’s all laid out there like that. We stood on that X and looked back at the windows of the School book depository where Oswald would have been shooting from. It would have been a clear and easy shot. Not near as complicated as it was always made to seem.
The fact is, he had easier shots at Kennedy while he was coming straight towards him. My guess is that he chose not to take them because so many people would have been looking right in his direction at the time of the shots. It would have been so much easier to see him(Oswald) there. By waiting until Kennedy turned the corner and was moving away, all faces and cameras would have been pointing away from his location.
Could easily have been one man. It could easily have been Oswald. Or someone one else. Who knows who it was.?
Robert Garwood
Bobby Garwood walks out of Viet Nam more than ten years after he was captured and held as a POW. He begins to tell about other US service men still in camps in Viet Nam and other countries in Southeast Asia. But Bobby Garwood is an embarrassment to the US government and they don’t like him. So what he says has to be kept quiet. However, what he says can be proven. Google him. Look him up.
Read everything you can find out about his disappearance, his captivity, and his return home. Then think about what you now know about our involvement in Southeast Asia. Think about all of the despicable things our government did to the very soldiers they sent over there to fight. Then decide what you think about what a man did to survive his captivity in the hands of the enemy.
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Posted by thought4food
April 17, 2007
It amazes me that in the the most advanced time that we know of on this earth, in one of the most socially, economically, and scientifically advanced countries on this earth, we still can’t manage to keep our asses out of each other’s bedrooms!
Who cares if gay couples get married? How in the hell does that possibly have any contrary effect on heterosexual couples? And don’t come thumping any Bibles at me either. Let me just remind you that one of the main reasons this country was founded was the desire for religious freedom. That means that you don’t get to pound your mainstream Christian beliefs down my throat.
We no longer need to be fruitful and multiply. I think it’s pretty plain for anyone to see that the human race has gotten that one down pat. We might even be said to have been excessively successful at it. So, other than procreation, what is the problem?
Let’s just put it bluntly. Because heterosexuals are in the majority, we can just refuse to allow anyone in a minority the same rights and protections as us because they are different. I thought we took care of that kind of idiotic thinking with the civil rights movement. I guess not quite.
It’s funny….I notice that when children are young, you have to point out to them the same lesson over and over. They don’t have the ability to apply a lesson learned in one situation to a slightly different situation. It takes a little bit of maturity and a little bit of intelligence for them to get the hang of it. Sadly it seems that we haven’t reached that point as a country yet.
Aside from the fact that I just don’t feel like someone else’s sexuality is my business, the problem I most have with the national feeling against gay marriage is this: if it’s OK for the majority to tell gay people who they are allowed to marry, how long will it be before they can tell YOU who YOU can marry?
That may sound alarmist to you, all comfy and safe in your bed with your husband or wife. But what if your spouse is of a different faith than you? What if that becomes politically incorrect? What if the majority suddenly decides that interfaith marriages are a security risk? What if they’re un-American? What happens if you can’t marry the person you love because their faith is one thing and yours is another?
Not their business, you say? What about the separation of Church and State, you ask? Good question! What about that? There are plenty of churches ready and willing to marry gay couples. The states won’t legalize the marriages. Their reasons are all based on religious beliefs. That is a pure, unadulterated violation of the rules governing the separation of Church and State. Go figure. Not the first example by far, and certainly won’t be the last.
Here’s the deal. We let it slide that two people who love each other and are willing to make a legal binding commitment to each other, be told that they can’t do it because someone doesn’t like what they do in bed together. We let it slide because it isn’t us. We let it slide because we are ignorant, embarrassed, afraid. We let it slide. And the next thing that happens is, someone is standing in our bedroom door making judgements about whatever private things we do that are none of their damn business, and saying that we can’t do it because the majority says it’s wrong.
Couldn’t happen here, could it? Not in America. Not in the land of the free. Well, it’s not really free anymore though, is it?
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Posted by thought4food
April 11, 2007
If you have a problem with people saying what they think, you might want to stop reading right here. Because unlike Imus, I won’t be coming back later to apologize for saying it. As far as I know we still live in America. I still have a right to free speech. If you don’t like what I say, you still have a right not to listen to it.
I understand why a politician will apologize for making a remark that most intelligent people will naturally notice is remarkably stupid, like Imus did. They have a future riding on their ability to appeal to a majority of the people in their districts.
Entertainment personalities, especially “shock jocks” like Imus, on the other hand, are supposedly making their living by saying incredibly stupid things on a regular basis. Why should they bow to the pressure of public opinion and apologize for saying it? Hell, why bother apologizing for it at all? It’s out there for all time now anyway. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, dude. All you’re gonna do now is smear it all over the counter.
Imus has a right to say whatever stupid thing he wants to say. As long as he doesn’t violate any FCC rules and regs he can say anything he likes and we have no right to censure him. If we don’t like what he says we have the option of simply turning him off. As long as Imus keeps his dumb ass off my property, he can say all of the backwardly stupid, inbred thinking, family-tree doesn’t branch kind of stuff he wants to and I’ll defend his right to say it to the death.
I don’t have to agree with him, what he says, how he thinks, or even the fact that in some areas he obviously can’t or hasn’t thought. It doesn’t matter that I believe that he is probably making remarks like this out of some sort of self hatred. He has a right to be an idiot on the air if he wants to and he doesn’t have to apologize to anyone for it! He owes no one an apology for being less than a decent human. Being a creditable, decent, humane individual isn’t a requirement for having your rights protected in this country.
We in America need to remember that we are guaranteed the right of free speech. We don’t need to apologize to anyone for the things we say. Whatever stupid, ignorant, ill thought out, uneducated, pitiful opinions we might have, we are free to state them to the world if we want to and we don’t owe apologies to anyone for them.
We are free in this country to be idiots, racists, bigots, and fools if we want to. It’s a free country. So, I say: Go Imus! Talk it up!
Just make sure you stay away from my house because your right to free speech ends at my property line. I have no problem with temporarily seceding from the Union and kicking your sorry ass from here to next week.
Barring that, talk on, ya idiot! I’ll defend your right to do so on the public airwaves until America isn’t America anymore. Which could be next year if we keep on in the same way we’re going now.
I’ll put the coffee on the for the Homeland Security guys, just in case. If having sex on an airplane is in their domain, defending Imus’ right to be an idiot might be too. *sigh*
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Posted by thought4food
April 6, 2007
I used to live on a very busy corner in town. (see Great Quest For The Head Of The Possum post) The house was at the bottom of a very steep hill, ” A very steep hill”. When it snowed, all you had to do was look at that bit of road and you could tell how much because no one would drive up it.
One nice summer day I was sitting on the couch in my living room reading, while my dearest husband was sleeping. He worked night shift then and he slept during the day. It was a normal day. As much as you can call any day with me in it normal.
It slowly came to me that something wasn’t right. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was. I looked up, I looked around. I didn’t see anything wrong in the house. I looked back down and started to read again. Then it seemed like the couch was beginning to vibrate…..but no, it was the house that was beginning to vibrate. Now that was odd.
I got up, pulled aside the curtain on the door and looked out just in time to see a steam roller knock one of the brick supports out from under my porch roof, ride up onto the porch, hit the house, and then fall through the porch floor into the hole underneath it.
Well howdy! I turned and walked halfway into the bedroom, turned and walked back to the door to look again, walked halfway back to the bedroom again, back to the door. I realize that I have absolutely NO “a steamroller just hit my house” etiquette. I have no idea what to do. I am saved by my dearest husband’s voice calling from the bedroom inquiring as to what the !@#$%^ just occurred.
I walked into the bedroom to explain and he is halfway out of bed and halfway into his pants. I told him a steamroller hit the house. He asked if I was OK. I said yes. He said OK. He then proceeded to add to my already vociferous bad word vocabulary by leaps and bounds. I was impressed! And pleased. You can never have too many bad words to choose from. Especially in a situation like this.
We went back to the door and gingerly went outside. Not easy since the door bumped the part of the steamroller that was still above the porch floor when we opened it. As we came off the porch a very pale, agitated, wet and odoriferous gentleman scampered up to me asking if I was OK. Not quite in full grip of all my faculties yet, and not realizing who he was, I simply told him that I was fine. Turns out he was the man driving the steamroller.
People began showing up fairly quickly. As I said in a previous post, the entire world passed our door 3 times a day at this house. A steam roller sitting where the porch used to be drew a fair amount of attention.
It just so happened that our landlord had a business just across the street and he saw the whole thing. Bless his heart, I believe he nearly had apoplexy on the spot. Everyone was very excited. Especially that poor smelly fella that was driving the thing. Eventually he began to explain to my dearest husband what happened.
He had driven the steam roller to the top of the very steep hill to use it paving a parking lot that was located just below the top. As he got near the driveway to the parking lot, the brakes gave way on the steam roller. He tried the emergency brake, but that gave way as well. By that time, the steam roller was well on its’ way down the hill. He decided that he would turn the roller towards the curb, with the idea that rubbing against the curb would stop it, or at least slow it down. No such luck.
By the time he realized that it was getting away from him and he wasn’t going to be able to stop it, he was fast approaching the intersection. He couldn’t see beyond our house to see what was coming andhe was very frightened, so he bailed out. The odoriferousness came from the fact that after he bailed out, he realized that what could have been coming was a bus load of children. The imagery was too much for his bowels.
When the steam roller was rolling down the hill scraping against the curb, I felt it shaking the house. When it reached our driveway, it turned slightly and ran up into our yard, crushed a bush, abolished the brick porch post, broke through the brand new 2 x 6 flooring of the porch right before my eyes, hit the house about 3 feet to the left of me and the rest is history.
We made the front page of the paper. The insurance put a new porch on the house and bought us a new table and chairs to put on it. And we were known for years afterwards as the people who’s house got hit by the steam roller.
I ask people this all the time……….Is it just me, or do things like this happen to you too?
The answer is always………No, Red, It’s Just YOU!!!!!
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Posted by thought4food
April 3, 2007
Where, in any logical manner of thinking, is this a good idea? We do not trust children under the age of 21 to have enough judgement or enough ability to divine the consequences, to buy alcohol. We don’t believe that children under the age of 21 or 18 to have the mental facilities to understand the significance of signing a contract. We will not allow a child under the age of 18 to put his life on the line for his country.
We will however, decide that we find a child’s actions maddening enough to decide that we want to punish him as an adult. We decide that because his actions resulted in devastation, he certainly must have known all along that it would come to pass.
How can we hold children to such a high standard over criminal actions only? We don’t hold them to such standards in any other area of their lives. We do not believe in their ability to judge the consequences of their choices in the legal arena, in the military, in the area of mind altering drugs. Why should they be able to judge the consequences in that one area only? What is it about crime committed by youth that so infuriates us?
Is it guilt? Is it the fact that this country should be protecting our children so much better than we are? Is it that our social services departments are geared specifically towards keeping families together rather than towards the welfare of our children?
Why is it that we find it so easy to say that 16, 14, 12 year old children knew with an adult certainty that what they did was wrong and that they knew precisely what the consequences would be? That they perpetrated whatever crime it might be with malice and knowledge of all that would befall their victims at the end?
We would never decide that those same children, if found not guilty, could then sign a contract with their lawyers, go out and buy a mixed drink to celebrate, or be allowed to drive home from the courthouse. They could not then go join the army and defend their country after being tried as an adult and found not guilty. They are only considered adults for this one, very particular, thing.
What is wrong, wrong, wrong with this picture?
We can’t have it both ways. Our children are either children or they aren’t. They are either too young to make informed decisions or they aren’t. Regardless of how we feel about the devastation they may cause. We call them children specifically because they are not equipped to make rational, informed decisions. There is an age of majority because children have not been prepared for adulthood until then.
The real problem is that we don’t really prepare children for adulthood at all. We send them to school to learn some arbitrary set of lessons, and send them out into the world with no real knowledge of how the world works. We have absolutely no markers of progress for children except for certain religions. We have no standards of progress except for a high school diploma, which basically means that you can sit still for 12 years and not be too annoying. You don’t particularly have to learn anything. And you don’t have to graduate high school with anything of value under your belt. You don’t have to be able to read if you can make a 30 yard pass, or even if you’re just quiet and don’t make trouble. You don’t have to be able to balance a checkbook, know what compound interest is, or understand the importance of a good credit rating.
You don’t have to understand self esteem, or even have any. You don’t have to understand self respect or respect for others. You don’t have to understand helping, sharing, kindness, sympathy, empathy, or just plain being nice.
We build our schools like prisons and our prisons like schools. If we paid our teachers like professional athletes, can you imagine what kind of presidents we would have? Instead, we put them in jail if they have a fight in school. We expel them from school for having aspirin. We charge kindergartners with sexual abuse for kissing their friends, and we try children as adults.
The question I keep asking myself is this: What the hell are we thinking?
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Posted by thought4food
Thought For Food 