Sarcasm = Anger?

As I was scrolling through Facebook a few days ago, a thought hit me: the people in my newsfeed employ sarcasm on a regular basis. Usually I find it funny, but lately I’ve been offended. Sometime I even agree with what’s said, but I don’t think it’s the right “place” to say it.

We’re sarcastic about politics, religion, how people treat us, how people treat our perfect little angels, how much we love our jobs – the list is endless. But sarcasm is just another way to express anger, and therefore I propound a theory: we express anger through sarcasm – a lot. Being a rather sarcastic person myself, I feel authorized to propose this theory. I know when I use sarcasm, although I prefer to think of it as “biting wit,” I am definitely angry or frustrated. But where does all this anger come from? For me, personally – well, that’s none of your beeswax, if you please! But it comes from somewhere. And  I am not the only one going about my day feeding caustic statements into the minds of others.

You know what else? It’s not attractive at all when it’s made in poor taste, at an inappropriate time, and to the wrong audience. Unfortunately, when sarcasm is used it’s usually done so with all three of those parameters in place. I mean, are we really “friends” with all our friends on Facebook, for example? No! They’re mostly acquaintances. Most of them may know me my whole life, but knowing what someone was like in grade school and who they grew up two be are often to totally different things.

I shouldn’t bash Facebook so much; if I’m seeing it all over my newsfeed I am positive the people using it are doing so at work as well. Not everyone at work is your friend; many of them will find it immature and obnoxious, not to mention unprofessional.

One of my idols growing up was Julia Sugarbaker. She was amazing. Smart, successful, beautiful, and just one of those women who champions the underdog, even when it’s her shallow and slightly stupid sister. The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia, anyone? Dadgum. Now that is an appropriate use of sarcasm! If you listened to that video, you would hear no curse words; you would hear no threats to poor Marjorie, no epithets on her intelligence or opinions. But Julia put her in her place, and rightly so.

Yes, Julia was the best at employing wit and sarcasm to get her point across. Those of you raised on Designing Women would know that she did it often, and it was more than entertaining; it made you stop and think. About race; about culture; about family; about loyalty; about them damn Yankees. Ah. I miss you so, dear Mrs.  Sugarbaker. But if you were a racist white person, a human being unfortunate enough to be raised above the Mason Dixon, or just a plain old uppity you-know-what…you would find her sarcasm offensive and I wouldn’t blame you. Designing Women wasn’t written for Yankees! They knew who their audience was.

Why don’t we just stop being so sarcastic to begin with? Why don’t we try to listen more and talk less, to be kinder even when we don’t feel like it, to stop automatically assuming we are so much smarter than everyone else, and to think before we speak?

Gun Control: Do Your Homework!

Everyone is up in arms (pun intended) over gun control, almost completely polarized, because it’s such intensely emotional issue. Gun control might not seem puzzling to most people, but it is topics like this that people tend to obstreperously voice their opinions about, and inevitably this makes the problem worse. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves how harmful it is to disrespect other people’s values. By not listening  and considering the other side’s values and beliefs with calmness and care, politicians increasingly contribute to the out-of-control rage we have going on in this country about gun violence and its solutions. They aren’t the only ones who need to calm down and think – we do too.

When we don’t think things through carefully enough, we can cause dangerous consequences. Case in point: The Journal News, which recently published the names and addresses of gun owners in two counties in New York. In the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting, the paper thought the residents in these counties would like to know what type of guns their neighbors were keeping in their homes. Before reading the article, I hazarded a guess that it was intended to show people that even neighbors they thought they knew well might be harboring weapons designed for military use. Then I read the piece, and discovered it’s not just about what types of guns a person owns, but how many. What may have sparked the idea for the article wasn’t just Sandy Hook, however; it was the shooting of a woman on the street by a mentally-ill man who had “amassed a cache of weapons — including two unregistered handguns and a large amount of ammunition — without any neighbors knowing.”

If you were living in a quiet little suburban town in upstate New York, for example, and had your bucolic, provincial peace shattered by such a terrible event, you too might want to know what else the neighbors might be hiding other than affairs, drinking problems, strange cult followings, or boredom. You might think that not only is it possible your kids aren’t safe it at school, but you can’t even walk down the street without worrying about getting shot in the head. I mean, this isn’t 8 Mile, for crying out loud.  I can see why the reporter or the staff of The Journal News came up with the idea, and in fact they printed a similar piece back in 2006, but I do not believe it was as detailed as their latest publication.

However, had the newspaper staff considered the idea further, they might have come up with the following objections to printing it:

1. Some of those gun owners were retired police officials who had put criminals away. Said officers have the worry that some of these criminals would retaliate once they were released, and now those officials, who served the very public now publishing gun ownership information about them, were in even more peril of being hurt or killed by these criminals.
2. Women with restraining orders against spouses, former spouses or boyfriends for domestic violence were now not only easier to locate, but said men targeting them and/or their children now knew they were armed and how, leaving them wide-open for attack using more dangerous weapons.
3. Gun owners with expensive weapons, or those often sold as “hot” on the street, were now easy picking for burglars.

I confess I didn’t come up with these ideas; I heard them in an NPR interview this past Sunday. A reporter, who does not work for The Journal News, brought up the second amendment, which is a nice segue into the main reason for this blog post, which is the question: have you done your homework?

If you have, you will know exactly what the second amendment states about gun ownership, and I quote: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Here is what the second amendment does not say – that we the people have the right to bear military weaponry. It does not say we have the right to bear those huge ammo belts seen in Hollywood movies. Is this amendment open to interpretation? Perhaps. Some could say that in order to form a “well-regulated militia” civilian citizens would need military weapons and a large capacity of ammunition. But at the time the Constitution was written, the need for a militia was in existence to overthrow the British government; to expel it from this country. For those of you who believe it’s time to do that, surely you understand that having a machine gun isn’t going to help?

Many believe the Constitution absolutely is open to interpretation, which begs the question: is any kind of weapon what the framers had in mind? I personally doubt that because these weapons were not in existence at the time, nor were mass shootings like Columbine or Virginia Tech or Sandy Hook a part of their lives. This is not to say that the framers did not live in politically and racially-charged times. Indians massacred pioneers and vice-versa, for example. Some people might call that senseless violence, but it was very different in nature from some deranged person shooting into a crowd of people just because of sheer lunacy.

The next homework question is this: do you even know what Obama said in his initiatives? Good! Because I am going to list them for you below. Uh-huh – all 23. And by the way, at no point in this whole affair did he state he was proposing a plan that would keep Americans from buying the normal weapons they currently are allowed to purchase. So if that’s what you’re hearing, politely remind those around you to get their facts checked.  Just because it’s a cutesy photo on Facebook doesn’t make it true!

1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.
2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.
3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.
4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.
5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.
6. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.
7. Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.
8. Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).
9. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.
10. Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.
11. Nominate an ATF director.
12. Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.
13. Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.
14. Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.
15. Direct the Attorney General to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies.
16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.
17. Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.
18. Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.
19. Develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education.
20. Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.
21. Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges.
22. Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations.
23. Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.

These initiatives were found on pbs.org and included the following: “The president also proposed universal background checks, a ban on military type assault rifles, a ten round limit for ammunition magazines and eliminating armor piercing bullets. It’s up to Congress to act on these measures.”

So you can keep your Glock-9, your rifle, your shotgun – but you would be banned from purchasing an Ak-47. This seems like extreme…common sense to me! After all, why would a civilian American citizen need an assault rifle and unlimited ammunition rounds? No one I have asked has been able to give me an answer except to say that they don’t like their “rights” being taken away. Some people are appalled by Obama’s restrictions but have no desire to buy a gun.

I think the reason many Americans – barring those who plan on taking down the federal government in a suicidal stand-off, holed up in some mountain cabin – have heated feelings towards what the President did because they believe that he erred in his method. To them, I ask the following question: why would he have done this if he had enough support from Congress to pass his plan? If the only reason you’re against what he did is because of how he did it, then ask yourself yet another question: does the end justify the means? If it helps keep mentally-ill people from showering a crowd of children with bullets, ending their beautiful lives, can you honestly say it isn’t worth it? Of course not. If it prevents people who don’t need machine guns from buying them and hosing down someone for no reason, why is it not worth it?

There is one other reason some Americans are against Obama’s initiatives, which is that they don’t want “big brother” having even more control over their information. The NRA, I believe, is also of this opinion. Again, though, if it saves lives, it seems advantageous. However, being one of those Americans who resents government control over so much of our lives, I can understand their position. The truth is, in my opinion, that this is yet another classic example of choosing the lesser of two evils.

In fact, an ABC News poll shows that most Americans support the President on this one. Which begs my last question: how should the American public, the President, and Congress handle this? I propose by using the democratic principals this country was founded on. How? By Congress voting what their constituents want, in a transparent way. The winners win and the losers lose. However, in the meantime, how it is handled, at least by the President and Congress, is not tricky at all: simply listen to each other with respect. Don’t shout at each other. Don’t threaten or make demands. Just publicly get your points across. Pick someone from each party to address Congress, as well as the President, and give all three the same amount of time in which to speak. Do not let Congress members or the President fire off heated, intense epithets in front of cameras or in print. Grow up. Because this is an issue that needs to be settled, and Americans deserve to be safer than we are. And then let the American public decide.

In fact, I may be on to something. How nice it would be if American officials could behave like this about all the issues that come up. What would this country look like if most (because I am not deliriously naive) Americans behaved this way as well?What do you think?

Where Were You When?

The assassination of JFK. The Berlin Wall. 9/11. The first time a Bieber record went on sale. There are things throughout history we remember,  and some of you have never even heard the Biebs croon a pop hit. In fact, an entire generation of Americans cannot tell you where they were when O.J. Simpson was acquitted.

I remember where I was. I was in the library of my small, all-white private school. The entire high school was crowded into the back room where there was a tiny tv. They may have wired it for cable just for this event. Just kidding. Anyway, we were riveted. We had very strong opinions, even as teenagers, about the verdict. We all knew he was guilty, and most, if not all, of us, had  heard our parents express  their outrage or opinions on how the trial went and how it would end.

Today I closed the page on Without a Doubt, written by Marcia Clark, someone else an entire generation will not remember. She was the lead prosecutor of the case. And she got squashed. I mean, absolutely pounded by what folks dubbed “The Dream Team,” headed by none  other than Johnnie Cochran. Rings a bell, doesn’t it? There’s a Cochran law firm. And I bet when you read the words “Rodney King” you start to get an idea of what we’re talking about.

After all, Rodney King was beaten by Los Angeles Police Department cops. Their acquittal is said to have started the LA Race Riots of the 90s, a truly brutal time in that city’s history. There must be a billion rap songs about it out there. He was, also, famous for his hair. What happened to Rodney King, despite what he may or may not have done illegally, was so wrong it’s sickening. And when O.J. stepped up to bat, an almost all-black jury gave him the go-ahead. Get-out-of-jail-free card. He walked.

He walked despite overwhelming physical evidence that he was guilty of the murder of Nicole Brown  Simpson and Ron Goldman. The brutal murders of these two people. And he had a recorded history of domestic violence with Nicole, whom he had two children with. There are those who believe that the O.J. verdict was direct retaliation for Rodney King. I happen to think it’s a very distinct possibility.

Here is some information Clark wrote about in her book that was published in 1997:

“The People lost this case not because we introduced too much evidence or too little evidence. We lost because American justice is distorted by race. We lost because American justice is corrupted by celebrity. Any lawyer willing to exploit those weaknesses can convince a jury predisposed to acquittal of just about anything…[A] handful of clever, expensive attorneys were allowed to manipulate the system by invoking the wholly irrelevant, yet provocative issue of racism…You took a jury itching to avenge Rodney King and incited it to nullify the law.”

Get on it Marcia.

Just so you know, O.J. did not fare so well in the civil trial. He was found guilty.

I have dealt with racism my whole life. In fact, we all have. You don’t have to be Southern, from Compton, or a resident of 8 Mile to know what I’m talking about. The fear of things we don’t understand is the human condition, and racism is born out of that fear. It is not mutually exclusive to whites. It is something I dislike but understand from the white perspective and sympathize with from t he black perspective. I’m not one of those white people who says I can totally put myself in the place of a black person, but anyone with half a brain can imagine what it would feel like to be brutalized or treated unfairly due to race. Oh, wait a minute…I actually can. I once was told I wouldn’t get a job in my field because I wasn’t in the right racial category the company was hiring from. Yep. I never want to work in my field again. I just don’t have the heart.

I have wondered how I would ever write about race. It’s an issue that polarizes just about everyone – at least how they respond publicly to it. Not everyone has looked at it from all the angles.I think I have. I have never been a slave. As you can see from my avatar, I’m white. So that explains it. I’ve never been black in the 60s. But slavery ended a long time ago, and blacks have the same rights we have. So I say let bygones be bygones.

I’m not simplifying the issue of race; I’m giving the only option that lets us move past race issues and into relationship with each other. I have no idea if that will ever happen on a large scale but we all know it happens every day, one-on-one. I don’t look at a black person as a “black person” – I look at them as if they’re a person, and I expect the same thing in return. I hate the term “race card” but the truth is that sometimes race does determine how a person is treated. You don’t have to use the N-word to be a racist. Harboring hateful ideas in your mind determines your character, even if you’re the only one who knows about it. Jumping on a bandwagon of unwarranted animosity is the same thing, but because it’s what a lot of other people are doing, it’s considered ok.

The perfect example works for both blacks and whites: the dislike of the President of the United States simply because he is black, or the support he has received simply because he is black. There are a lot of white people who voted for him because they felt it would somehow balance the scales, in my opinion. That’s just plain stupid, as is disrespecting the leader of our land due to color and not even trying to see his good points. I’m not a fan, by the way, of his presidency. However, I do see sides of his personal character that I  like (as well as those I don’t.) This is only possible if you strip your consciousness of unnecessary hindrances to understanding and appreciation.

I am not naive enough to think that one day,  we will all live in peace and harmony – at least, not until the Lord  comes back and we all get to heaven. Until then, we have to do the best with what we have. So who am  I appealing to? The white family who raises its children to respect those of all colors? No. The black family who does the same? Obviously not. I am appealing to those of any and all colors who raise their children and live their lives hating  the color of another person’s skin. To you I say: get over yourself. God loves variety or He wouldn’t have painted us so beautifully in the first place. And I know y’all don’t think you’ve got something over on Him, right?

It takes a strong mind, as well as an exceptional character (in my opinion) to give credence to different viewpoints, and at least to think about them. Aristotle said, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” I do not have a strong mind nor an exceptional character. I am extremely opinionated, impatient, and strong-willed to the point of absurdity. But even I have trained myself to think through things that really bother me and consider all the different facets or perspectives. And when I can’t see any but my own, I always get the thoughts of someone else on board, which has taught me a lot. You wouldn’t even believe it.

A good example of this, I think, is the opinion a lot of whites have that Latinos are ruining the healthcare system.  Let’s say you believe this to be true. I can give you that, because there are a lot of people out there who would agree with you. Can you at least understand where the desire to flee to America comes from? Imagine living in a country that can’t provide you clean drinking water and you have children. Wouldn’t you be tempted to become a fugitive to give them a better life? Imagine living in a country where drug cartels run everything. The absolute danger you would live in, day in and day out. If you would  not even contemplate moving your children to safety, you have issues other than racial bias and you should probably explore that.

And let us not forget all the white people who got off easily: Lyndsay Lohan. Casey Anthony. Robert Blake. I once wrote a blog post about cosmic fame and how it totally distorts our perspective on reality. Celebrity status definitely played a role in the O.J. Simpson verdict, as well as these previously mentioned cases above. Casey Anthony wasn’t a star; she was a figure made famous over the Internet and on tv. It’s ridiculous the role fame plays in courtroom antics.

So the next time a racial thought runs through your mind, try seeing it from another point of view. When you see a white person living in a nice house, with nice things, instead of saying, or thinking to yourself, how entitled  he or she must feel, try to think about the possibility that he or she worked really hard to get those things. That person may even give some of it back to people like you! When you see a black person charged with a crime, try to remember that a lot of people grow up poor and don’t have the emotional and physical blessings of others,and that can lead to a lot of problems you, in your upper-class suburban bubble, will never understand. When you see an illegal alien sitting outside a gas station trying to find work for the day, put yourself in his place. What if you lived in a foreign country so you and your family could have a better life, and you couldn’t speak the language, understand others, and get a decent job?

Live as a Citizen of Heaven

Two verses I read recently made me really happy. You know how just reading  something lifts you up, right away? Makes you feel like you could do anything? They are both from the book of Philippians.

“I pray that your love will overflow more and more…Keep on growing in knowledge and understanding…Live pure and blameless lives…be filled with the fruit of your salvation.” – Philippians 1: 5-11 (various.)

The other is from the same chapter, but verse 27: “You must live as citizens of heaven.”

Lately there is so much animosity going around between political parties. I knew I would not vote for the President, but I had my doubts about Romney as well. The future of our country is definitely uncertain, but then, how is that any different than what people said four years ago? Ten years ago? Two decades, or two hundred years, ago? It’s not! The future is uncertain – otherwise,  it wouldn’t be the future! We can make all the plans we want to. We can figure out how to fix the economy and in two years an act of God could destroy this country.

What good would our plans be then? I don’t pen this to say that we shouldn’t make plans to make our lives as a nation or an individual better. We should. That is the responsible part of life; that is Biblical. But the truth is that sometimes life hands us things that can’t be fixed in a timely manner. Meaning – on our timetable. Sometimes time is all it takes and it takes a lot of time!

So what should we do while we wait? Fret about who leads our country? Fret about our role in it? Seriously, what is your role? Is it to change the world? No! All our lives, we as Westerners have been taught that we as individuals can make a difference. Really? How? That is what I’d like to know, because I have wasted thousands of hours of my own life, if not millions, planning ways that I could make the lives of everyone around me better if I could just find the right words, or behave the right way, or be smarter or nicer or tougher or gentler. Ugh!

It’s a nice thought, isn’t it?  That one little light can shape the outcome of billions of people. But it is such an utter lie, I think. The only world we can change is our own – our own individual world. There is a period of time when we are in control of our children before they are old enough to say no. To do what we don’t want them to do. And that is all. For the better part of our lives, the only control we have is over ourselves. There is nothing I can do to fix the peace problem in the Middle East. There is nothing I can do to fix the United States government or to shape the outcome of an election.

That’s the whole point, isn’t it? When Jesus came, so many Christians were pumped because they thought He was going to step up and take the place of oppressive government and make it work for everyone. But He had no desire to do that whatsoever. Why do you think that is? Because it wasn’t important? Because He didn’t care? No. It was important and He did care, but it wasn’t the point of His coming at all.

If everyone stepped out of politics, what would we have? A huge federal government existing solely for itself? Probably so. And how much more screwed up would it be than it is now?

I’m not telling people to avoid voting or debating, but I am advising people to live for eternity, not for the here and now. For example: abortion has always been a hot-button issue since Roe v. Wade. That’s not to say abortions weren’t being performed before that decision – they were. They probably took a lot less lives after the decision. The point is this: you or I cannot change the fact that until “Thy kingdom come,” people are going to want and have abortions. Debate it. Talk about how you feel. Let your opinion or experience help someone else to make a decision. But you cannot make that decision for another living soul. So all the hostility in the world will not change someone’s opinion; it will  just cause more animosity.

The world is chock-full of lost people! That is so sad to me. And there is a “tolerance gospel,” as I like to call it, that has gone a bit astray in trying to win hearts and minds for Christ. We are called to confront sin. We are called for other things as well, but we cannot forget this or wish it away because it’s hard and uncomfortable. But we cannot preach love to everyone if we hate them at the same  time. We cannot call everyone who disagrees with us ignorant or stupid or just plain wrong.

What can we do? We can do what the verses in Philippians say: Keep on growing in knowledge and understanding…Live pure and blameless lives…be filled with the fruit of your salvation. These directions aren’t about us and others – they are about ourselves. The world is full of hurting, lost, and mistaken people – for sure. And we are not supposed to silently watch – passively watch – people in those conditions go by in front of us. But there is a balance here that is totally out of whack.

We, as Christians, are called to be disciples of men. That is a hard pill for me to swallow. I do not at all feel comfortable discussing a stranger’s beliefs in God with him or her. But we can all be examples. We cannot change the world. We can only change ours. So whatever you are called to do, do it!! Do it with grace, mercy, honor, integrity, and excellence.

Cosmic Fame

There are so many reasons to admire famous people. Excellent entertainment skills; astonishing athletic ability; exceptional leadership. Even great business sense.

I like reading about the accolades of celebrities. I like when they use their fame to good end. It shows a human side to people we so elevate.

However, it is that elevation that causes such trouble. CNN did a story about a woman who stood up to former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno.

As regards the Sandusky debacle, Vicky Triponey had this to say:

“The culture is deep,” she said. “The culture is making decisions based on how others will react, not based on what’s right and wrong.” It focused on the interests of those at “the top of the chain,” she added. “Others at the bottom didn’t matter.”

She had nothing to do with Sandusky and wasn’t aware of it happening; her problem came when she tried to institute penalties against football players who broke the rules, and she came up against a solid brick wall: Joe Paterno.

The names of celebrities who committed true crimes are endless. I won’t even mention any others. I just want to express that it is nice and normal and good to have people to look up to and admire. It gives us a goal as well; something to strive for. Something we want.

It’s when that gets out of hand – when the hero worship is taken way too far – that we need to take a serious step back and stop excusing famous people who commit crimes. I can promise you that whoever out there you would let off the hook for a critical wrongdoing would not do the same for!

My Preference? That I’m Right, of Course!

Sometimes we feel like God is really trying to tell us something, or that a problem we struggle with (or might not even realize we struggle with) is really popping up in our minds. Yeah. How come it’s never a positive?

Well, for me,  it’s personal preference versus gospel  truth, and last night at my small group meeting we were discussing it as well. This is actually something I’ve been wrestling with for months.

Photo courtesy of theorthodoxgospeltruth.blogspot.com.

Some believe “gospel truth” means whatever issue is at stake is clearly laid out in the Bible. Others,  like myself,  have elevated a belief to the status of “Biblical” even thought it’s not, technically. Here’s where it gets murky – there are a lot of things we know we shouldn’t do, like view porn, even though the word “porn” is located NOWHERE in the Bible. This is, in my opinion, the gospel truth. Get it?

Anyway, here’s what freakin awesome about our own gospel truths: they’re different! Yeah. Huge cosmic joke.

In 1 Corinthians 9: 19-22, Paul wrote about this. He adapted to all sorts of people. Meaning, he didn’t change his core beliefs, his morals, his values – he just became malleable so he could get along with different types of people.

People have different beliefs. They behave differently. It is a fact of life, and no matter how hard I  or anyone else tries, we cannot fit people into Cosmo-quiz boxes. People are complicated. And I have got to stop resenting people who are different from me. By that I mean  people who come across to me as amoral, immoral – just blatantly ungodly. It’s such a stupid waste of time!

 

A Mistake, or Running His Mouth?

You may have noticed that I am a Democrat, although not of the  Obama kind. So, unfortunately, this time I have to vote Republican. I know. Yuck. Gross. Eeewwww…Anyway, I was pleased as punch that at least Romney has a good-looking running mate. Haha. Literally.

Paul Ryan is under fire today for lying about his finishing time in a marathon, and it got me to thinking. Why would he do it, or did he do it? Lie, that is?

Let’s say he did. Let’s say he remembers his time from 1990 and fibbed. What does that mean? That he would make a bad Vice-President? Maybe. Maybe he lies about other things. Maybe that “great speech” at the convention was  just an arrogant liar running his mouth, and if so, he would remind me of an ex-husband of someone’s out there…ouch. That would really suck for this country.

But what if he didn’t lie? What if running a marathon was just a one-time thing, as it seems likely from both The Washington Post and Runner’s World? What if he really is health-conscious (good for him!) but doesn’t like the idea of doing a marathon but did it anyway, just for kicks, or to say to himself that he could do it? So, if it wasn’t such a huge deal to him, maybe he really did forget.

I hope it’s the latter, but only time will tell. Even if he is  a liar, does it really make a difference? If we want change, don’t  we have to vote for Romney even if his running mate runs his mouth too freely?

Small-Town Politics

I have a friend who grew up on a ranch in a small town in rural Alabama. She now lives in the suburbs of a large Southern city, but she knows of what she speaks. She spent most of her life there, and although she doesn’t want to go back to live there, she misses it terribly and wants what is best for all its occupants. She relayed this information to me and I thought y’all just might find this interesting and that you should spread the word. This coal ash needs to go – and so does Albert Tuner Jr. Don’t take her word for it? Then do the research yourself and come up with your own conclusions. I think my friend is right.

The basic storyline is that a few years ago, coal ash from the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) began to be moved via rail through Birmingham, AL to Uniontown, AL. This ash is highly toxic. The majority of the good people of this town and county did not want it, but they lost. This is the poorest county in the state of Alabama. Some have even called it “environmental racism” since the premise is that minorities who are also poor are either used as guina pigs for testing the hazzards of dangerous materials or are considered stupid and taken advantage of by those who want to, literally, dump their problems off somewhere else.

The campaign to bring it there was spearheaded by Albert Turner, Jr., a local “character” – that’s Southern code for jackass. He has threatened numerous county council members (he sits on the council) as well as ordinary citizens  who criticism him. The following tripe can be found in an article on black politics in Alabama from al.com:

“This is their school they built,” Turner says with contempt as he drives past Marion Academy, the private school that many of the county’s white children attend. NOTE: Public schools in Perry County, AL are notoriously dangerous. White children’s parents pay, for them,  an exorbitant amount of money to send them to very small private schools for safety’s sake.

The Marion bank has never had a black loan officer, he says. Judson College, the Baptist women’s school and one of the county’s largest employers, has one black professor and no black administrators. NOTE: Having attended Judson College for one year myself, and having visited its campus many, many times prior to that, I think I speak with enough authority from experience to say that finding qualified blacks who actually want to come back to Perry County to live and work is next to impossible.

“There is no integration here,” Turner says. NOTE: This county has one  major import and export – drugs.  Crack, cocaine – these are some of the biggies. Knife fights and gunfights in the street are commonplace. I once worked downtown in a major Southern city and witnessed several drug deals made openly on the streets. My very first thought w as, “My, how homesick I am!” There may not be as much integration there because it’s a safety issue, but I assure you there are PLENTY of good, white people who want what is best for the county and it has nothing to do with racism.

It galls Turner that Judson’s president, David Potts, mainly employs blacks in the kitchen and on the janitorial staff, and yet he says Potts constantly meddles in city and county politics, trying to control the majority black government. “His involvement in local politics is going to be the death of that school,” Turner says. “A school like that can’t stand the heat that the black community can bring.” NOTE: You are a gangster. A thug. You have sold out your “own people” for money and are inciting them to violence. I happen to know this delightful fellow,  David Potts,  and he is doing nothing of the sort. The real”‘heat” is coming down  on ABJ and he is the one who must see the end is in sight.

I want you to read the information regarding the coal ash problem but I also want to get the word out that gangsters like Turner need to be investigated by the State of Alabama. He has committed criminal acts and should be held accountable for them – criminally. He is guilty of harassment, assault (one-on-one and via his radio show), and Lord knows what else. He needs to be stopped.

What Connection?

Photo courtesy of apapromotions.com.

I just read a CNN article about U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and his supposed misconduct with Fast and Furious, and how the U.S. House held a vote recently about whether that was actually the case. What surprised me was the A.M.E.’s publicity about the vote.

The A.M.E. Church is a black denomination of mixed Episcopals and Methodists, which I find rather strange, but that’s just my opinion. What is bothering me about this article is not just Michelle Obama’s blatant use of the A.M.E. conference to get her message about Eric Holder out to the blacks in the nation, but also the A.M.E.’s idea that just because they disapprove of criticism of Eric Holder, they have the right to expect coverage of their dislike of the House vote.

But the A.M.E. didn’t stop there! They actually tried to establish a very invisible connection between the House vote on Fast and Furious and voter fraud!! HUH? Are American black voters so stupid that they believe whatever church or social leaders tell them? No, they are not! So why does this ploy always seem to work?

 

What Would You Do?

If I have heard, “These illegals have ruined our hospital system with free healthcare,” one time, I’ve heard it a thousand times. For the record, I am not one to be caught saying that, although I do understand where it comes from.

Also for the record, I have to say that it’s not like illegal immigrants use it like a doctor’s office. Most of the time it’s for emergency care, just like us good ‘ole taxpayers use it.

Photo courtesy of thehispanic.blogspot.com. Is this how you feel about illegal immigrants? You’re not alone.

But it isn’t just about healthcare. It’s about paying taxes, free education, free lunches, and taking our jobs.

 

 

 

 

Photo courtesy of twincities.com. A basic run-down of immigration statistics in America.

However, there’s a big caveat here, because the jobs they are taking are the ones that only they would work anyway. The rest of us wouldn’t work for less than the minimum wage even if our very lives depended on it, which is a problem for us, not them.

So, in case you haven’t figured this out by now, I have a lot of sympathy for illegal aliens of any race, although if we’re being honest, the most complaints we have are about those of Latino origin.

Usually I tell people that if I were a mother or father living in Mexico and I had the chance to cross a river to give my kids a better life, I’d swim it quicker than a wink. But they don’t seem to get it. I mean, they can understand it on some level, but they’re more concerned with their financial health than the safety of others. I know it’s not a race thing, because the people I know have friends and family members of differing races.

But it is easy to live our middle-class or upper-middle-class lives with decent jobs, affordable healthcare (meaning we can go to the doctor if we need it), and good food, along with great housing, and condemn others for wanting that chance. For wanting their children to get that chance. To me that is so wrong I don’t even know where to begin. By the way, it might help to remember that we were born into possibly the most privileged country in the WORLD. So many people out there struggling to survive were not.

And spare me, please, the song and dance about churches fulfilling the obligations of the poor and discarded, rather than the government. That is a TERRIFIC idea in theory. In fact, that is what Jesus would had have us do. I believe that with all my heart. But in reality many churchgoers don’t even tithe what they should, much less want to spend their money on giving to the poor!

So what is the solution? I don’t like mentioning a problem without proposing a solution. I don’t think the answer is to send troops or American dollars to Mexico and straighten them out. For crying out loud, we have got to learn to deal with the problems we have here, first, unless there is some extreme loss of life on hand, like genocide. That’s not what’s happening in Mexico, although you might think differently if you lived there with the drug cartels running everything.

Much as I am loathe to admit it, I think President Obama and his recent  immigration rules are spot-on, because let’s face it – we certainly don’t need to use the resources we have hauling all the immigrants across the border. A lot of them were children when they were brought here. They shouldn’t be punished for an illegal decision by their parents. This plan of Obama’s might actually work. The good news is, it keeps serious criminals out. I think it’s a win-win for everyone.

I know we should be concerned about our health care system. I know we should be concerned about jobs in America being overtaken by people who didn’t enter the country legally, although we’d never work those jobs ourselves. Frankly, I’m more concerned about terrorists flying in from all over the world than I am about migrant workers and the like crossing the Rio Grande.