Is This America?

I'm betting a bit concerned about what's going on in the United States. The WikiLeaks scandal just highlights how bad things have become, things we thought had changed under Obama.

Salon.com has some great articles about exactly what is happening. They are well thought out and contain lots of links supporting what the author claims:

• Why Julian Assange is a journalist: A look at why the First Amendment DOES apply.
  
• The government's one-way mirror: On the rise of government surveillance of innocent US citizens. Come on, say it with me: If you haven't done anything wrong, what do you have to hide? [Wait, couldn't we say the same about the government?]
  
• The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention: On how Manning is being held in solitary confinement, which is considered torture, because he is ACCUSED of wrongdoing. It also touches on the harassment of his supporters and why Manning is actually a whistleblower, not a traitor.
  
• Getting to Assange through Manning: The government can't prosecute WikiLeaks without also going after the regular media, so it's trying to link Manning and Assange in some kind of collusion.
• Government harassing and intimidating Bradley Manning supporters: This is supposed to be a free country. But if you support Manning or WikiLeaks, expect to have all of your electronics confiscated if you ever leave the country and return. Because Customs doesn't need a warrant to do that.
  

I had hopes that after Obama took over, some of the most egregious changes to our civil liberties would go away. But it appears it may be getting worse.

I'm not sure if this is related, but I ran across an interesting WikiLeaks article at the Sacramento Bee. At least, it looked interesting. I found the link via a search engine but when I clicked on it I got a 404 - article not found message. I thought the link was bad, so I searched the Bee's website for the article, and found it, and clicked on it. And got the same 404 error message. So I tried some more links. The articles about WikiLeaks gave me 404 errors, but the other articles seem to be fine. I want to know what the hell is going on!?! Is the Bee getting harassed by the government? Or are they policing themselves so that they don't get harassed? Either way, it's WRONG!


Here's a quote (via Salon) from the leaked chat logs that Wired magazine released. It's Manning saying why he did what he did (emphasis Salon):

Manning: well, it was forwarded to [WikiLeaks] - and god knows what happens now - hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms - if not, than [sic] we're doomed - as a species - i will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens - the reaction to the video gave me immense hope; CNN's iReport was overwhelmed; Twitter exploded - people who saw, knew there was something wrong . . . Washington Post sat on the video… David Finkel acquired a copy while embedded out here. . . . - i want people to see the truth… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.

Without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public. Words to think about.

Free Speech is Free Speech: Part 4

Westboro Again!?! I should have established by now that I firmly believe in Freedom of Speech. Even from morons ;) But what the fuck is wrong with these Westboro people? Now they plan on protesting at Elizabeth Edwards' funeral. I really don't understand how they can do this. They have to be completely insane. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Just because you CAN say something doesn't mean you SHOULD say something.

Boycott Body Scanners! Update I

I found a great article (h/t Gizmodo) about the whole debacle. It's from the Washington Examiner. And it's someone saying some of the things I've been thinking. Like: what about explosives in body cavities? (Which we already know the terrorists do.) What about people keeping copies of my naked body? (Which the US Marshal Service did in Florida.) Etc. Etc.

The most telling point is my favorite. How many people have died from terrorism, in the US, during the last decade? About 3,000 on 9-11. But we have to give up a ton of civil liberties because of that. How many people were murdered during the last decade - 150,000. But we don't have metal detectors at the Interstates leading into New Orleans.

Think about it people!

Boycott Body Scanners!

There is a call for people to boycott body scanners at airports on Wednesday November 24, 2010. And I hope everyone does. This is something that I feel strongly about. I understand about safety. That we should go through metal detectors and have our bags scanned. That's fine.

But then 9-11 happens and all of a sudden the TSA is tearing 1" nail files off of fingernail clippers. It did nothing for safety, but hey, they could say they were doing something. They took safety seriously. (The fingernail files eventually stopped.)

Then a guy tries to blow up an airplane with a shoe bomb. So now we have to take off our shoes at airports, and have them scanned. And as far as I can tell there has never been a 2nd shoe bomb.

Then a guy tries to blow up an airplane with an underwear bomb. So now we have to go through a body scanner (which is a strip search!) or get a thorough physical pat down (sexual molestation).

What's next? Al-Qa'eda has used explosives contained in a body cavity before. Will I have to get a body cavity search next? Where will it stop?

Hell, it's so annoying that I never want to fly again. But I refuse to give them that satisfaction! I really have to wonder sometimes, how much of this is real safety, and how much is just plain juvenile meanness? You don't want someone seeing you naked - fine, we'll punish you with an invasive pat down! You don't like it - don't fly! Then we don't have to scan/pat as many people. Besides, what makes you think you deserve the right to fly anyway? (Alright, I'm heading to crazy town now . . .)

Dropping H's Part 2

Yes, an update to my stupid grammar rant. Because I found an exception to the H-rule. Actually, it's not an exception, but some people might think it is. An honorable profession: in this case it is an, because we don't pronounce the H in honorable.

The basic grammar rule is that if the first syllable of the word starts with a vowel, when it's pronounced, then it's an instead of a.

Examples: A one-room house, AN honest mistake, A history of mankind, AN open bar.

Thus concludes today's grammar lesson. Enjoy.

Do We Look That Stupid!?!

Alright, I'm sure by now that everyone has seen the video of the missile in California. Which is now "officially" a jet contrail. First of all, it looks like a missile contrail, not a jet contrail. Secondly, in some video shots you can actually see the flames of the missile. (To me, it looked kind of like shots of the space shuttle launching, once it's up high.) Thirdly, this happened the day before Obama was in South Korea. A friend of mine thinks it's a reminder to the North Koreans and others that we can launch missiles off of submarines. When I searched for it on Yahoo! I used the terms missile and California, and Yahoo! popped up North Korea there too.

The Pentagon isn't fooling anyone. Except people who really think the news is always correct and never wrong. I don't mean to sound like some crazy conspiracy theorist, but I used to live in the southwest. Sometimes we would see weird planes that didn't "officially" exist yet, but were being tested and were classified. So it also wouldn't surprise me if the missile was a new one being tested by the military.

Dropping H's

Alright, one of my new pet peeves is people using the letter H incorrectly. And by that I mean, using "an" in front of a word starting with "H." Like last night, when CSI used the term An Historic Event. In this country, we pronounce the letter H, and it acts as a consonant (because it is one). It should be A Historic Event. I feel like whoever is writing these things has some idea that "it sounds fancier if I do it this way." Kind of like people who use the word whom, instead of who, but don't actually know the correct time to use it. (For the record, I sometimes use whom, but only when it's correct. You use it in places where you would use him or her. And it's mostly dropped out of usage anyway, because it seems to confuse people.)

Example: Who ate the leftover pizza? (He ate the leftover pizza.)
To whom are you talking? (I am talking to him.)

Well, saying An Historic doesn't make you fancy or knowledgeable - it makes you stupid. Unfortunately, it seems to be pervasive in many of the books I've read recently, which makes me wonder if grammar books recently changed, or will be changed, to reflect the new incorrect usage. Well, I say STOP! Take a stand against incorrect grammar! And while you're at it, stop using 's after words that end in S. When I was a kid it was the Smith's house and the Rogers' house. Apparently some grammar books are now saying it's the Rogers's house, which is horrible. STOP IT!

Last Pink Ribbon Rant?

October is almost done, so my ranting will be over until next year. So let me leave you with one last thought. You know how every now and then there's some really really annoying commercial on TV and every time it comes on you have to mute the volume, or else you'll start tearing your hair out and run screaming from the room? That's what pink ribbons have done to me.

What price, failure?

I just read an interesting post over on BlogHer (a site for women bloggers). It's called College Never Prepared Me for Not Using My Degree. I thought this part was especially telling:

College prepared me to succeed. Everyone I've ever known, as a friend or mentor, has told me that I can do anything I want. That if I just try hard enough, I'll be successful. But it doesn't really work that way, does it? I've always been prepared for success. No one sits you down and says, "Sometimes, you're going to try really hard, and you're going to want something more than you've ever wanted anything else in your life, and you're not going to get it. Sometimes, you're going to fail. You're going to fail in small ways, but you're also going to fail in great, big, embarrassingly, heart-breaking messy ways. And it's okay."

This is precisely what is wrong with our children. This girl is part of the first generation to graduate under the "no failure" model. Your team comes in last place - you still get a trophy! You flunked the test - hey, that's a 60%, not an F! Because no one fails anymore! And there are no consequences! Until you get into the real world. And then you're not prepared for it, because you've never experienced it before. I've read a number of those lists and articles about really successful people, and most of them list failure as one of the important turning points for them. But now we've taken that away from our children. It's alright to be an optimist, and to reach for the stars. Really, go for it! But you do need to realize that not everyone makes it. And that's okay.

Boobies Rule!

You've probably heard about the I [heart] Boobies pink bracelets meant to raise breast cancer awareness. Some people don't like them, especially school officials, who seem to think that "boobies" is inappropriate language. In which case, I think they should change the motto to I [heart] Titties.

Humor aside, this is another rant about pink ribbons (or bracelets in this case). And you thought I was done ranting! I have no problem, in general, with pink boobies bracelets. And I think part of the reason they were created, is because they might appeal to kids, and get out the message about breast cancer.

They've been banned in some schools, and one kid in particular ran into problems. He initially had to wear the bracelet inside out, because the word boobies was "inappropriate." After the ACLU got involved, he's allowed to wear it normally now - just like all the girls at his school have been doing. But he can't wear it at all in the classrooms of two teachers (one had breast cancer, the other lost a relative to it). The article doesn't say whether or not girls had to take off the bracelets in those classrooms, even though the teachers were apparently offended by the term "boobies," not by the guy.

Bracelet wearers, officials added, must sincerely support the breast cancer cause and not use them to demean women.

Good god, what's next!!! If you want a pink ribbon, you'll need to fill out a request form?!? We all know how I feel about the pink ribbon phenomenon. I feel the same way about the bracelets. To me, they all trivialize breast cancer. So there's no difference between them in my mind. And in defense of the boy who got into trouble: he began wearing the bracelet because he was going to chemo with his dad, who has testicular cancer, and noticed there were a lot of women there with breast cancer. To me, that says that maybe, just maybe, he's not trying to demean women.

And how the hell does this demean women anyway! Boobies is a slang term for "breasts." It's a childish term, literally used by children who are too timid to say the word breast. Boobs is the more grown-up version. I don't care if kids are wearing them because they think it's funny to have the word boobies on a bracelet. They're still wearing them. It doesn't demean women. To me, this sounds like the same people who are against breast-feeding in public, because boobs are sex objects. The whole thing smacks of old-timey prudery.

Free Speech is Free Speech: Part 3

Wow, according to this posting, the Westboro Baptist Church has no problem with the Ground Zero Mosque. Well, they think it should be allowed to be built, but they do think Islam is a false religion. I'm not sure if they really believe that deeply in freedom of religion or not. A friend of mine suggested that they only support the mosque because they know it will piss people off.

Free Speech is Free Speech: Part 2

A friend of mine had a great idea. We should all show up outside the Westboro Baptist Church and protest them! This article on Wikipedia has their address. I wonder if they would still claim Freedom of Speech, if we stood on public property outside their church and told them they were all going to hell because God hates people like them. We could even chant and sing songs like they do.

It's Pink Ribbon Rant Time Again

Yes, I know. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Or as I like to call it: Pink Ribbons Out the Wazoo Month. As I've said before, in general, I don't have a problem with breast cancer awareness. I think it's a good thing. I have a problem with this huge celebration (or sale-a-bration) that it seems to have become. In the old days, you could send in pink yogurt lids and the company would donate 10 cents for each lid. Nowadays, every product made is available in pink, with or without the pink ribbon, and you are guilted into buying them. Many of these companies donate a pittance to the cause, and really, they could care less. All they care about is selling you products. And they've learned that this is a good way to do it.

My other peeve is the entire Awareness Month. Breast cancer does kill a lot of women and strikes a visceral cord with them, because it affects their breasts. But it's not the leading cause of death in women - that's heart disease. It's not even the leading cancer cause of death - that's lung cancer. And yes, maybe it's no longer the leading cause of cancer deaths BECAUSE of awareness. But I feel like it overshadows all the other cancers. How many women worry about getting breast cancer and get mammograms once they turn 40, but have to sneak out to their car and light up a cigarette? How many young girls start to smoke and get addicted, never thinking that one day it could kill them?

Carrying on with my peeve, Breast Cancer Awareness happens twice a year. I start seeing pink a few weeks before October, then there's the entire month of October. Then there's the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure around April. My local station starts advertising that 2 months in advance, because they have training sessions at the local track. So that's almost 5 months of Pink Ribbon Madness. Just as I get sick of seeing certain commercials on TV, I get sick of seeing Pink Ribbons everywhere.

Another cancer peeve I have issues with is the term "survivor." There's a good article about this on Slate. I'm not really sure what "survivor" means; apparently it has changed over the years. It used to mean having survived over 5 years in remission, I think. Call me crazy, but if the cancer is gone and never comes back, to me, that seems like any old bad disease. I think the true survivors are those who are still fighting it. And if calling yourself a survivor makes it easier for you to fight it off, then go for it. But as the article points out, calling yourself a survivor makes it seem like you did all the right things to survive. So anyone who dies, didn't do the right things. They didn't get the chemo, or the surgery, or a better doctor, or they just didn't fight hard enough. And that's just plain wrong. My grandmother fought cancer for years, until she finally lost that battle. But I declare her a survivor for lasting that long.

Don't think I'm trivializing cancer by calling it "any old bad disease." But if we're going to call people who survive cancer survivors, what about other diseases? Malaria is really bad, and it can recur once you've had it. So should those people be called survivors? It's pretty uncommon in America, but not in other parts of the world. What about people with recurring heart attacks, etc. Are they survivors? I know some people out there are going to say that I could never understand, because I haven't had cancer (and I pray I never do!). But I've seen two of my grandparents die of it. And I've volunteered at a hospice, where a lot of the deaths are from cancer. I don't trivialize anything that can cause that much damage. But I feel that Pink Ribbons are doing the job for me.

Women Rule!

Foreign Policy has a great little photo essay on women currently ruling countries. It's almost sad to look at it. The US still hasn't had a female president, but freaking Pakistan and Bangladesh have - and they're Muslim countries!!! I had pretty much assumed we would have a black president before a woman president, which has turned out to be true. (Because no matter how prejudiced some people are, at least it's still a MAN running things, not some crazy dame!) But now that the ice has been broken, we need a female president soon. And I do NOT mean Sarah Palin; I think she's an idiot. We need some good female candidates over the next decade so that little girls can see a woman actually win the presidency.

Free Speech is Free Speech

I am a big believer in freedom of speech, and sometimes that means defending people who don't deserve it. Case in point: those damn funeral protesters. The case is now up to the Supreme Court, and I really hope they can cut through the hurt feelings and make the right decision, which is their job. Personally, I feel it is completely reprehensible to protest a soldier's funeral. But we have the right to do so in this country.

I believe I have mentioned before in this blog, that right after I graduated college, I did some shift work. I was flipping through the cable channels at 4 am and found the KKK on the local cable access network. At first I was pretty offended, but then I realized that they were protected under freedom of speech laws. To paraphrase: I don't believe in flag-burning, but I will defend to the death your right to burn the flag.

Yes, Rich, Jews were oppressed

Wow - it's been a while since I blogged! I felt the need to comment on this though. And I hope it does not come out as trying to defend Rich Sanchez. Sanchez was fired from CNN after calling Jon Stewart a bigot, saying he was part of the liberal northeast elite, and when it was pointed out that Stewart is Jewish, that:

I'm telling you that everyone who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish, are an oppressed minority? I can't see someone not getting a job these days because they're Jewish.

Like I said, I don't mean to defend Sanchez, but maybe he just doesn't know? I'm an educated woman, and it wasn't until I was in my early twenties that I found out Jews had been discriminated against in America (and that was because of a movie!). I grew up with discrimination being black and white. As far as I knew, there was no other kind. It wasn't until college that I learned the KKK had at one point been anti-Catholic. Looking back, it really makes me wonder - why was I never taught this in school? Was it because there were comparatively few Jews where I lived, so it was considered unimportant? Or was it because there were so many people of African descent that all other discrimination was crowded out? But from some of Sanchez's comments, I think he may simply be ignorant of the past.

Copyrights?

Someone suggested that if freequel is indeed a new word, then I should copyright it. So, for starters, consider it copyrighted on this blog. I'd like to add the words frequel and free-order (free pre-order) to that as well. Maybe even fre-order? Ooo, I know, fre-book (for free e-book). Damn, I could do this all day. But I am serious about freequel, etc.


Edit: Great, so as soon as I posted this I found frequel: apparently it is a movie that keeps repeating from the same franchise (franchise + sequel?). I guess I should stick to free-pre or something like that.

Freequel? You heard it here first!

So, I got a Kindle a for Christmas. And it fucking rocks! I've downloaded a bunch of classics (free), some of which I have actually now read. And I've really gotten into the Amazon Free 100 list. I was recently made aware of a site called AddAll, which is a meta search engine for e-books. It also lists the latest free e-books (free-books?) from Amazon. But some of those e-books are actually not out yet. Yes, Amazon has free e-books, that you can order for $0, and they are delivered to your Kindle when they are released. Yay! So I decided to coin a new term for these free, order-in-advance, e-books, and the first thing that came to mind was Freequel. Like a prequel, but instead it's free. You heard it here first.

School is Back . . .

. . . and boy is it crowded. My university has a record number of students this semester and they were all on the road today. I took a road near the school for an errand. That was a mistake! I'm no longer taking classes, so I had forgotten that class had just ended, and people were leaving. Way too many people on the road!

Have you noticed how hard it is to park near universities too? And if you do park, it's not cheap. I think the basic student cost at my school is $75. That entitles you to the privilege of finding a non-existent parking spot in a lot half a mile from campus. If you want to park in one of the parking garages on campus, that's $250 for the Fall semester. The school has a new health plan, so my health insurance for Fall was about $280. Hmmm. There's something wrong with that picture.

Edumacation, Shmedumacation

First, kudos to Obama for realizing that our university system needs help. But it's not just our universities. See my previous post about the sorry state of affairs in my own classroom. The real problem is our high schools. It's ridiculous that so many college freshmen need so many remedial classes each year. If you cannot pass certain basic high school classes, then you do not need to go to college. It's that simple. And, not everyone needs to go to college.

Now, before I get spammed by people calling me elitist, let me explain. There are people out there who do not like school and don't want to go to college. There are people who are perfectly capable of getting a great job in a trade, and don't need college. My cousin is 17 and is dropping out of high school to get his GED and start a welding program. Several of his friends dropped out after 9th grade and became diesel mechanics. You can make a very good living as a diesel mechanic or a welder, especially in the South. None of them wanted to go to college, and they also did not want to become farmers. So they made the best decision for them. They did not try to go to college for no reason, except that society expected it of them.

Somehow, our culture has come up with this idea that everyone must go to college. So people who shouldn't, end up going there. And many who may want to go end up dropping out. And way too many of us end up owing massive student loans to pay for our experience. We will always have a need in our society for welders, plumbers, brick layers, carpenters, electricians, construction workers, road workers, etc. And if they don't need a college education, why should they have to get one? The years we spend in college, they spend as apprentices, learning their trade. What's wrong with that?

Freedom, anybody?

WTF is going on! Several blogging and messaging sites have been forced to close, by the US government. One of them had 70,000 users, who no longer have access to their blogs and never will. The blogsite is permanently closed. The webhost (who hosts the blogging site) says they had to close it because the blogsite violated the terms of service. CNET says that it was because al-Qaida materials were found on the blogsite's servers. And the CTO for the webhoster is saying the government didn't make them shut down the blogsite, it was the webhost's own decision. Which still makes me say "What the Fuck!

I understand shutting down terrorist information. No matter how much I believe in freedom, I don't believe in letting al-Qaida recruit people and build bombs. But shutting down the entire site! That's ridiculous! I'm fairly certain the blogsite wasn't intentionally hosting al-Qaida material. Hell, for all we know there are al-Qaida blogs on Blogger. I'm pretty sure that Google wouldn't shut down their entire blog service because of it. They'd just destroy the individual blogs.

I really feel badly for the bloggers who used that blogsite. They may have lost years of material and now have no recourse for getting it back. And this becomes yet another instance of a small company (the blogsite) being destroyed, whereas a larger company (Blogger) wouldn't be. So there goes your freedom of choice getting smaller. Just give in and choose the global corporation, forget the mom & pop shops! Screw them, they should have sold out when they had the chance.

Woohoo - Chupacabras!

I just love all the Chupacabra sightings. They have been doing DNA testing and so far they've turned out to be hairless/mangy coyotes. That seems likely. My first thought, after seeing photos, was that it was a coyote-dog mix of some kind. There are a few hairless dogs that look pretty weird (Chinese Crested, Xoloitzcuintli) and have that odd grey skin color too. Don't forget, most of the World's Ugliest Dog Contest winners have been part Chinese Crested. I actually thought that would be pretty neat, if some pet had gotten lost and bred with a coyote and had enough puppies to form a little band of goat-suckers down in Texas.

Googling

There's an interesting article about Google and their book project at Yahoo. Personally, I don't Google things, I Yahoo! them. Most search engines nowadays have a lack of privacy, but Google seems to want to database every single thing that you do, so I stay away from it. Supposedly, you can even search and find e-mails that people have written with their Google accounts.

Anyway, the article is interesting because it talks about how people look something up, but never go farther than usually the 1st page of the search results. That people are letting Google think for them, instead of thinking for themselves. I've seen things like this in my classroom too. The students don't want to do anything that takes effort. I know that sounds like all students throughout history, but it's worse now. If it takes a lot of effort, many of them don't seem to know how to do it.

They also can't follow simple instructions. I had my students write short little essays at one point (they read an article in a book, then answered the questions that followed it). I gave them a specific list of how I wanted the essay - 12 pt Times Roman font, double spaced, 1.25" margin, and it must be long enough that it runs onto a 2nd page; it couldn't be just one page of type. I put the instructions up on my website, and went over them all in class. Most of my students could not follow those instructions, or just chose to ignore them, thinking that it didn't matter and I would take their essay anyway (I took them, I just gave them a bad grade).

After the first essay, I discovered that I also had to post instructions on writing an essay in general - that you should have an introduction, your main points, and then a conclusion - because most of the students didn't seem to know how to do that. In fact, there were only a handful of students that I would deem ready for college after reading their essays. I was teaching a freshmen course, but that was still a shock to me, that so many people today simply cannot write at all. And some of them were upset about writing an essay because this was not for an English class! (Hell, I once had to write an essay on a math exam!)

I hate to harp back to the "good old days," but I'd swear that when I first started college, if you didn't learn the subject material, you would flunk the course. And if you cheated, you would flunk the course. And when you got to your upper-level classes, you had to study. I studied my ass off for my bachelor's degree, but now it seems like most colleges are turning into diploma mills. And at some colleges it's almost impossible to flunk someone for cheating (I won't name the college, but one professor I know was put through the wringer for trying to flunk a student who had outrageously plagiarized her final paper - it was so bad that he said he'd never do it again, he'd just give the student another chance). Since when did cheating become something that's allowable? Why have standards dropped so low? The same college where the cheating incident took place now offers 8-10 remedial math sections each semester. If you can't pass basic math, how did you get into college!!! Forget that, how did you graduate high school!!!

What Team Are You On?

Alright, I admit it, I'm female. And yes, I read the Twilight books, and I've seen the first movie (I know people who are fans). So what team am I on? I'm on Team I Don't Give A Fuck. And I'm a little disturbed by these Twilight Moms. In some ways it reminds of the Olsen Countdown, to when the Olsen twins would become legal age to lust after.

Rush Limbaugh needs to die!

Alright, I just can't take this bullshit anymore. It was bad enough when Rush would rant about those evil junkies, while he was doctor-shopping for oxycontin, but now he's taking on children! Here's a quote, about where the kids should look for food:

And, of course, the first will be: "Try your house." It's a thing called the refrigerator. You probably already know about it. Try looking there. There are also things in what's called the kitchen of your house called cupboards. And in those cupboards, most likely you're going to find Ding-Dongs, Twinkies, Lays ridgy potato chips, all kinds of dips and maybe a can of corn that you don't want, but it will be there. If that doesn't work, try a Happy Meal at McDonald's....

There's another place if none of these options work to find food; there's always the neighborhood dumpster. Now, you might find competition with homeless people there, but there are videos that have been produced to show you how to healthfully dine and how to dumpster dive and survive until school kicks back up in August.

There's a reason we have school lunch programs for the poor - because for some kids, that IS the only meal they get every day. They don't have cupboards full of crappy desserts and they sure as hell can't afford McDonalds (unless that's where they're dumpster diving). Hell, they don't even have computers so they can look up how to properly dumpster-dive so that they're getting a healthy dinner.

I had a paper route when I was in college, and I had to stop and collect the money for the paper delivery. One lady I collected from was a senior citizen, on Social Security, so I tried to make sure I was never late collecting from her, because she couldn't afford to pay for two months at once. This same lady was the only thing keeping the children behind her alive. This was an older neighborhood, and there was a house behind her house, and the driveways were right next to each other. The woman in the house behind had 3 children, and was hooked on heroine. Every month, she would use her food stamps to buy heroine. The senior lady had called Social Services on her several times, and even bought the kids food. She said she had to, because one day she went back there and knocked on the door. The kids were all at home, but the mother was out. She looked through the kitchen, and the only food item in the entire kitchen was a bottle of ketchup. So tell Rush Limbaugh to shove his condescending, hypocritical, blinded point of view up his prodigious ass!

Alive and well

If anyone is still reading my blog, yes, I am alive and well. I was sick for a while with my own health problems, but I'm okay now. Then last year my father became ill and he died, so things have just been crazy.

I'm not teaching at the moment, so there probably won't be a whole lot going on here. I do hope to return to blogging one school starts up this fall.