The Hard Truth From Orlando

MORE ON IMMIGRATION RANT

CNN contributor Ruben Navarette wrote about the 4-year-old American-born Emily Ruiz (with a US passport) who got sent back to Guatemala after vacationing there with her grandfather. He wasn't allowed to re-enter the country on his expired visa. Emily spent several hours in detention while grandpa had a panic attack over what should not have been a surprise to him. Emily's dad gave the officials permission to have Emily go back to Guatemala with grandpa who was being denied entry to the US .

Emily's parents admit to being in the United States for years illegally. While Mr. Navarette insists on the politically correct silliness of the term "undocumented,” they’re in fact here illegally, because they are here in the United States in violation of federal and local law. That's what makes them "illegal" aliens. And they've been here for at least 4 years illegally, because that's when little Emily was born here in the US . So Emily's parents have had at least 4 years (and probably more) to get down to the closest Immigration Office and get started on legalizing their immigration status.

Apparently, Emily's parents weren't totally confident that the Federal Government wasn't going to do anything about their violation of the law, and they were cognizant of their illegal status, or they'd have accompanied their four-year-old daughter to visit with family in Guatemala . So rather than taking a chance on being caught at the airport by ICE, they sent Emily with her grandfather -- who couldn't get back into the country because of an expired visa and a previous illegal entry into the U.S. back in the 90's. In other words, grandpa was a repeat offender who got caught and deported.

Mr. Navarette takes exception to little Emily being labeled as an "anchor baby," a child born of illegal parents in the United States who serves to be the excuse to keep illegal parents and other family in the country. He seems to believe that officials were wrong to give Emily's parents the choice of sending their 4-year-old daughter back to Guatemala with her grandfather or being put in government-sponsored care. Emily's dad says authorities didn't give him the third option of coming personally to get his daughter; the authorities say they did.

I don't care. Dad got a choice he didn't merit to say where this minor child went. I think the authorities did the nice thing and not the correct and legal thing they should have done.

Mr. Navarette thinks what happened to Emily was tantamount to being "deported." Actually what should have happened was, in point of law, Emily should have been handed over to the local social services, grandpa and parents immediately arrested and deported. But because our legislators and courts are hell-bent on respecting parental rights of parents who put their children in jeopardy, legally and physically, law enforcement puts apocryphal parental rights ahead of international and federal law.

This idiot situation of Emily and others is being played out all over the country because our local and federal legislators have failed to take a definitive stand on "anchor babies" and the disposition of their parents. Was Emily placed in jeopardy? Indeed she was -- not by ICE, but by her parents. They decided to enter the country illegally (apparently it’s a family tradition if you look at grandpa's deportation record). Her parents chose not to seek legal residential status at any time between the time they entered the country and the date of the incident Mr. Navarette decries. Her parents then decided to send their 4-year-old to another country with an adult with questionable re-entry status. And Mr. Navarette thinks this is the government's fault. Where, in all of this was basic parental, commonsense responsibility?

And we have so many attorneys who smell money and are willing to assist illegals, not in establishing legal residential status, but in cashing in on frivolous law suits for self-generated slights of their purported "civil rights." Illegal immigrants don't have civil rights. Emily has a citizen’s civil rights. Her scoff-law parents don’t. We need to follow Japan 's lead and give the parents a choice: Your citizen child can stay here with a legal relative or in foster care or your child can go home with you to Guatemala and return when she's ready. But you parents are going to Guatemala , on the plane, tonight. Will Emily suffer? Possibly. But her parents put her in that position; the US government did not.

Our malfunction as a nation is that we let lawyers re-interpret the law when it becomes a personal inconvenience instead of enforcing it uniformly. We never draw a line in the sand that we're not willing to keep re-drawing until we back ourselves off a cliff. We don't consistently make decisive public examples of non-compliant people who have to have the obvious spelled out for them or they simply will not comply.

Mr. Navarette seems to think that America needs to re-write the rules for Latinos; somehow because there are so many more of them here illegally, he feels they're being singled out. What all immigrants need to do is follow the law. What all attorneys should be doing is pushing their clients into compliance with the law -- not helping them evade responsibility for their actions. What all law enforcement needs to do is enforce the laws. And what our legislators need to do is lock in the policy for dealing with "anchor babies" and their dereliction of duty non-citizen parents so there's no more wiggle-room for these hand-wringing, whiny criminals.

Mr. Navarette needs to take off his Latino hair shirt and think like a tax-paying American who's looking for policies to bring the best and brightest of other countries to come on, join us and make us a stronger nation -- instead of extorting us to embrace a tsunami of two-legged, self-victimizing economic and social liabilities, whatever language or culture produced them.

Best of luck, Emily. With your family’s history of really dumb decisions, you’ll need it.

Florida Cracker

Inside Japan's nuclear emergency

Not a terribly cheery post this week, I confess, but interesting. The above link takes you to a fabulous graphical video from The Washington Post that succinctly shows and describes the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant meltdown...so far, of course. And, oh yeah, somebody did predict the whole nasty scenario, as is noted in the accompanying story

The Thought For Today

“Information is the currency of democracy.” - Thomas Jefferson

The Hard Truth From Orlando

POLITICAL RANT

Florida's Governor Rick Scott -- where can I start? This guy is what Bugs Bunny would call a "maroon" -- and a dangerous one. He's the new Republican Tea Partiest -- he belongs to the party of "NO." No, we can't work on that. No, we can't do that. No, we don't need that. No, I'm not going to help, I'm just going to obstruct. No, we're not going into the future; we're going to embrace the past -- the 1950's past. No, we're not going to work together. No, I'm just protecting taxpayers, even if they don't want my protection and what I'm doing is more injurious than if I left things to hell alone -- although protecting taxpayers was apparently the farthest thing from Scott's mind when he was gouging the taxpayer-based Medicare system as CEO of a hospital corporation and even further from his mind when he became a venture capitalist funded by those ill-gotten gains with which he could then afford to buy the governor's office and get a whole state to plunder. Now, he purports to be the Florida taxpayer's Father-Knows-Best, orchestrating the state's finances based on his shady experience in every state he's worked.

Scott said repeatedly during his campaign that he had a plan to create 70,000 jobs. Then he got in office and said he wanted to have a conference on how to create 70,000 jobs. (Um, I thought he said he already had a plan.) Maybe he got confused (or we misunderstood) and he really meant that he had a plan to eliminate 70,000 jobs. In that case, he's making great progress on his campaign promise.

Governor Scott decided he didn't want the high-speed rail -- which has been voted on more than once by Florida residents, the majority of whom want it, both for the transportation alternative and the jobs. And he personally turned down the billions the Federal Government is willing to put in because he says he's afraid the taxpayers will have to somehow foot the bill somewhere down the line.

I guess he means like we currently have to foot the bill for the never-ending toll roads system that continues to turn an annual multi-million dollar corporate profit without improving traffic conditions in Central Florida . I guess he means like the ongoing loss of revenue because of the refusal of future employers to relocate to the area because the transportation and traffic along the I-4 Corridor is sufficient to discourage any business in this gasoline-powered urban nightmare.

But he says he wants to spend billions to improve Florida 's ports to encourage sea-traffic from the proposed Panama Canal widening. But any twit-head knows you have to have the infrastructure to move the freight from the ports to other locations and most international ports are attached to the national rail systems, which would have made the high-speed rail a plus for the Port of Tampa as a destination. But no, he wants to do the improvements in Miami , without rail improvements. I guess his Republican buddies down there need the money to make up for their losses in the mortgage melt-down his banking buddies engineered, so he'll help them re-dig the Port of Miami and then figure out how to move the freight from the ships after the price of gas breaks the back of the trucking industry and puts all blue-collar and middle-class workers in the welfare lines. His wealthy Republican buddies will profit from both in the Port improvement and their oil-company stocks at the same time.

Father-Knows-Best Scott has now turned down an offer from the manufacturers of the viciously abused fake heroin Oxycodone/Oxycontin to set up a monitoring system to curb the proliferation of Florida pill mills, a pharmaceutical scandal known throughout our nation. Governor Scott says that any monitoring system is an intrusion into citizens' privacy and it will somehow cost the taxpayers to create and monitor the system. Apparently, he thinks such a system will cost taxpayers more than the immediate epidemic of drug-related crime, incarceration, rehab and other taxpayer-based health programs the pill-addicts are hemorrhaging.

He seems to imply that system will be different somehow than the current legislated system we have in Florida to monitor the purchase of decongestants with a working active ingredient that meth-heads use to cook up methamphetamine; the formerly over-the-counter decongestants for which we now have to produce a photo ID to the pharmacist, register the amount, date, time and location of what we purchased and sign an affidavit that we will not make methamphetamine from our little purchase of head-cold pills. Does he mean a system like that to stop the Oxycodone/Oxycontin pill-mill epidemic is more intrusive and costly than monitoring decongestants?

I think Governor Scott and his buddies in the hospital business, with their heavy investment in pharmaceutical stocks, don't want that pain-pill cash cow slaughtered before they've gotten their pockets stuffed. Good God, Scott's got to make up that 63 million-plus he spent to buy the governorship somehow.

But Scott's says he's going to save the taxpayers money. He's going to break the back of one of the best government employee pension programs in the U.S. He's going to end tenure for teachers, gut the incomes of anyone stupid enough to work for this State or local government at less than comparable private wages, end the benefits (many of which are insurance industry-driven costs which corporations have NOT been regulated and continue to run rampant) packages for employees which are the main incentive for working 30 years for the State at minimal wages with no pay raises for years at a time. He wants 5 to 10% of employee wages to be funneled back into the retirement program -- which amounts a double paycut for every employee; the percentage the State isn't paying into retirement for the employee plus the percentage the employee has to cut out of their wages.

Scott wants you to believe he's a just fiscal conservative, here to man the helm when Florida 's economy is faltering after being bled out by the rampant Wall Street and Washington mortgage frauds and the never-ending wars in Afghanistan/Iraq.

But you know, Scott originally hails from Kansas , home of the Westboro we-hate-fags-let's-picket-military-funerals Church, home of the anti-abortion, anti-women's rights Personhood Movement, you-have-to-teach-Creationism-in-school Kansas . He's a fringe-riding hypocrite, out in search of the God-Almighty dollar. He's made his millions stealing from taxpayers and middle-class workers with the complicity of Wall Street and the health insurance corporations. He rode into power on a carpet of personal money and the endorsement of a Tea Party movement which has proven to be a fine example of what kind of rhetoric it takes to make crack-pot a viable political platform.

In the post Civil War era, he'd have been labeled a carpetbagger. But for now, he's a loose cannon, Tea Party darling, with no brakes and nothing in his head but dollar-signs for eyeballs. Don't blink, ya'll. These next few years will be interesting. I wonder how many of us Floridians will survive the financial wreckage when this rip-off artist is finished fleecing Florida and moves on to his next set of victims.


Florida Cracker

The Problem With Passwords

From Bloomberg Businessweek... Scary stuff.

And from Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2285534/ Sadly for me, I don't own a Cell.

The Thought For Today

"I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends." - Abraham Lincoln

US-CERT Cyber Security Alert SA11-067A -- Microsoft Updates for Multiple Vulnerabilities

Yup - Microslug again...

Live The Sheen Dream

Okay, it's hard to believe that Charlie actually said all this in his ravings, but it might be coming from the this same source. And I'm afraid to ask what that is. Have fun.

And from The Washington Post: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/comic-riffs/2011/03/charlie_sheen_cartoons.html?wpisrc=xs_sl_0001

The Thought For Today

"Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe." -Josh Billings

PC World - 101 Fantastic Freebies

01 World - 101 Fantastic Freebies

Pretty much self-explanatory. Freeware for everyone!

The Thought For Today

"We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Give us the tools and we will finish the job." - Winston Churchill

Detroit Needs A Statue of Robocop!

"Detroit Mayor David Bing recently shut down a movement to build a Robocop statue in his fair city. Which, well, that's just crazy. Fortunately, some concerned citizens have taken it on themselves to raise enough funds to commission the statue themselves. If you love America, you can contribute here." Why not? Stranger things have been done. I'ld tell you about a few but I'm not sure if the statue of limitations has expired.

The Thought For Today

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge." - Albert Einstein

10 Online Resources For Free, Legal Music

From Mashable!

US-CERT Cyber Security Alert SA11-039A

Microslug again, of course.

Universal Life Church

Universal Life Church

Well, isn't it about time that you became an ordained minister? And it's free.

Monk and steel? You don't want to know - really

But I'm sure you're going to check it out anyway. Eric is in the hospital, so I'm tending the virtual nest until his return. This is for all you macho-dude types, and begs the question, Are you as macho as a monk? Well, this monk, anyway.

The Thought For Today

"I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through." - Jules Verne

The Thought For Today

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick

The Hard Truth From Orlando

Commentator Andy Rooney feels like American Christians need to take back the right to pray in school, at games, before government sessions. He thinks it’s okay that it’s a Christian prayer because the U.S. and Canada were founded on Christian principles and Christian churches outnumber all others better than 200 to 1. He says that the U.S. courts are taking away their right to pray. He’s wrong. The courts are reasserting everyone else’s right not to have to be held hostage at public gatherings to the anyone’s particular brand of religion.

Yes. America was founded predominantly by Christians. They were seeking the freedom to pursue their beliefs, free and separate from the Government endorsed religion. They were Christians, mostly, but their brand of Christianity was not "recognized" by their governments and therefore they were not permitted to follow their conscience without government-sanctioned penalties. So they looked for some place that they could worship independent of their respective Old World governments.

That's the part of history that our "Christian" prayer in school group keeps forgetting. They think because it's their group that has the numerical religious majority then they get to inflict their brand of religion on everyone else in the country. And because they've decided that they are always right because they are the majority, then everyone else has to tolerate their beliefs -- but they don't have to respect anyone else's. That's what put the end to prayer in school. That's what causes conflict everywhere the prayer issue comes up -- the insistence that those not part of the group must also bow their head if they want to participate in gatherings.

I went to school in the 60's when the First Baptist Church was THE church in the area. All of the teachers had to belong to that Church or they didn't get tenure. If you weren't a member of that Church, you didn't get invited to your classmates’ birthday parties or any other gathering. You were excluded at recess; you were ignored by the teachers. To this day, if that church catches on fire, I want to be there with hot dogs and marshmallows and celebrate its destruction.

I remember my first tour at the Florida State Prison chapel, which they proudly boasted was non-denominational. But it had a HUGE cross affixed at the front -- and a healthy percentage of any inmates are practicing black Muslims, with a sprinkling of other faiths. Bet they felt real welcome worshipping under that big cross.

Non-denominational means no symbols, no religious messages -- just a quiet place to reflect and a podium at the front for the service conductor. That's what a non-denominational chapel SHOULD be.

It's like the prayer breakfasts and gatherings they all insist on having -- at government functions -- and the guy doing the blessing ALWAYS has to say "In Jesus name we pray." They can't just say Amen. I challenged once and asked if they could say the prayer without the "In Jesus name" so they cancelled the prayer altogether and the entire meal the chaplain sat and glared at me...turning around in his chair to make nasty faces.

I asked one woman why they always have to say "In Jesus Name" and she advised me that if you didn't say that, God couldn't hear your prayers. How interesting. I didn't know people could read God's mind. I thought God was supposed to be omniscient and knew everything about everyone; not selectively deaf and/or requiring passwords to motivate his beneficence.

I remember one of the big issues at the prison I worked at was the administration trying to deny this guy (a convicted burglar and embezzler) the right to worship Satan. Now, I think that’s totally fruitloop on that guy’s part, but he wasn’t into blood sacrifices or hurting anyone. He just believed that Satan was on the side of people, God wasn’t, and he wanted to read his Satanic Bible (yeah, there is such a thing) and have time in the chapel to do it. Which is pretty weird, I admit, but who was he hurting? No one. But you’d have thought he set fire to babies in the middle of the quadrangle from the way administration was acting. They tried to claim it wasn’t a “real religion.” Well, frankly, most people will tell you that any religion that isn’t theirs isn’t a “real” religion; it’s myth, it’s a lie, it’s a cult, it’s a – whatever, but it isn’t like theirs, so it isn’t real.

He won the law suit and they had to let him have an hour each week in the chapel, where he read his “bible” and meditated, and caused no damage and no scenes. He behaved the way Christians like to claim they do, with compassion, tolerance and true charity.

The Wiccans won the right in court to conduct their services at Ft. Hood back a few years. The local Christian (and military chaplains) churches came unglued because it’s “not a real religion and it’s witchcraft.” But it’s a religion and there was a congregation and they had the same rights the Christian churches wanted exclusively for themselves. And a number of service members were Wiccan and they wanted the same rights for themselves that they were in the military to protect. Fair’s fair, and that’s how the courts saw it.


I remember the stranglehold the Officers Christian Fellowship had in the military, too. You're not a member? You get excluded. There was a whole subculture of OCF officers who excluded and penalized non-members, who were good officers and good military service persons. And there were blatant threats, join the OCF or you don't get a good performance review and your career in the military will be short-lived unless you "come to Jesus" through their organization.

You know what? A cold day in hell before I ever willingly attend another service or any function that starts with a prayer. And if I ever sit through another graduation ceremony where some stuck up little evangelical shit feels they have the right to preach at us because they "have a calling" and we're there to see our kid graduate so we're trapped while they lecture us about how we can only be saved through their Jesus and their brand of religion, I'm going to feel free to exercise my First Amendment rights and disrupt and cause a scene.

Round them all up, tie 'em together and give them a baptism in the middle of the Pacific Ocean . Let's see if their version of God wants to fish them out or let them walk on water.

I don't object to prayer. I don't object to worship. I don't object to religion. I object to individuals insisting we all have to listen to their brand of religion and that they alone have the right to speak out on what they believe. Arrogant Fundamentalist jackasses. I equate them with the Taliban and all the other religious egomaniacs who have decided to play God and insist everyone else has to play along with them, too.

Yes. Everyone has the right to pray. They don't have the right to make me pray with them. And that's why Andy Rooney's wrong. This nation was not founded on the Christian religion. This nation was founded on freedom of expression and the freedom to explore your own conscience and find your own path to self-awareness and morality. The Christian majority’s rights end at the tip of my nose – if that bothers them, they can pray for me somewhere I don’t have to listen to them.


Florida Cracker

The Thought For Today

"In America--as elsewhere--free speech is confined to the dead." - Mark Twain

The Thought For Today

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere." - Albert Einstein

The Thought For Today

"It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety." - Isaac Asimov

US-CERT Cyber Security Alert SA11-011A

Yup, Microslug again...

The Thought For Today

"New Year's Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual." - Mark Twain

The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

HELLO, FROM YOUR BRAIN-DEAD MASTERS.

The Thought For Today

"If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance." - George Bernard Shaw

The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

"A person briefed on the latest tests tells ABC News the failure rate approaches 70 percent at some major airports. Two weeks ago, TSA's new director said every test gun, bomb part or knife got past screeners at some airports." Via Gizmodo.

US-CERT Cyber Security Alert SA10-348A -- Microsoft Updates for Multiple Vulnerabilities

Ho, ho, ho - it's Microslug again...

The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

"US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, however, said officials had handled the matter "by the book"." Tough shit bitch, welcome to the club. Don't bother to look for justice here.

The Thought For Today

"Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: That we are here for the sake of others...for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day, I realize how much my outer and inner life is built upon the labors of people, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received." - Albert Einstein

The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

"HANG, HANG, HANG THE BASTARD!" "For what?" "FOR MAKING US LOOK BAD!" "But that's not against the law." "WE'LL MAKE UP A NEW LAW AFTER WE HANG HIM!" Land of Liberty and Justice for all?

The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

America was once based on freedom. This no longer seems true. Amazon and Paypal have shown otherwise. Does the term 'Craven Cowards' sound right? It does to me.

The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

You find yourself asking, how much LOWER will the TSA go? The sad answer is: We WILL find out.

The Thought For Today

"The majority never has right on its side. Never, I say! That is one of the social lies that a free, thinking man is bound to rebel against. Who makes up the majority in any given country? Is it the wise men or the fools? I think we must agree that the fools are in a terrible overwhelming majority, all the wide world over. But, damn it, it can surely never be right that the stupid should rule over the clever!" - Henrik Ibsen (And a big hello to the TSA!)

The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

And hello "I don't need to go through the sensors and you do". During an appearance on CBS, the TSA's Pistole expressed "great concern over anybody who feels like they have not been treated properly or had something embarrassing" happen. HA!

The Hard Truth From Orlando

RANT

I don't know about everybody else in the world, but I'm already sick of the beat-to-death news of the upcoming nuptials of Prince William and what's-her-name. I don't care where he proposed to her. I don't want to see the pictures of the bed they slept in, the cabin they stayed at in Kenya, the ring on her finger or the cafeteria table where they met. I don't want to see the photos of the bikini she was wearing at the fashion show when Prince William "noticed" her as more than an acquaintance. I don't want to know if the Queen Mother thinks she's a good match for her grandson or if what's-her-name was extremely nervous meeting the royal family the first time.

I don't care.

Mind, I understand that as people, this young couple is newsworthy by virtue of the history they represent. I understand that there's always a fascination with "royalty" among people who are curious about those who live in the rarified atmosphere of inherited privilege, luxury and power. But what I really understand is the media is going to spend an inordinate amount of money and airtime to absolutely hammer the hell out of everyone at every level of communication with every bit of minutiae and speculation about the trivialities of this couple's romance and marital escapades.

It's going to be the mind-numbing, never-ending subject on every network, every entertainment show, every talk show. You'd think nothing else is happening in the whole world, when we've got countries teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, natural disasters claiming thousands of lives, pending global depletion of fossil fuel with the resulting catastrophic consequences for civilization as we know it, global warming, civil unrest in our own nation, and daily scientific advances which were sheer fantasy not five years ago to talk about. There's a lot of news -- good news -- that we could be watching instead.

But we're going to peruse the inconsequential silliness of a very public couple's private life for hours and hours and hours every day; a kind of ultimate reality show for a generation that can't get real.

I think I'll disconnect my cable and just watch movies from NetFlix for the next two years and tune back in when it's all over but the flashbacks.


Florida Cracker

The Thought For Today

“When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” - Sinclair Lewis

The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

"Airport body scans just latest TSA window dressing."

"An act of terrorism is committed, and TSA issues a new directive aimed at preventing the very crime that already occurred. It's like the U.S. wagging a finger and saying, "Now, don't try that again." And the terrorists try something else." I feel so much safer now, don't you? Don't forget, the 24th is National Opt-Out Day. Just say no to being microwaved or X-rayed. Your body may thank you - though not for the TSA fondling you'll get.

Idiots In Charge

"William Bordley, an associate general counsel with the Marshals Service, acknowledged in the letter that "approximately 35,314 images...have been stored on the Brijot Gen2 machine" used in the Orlando, Fla. federal courthouse. In addition, Bordley wrote, a Millivision machine was tested in the Washington, D.C. federal courthouse but it was sent back to the manufacturer, which now apparently posses the image database." I have absolutely no problem with the TSA's outright lies to us about our privacy being preserved, do you?

Idiots In Charge: TSA Full-Body Scanners: Protecting Passengers Or Padding Pockets?

From Gizmodo: "Sorry pro-naked scanner people, but I'm with the pilots, the flight attendants, disgruntled passengers and Ben Franklin on this one. We need to put things into perspective.
If we're going to spend hundreds of millions on something, I'd rather it be something effective that's truly benefitting my fellow passenger, not some lobbyist and their current client."

And TSA's excuse: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/11/15/california.airport.security/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo
I've heard better excuses from a 3-year old child.

Idiots In Charge

Napolitano met with the U.S.Travel Association and 20 travel companies "to underscore the Department's continued commitment to partnering with the nation's travel and tourism industry and fuck with people just because we can."

Idiots In Charge

"Blogger Bob said...
Anon, I'm posting about this because it is relevant. One of the top questions on this blog is about AIT safety.Also, there is no fondling, squeezing, groping, or any sort of sexual assault taking place at airports. You have a professional workforce carrying out procedures they were trained to perform to keep aviation security safe.Please keep pat-down discussions in the Enhanced Pat-down post and let's keep on topic with AIT safety here."
Thanks,Blogger BobTSA Blog Team"
BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT! Well, you get the idea.

And, just for laughs:
http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/08/enhanced-pat-downs.html
The comments are a Must Read!

The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

Someone remind me - why did we outlaw napalm? It's so good on pests.

The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

All the jury members and all members of the RIAA, should be given a free trip to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. And greatly encouraged to swim home. All of you have fun now! Idiots.

P.S. And because we're such nice people, let's give a free trip to everyone in the MPAA too!

The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

Those Stupid Assholes (TSA) strike again: "Federal authorities have arrested 34 suspected illegal immigrants who've been attending a flight school in Stow, Mass., The Boston Globe reported. Strict security controls put into place after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks ban illegal immigrants from taking flight lessons and require background checks on all foreigners training to fly in the United States.
Thiago DeJesus, the owner of the TJ Aviation Flight Academy at Minute Man Air Field near Boston, was among those arrested in the sting. A Brazilian immigrant and licensed pilot, DeJesus was charged in July with being in the U.S. illegally, but continued to give flying lessons until this week. Although DeJesus denies being in the states illegally, he is scheduled for a deportation hearing in February.
All of the arrested students were Brazilian nationals who were taking classes to learn to fly small single-engine planes, WCVB-TV reported. Officials at the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration could not explain why the students had received federal clearance to take classes and obtain pilot's licenses.
No link to terrorism has been found in connection with the flight school, and the arrested immigrants are free pending deportation hearings in federal immigration court."

Now, if they had only made them take off their shoes, this would have never happened.

The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

Those Stupid Assholes (TSA) are at it again. And, of course, nothing will happen to the guy responsible - or his co-workers who didn't report him.

The Thought For Today

"A woman is like a tea bag- you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water." - Eleanor Roosevelt

The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

Let's see - explosives were discovered last week in cargo parcels so they damn near strip search passengers to hide the fact that they fucked up. TSA: Those Stupid Assholes.

The Thought For Today

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names." - John F. Kennedy

The Hard Truth From Orlando

And the bullying horror stories go on --

Two sets of parents are suing Mentor High School in Ohio for
the bullycide deaths of their children. Four children from that
high school have committed suicide, and while there are
questions regarding the allegations of bullying in the one
child's death, there's not much doubt that the other three
were very harassed, tormented and threatened to the
point that they committed suicide rather than continue trying
to live in the community -- a community once voted as one of
the "top 100 places to live." The reporter quoted one student
as admitting that the school practiced an exclusive culture of
athletes and cheerleaders. If you're not one of those, you're
free meat for the bullies -- I'm paraphrasing, but you get the
point.

I remember the Columbine shootings and the victims. There
wasn't a lot said in the earliest days after the shootings about
Klebold and Harris, the perpetrators of this mass murder.
What did come out fairly quickly was that both felt bullied --
and whatever their psychopathic proclivities might have
been, there was evidence that they had been pretty
consistently targeted for bullying by the jock-culture
of Columbine.

But none of those caught my attention like the Columbine
funerals. There were something like five or seven of the
murdered students' funerals in the same church. Candidly,
that told me what I needed to know. This is a closed
community. This is a cliquish community. This is not going
to be a community of tolerance, acceptance or assimilation.
All these kids went to the same church, knew the same
people, attended the same functions, belonged to the same
social organizations. They'd be pals inside and out of school.
Everyone who didn't fit their standard would not be someone
they'd feel obligated to include -- or protect.

There was a forensic psychiatric group that evaluated
Columbine and said it was the worst case of the "insider"
culture they'd ever come across and that it undoubtedly
contributed to the anti-social ideations and actions of Harris
and Klebold. In short, it created marginalized children who
morphed into monsters.

I have no doubt this is precisely what's occurred and
continues to occur at the Mentor High School in Ohio. Thus
far, the children who have been targets have turned their
negative feelings inward, blaming themselves, while the
bullies continue to congratulate themselves on their vicious
successes and the school continues to turn a blind eye. The
parents of the bullies aren't going to see anything their child
is doing as wrong -- your kid just can't stand up for himself
or herself; your kid is weak and a loser. The administration
is trying to keep a lid on their negative statistics -- and there
is NO external oversight group to appeal to for the parents
of the bullied children. It will be the expensive, time-
onsuming legal battle every step of the way.

But I will say it again, and again, and again. If you want to
win against the bullies, you have to go outside the school
and to the State Attorney's Office and file a sworn criminal
complaint against the bullies. You have to file it above the
law enforcement agency (sheriff or police department) that
works hand-in-glove with the school administration to keep
the victims quiet and the school looking good. You have to get
your child to NAME the children who calling names, harassing,
hitting and NAME whatever teacher or administrator
witnessed the action or that you complained to and file
specific charges against them; criminal negligence against
the administrator or teacher and criminal charges of
harassment, intimidation, assault or battery against the
bullies.

Only then does the message get through. And your child,
and the other children, will know you as a parent aren't
messing around. The bullies and school administration will
threaten, cajole, and do their best to derail your child's
nerve (and yours). Stay the course. Take the charges all
the way to court. Get the bully and the parents tagged in
the legal system and give the next victim a legal edge the
school can't ignore. If you can shake up a school so that
protecting bullies is going to cost jobs and funding for the
school, then -- and only then -- will you see a change in
the "insider" culture.

Sympathies to the parents of the children.


Florida Cracker

The Thought For Today

“Woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself.” - Susan B. Anthony

The Thought For Today

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." - Napoleon Bonaparte

The Thought For Today

"When books are burned in the end people will be burned too." - Heinrich Heine

The Thought For Today

"Attitudes are contagious. Are yours worth catching?" - Dennis and Wendy Mannering

The Thought For Today

"If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm." - Vince Lombardi

The Thought For Today

"It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up a bank clerk." - Bertolt Brecht

Moebius strip comic by Jim Woodring (video, photo, animation)

That's right folks - a comic strip done as a Moebius strip. It's not The Neverending Story, but it is funny - and unusual.

The Thought For Today

"The sky is the daily bread of the eyes." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Thought For Today

"Arrogance leads to failure." - The Buddha (Siddhartha Gotama)

The Thought For Today

"You can get more with a nice word and a gun than you can with a nice word." - Al Capone

The Hard Truth From Orlando

HEADLINE: Dad arrested in Seminole County, Florida, for
going on a bus and threatening the kids who bullied his 6th
grade disabled daughter...

As I've previously ranted at length about the criminal
behavior of students toward other students...

Mr. James Jones had the motivation and the right idea, but
he chose the wrong venue. In order to effect a change, he
needs his daughter to identify one or more of her
tormentors by name, go immediately with his daughter
to the State Attorney's Office and file a sworn complaint
against that child or children by name. He would have to
assist his daughter in the wording, being specific as to the
times, dates, places, what exactly was done (including things
that were thrown at her as evidence if she kept any of them),
what was said and by whom, and lists of any children or adults
she might know (including the bus driver) present during any
of these events. If his daughter only knew one of the assailants,
that's fine. She can name that one specifically in the sworn
complaint.

A lot of parents make the mistake of thinking that if they
report the bullying to the school, the school administrators
are going to do something about it -- after all, almost every
school now has a zero-tolerance of bullying policy. But
administrators have to report any incidences of violence,
disciplinary actions against students and the like to the
school board and this creates negative statistics against
the school, weighed against the job performance reviews
of the administration staff and in the school "fitness"
reports. Negative reports can cost funding to a particular
school. So despite the zero-tolerance policy, the
administrators are very reluctant to take any action
against the bullies. They'll move the child who's being victimized
if the parent insists, but basically, they won't do anything to stop
the behavior unless the victim's parent ups the ante to a lawsuit
against the perpetrating students, their parents, the school
and/or the administrators themselves.

A civil lawsuit is an expensive proposition. The sworn
criminal complaint is free; however, it needs to be made
at the State Attorney's Office to be effective. Parents who
make a criminal complaint to the school administration are
referred to the School Resource Officer, who is officially a
law enforcement officer but he answers to the school
administration -- and they can and often do put the kibosh
on any investigation. If the matter goes to the local sheriff's
office, it just gets referred directly back to the school resource
officer and then to the school administration.

But if the complaint originates in the State Attorney's Office,
there's an agency the school administration can't deflect
directly. They can make it more difficult to investigate,
but the State Attorney's Office has the power to issue
subpoenas for witnesses and records of administrative staff.
Mr. Jones would need to be proactive, calling periodically and
showing up in court to make sure the criminal case is not
being sidelined, but chances are excellent that the criminal
charges would be enough to "tag" the kids perpetrating the
harassment and threats of his daughter and get her and
other victimized children some relief from the bullies.

And Mr. Jones should definitely talk to a civil litigator about
suing the bullies' parents, the school administrators and/or
the bus driver. While I abhor the constant state of sue-happy
silliness in our country, a lawsuit is a real attention-getter for
effecting policy. Sadly, no one in any organization anymore
does something automatically because it's the right thing to
do -- they do it because they don't want to get sued. And rest
assured, if your child is the bully and you're one of these
useless, ineffective parents which are epidemic nowadays,
there's nothing like the threat of losing a substantial portion
of your income or having to go to court over and over because
of your kid's behavior to wake you up and get you involved.

I wish Mr. Jones and all the parents of bullied kids luck and
the intestinal fortitude to make the legal system work for
them against the inaction of school administration
everywhere. Having fought the fight twice on behalf of
children in my family, I know how draining and
frustrating the process is. But if you stay with it and
don't take "no" or "we can't" for an answer, your
children will be greatly comforted knowing that they're
not battling the bullies alone; they have someone in their
corner fighting effectively and making changes. And you
can make our schools a positive environment for productive
academic learning instead of a daily dose of hell for children
ill-prepared for this kind of unrelenting brutality.

Meantime, Mr. Jones' daughter is in the hospital on suicide
watch. Mr. Jones is facing criminal charges and the bullies
are laughing their butts off at how much trouble they've
caused -- but with this much media attention, the school
administrators aren't going to be able to duck and dodge.
They're going to have outside scrutiny of how they handle
these aggressive, nasty little freaks and they're going to have
to be prepared to answer in court for their failure to step in
at the beginning and protect the girl. And I hope the bullies
parents get a strong dose of wake-up, but I won't hold my
breath. We'll see the bullies again -- maybe not with this
victim, but we'll see them down the line in criminal court.
Bullies don't change anything but their targets.

Good luck, Mr. Jones, to you and yours. Yell for help. There's
a lot of families and teachers out there who want to get these
little creeps out of the schools and preferably, out of the
community altogether -- them and their dead-beat,
worthless parents.


Florida Cracker

The Thought For Today

"A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing: one that sounds good, and a real one." - J.P. Morgan

The Hard Truth From Orlando

“Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s,
and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21).

1. It is good and appropriate to submit to the state when
asked;
2. Spiritual demands supersede earthly demands, but do
not abolish them;
3. The demands of the state are non-negotiable;
4. Spiritual authority should maintain its independence
from temporal authority, which rules by force rather
than moral law.
That’s straight from Wikipedia and the King James version of
the Biblical texts – plain information, plain understanding of the
text no matter your Christian affiliation. And that’s why I don’t
understand why these so-called ministers of faith don’t
understand why they have to comply with criminal
investigations – except that they don’t want to. The source
of their own religion spelled it out for them that they must
comply with secular laws.
Nowhere does their religious code claim that sexual abuse
of children is acceptable. Nowhere does it claim that those
who perpetrate these acts are not to be prosecuted.
Nowhere does it claim that the most helpless of the
supplicants are to be callously used and justice for them
suppressed with such disdain and vicious disregard.
Nowhere does it say that a wolf in the fold should be
tolerated; in fact, quite the contrary. The wolf is to be
eliminated for the protection of the flock.
On all counts, the Catholic Church has failed. They have
failed to police their own; they have systematically and
sadistically abused the most vulnerable of their congregants;
they have bribed and corrupted families and local officials to
cover their criminal acts; they have openly obstructed any
investigation or punishment of the criminals in their midst;
they have misused charitable donations and subverted their
own credo. Somewhere along the line, they mistook
representing the will of God for acting as if they were God.
Time to shatter the Golden Calf and toss the false prophets into
the fire. And if that’s too metaphysical, the Catholic Church
needs a good public purge of its dirty priests and hierarchy
delivered openly into the hands of the secular authority if it
ever hopes to regain any semblance of credibility and honor.
The crimes they have perpetrated under the guise of
ministering are an obscenity and if the Catholic Church
suffers a loss of substantial power, influence or position in the
world, they need only to look to their own actions for the cause.



Florida Cracker

PDF 'virus'

A lot of email traffic on this one....this should clear up a bit of the confusion...

Also, check for Windows/Microsoft updates...now. Even though Black Tuesday isn't until the 14th, there are some Criticals out there now waiting to be installed...

A Guide To Gizmodo

"Whether you're new to Gizmodo or a seasoned old-timer, there always seem to be some tips, tricks, guidelines, or rules that might be news to you. That's why we've put everything into one handy-dandy reference guide."

The Thought For Today

"Most people are willing to pay more to be amused than to be educated." - R.C. Savage

The Thought For Today

"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say,'I used every thing you gave me.'" - Erma Bombeck

The Hard Truth From Orlando

And so it goes...
In the news today, Amber Turner and Erin Ross -- another
young woman dates a loser, breaks it off with him, and he
comes unglued. He texts her. He harasses her. He stalks her,
waiting outside her residence and her work place. She goes
to get a restraining order and gets denied by the judge. So
stalker-ex kidnaps her as she's heading to work, takes her
to a motel, kills her and himself. And now becomes the
inevitable handwringing and blame game, as everyone sings
the woulda, shoulda, coulda refrain. And as I'm walking my
dog at lunch, I hear a guy on his cell phone outside his
apartment (notice how the cell phone generation conduct
"private" phone calls where EVERYONE has to hear them?)
in a tirade against whatever woman he's involved with -- or
thinks he is. His conversation is, You been with three different
guys since I known you, you're just a whore, I ain't putting up
with it. Well, obviously, he is putting up with it, because
instead of cutting this alleged whore out of his life and moving
on, he's hammering at her on the phone and making demands
of her under some kind of strange rationale that he'll somehow
only be satisfied if he has her back -- even though she's a
whore and worthless and can't be trusted.
20 minutes later, the dog is back in the house and I'm heading
back to work, and this idiot is STILL outside on his cell phone
berating this woman, who apparently is too stupid to hit the
END button and turn her phone OFF and/or do the magical
programming to block his phone calls. She obviously doesn't
live with him. He's not paying her any money (at least, he
didn't mention it in his phone call -- he'd have been bringing
that up, trust me) and they don't have any kids together
(because that also didn't come into the harangue and they'd
have been used for verbal leverage). So WHY, WHY, WHY
is this woman not hanging up on this guy?
Because date/domestic abuse is a sick, vicious game and it
takes two players. One player gets to be the psycho bully
and one gets to play the mentally defective victim. And
make no mistake, the victim is as mentally defective as the
bully. The victim chooses to be a victim. The bully chooses
to be a bully. And both of them choose to be completely
irrational and self-destructive, locked in an perpetual match
of violent stupidity.
We have all the laws in place for the abused women (and
statistically, it is many more times women than men) to get
help, get away from their abusers, get counseling and
assistance. But there's no legislating common sense and
self-preservation. And after decades of working to get
women sanctuary from abusive relationships, you begin to
understand the earlier history of disdain by law enforcement
for victims of domestic violence. It's hard to have sympathy
for someone so dumb they keep walking into the buzzsaw.
It's hard to be sympathetic to someone who clearly has a
choice in who they date and what they do with their life, and
choose consistently to pick a piece of destructive two-legged
crap, whether it's for a one-time date or a life-time
commitment.
It used to be said that women stayed in abusive relationships
because financially, they and their children were not in a
position to live without the abuser's income. If you look at
the statistics now, most women have their own jobs and
sufficient government aid that they don't have to be in a
relationship for financial survival. In fact, many of them are
with guys who are providing little or nothing to the
household income. So why are they still walking into the
relationship meat grinders? Because women haven't gotten
the message that they are the ones who choose the kind of
life they want to live. If they pick a sadistic twit-head for a
partner, then it's on them to get out of it. If they want a
better life, they have to be more careful and cold-blooded
about what kind of guy they allow through their door. And
you don't have to be nice about his feelings if he's the one
who's crossing the line. But you have to make sure he knows
where the line is and that he won't like what happens if he
crosses it.
There's no rule that says you have to give ANYONE your
phone number. There's no rule that says you have to let the
guy in your house on the first, second -- or fiftieth date.
Women need to ask themselves when they are first being
chatted up, where do I see this guy in five years? Where do
I see him going in ten years? If he's 20 or 30-something years
old, hasn't got a job, doesn't own a car, hasn't got his own place
with HIS name on the lease, can't pay for a movie and a meal
for his date, can't pull his pants up, can't stay sober and
doesn't know how to take NO for an answer, treats you like
you're too dumb to come in out of the rain, then chances are
really good that he's going nowhere, ever, and he's going to
make sure you go with him if you're dumb enough to stick
around.
If you have a history of crappy relationships, take a good
hard look in the mirror and see if you're walking around
with a big V for victim on your forehead. If that's what's
shining back at you, then you need to make up your mind if
this is what you want to be for the rest of your life, and
define your future choices accordingly. If you don't know
or can't tell -- contact the YHTP.org -- You have the
Power...Know How to Use It, Inc. to reduce your chances
of being a victim and joining the depressing list of relationship
casualties.
Good luck.


Florida Cracker

I WILL RUN THIS EVERY DAY FOR THE NEXT THREE WEEKS

6EAD: http://www.mclu.org/node/653

WATCH: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK5bMSyJCsg


ANOTHER CASE: http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/man_arrested_for_video_taping_police/

The Thought For Today

"Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing. ” - Oscar Wilde

Make Free Calls in Gmail With Google Voice

Just in case you missed it in the news, the rumors are true...

Maybe You Really Can Blame Your Weight on Something Else

Does a virus cause us to gain weight? It's a possibility some medical researchers are exploring, according to suspense writer Tess Gerritsen. Until we have the answer, she suggests keeping our weight down this way.

The Thought For Today

"Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made." - Otto von Bismarck

The Thought For Today

"To teach is to learn twice over." - Joseph Joubert

The Hard Truth From Orlando

The story of another Christian graduate student being expelled
from the counseling program because she refuses to counsel
homosexual clients based on her "religious" beliefs was in the
news. Julea Ward, a purported counseling major, lost her
lawsuit against Eastern Michigan University which she filed
because she was expelled. Students under the ACA code are
required to counsel clients without imposing their personal
values. Ms. Ward could not refrain from imposing her world
views on her clients.

Paraphrasing, the university apparently realized that Ms.
Ward was never going to change her behavior and would
continue to refuse to counsel clients who did not meet her
"Christian" standards before she would consent to counsel
them. (And of course, if they're already good Christians,
what do they need counseling sessions with her for?)
There's another virtually identical case going on in Georgia
right now with another purportedly "Christian" grad
student, who also refuses to counsel homosexuals.
(Allegedly, the Georgia girl is also no great shakes at
written communication either, as she's been ordered into
so remedial training for that as well.)

This is the same Fundamentalist tactic that has some
pharmacists trying to refuse to give the morning-after
pill to people with valid prescriptions because they don't
believe in abortion. The rationale these "Christians" are
using is that making them comply with the ethical codes
of the professions they have chosen is an infringement on
their religious freedom guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

These hard-core, hard headed Fundamentalists don't see
their behavior as infringing on the rights of the clients, who
have a reasonable expectation of receiving services from a
certified member of a given profession. They don't see the
invidious divisiness of cherry-picking which people are
entitled to professional services. Suppose they were
indulged in their fanaticism so they don't have to counsel
anyone who doesn't meet their Christian standards. Should
we then allow only homosexuals to counsel homosexuals
heterosexuals need not apply? And only Jews can counsel
Jews, Muslims for Muslims, and only women can counsel
women, and on and on.

And then we can just isolate people in their own separate
little ghettos so they don't have to run into any of "those
people." And it depends on which ghetto you live in as to
who "those people" might be. And then eventually, we can
each only obey those laws which we think apply to our
ghetto and then find ways to punish "those people" so
they'll see our way is the only way. And maybe we can
rename ourselves something like, oh, I don't know, the
Taliban, and make sure EVERYONE knows the
consequences of not believing like we do.

Or we can be Americans and practicing Christians and say,
"There but for the grace of God go I" and reach out with
compassion and kindness to those in need and leave the
religious drumbeating to the intolerant jackasses of the world.


Florida Cracker

The Thought For Today

"Seek the wisdom of the ages, but look at the world through the eyes of a child." - Ron Wild

The Thought For Today

"Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction; for we have made fiction to suit ourselves." - G.K. Chesterton

Ghostery

"Be a web detective.
Ghostery is your window into the invisible web – tags, web bugs, pixels and beacons that are included on web pages in order to get an idea of your online behavior.
Ghostery tracks the trackers and gives you a roll-call of the ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers, and other companies interested in your activity."

The Hard Truth From Orlando

RANT # 2 More on Immigration Reform
The biggest negative consequence of illegal immigration we
can show with hard data is financial. And the financial impact
is disparately suffered by the middle-class Americans who
pay the largest portion of this nation’s taxes. And that’s not
to say illegals don’t pay tax; they do. But they don’t kick in
as much as they take out of the system. As a group, the
illegals represent a part of the U.S. population which is
poorly educated, earning less, paid less by corporate
America to maximize profit while evading taxes on that
profit and often collecting taxpayer-funded government
subsidies for businesses. Furthermore, a big part of what
the illegal immigrants earn is not spent locally but is sent
back to other countries to support families there. That’s
products we’re not selling locally by local businesses and
sales and income taxes we’re not seeing in local communities
because the consumers aren’t citizens spending their income
in our communities.

Meantime, the American consumers continue to pay for
over-priced goods produced by corporations with underpaid,
illegal labor, while simultaneously shelling out the taxes
which support the social program expenses incurred by
“undocumented workers.” And corporate owners pocket
their inflated profits, tax-free government subsidies, and
deposit their inflated incomes in tax shelters not available
to the American middle-class.

The other negative of rampant immigration that’s harder
to measure, except anecdotally, is the impact of the third
world cultures which refuse to assimilate in modern
American society. We see it in the high domestic violence,
street crimes, rampant thievery and other stats; the
unwillingness to promote education or to ensure their
children participate in and complete school; the social
expectation that the girls will not finish school, but start
popping out babies in their teens, almost guaranteeing a
lifelong embrace of poverty; the culture of extortion,
corruption and bribery among government employees
and a general attitude of take what you can get and live
for the moment. You don’t build anything for the future
with that kind of value system.

There’s also the immigrant community leadership which
is increasingly demanding its own separatist courts and
governing bodies for determining matters which are
currently exclusive to the jurisdiction of U.S. and local
governments. In Europe , national governments are
already struggling with a highly vocal and disruptive
foreign immigrant community which insists that it
govern itself – yet benefit from the host countries’
economic successes – which were created by the
culture which the immigrant community disdains
and actively seeks to undermine.

We have residents of the United States , some citizens,
who don’t speak English, who have lived in this country
for upwards of 30 years and never learned English
because they live in isolated foreign-language speaking
communities within communities. They don’t regard
themselves as Americans and see no loyalty to a nation
that protects and provides for them, nor any loyalty to
their English-speaking neighbors – however, they’ll fight
you to the ground for what they have come to perceive as
their “entitlements” under the very U. S. laws they flout.
And middle-class Americans taxes pay for those so-called
“entitlements” of food stamps, health care, welfare, child
services, subsidized housing, criminal justice proceedings,
legal aid, and on and on.

In Orlando , there’s the Chamber of Commerce – and,
believe it or not, there’s the Hispanic Chamber of
Commerce; and they are separate entities, with separate
memberships and separate agendas within the same
geographical community. There’s the Orlando community
and there’s the Haitian community in Orlando or the Puerto
Rican community in Orlando or the Mexican community in
Orlando . It’s not one community. It’s not one language.
There’s no unity of purpose or focus or function. It’s a
bunch of vying interests, clawing for local middle-class
American tax dollars to promote their separate agendas
at the expense of, and with total disregard for, the whole.

This nation is in trouble. It’s time to enforce the laws –
all of the laws on all of the people, all of the businesses,
all of the time; time to break up these conclaves of
foreign influence and bring them into mainstream
American values and standards or expel them from our
country; time to put an end to the deficit social costs of
immigration and end automatic citizenship for any child
born on U.S. soil, with attendant “entitlements” just for
sucking U.S. air. It’s time to make corporate America
pony up when they employ illegals at reduced wages for
the sole reason of padding their profits and avoiding the
tax consequences for themselves and their owners, leaving
the hard-pressed middle-class to pick up the tab
consumer goods and social services costs.

If you’re a middle-class American, you better start
fighting for yourself and the hard-working ethics that
made this country the envy of the world or be prepared
to hand over everything you’ve ever worked for to a
Big Business-controlled Big Government that’s trading
your children’s legacy of American self-sufficiency and
self-government to buy the reduced-rate labor of any
Joe Snuffy the Ragman who staggers across our border
with his hand out.



Florida Cracker

The Thought For Today

"My notion of a story is an interesting situation in which a human being has to cope with a problem, does so, and thereby changed his personality, character, or evaluations in some measure because the coping has forced him to revise his thinking. How he copes with it, I can't plot in advance because that depends on his character, and I don't know what his character is until I get acquainted with him." - Robert A. Heinlein

The Hard Truth From Orlando

RANT # 1 Immigration Reform (# 2 next Wed.)

I’m tired of the term “racist” when applied to Arizona ’s
stance on immigration, or for that matter, when used to
describe anyone who opposes our current policy of
immigration non-enforcement. If, as an American citizen,
I am required (as determined by Supreme Court case law)
to show valid ID if stopped by the police conducting a
legitimate investigation, why should an illegal immigrant
not be required to present valid ID? What gives an illegal
immigrant more personal freedom than I have as a
tax-paying, hardworking citizen of the United States ?
And if you live in a community of mostly “brown” people,
how can it be “racist” to stop and address “brown” people
while conducting a valid investigation? It would be weirder
if you lived in a mostly brown community and only stopped
the white or black people. That’s not profiling to stop
brown people while conducting legal investigations in a
brown community – that’s common sense. Of course,
if we only let the brown police stop the brown people
and the white police stop the white people – but isn’t
that definition of real racism and a de-facto disregard
of “all are equal under the law?”

I think George Orwell had it right in Animal Farm when
the sheep were trained to bleat “two legs bad; four legs
good,” in an endless drowning chant every time someone
brought up a subject the minority demagogues didn’t
want discussed. Freedom of speech by the American
taxpayer majority is likewise being held hostage by the
minority because all the anti-immigration enforcement
group has to do is start shrieking “Racist” to derail any
reasonable analysis of our current immigration disaster.

The cold hard basic truth is: Big Government doesn’t want
to enforce immigration laws on the books because Big
Business profits outrageously from illegal employment.
And Big Business owns the movers and shakers of Big
Government, one dirty hand washing the other. And
most illegal immigrants don’t want to be citizens of the
U.S. ; they just want the American standard of living
without embracing the culture or credos that created it.
Too apt an analogy is locusts; they come with all of their
neediness, lack of education or forethought, breeding
indiscriminately children they cannot support; and
when the American middle-class tax base is drained,
the community their rampant influx creates will be
ultimately just as bad in the poverty and corruption as
that they profess to be escaping.

And as for the rest of the bleating herds opposing
immigration enforcement, they’ll apparently be happy
when everyone is sitting naked in a circle in the dirt,
celebrating that we’re all equal – because none of us
has anything that others can’t take away.

It’s up to us middle-class American taxpayers at the
grassroots level to oppose illegal immigration at every
level and vote out any politician who refuse to enforce
immigration law if we want to survive as a nation.


Florida Cracker

I Write Like

"Check which famous writer you write like with this statistical analysis tool, which analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them with those of the famous writers." And before you ask, Harry Harrison. I LIKE Harry Harrison.

The Thought For Today

"To betray a source would be to betray myself, my career and my life. I cannot do it."— Daniel Schorr

The Thought For Today

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries " - Winston Churchill

The Thought For Today

"If a June night could talk, it would probably boast it invented romance." - Bern Williams

The Thought For Today

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning." - Albert Einstein

The Thought For Today

"When you meet someone better than yourself, turn your thoughts to becoming his equal. When you meet someone not as good as you are, look within and examine your own self." - Confucius

Top 10 Clever Google Voice Tricks

Very, very handy stuff.

http://lifehacker.com/5573714/top-10-clever-google-voice-tricks?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmodo%2Ffull+%28Gizmodo%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

Rec: Santa Fe Wraps

12 oz. ground beef (or turkey)
1 can (14 1/2 oz.) Diced Tomatoes
1 tablespoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 can (15 1/4 oz.) Whole Kernel Corn, drained
1 pkg. (3 oz.) cream cheese, cut up
1 jalapeno pepper, finely chopped
6 (8 inch) flour tortillas


Brown meat in large skillet; drain. Stir in undrained
tomatoes, chili powder and cumin. Bring to boil; reduce
heat. Simmer, uncovered, 5 minutes. Stir in corn,
cheese and jalapeno; stir until cheese melts. Spoon
mixture onto tortillas and roll up or fold. Serve with
shredded lettuce, shredded Cheddar cheese and salsa,
if desired.





Serves 4 to 6
Refrigerate remainder
Can be reheated in microwave

Deano Sez: Pioneer One

I can't think of a better excuse to install a Torrent client....

The Thought For Today

"Forgiveness is not an occasional act: it is a permanent attitude." - Dr Martin Luther King

The Hard Truth From Orlando

Re: Seattle Police Officer Ian P. Walsh who punched the
17-year-old girl so squarely in the face when she physically
interfered with the restraint of another girl being detained
for jaywalking: GOOD SHOT! I bet that young woman has
gotten away with that nasty behavior all of her life. Maybe
she’s finally learned she’s not immune to what she’s been
used to dishing out. But probably not, with the majority of
the urban African American community doing what it
always does – supporting self-defeating, anti-social
behavior instead of chastising it. She’s bound to think
she’s some kind of victim, instead of a perpetrator of a
criminal act.

The National Urban League, formerly the National League
on Urban Conditions among Negroes (according to Wikipedia)
and allegedly a non-partisan civil rights organization that
advocates on behalf of African Americans and against racial
discrimination in the United States, has of course denounced
the punch in the face of the girl as an “over-reaction” on the
part of the officer. They’re all for educating the white
community to recognize institutional discrimination and to
hold those in authority accountable for their behavior and
policies towards the members of the non-white community.
For them, it’s always about how their portion of the community
is being treated and never about how their behavior is creating
the very reaction they decry.

I’m always kind of amazed that organizations like this don’t
work on educating the people they purport to represent how
to behave in public places and when confronted by persons in
authority. If this organization wants to claim that a Caucasian
girl wouldn’t have been arrested for jaywalking, wouldn’t have
been punched in the face, they’re probably right. Most
Caucasian girls don’t immediately get loud, vicious, and
violent and show both lousy upbringing and poor social skills
when confronted by an officer. It’s not routinely part of
“white” American culture to get violently confrontational
with law enforcement and while “non-white” American
communities have a different history with law enforcement
in this country, modern law enforcement also reacts
differently based on ongoing experiences in those
communities.

What would be the difference in a situation like this, a trivial
little jay-walking offense? A white-bread, middle class girl
would probably ask what she did wrong if stopped – and in
a normal speaking tone, sans profanities. She would show
her ID if requested. She would most likely apologize for her
transgression, even if she didn’t know she was doing wrong.
The police officer would then probably write her a citation or
let her off with a warning. Would he do it just because the girl
is white? No. He does it because she behaved in a civilized,
compliant fashion – and not like some shrieking, ignorant
harpy who’s presenting a very real, continuing physical
threat to the officer and the community by her behavior.

The officer was there enforcing the law because obviously
there had been a complaint about persons jaywalking –
which if you live in an urban area in certain neighborhoods,
the pedestrians like to stroll in groups through the streets,
playing chicken with motorized traffic. And if you confront
them about blocking traffic, they take it as an excuse to go
bug-nuts on you – like it’s your fault they’re blocking traffic,
endangering themselves and others. And that’s what these
girls did because that’s what’s expected in their community.

So the officer confronts the girls about jaywalking, and they
do what too many African Americans have been trained to
do and that is go immediately stupid, loud and violent. And
what could have been a simple warning or citation (which
would probably be dismissed in court it’s so trivial) becomes
a felony arrest for resisting with violence, battery on a law
enforcement officer, interfering with an officer in the
performance of his duty. And I’m sure if the girls had
gotten a little crazier and escalated their resistance to an
outright attack on the officer instead of a strong shove that
resulted in a retaliatory punch, one or both of them might
have been shot or Tased – and not for jaywalking, but for
endangering a law enforcement officer in the performance
of his duty.

The Urban League should get its collective heads together
and quit protecting community scofflaws because they
happen to be the same color and get serious about a
campaign to get their communities into civil, legal and
behavioral compliance with the rest of polite society.
They need to quit promoting a culture of resistance to
persons in authority simply because they ARE in positions
of authority, because until they do, the Urban League is
part of the problem, NOT a tool for the solution.


Florida Cracker

Rec: Crawfish Pie

1 medium onion, diced
1 lb coarsely chopped crawfish tails
1/4 cup minced green onion
1/4 cup minced parsley
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 bell pepper, diced
1/2 cup seasoned bread crumbs
2 diced celery stalks
1/2 teaspoon red pepper
1/2 cup butter
1 egg
1/4 cup tomato sauce
1 cup milk
1 10 inch double crust pie plate


Saute onions, garlic, bell pepper and celery in butter until
limp. Add tomato sauce, crawfish and parsley. Cook slowly for
10 minutes. Turn off heat. Add bread crumbs, salt, pepper, egg
and milk mixing well. Pour into crust and bake 35 to 40 minutes
in a preheated 350 degree oven.

Serves 6
Refrigerate remainder
Can be reheated in microwave or enjoyed cold

Limited Edition Dungeons & Dragons Spellcasting Soda

For you Gamers...

The Thought For Today

"Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off." - Colin Powell

The Thought For Today

"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." - Edmund Burke

The Hard Truth From Orlando

The family of Mexican youngster Sergio Adrian Hernandez
Huereka, 15 years old, are mourning the loss of their son, who
apparently put himself in harm’s way when he and some
buddies decided to hang out near the border between Mexico
and the U.S. and throw stones at U.S. Border Patrol officers
apprehending persons crossing over the border illegally into
the U.S. A U.S. Border officer shot back when the
rock-throwing didn’t stop and Sergio died. That’s the
simple situation as reported. An unsupervised kid was
where he wasn’t supposed to be, doing what he shouldn’t
have been doing, and he died for it. It was an entirely
preventable tragedy.

But the political and legal fall-out and cross-agency finger
pointing from this incident of teenage stupidity might go
on for months, if not years. President Calderon publicly
deplores the increasing violence being exercised against
Mexican citizens who illegally cross into the United States,
but he and his government do little or nothing to stop his
citizens from routinely breaking U.S. law and the conditions
of treaty between his country and the U.S.

There’s not going to be a quick-fix for this in the big
picture. Border Agents are the first line of defense against
the drug lords of Central America and the tidal wave of
illegal immigrants who are flooding the U.S. social support
systems and draining tax dollars from a system to which
they were never entitled. And lest we think we’re alone in
fighting a battle against hordes of immigrants for which we
were not prepared, one needs only to look at the news out
of Europe ’s impending elections. There are two big issues:
economy and the underpinning immigrant flood into the
industrialized nations with the inherent problems of
under-employment, cultural clashes, poor education,
poverty, crime and the drain on social services. Gosh,
that sounds familiar.

But the root of the problem is decades of non-enforcement
of immigration laws by the federal government. This has
given rise to the porous Mexican/American and Canadian/
American borders, the casual disregard for local law
enforcement and the hitherto nearly nonexistent
consequences of violating those laws. But what we have
now is the backlash of local communities’ law enforcement
against federal non-response in the form of Arizona’s law
(with other states following suit) and local municipalities
paying to have their officers cross-certified to enforce
immigration laws and not have to wait on ICE or Border
Patrol when an illegal immigrant is apprehended in their
community. The so-called Tea Party movement is
galvanizing to support Arizona ’s call to immigration
enforcement and federal response is to increase security
and personnel along the borders.

Well, in the words of the old song, it’s tightening up time.
We can anticipate confrontations and violence increasing as
we tighten up border security. And resistance is inevitable
in the face of near non-existent enforcement for so many
years, where complacency and disregard were the norm for
generations. No one likes it when they have to change what
they’ve taken for granted. Things aren’t going to get better
for a long while; they will get worse.

But for those of us at Ground Zero, who live with the dirt and
grit on the ground reality, we can keep ourselves and our
families safer by practicing some very basic concepts, like
not going where bad things are happening, knowing where
your children are and what they’re doing. Sergio – well,
he’s paid the price for being more testosterone than brains,
like the rock-throwing adolescents in Palestine who become
casualties of Israeli bullets, like the rock-throwing rioters in
Thailand , the street-roaming kids in inner-city U.S. of A
– and on and on and on.

Mothers, if you cherish your sons, keep them home. Lead
and live the example for your children. Kick their butts if
you catch them putting themselves in opposition to law
enforcement, hanging out with idiots, and make it clear
you are NOT on their side when they deliberately put
themselves in confrontational situations. Be a parent now
and you’ll live to see yourself a grandparent, and let the
politics sort itself out.


Florida Cracker

The Thought For Today

"In Germany, they came first for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists but I didn't speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time nobody was left to speak up." - Reverend Martin Niemoeller, Dachau, 1944

Rec: Quick And Easy Stuffed Peppers

2 large red bell peppers, halved and seeded
1 (8 oz) can stewed tomatoes, with liquid
1/3 cup quick-cooking brown rice
2 tablespoons hot water
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1/2 cup frozen corn kernels, thawed and drained
1/2 (15 oz) can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese



Arrange pepper halves in a 9 inch square glass baking dish.
Cover dish with plastic wrap. Poke a few holes in the plastic
wrap for vents, and heat 4 minutes in the microwave, or
until tender. In a medium bowl, mix tomatoes and their
liquid, rice, and water. Cover with plastic, and cook in the
microwave for 4 minutes, or until rice is cooked. Stir green
onions, corn, kidney beans, and red pepper flakes into the
tomato mixture. Heat in the microwave for 3 minutes, or
until heated through. Spoon hot tomato mixture evenly
into pepper halves, and cover with plastic wrap. Poke a
few holes in the plastic to vent steam, and heat in the
microwave 4 minutes. Remove plastic, sprinkle with
Mozzarella cheese and Parmesan cheese, and allow to
stand 1 to 2 minutes before serving.



Serves 2 to 4

Rec: Hasty Lasagna

1 can/bottle (15 1/2 oz.) spaghetti sauce with meat
1/4 teaspoon oregano
1 package lasagna noodles (6 oz.) cooked and drained
1 cup cream style cottage cheese
1 package (6 oz.) sliced Mozzarella cheese


Combine sauce and oregano in bowl. In a greased (Pam'd)
baking dish alternate layers of noodles, cottage cheese,
Mozzarella and sauce, using sauce as top layer. Microwave
12 to 15 minutes on MEDIUM-HIGH until center is heated.

Serves 4
Refrigerate remainder
Can be reheated in microwave

Rec: Basic Microwave Risotto

3 tablespoons butter
1 clove garlic, minced
1 onion, chopped
1 1/2 cups vegetable broth
1 cup uncooked Arborio rice
3/4 cup white wine (or white grape juice)
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese



In a 3 quart casserole dish combine butter, garlic and
onion. Place dish in microwave and cook on HIGH for
3 minutes. Place vegetable broth in a microwave safe
dish. Heat in microwave until the broth is hot but not
boiling (approximately 2 minutes). Stir the rice and
broth into the casserole dish with the onion, butter
and garlic mixture. Cover the dish tightly and cook
on HIGH for 6 minutes. Stir wine into the rice. Cook
on HIGH for 10 minutes more. Most of the liquid should
boil off. Stir the cheese into the rice and serve.



Serves 3 to 4
Refrigerate remainder
Can be carefully reheated in microwave

The Thought For Today

"You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful. " - Marie Curie

The Thought For Today

"Lead, follow, or get out of the way." - Thomas Paine

The Thought For Today

"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself." - Thomas Paine

The Thought For Today

When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon." - Thomas Paine

Wikipedia

Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be an interesting week.

The Hard Truth From Orlando

Illegal immigrant 22-year-old Jessica Colotl is being sought
by law enforcement of Cobb County , Georgia . Apparently,
Ms. Colotl was brought to this country illegally about age 10
by her parents from Mexico , also in the country illegally.
Ms. Colotl was attending university in Georgia , claiming
residency – which is a lie by virtue of the fact she’s not a
legal resident of the U.S. -- which let her pay less tuition
for classes. But she has no driver’s license because she’s
not legal, and she’s driving anyway and probably has for
years, but she got caught by a minor traffic infraction.
Then she lied to the police about where she lived, got sent
to immigration, who turned her loose pending a hearing, and
now she’s ducking law enforcement again to evade deportation
and the new felony charge of lying to law enforcement on a
sworn affidavit – which lie she told because she’s illegally
here in the country and knows it and has always known it.

Now, the apparent weirdness of her thinking is evident in
that she wanted to go to school to become a lawyer. How
she’s supposed to get certified by any state bar association
when she’s not a legal citizen, cannot truthfully take the
oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and
all local and federal laws when she’s not a citizen and is
continuing to break the law of the land every day and
every minute, awake or asleep, seems to have escaped
this young woman and her supporters who decry Cobb
County’s “harsh” treatment of her. Who would want to
hire any woman whose life is lying and cadging and ducking
– and yet she expects to obtain a lucrative, professional
position in the upper echelons of law enforcement which
by its very definition represents the highest standards of
integrity and legal conformity, none of which can be said
of Ms. Colotl.

She’s had 12 years and her parents have had at least 12
years to petition for legal status. Instead, she chose to lie
her way into university, lie on every application, every
form – and finally commit a felony by lying to law
enforcement when apprehended. She’s conducted herself
with oblivious disregard for violation of the rights of the
citizens of Cobb County and everywhere else she’s resided
– residents whose tax dollars help support her spurious
claim to residency. Residents who stood to face financial
ruin and personal injury and damage when she’s operating
a motor vehicle on public roads without legal license or
insurance. If she’s obtained student loans, she’s committed
fraud at the expense of taxpayers whose children were
entitled to those increasingly limited funds and whose
entry into college might well have been impacted by her
fraud.

The long and the short of it is, we don’t need Ms. Jessica
Colotl. And we certainly don’t need what she represents.
She’s not a shining example of anything but what’s wrong
with illegal immigrants in this country. They act as if
they’re entitled to all the benefits of our country and
Constitution, yet they make not the slightest effort to
come into compliance with our laws and regulations.
They claim “civil rights” when civil rights belong only to
legal residents and citizens of the United States . They
cheat and expect to be rewarded for it instead of owning
up to their crime and making reparation.

When Ms. Colotl is apprehended, I hope it’s a swift
one-way ticket back to Mexico so we can quit supporting
this cheat. And she can be mad at the people who really
put her in this precarious position and encouraged a
lifetime of lies and fraud – her parents.


Florida Cracker

The Thought For Today

"The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object." - Thomas Jefferson

The Hard Truth From Orlando

Yeardley Love and George Huguely at UVA – the latest names
in the never-ending saga of date and acquaintance violence
ending in murder, and I have to wonder, why is it all the
hard-charging, smart young women pick such losers for
boyfriends? And make no mistake, Georgie-boy was a loser
and he chose to be a loser. He chose to lose his temper, he
chose to lose control of his drinking, he chose to lose control
of his life and he chose to beat his girlfriend’s head in. That
qualifies him as a loser. But picking him and putting up with
his bad behavior for even a minute made Yeardley a loser, too.
Unfortunately, she’s paid the final price for her poor decision,
while Georgie-boy keeps sucking air and being a threat to the
community.

No, it’s true she didn’t go out and pick a guy who she thought
might beat her head in one day. But the first time Georgie-boy
took her cell phone and went through her messages without her
permission, she had all the information she needed about him.
The first time he got in her face or made a nasty, cutting
remark about her person, friends or family because she was
paying attention to someone other than him, she had all the
information she needed. The first time she opened her email
to a threat from him, she had all the information she needed.
The first time she was afraid of his anger because she had to
tell him something he wasn’t going to want to hear, she had
all the information she needed. The first time he got into a
scuffle over some triviality or threw a tantrum because things
didn’t go his way, she had all the information she needed.

Under any of those circumstances and a thousand other cues,
she knew or should have known he was never going to be a
partner, not a friend – he was a threat to her and everything
she hoped to have for herself and her future and she should
have cut him out of her life then and there. And she should
have and probably did recognize he was horribly flawed before
she became intimate with him but she continued in the
relationship like most women do, convincing herself – well,
he’s not that bad, it’s just sometimes, he didn’t mean it –
until it got so bad she couldn’t believe the excuses she was
making for him and tried to walk away while still “being
just friends.”

She probably broke their relationship off just when he
believed he had her firmly under his control because she’d
let him get away with his behavior for so long. She didn’t
file a complaint; she didn’t get a restraining order; she
didn’t relocate or even contact his or her parents about
his behavior and why she didn’t want him around any
more. Acquaintances and family might be saying they
didn’t know she was being abused, but the fact that
Georgie took her computer from her room after beating
her to death plainly indicates he knew what threats he’d
been making and that they would be used against him.

And so passes another promising young woman who made
a really crappy decision in her choice for companionship and
paid for it with her life. And society is stuck with the loss of
another productive citizen and the burden of a man-shaped
monster that never was worth the powder to blow him to hell.
And maybe it’s just Darwin ’s theories at work; we’re culling
the herd by getting rid of the females too silly to evade the
predators and preventing reproduction of the idiocy into
another generation.

I’m sorry for both families. Sorry for Georgie-boy’s
parents who didn’t seem to recognize how much of a
danger their son had become. Sorry for Yeardley’s
parents who have lost a bright and promising daughter
who didn’t realize the level of danger from such a
self-centered freak. Nobody wins. And nobody learns
a thing.


Florida Cracker

The Thought For Today

"When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred." - Thomas Jefferson

The Thought For Today

"The government is best which governs least." - Thomas Jefferson

The Hard Truth From Orlando

LOSERS AWARDED $2.25 MILLION DOLLARS FOR
BEING LOUSY PARENTS

“It was a mistake of the parents to not remember the kids
might be in the car, but that's what the professionals are
there for, to save you from those basic everyday mistakes."
(From ABC news article)

What a crock of crap. The three families whose unsupervised
children died when they got trapped in the trunk of their own
Camry on their own property and the bodies weren’t found
for days have been awarded $2.25 million dollars because the
Camden police didn’t find their kids for them.

All right, the police didn’t follow all the “search for
children” protocols. They might have found them if all
protocols had been followed – already dead probably,
but they didn’t and the bodies weren’t discovered until
days later. Of course, if the parents had opened their eyes,
quit the handwringing, and gone out to look, they’d have
found them too – and probably still alive.

What did the parents fail to do? Well – how about
everything? They failed to train their children in
appropriate places to play. They failed to have someone
keeping the children within earshot or line-of-sight while
they played. They failed to keep the children from going
places where they couldn’t readily be seen by an adult.
When they didn’t see or hear their children, they didn’t
do an immediate and complete search – particularly
knowing their own children’s habits and proclivities.
Instead, they sat back, went hysterical, and waited for the
police to figure out where their untrained, unsupervised
miscreants had wobbled off to.

Too bad about the kids. This kind of crappy, disinterested
parenting is epidemic in America and become worse since
the influx of immigrants with the “it takes a community to
raise a child” mentality. Yeah, it takes a community, but first
the kid is supposed to have a parent, whose priority is the
safety, training and well-being of the child they bred so they
can be a positive influence in the community and not a
community burden. And because these parents oftimes
aren’t legally married or have some pretty loosey-goosey
living arrangements with “cousins” and “friends” whose
last names they don’t even know, you’ve got a pretty good
idea of what kind of self-awareness and discipline the parents
have – never mind what they instill in their children.

So now we reward these piss-poor excuses of parents by
giving them money, on top of whatever social services and
welfare moneys they were receiving for not taking care of
their children, and simultaneously reinforcing the “blame
the cops because I acted like an idiot” mentality rife in
America.

But I don’t feel like the parents have really profited.
These people are born losers. You could give them the
keys to the National Treasury and they’ll blow it. But
maybe they’ll take that 2.25 million dollars and get some
parental training to go along with their grief counseling.
And maybe they’ll buy enough mirrors so they can plainly
see who to blame for the loss of their children, instead of
pointing the fingers at everyone else.

The cops, who take responsibility seriously and who failed
to find these children, will punish themselves forever. I’m
glad I wasn’t there. But you know it doesn’t take a lawsuit
to get the attention of a responsible person. It just takes an
in-your-face failure, someone else to pay for your mistake
and you’ll never forget what you failed to do. And I don’t
think that’s something those poor excuses for parents will
ever learn however much money we throw at them.



Florida Cracker

The Thought For Today

"To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girl friends." - Benjamin Franklin