Colors from Crayons - All Broken

Evidently, the crayon box is full of missing Crayola colors.  Those remaining in the box have been pulled by the ACLU and other nonsensical groups that still believe that double standards and the PC gurus rule the ideals and premise of free speech.  What a shame - especially since words like onyx and ecru seem to be popping up in more and more crossword puzzles.

Let me establish some little tidbits of facts as they relate to my upbringing.  Much to the shock and dismay or even chagrins of others, I was raised in a somewhat liberal, Catholic Democratic household.  My parents, immigrants from Ireland, were morally conservative, but were socially liberal.  Colors were crayons, not labels slapped on human beings.

However, it seems that those days are long gone; replaced by the PC police.  It's frightening to open my mouth for fear of being labeled a racist.  In fact, this has occurred before.  A work place slander was shot at me, a direct hit to the back of my head.  Apparently, some distinctively ignorant liberals could not differentiate my inability to vote for Barack Hussein Obama due to his obvious lack of experience, and in all their mind-reading talents, thought my disdain to the POTUS was color based.  In all actuality, the USA still does not have a "black president" but rather a man whose father was African and mother was a white American.  But hey, that's just a sticking point.

Personally, I challenge readers to search their minds: past & present as to whether or not they have ever uttered a less than flattering comment about someone based upon their skin color, ethnic DNA, religious beliefs...anything.  Unless you are the Messiah, no one is perfect, and mistakes and regrets are part of the human experience.

The news has been peppered by the major no-no words uttered by Mrs. Paula Deen, a southern style chef, and at one point, a popular show on the Food Channel.  Apparently, Mrs. Deen is part of litigation, and during a recent deposition she was asked, under oath, if she had ever uttered the word, "nigger".  She complied and answered honestly.  I'm not really a fan of Mrs. Deen.  I can't cook to the caliber of my own son's culinary creativity, and as many times as I have watched "Chopped", I am capable only of preparing grilled cheese and oatmeal.

What shocked me though was the Food Channel giving her the axe, and refusing to renew her contract.  I suppose that every media outlet has the right to decide who they want to have representing their product - in this case - food.

However, this whole case seems to reek of old fish and even smelly cheese, in the DOUBLE standard arena.  For the life of me, I am duped.  A black person can refer to another black person as a "nigger", "nigga", etc., and that's appropriate.  Caucasians can be referred to as "cracker", "honky", etc. by blacks and its seems celebrated by pop culture.  
(Just listen to any rap artist i.e. Kanye West, Tupac Shakur, Lil Wayne, Biggie Smalls).

I refuse to embrace the notion that blacks seem to believe there is some sort of due owed them from the horrendous and unfortunate parts of U.S. history and the Civil War.  While I completely agree with the horrors of the Civil War, far more Caucasians were killed during that war.  Let's not forget the disgusting and disappointing prejudices against immigrants over the past 150 years.  Jews coming from Europe were horribly treated, as were the Irish, Italian, etc.  Discrimination is not a color based form of the human condition.  It happens to everyone, regardless of skin color.

Rev. Jesse Jackson might as well be known a race-baiter, along with other boisterous dummies on both sides of the political spectrum.  Who can forget the crap that spews from the likes of Al Sharpton or  anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, directed towards Jews and Caucasians ? Venomous outbursts that go unpunished and/or excused.  Then society picks Paula Deen as the new poster child for race, unsavory comments and a total lack of tolerance or forgiveness.  The double standards astound me.

This is by far one of the most controversial topics to be discussed in current affairs.  No doubt I will alienate half of my reading audience with this topic.  I am comforted by the fact that my true friends now me as someone who could give a bloody damn about skin color.  I don't care.  I tend to follow MLK's words about character rather than skin color.

August 28, 1963 - I was not born yet (4 months later), but I firmly believe that to be one of the greatest moments in history, and the high point of the Civil Rights movement.

MLK spoke of a dream where little white children and little "negro" children could hold hands, and that we would be "judged by the content of our character".  Do those brave words no longer apply to modern day society? 

My crayon box is full of colors.  What about yours? 

House of Cards - A Real Life Political Play

Lately, I have found myself utterly captivated by an original series on Netflicks.  House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright is an exceptional series about the political plays going on inside Washington.  If it were not so utterly plausible, it would not be as entertaining.

Kevin Spacey's character is a politician who seems to be running the other politicians around, dictating just how and when to pull schemes out of hats, like a magician of sorts.  His dutiful wife, Robin Wright, seems to tolerate the political life, although she spends a great deal of time cavorting with a former lover.  Not to be outdone by Kevin Spacey's character, who is also dancing between the sheets with a naive political reporter.  A kind of sex for inside tidbits for the goings on inside Washington's dysfunctional whore house.

I have established that Spacey's character is a democrat and most of the characters are also democrats.  This really is not relevant.  The hysterical parts for me are events like true life Republican Sanford who got lost along the Appalachian Trail a few years ago, and was found to be doing the no-no dance with his mistress instead.  And if his paltry resignation years ago was not pathetic enough, somehow  he is like the prodigal son to South Carolina, and has been re-elected again, beating out Stephen Colbert.  So, the point being, playing footsie is a bi-partisan event.

House of Cards is riveting.  There are new plots running through every episode, with twists and turns along the way.  There are familiar faces throughout the show.  What is scary, almost petrifying about the series is that I imagine real life Washington to be almost a carbon copy for Kevin Spacey's naughty and conniving political figure.  It's as if I have turned on Fox News (any news source would suffice) and am seeing all the dirty politics going on in today's world.  We have the IRS, Atty Gen Eric Holder and what might appear to be a very scary incident involving reporter James Rosen, and investigation which make me believe that Big Brother is really watching us.  We have the Benghazi murders being covered up, which Obama is finding out will be more difficult than perhaps he might have initially imagined. 

Maybe House of Cards and current politics are simply mirroring each other's playbooks.  Oh, that's downright mortifying.

The Old Bait & Switch

I've been writing this blog for a couple of years now.  Topics touched upon are far and wide.  Hormones,  menopause, grape Popsicles, military honors, epithets, remorse, sadness, joy, elation and over all a sense of accomplishment.  I'm quite confident that along the way I've pissed off my fair share of people. 

Bill O'Reilly has a "Word of the Day" at the end of the evening program he hosts.  Once, the word was makebate.  As a former school teacher, Mr. O'Reilly seems keen on getting the English language across to his viewers.  Once am educator, always as an educator.  Upon hearing makebate, I looked it up and found the word to more or less be a fairly accurate description of who I really was.  Even as I write my blog, I'll leave the word for anyone interested in furthering their language skills.

So the events of late.  Tornadoes and loss of human life are always going to be a tough pill to swallow.  There is no getting around trying to explain a large funnel cloud dropping out of the sky and tearing one house to the back stoop, and then moving on, skipping 3 or 4 houses along the way, and then dropping down again, but this time on a school, full of children.  Why?

Then, before the dust settles from people picking up their lives out of a tree, 2 blocks over, Ms. Lois Lerner gets up in front of an oversight committee, denies or should I say, emphatically defends herself, but not before taking the 5th.  What's the point of going to the trouble of emphatically rattling of some innocence, only to pleading the 5th?  Strange.  Odder still, now Ms. Lerner is on Administrative leave.  hmmmm.

Poor James Rosen from FOX News, and  his poor parents, having creepy government snoops looking for ?????  what?  His aftershave?  His favorite deesert? What about investigating old gal pal Helen Thomas?  Surely, she got some interesting schtick to dig through.

We have the 2 crazed men with blood stained hands, kitchen knives, meat cleavers, standing in London, screaming as to the injustices in their own country.  So, what better logic than to go to the United Kingdom, chop the living shit out of a British soldier.  No sense.  None.  Or the fact that someone with a big set of cajones didn't take a meat cleaver to them.

And at the end of it all, we have BENGHAZI!  We have Ambassador Chris Stevens, Glen Dohery, Sean Smith and Tyrone Woods.  We will always have BENGHAZI.  The President has little to no apparent interest in really trying to find out the truth.  Meanwhile, these mens' parents grapple with the weight of the world, and hearing how their sons died with honor from a man who knows nothing of the word honor or what that world physically entails,

So, bait and switch.  What does it mean?  I just listed a short chapter of the past few days...I wonder what next week will bring.

The Babies of Kermit

I'm tired.  Exhausted would be more accurate of a definition.  My fatigue reaches right down to my toes, which I can feel, partly in thanks to steroids.  However, with the steroids come the irregular sleeping patterns, fancies of honey peanut butter sandwiches, tapioca pudding and asthma.  I just completed a small walk, at 0200, with my fearless companion, who at any point could have abandoned me,  possibly running to investigate the kitties with white tails, or worse even still, the rollie pollie prickly rodent who, with one quick slap of the tail, will deliver  your dog a snout full of barbaric quills and a very steep vet bill.  But, when it comes to steroids, you bless them and curse them all at the same time.  I am awake to write.

We are in the middle of moving from a condo to a 31 foot trailer.  This is no I love Lucky or Lucy jaunt either.  This is the permanent move where everything is going, sans a few tiny personal items, and the rest will be auctioned off.  The once thought of an "easy" button is out of batteries, or maybe I burned it.  But, what started out as an organized sense of chaos, in reality, is anything from that word.

In the middle of this disaster has been my absence from my daily addiction of true news watching.  Sure, last week, I watched with heavy heart at Mr. Hicks and his fellow witnesses testify as to the TRUTH behind Benghazi.  And when news medias' replayed, ad nausea, former Sec. of State's angry fist pounding rant on the senate table, I couldn't struck by her choice of pea green clothing, and her emphatic, "what difference does it make" diatribe.  Somewhere in the back of my head, I saw the play "Wicked" pop up in my mind.  All that was missing from that part of the act was for her face to be painted pea green as well.  Okay, I take it back, she was missing the broom and black pointy hat.

But, still, this is not the topic of the blog.  Tonight, as I tossed and turned from the effects of steroids, I could not control my contempt for yet another stooge in the great mystery of news stories this week.  Yes,  Pennsylvania had an abortion doctor, the likes of ; actually even more diabolical the Tiller Tiller the Baby Killer, on trial for the murder of little defenseless babies and also an adult victim who died from an apparent drug overdose while in Dr. Gosnell's care. 

The evidence showed that this MONSTER, for there is no other word to describe him,  snipped the spinal chords of aborted babies who were born alive, after intended abotions. A 7 month gestated baby being brought into this world, and against all odds, surviving, only then to have a doctor *do no harm* snip out its little life.  And to make it more reprehensible, he did it 4 times that we know of.

Did we learn nothing from the times of Hitler and his experiments at the hands another imp of Satan, Dr. Josef Mengelson?  Is all we have left in this world are the numb, cold, emotionless  empty shells where our hearts once belonged?  Whether pro abortion or not, have we slipped to a society and actually think that snipping the spinal chord of an innocent child seems to be of the norm?

What's next?  Will we have doctors who say and somehow logic their way into a defense that..."well, his head trauma was all to great, and we might have been able to fix it...but snipping his spinal chord seemed easier".

My question is also to the women who were having the abortions.  If a child is born alive after an abortion, does that child immediately become part of a ward of the state, thereby becoming  the legal responsibility of society?  When do we owe a legal obligation to fight to save their little life?  Aside from the horrific notion that a doctor is somehow performing 3rd trimester abortions, how, on the other hand do we have hospitals all over the country delivering these wee little babies, the using all means possible to keep them alive?

I just don't understand, or maybe really, I never will.  Is ignorance Bliss?

BENGHAZI - AMERICA DESERVES THE TRUTH

Where do I go from here?  It's been a long month.  I believe my last post was almost a full 30 days ago.  My absence is not for lack of hot topics, or diatribes, but rather what I perceived as a full schedule.  Ha ha.  What a gas.  ME -  a full life of things to do.  It's not as though I took off for some month long discovery trip to my beloved homeland of Ireland, or decided that it was high time to start looking for the exact spot where life began, deep in the jungles of Africa.  No, nothing  of  high excitement.  Just life here in Steamboat; watching the snow come and go.  In truth, far more COME of snow, then melting; although right now I am hopeful.
Today the whisleblowers come forth on Benghazi to offer their testimony on the murder of 4 brave Americans .  Amb. Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.  During an October 19, 2012 interview with jester Jon Stewart,  President Obama cited, rather flippantly,...
'Because I would say, even you would admit, it was not the optimal response, at least to the American people, as far as all of us being on the same page.'
Obama responded: 'Here's what I’ll say. If four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal.'
He continued: 'We’re going to fix it. All of it. And what happens, during the course of a presidency, is that the government is a big operation and any given time something screws up.:...

Killed: Ambassador Chris Stevens, left and diplomat Sean Smith were among those killed in the attack on Benghazi

Heroic: Former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods, right, and Glen Doherty, left, were also killed in the mortar attack

So, I have chosen to include the photographs of these brave Americans, so that we might not forget them.

It seems, in general, that after a tragedy strikes, we come together, arms up in the air, pontificating as to the "how dare those Muslims" do this to us.  Then the hype settles down.  We walk away.  Our arms return to our sides and we go about our lives, never looking back at what has occurred.

The same could be explained with regards to the recent bombings at the Boston Marathon.  Up went the arms of disgust:  "How dare those Muslims" started passing through the lips of angered Americans.  Low behold, 2 Muslim/Islam/extremists/angry young men, whatever politically correct terms you wish to use, were found to be behind the heinous act of homeland terrorism.

My day is full.  I have a list.  One of the items on the list is to listen to these important hearings with regard to Benghazi.  Why?  We, as Americans, have a right to know what happened.  Where did the failure occur?  Why did we hear Sec. of State Clinton sit in front of a microphone and emphatically state how people on the ground treated Ambassador Stevens' body with respect, only to then see, in horror and disgust, the truth -  a photograph of Ambassador Stevens being dragged through the street, dead and having been sodomized. respect, If Hillary Clinton believes that sodomizing a dead American is a form of respect, is she REALLY TRULY who we want as our next President?

I'm not playing a Democrat vs. Republican satirical joust right now.  These are the facts.  President Obama and Sec. of State Hillary Clinton fell down on the job.  They need to be held accountable for the murders of 4 dead Americans.  We, the people, DESERVE to have our leaders held to a certain standard.  GOD will sort all the sludge out on judgment day, but until then, our Government toils away, digging through high, stinking piles of shit, furiously trying to find the ounces of truth.

Ambassador Stevens, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith and Tyrone Woods DESERVE nothing less.

The Crowbar in Passwords

Lately, I have become overwhelmed and perturbed by the world of passwords.  We have them for everything.  Secret numbers, symbols, letters all lined up and then jiggled, like one might do if they we trying to resolve a running toilet.  It's annoying.

I'm not the type of person who is particularly fond of asswords, ooops a Freudian slip.  Of course I meant to say passwords.  This blog vehicle requires passwords that are cannibalistic.  Half the time, I find myself shaking my head, as though someone will create some type of atonement for the times I was cursing at the computer screen.

But really, consider this whole thing.  In a population that is forever growing, how many people, who are somewhat computer savvy, can actually exclaim a conquest over the turbulent maze of "your password is too short, or does not have an enough numbers, or needs a symbols such as an %,&,#,@ "? 

Blog Spot, which I really enjoy for blogging provides you with a password so that you can share or email your blog entry.  I find myself turning my computer to odd angles, or take my glasses off, which are bifocals, or shaking my head wherein to pretend disorganizing the bugs in my brain.  Alas, no path seems to offer a solution to the password trick.

So, under symptoms of  menopause or just plain age related eyesight, I can be  patient until Tom Selleck decides to come to my house and enter passwords all day while I admire him, through the bi-focals!

Remembering the Street Lamps

It has been a complete month since my last entry.  This blog and its contents are like a neighbor or friend.  I feel a solid chunk of guilt and remorse for being away for far too long.

With recent health issues which have overtaken my once leisurely way of life, my intentions were at least of merit.  Everyday brought a new set of goals, which included penning a few word strings in my blog.  For whatever reasons, the act of writing fell by the wayside.  The thoughts would be primed in my mind, ready then for transference to keyboard and pecking at the keys.  Yet, everyday I either found an excuse or plum forgot to muse about menopause.

So, why is tonight different from the past 30 days?   There's a great deal on my mind.  Back surgery played a few tricks, losing a few friends occupied my mind and broken heart, finding that another friend had breast cancer weighed heavily upon my mind.  I have several reasons.  Taken one by one, they may have been fought against, and even become victorious over, but given and/or taken as a whole, the 30 days of self imposed exile seems to have allowed me to regroup and get my muckers ready to do battle.

That large, over fed rodent Phil gave everyone a laugh and inappropriately exclaimed,  "you fools, spring is around the corner".  He's got a pretty good gig, although I read that he may be indicted, and has a possible death sentence of his head.  I live in the Rocky's, and spring would not appear to be here as of yet.

As the snow does melt on warm days, the snow departs, giving way to soaking brown piles of recycled dog refuse.  I believe this is the year I shall purchase one of those handy contraptions so that I do not need to bend over to scoop poop.  We stayed on top of our dog droppings all winter, but no one is perfect and there are other dogs cruising the neighborhood.  I relish for spring to arrive, but the revelation of brown poops piles tends to put an odor on the whole season.

With the change in time, comes the longer days.  As a child, we had a crowd of kids who would gather for bike riding, adventures, fort building, all without the benefit of cell phones.  We knew the party was over by the appearance of the street lamps coming on at night.  Those were carefree days.  I miss them.  Thankfully, those same childhood friends are still in my circle, and from time to time we are able to lament over days of carefree fun.

Eventually adulthood reaches us all.  We are in the process of packing up our house, painting, replacing kitchen cabinets, installing new interior doors, and making the place look like a million bucks.  I will be relieved when every room looks somewhat normal, sparse, but normal.  I will rejoice when an offer comes our way, and we can move on to our next adventure, hopefully before the street lamps come on.