Tag Archives: Politics

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The Only Good News, Is No News

I was reading the news today, like most days. Top stories include catching the jackholes that did that god awful thing to that poor autistic kid during the ice bucket challenge. (Also, my post on the ice bucket challenge was proven true. People forgot all about that.) Then of course it wouldn’t be a news day without Ebola. Or shootings or other violence in public areas. Or other things that make you cringe and go “what the hell?” Let’s take a look at the top stories in news today.

 

To Abort or Not to Abort?: Last month, I was reading the monthly Cosmo. Yes, my guilty pleasure and judge me if you must. However, reading that magazine does not mean I have lower intelligence. It means that I acknowledge that sometimes you need to read mindless things to keep yourself from getting too serious. Not the point. I read a story about how this doctor was essentially sending his patients across the border into Mexico to buy “abortion drugs”. He couldn’t actually perform the abortion because of the new law that Texas had enacted, but he could fix the problem if someone took medicine to make sure it worked and was not a danger to the woman. I sat in awe. Seriously, we have amazing doctors here but we’re sending them across the border into cartel land to get a procedure that was allowed due to Roe v Wade? Why was this granted? So many women had died during botched self-procedures or shady doctors just trying to get a quick buck. Flash forward 41 years later, it seems to have reverted back. Until now, when the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to block portions of this law. Am I pro-abortion? No, I don’t think anyone is pro-abortion. Am I pro-it’snoneofmydamnbusiness? Yes, I am. It’s the libertarian way of the government should stay out of person lives. That’s how it’s supposed to go, right? Or is it that the government needs to be small enough to fit in your bedroom? Either way, I’m glad that now the women can be safely treated for this procedure if it is their choice. I’ve been a teenager who was unexpectedly pregnant. I know what it’s like to weigh all options. It wasn’t the choice for me, nor will it be unless there is a serious medical problem. Unless you’ve been there, don’t presume to know what it’s like to be in their shoes.

 

Eeeeebola: Since March of this year, about 4600 people have contracted Ebola. Of those, around 52% of them died. These are stats that you can easily look up on the CDC website. Also according to the website, the only real confirmed cases in America were in Dallas. The person who died was from out of the country (my impression from the data on the site) and the recent patients that contracted it were healthcare workers that might have made “oopsies”. How is Ebola transmitted? I’m not going to have Ebola and breathe into the air and infect a whole movie theater of people, and then have my city shut down with military people barricading the place and risk possibly getting nuked. (God, I loved Outbreak.) It gets contracted by close contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids. Any other report is an embarrassment and a fear-mongering attempt that I just laugh at. I actually feel bad for the people who do not take the time to properly educate themselves. Let’s put this all into perspective. 92,000 people have died as a result of heart disease. 84,500 people have died as a result of cancer. Ebola? 1. Thanks to medical advances in America, we have death. So American news organizations, stop scaring everyone into thinking that everyone who sneezes next to you has Ebola. Report facts not scare tactics because facts save lives while scare tactics cause panic.

 

Sometimes Hitting Kids is Necessary: I wrote a hubpage on disciplining as a parent. I have expressed my displeasure that anyone who dares to spank their kid is an evil source. A person replied to me by informing me that I was wrong when I spanked my oldest child when he was younger and I had damaged him. There is a fine line between discipline and abuse it seems. If you’re quick to smack your kid over every little thing, yes that will absolutely cause significant damage to their mentality. Now, if you spank your kid twice in a span of 9 years that is not going to cause huge harm. They say “oh well that excuse of I was spanked and I turned out fine means nothing”. Let’s look at a fact here, because I love facts. When we were kids, would we have dared to fill a bucket of disgusting bodily fluids and film ourselves dumping it on a kid with autism? Heck no, our parents would have slapped us silly and locked us in a room without anything but staring at walls for months at a time if we dared. Today? I bet there are thousands more incidences just like that because no one wants to discipline their children. That’s why children are growing up to be crueler than ever. We were bullied as kids, but no one was ever bullied enough to cause someone to kill themselves. Even more, not enough to go to their wake and spit on their dead body. Maybe there is a correlation between discipline from younger generations to older ones and why there is such a rampant amount of adolescent misbehavior. Because, guess what? They grow up to be miscreant little shits and no one wants to take responsibility for that. If your kid is a little shit, look in the mirror because it’s your fault for allowing that behavior to get so bad that you lack any control of your children. You are not their friend; you are the person who is supposed to be molding model citizens with the capabilities of changing the world for the better. I keep thinking about if my son is autistic and this happened to him. Part of me would do unspeakable harm to them while the logical part of me realizes that little punks are worth the jail time. I hope they get the book thrown at them, because they are disgusting people. And then I want to know how their parents feel about it, because learned behavior does exist and I wonder how much they learned about teasing an autistic kid they learned from them.

 

Sorry for the length of the post, but it was all necessary to get it all out.

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Dear ScamPal… Err… PayPal

PayPal provides a service that promises easier handling of your money. We all like easy. We all love convenience. That is the staple of our current “immediate satisfaction” culture. We want everything at the tip of our fingers for easy access and ease of use. When a service promises quick and easy transfers of payments and allowing you to get paid quicker, we all jump at this opportunity to make our likes just a little bit easier. With our busy lives, this is something we look towards to make things go smoothly in a world where things often are difficult.

As a freelancer and someone who makes money from doing surveys and getting rebates from Ibotta (fantastic app, by the way. I get a guaranteed $0.25 every time I buy milk, which is a lot.) This means often getting payments through PayPal. I’ve never had a problem transferring money before until a few months ago. I tried to transfer $5 into my bank, and ended up accidentally removing $5 from it. While I swear up and down I didn’t do that, it was late at night and that mistake could have easily been made. I tried for a while after that to retrieve the $10 with no luck, doing the same steps I had previously. I gave up. Then, I get a payment of $50 in. Yes, now maybe I can get my money. Every 4 days for a month I tried to follow the same steps to get my money as I had in previous times when I had money transferred into my account. Still no luck. Finally I got pissed, and sent a polite email to PayPal so I can get my money. After sending an email saying “you didn’t do it right, I took care of it”, I was promised my money in 3-4 business days. Here I sit, 6 business days later and I still do not have my money. I replied to the original email of “you didn’t do it right, but I did” to tell them that maybe it wasn’t my fault the money didn’t transfer and that I would really love my money. No response as of yet about that.

We all know they make interest off our money. We have even heard horror stories of them “forgetting to transfer money” so they can keep getting the interest from our money. Since they are not a bank, they do not have the same rules and regulations that banks have. Translation: they are legally allowed to not give us money so they can continue making money off of it.

It might seem silly to some of you to get pissed about $60. My family lives paycheck to paycheck. That $60 could pay for diapers and wipes for my toddler. That $60 could be gas money for our car. That $60 could be the difference in being able to pay a bill or not. We’re fine when they screw with people who can afford to get screwed, but what about those of us who can’t?

I just want my money. I have found ways around using PayPal, and I look forward to closing my account with them for being thieves with terrible customer service. Do I want to wait for a check to be mailed to me up to 10 weeks after I earned the money? Not really, but I’ve waited almost that long now so why not? At least this way no one is ripping me off and being so nonchalant about it. This makes me cringe more every time that I hear “business are people too”. If I met a person like this in real life, I would probably punch them in the face and take the jail time proudly. Maybe we can get politicians to stop getting paid off by companies like this so the everyman can stop getting shafted “just because they can”. So thank you PayPal for making me see the light in how we sell our souls for convenience. Let’s start a petition to get regulations on business like this so these sort of instances can stop occurring. I know just from people I talk to daily that this happens all the time, and that doesn’t make it right. Let’s stand up and put a stop to having our money stolen from us because of loopholes that we can’t fight because we need the service.

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Ending the Week With Controversy and Exciting News

Fall is coming, and this means the happiest time of year for me. I wonder if I could convince my husband to start setting up the Halloween decorations already? Too soon? He gets to put up stupid Christmas stuff over a month early, why can’t I get my Halloween stuff up early?! #debateoverholidays . It’s exciting to have our first holiday come up while we’re in our first house and I can’t wait to go completely overboard and be the neighborhood crazies. Which is horrible of me to say, considering one of the apartments next to me has mentally ill people. Besides the point, entirely.I promised both controversy and exciting news, and I will hopefully deliver on both.

I have written many blogs on how god awful it is to have Islam as a whole be accused of being a religion that celebrates terrorism because there are some radicals out there. I have even noted in the past that what makes those terrorists, but we ignore those radical Christian groups that bomb/shoot at abortion clinics. Why isn’t Christianity considered a terrorist religion because of those bad seeds but we automatically label all Muslims as terrorists. I even have recalled in the past how a person I grew up with (who was fantastic person) was Muslim and how she was treated after both terrorist attacks. More recently, people destroyed her family’s store after the Boston Marathon Bombing because her family has the nerve to not be Christian. I would even argue that even if they weren’t Muslim this would ‘ve happened because assholes in America only see skin color and clothes and not individual people.  So with that, I talk about ISIS.

People against calling them ISIS say it’s because they are neither a state nor part of Islam because they do not follow the teachings. While I agree it’s not a state, declaring them not Islamic is actually a half lie. They follow their own twisted ideals of the religion, as many twist Christians turn around the teachings of the bible to fit whatever endgame they have. Do I think they follow the teachings of the Qur’an as intended? Absolutely not. Despite what scaremongers want you to believe, they are a peaceful religion like any other peaceful religion. What do I think we should call them? I don’t care what you call them as long as you bomb the crap out of them and make them non-existent. In fact, how about we not refer to them as anything and not give them any airtime so they no longer get the toddler temper tantrum attention that they are getting. They are just children that want Mommy and Daddy’s attention, so give them the bomb treatment and call it a day? Not really because so many innocents are going to die. It’s not my place to decide which people die and who lives, unless it’s in a story I write. I just think this whole argument is stupid and distracts from the real issue of making them gone.

Now that the controversy is over, onto the good news. I have mentioned that I am going to join in another NaNoWriMo, hopefully with a completion like last year. I have the novel idea set, just need a title and to actually write it when November 1st hits. For now, I hopefully get my 4th e-book released in time for Halloween, a nice monster story for the masses to enjoy. Thank you as always for taking the time to read this.

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A Random Hodge Podge of the World Around Us

I had every intention of posting on Monday, but the hearing test was more important and then I had the big clean up after that surprising success of a birthday party, our first at the house. I would have posted pictures, but it’s hard to post pictures while managing a party and chasing a toddler. Still, it was awesome to show off our accomplishments and feel good that we did a great job putting everything together. Although it was cramped because the weather did not cooperate at all.

So today I am talking about random things in the political and otherwise world, some relevant, some not. Let’s get started.

  • The Massachusetts Gubernatorial race: I’ve put a lot of thought into this race, as I normally have. I don’t like Coakley for the job. I liked her at her old job, but I don’t like the idea of her running our state. (Shocker, I’m registered to a party and I like to actually vote for candidates and not letters next to their names.) Baker, is probably the way I’m going to go. Why? Because he’s staying out of marriage equality and is pro-choice. And because he has a plan to reform the welfare system that I so often comment on. The fact that he’s reinstating the “work for it” policy, he automatically gets my vote. I don’t care if you need help, as long as you’re not sitting on your ass just expecting free money. Why should I have to work for my income and you don’t? I don’t want hand outs, I was raised to work for my keep. And I raise my children that way. So what makes them so special that they get every bit of help while someone who works their butt off all day doesn’t get a cent? The reason they have to make that choice is because too many people want to sit around all day and the ones who are really out there trying get shafted. Let’s help the ones who want to work out, and stop encouraging the ones who don’t. It’s a sickening system when it favors people who don’t want to work versus those who are doing everything they can to make ends meet. I have more respect for the person who flips burgers until they can find something else than I do someone who just doesn’t give a crap.
  • The Company’s Insurance Plan Covering Birth Control and “Abortion Drugs”: I’m not an expert on the legalities here, but I do wonder something: if the company does not want to pay for women to have access to these medicines that are so offensive to them, what do they think happens to their tax payer dollars when someone on state funded insurance plans cover it. Technically, their money is still going to the same “loathsome and offensive” medicines. Does that mean funding is going to be cut so no one provides these medicines to women? Or are they just going to find a loophole to stop paying taxes as a result? Also, scientifically speaking, Plan-B does not stop a pregnancy. It prevents the egg from dropping to make sure that a pregnancy never occurs. Just because you believe it is an abortion pill, doesn’t mean that it is. I’ve known some guys that believed they were God, doesn’t mean they were.
  • Protest Zones: With the buffer law being ruled as unconstitutional, I keep wondering if I’m allowed to protest wherever I want just because it’s my constitutional right. Can I protest on my church’s front steps, declaring that the spaghetti monster is the greatest God ever? I’m sure I’d probably be arrest with disturbing the peace or something. Or how about on the sidewalk outside of my neighbor’s apartments to complain about how awful they are at dog ownership? Can I do that? So why can the pro-life protesters block traffic with graphic signs and protest wherever they want. I’m afraid to go to my son’s specialist next month because it’s next to a clinic and I don’t want to deal with making the choice of running an idiot over because they think I want to abort my 2-year-old child. And I certainly do not want him subjected to some of those posters they have up. (Do they really need to get that graphic? I thought religious people had morals?) It’s not like the buffer zone was far away from the spot they wanted to protest, it just blocked them from protesting in the parking lot or blocking the entrances. I thought where one’s rights began another one’s ended? I should have become a lawyer.

That concludes the speech for today. Thank you for reading

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The Mass Protest In Little Big City

Where I live, I am in the same city as Westover Air Base. In fact, I could basically just walk about 20 minutes and be standing right at one of the gates to get inside. This might mean nothing to you, except that in recent days it was named a possible housing zone for the illegal immigrant children that they don’t know what to do with that have come from Central America. It’s in a city that people have probably not even heard of outside of Massachusetts. Hell, some places inside Massachusetts doesn’t even know it exists. Though, in a funny note as a resident: Rizzoli and Isles has mentioned it a few times in a few different episodes, including one where they incorrectly stated there was no Popeye’s in Chicopee. There is one, in fact, right on the main drag. Do your research, television writers.

Now that I have successfully gotten off point, we went out to get groceries yesterday there was a protest of not too many people. Probably no more than 40, but I didn’t care enough to count them. They were protesting said plan to bring those children (I won’t refer to them as immigrants or illegals. It doesn’t seem fair to call a child something they do not understand.) to said Air Base. I joked to my husband: “Look, that is the entirety of the Western Mass Tea Party”. We had a laugh, and drove by not really concerning ourselves to them. If you get a 100 people, you’re a protest. If you get less people than I had attend my wedding, it’s just a gathering. no matter how many “Don’t Tread on Me” flags or antique style American flags that existed in the days of slavery you have waving in the storm’s wind. (Side note, I swear the lightning kept striking in the area where they were standing. Sign from God?)

Were they even residents of Chicopee? Why should it matter to them? If they were, then let them be. It is our right as American’s to protest! I don’t care that they were there, they weren’t in my way to the grocery store. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed them if it weren’t for the yellow flags they were waving. “Support our Troops, not Illegals” signs were being waved. I can get behind that. Our troops have fought to ensure our freedoms and safety, they should get better care than they currently get. We could save money by forcing people who don’t feel like working out into the workforce to raise revenue to better treat the troops. That’s a great idea that we’ll never see happen, though the increase in minimum wage makes it less beneficial to just not give a shit, because now they make more than the people living off the system. (Another point altogether).

At first, I had some concerns. I agreed with people saying that we’re stressed enough supporting said people who don’t feel like working now we’re going to have to put resources towards children from other countries too. As a parent of a child in the local school system, I know some of the classes already have 20+ children in them. I don’t want my child to suffer in school because of more of an overflow of children. That was calmed when I found out they would be educated on base. The money part didn’t bother me as much as it should have; we’re already paying for people that don’t need the help, why not take the money from them and put it towards children who are actually in need? I’m a mom, I can’t handle the thought of a child being neglected or mistreated. That sickens me, 100%.

Should we house them? I’m not sure. It’s not my call to make. They have people who know all the facts, but like everything else they never tell us everything. Everyone just tells us enough to sway us in whatever position they want us to go. I don’t fall for that line, and I’m not going to feign outrage unnecessarily because that just makes me look like an ass. An uninformed, uneducated ass. And I’m only guilty of one of those, as are most Americans. I have the mass amount of student loan debt to prove I was properly educated, the uninformed is the politicians and media’s fault.

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Mr. Newsman, I Don’t Believe You

It’s a shame that the state of media and politicians are so sad that they have created an equal amount of brainwashed citizens as they have completely apathetic and mistrustful ones. The journalists are supposed to hold all politicians equally accountable for their terribleness, not vary accountability based on whatever channel you watch. Who’s being held accountable for anything if everyone only cares about their own bottom lines? The pundits, the politicians and the so-called journalists are all guilty parties to this.
I constantly talk about this here because it’s true. We should not have to read 6 different articles to figure out one news story. One channel calls Obama the greatest, another says he’s the devil and should be in jail. How about he’s just an incredibly misguided guy that surrounds himself with corrupt fools who then corrupted him. He’s not a devil. He might be a crappy president, but he’s not a terrible human being. And I’m not naïve enough to believe a politician is going to be honest with us. They just want to get elected and sell their beliefs to the highest bidder. Unfortunately for us, we’re not the highest bidder. We’re just the idiots that put them there. Except me, none of the people I’ve ever elected was put in office so I guess I have a clear conscience. Though I usually vote for people based on my agreement on their views, rather than party and my green party candidate didn’t stand a chance. And no, it wasn’t a wasted vote because since this isn’t a true democracy and I live in Massachusetts, the vote would’ve gone to the Democratic party anyways since no Republican president has ever won Massachusetts.
My case in point: Politicians, ignoring the constitution and lying to the American people since 1788. You shouldn’t be shocked by their lying, you should be appalled that no one cares and they get reelected. You should care that the news organizations fight for their own agendas and pockets instead of us, the ones responsible for a portion of their paychecks. Our bosses would fire us for not doing our jobs, why should they get overpaid for theirs?
And for the record, do not confuse this Bergdahl trade as being the biggest controversy with it being the most recent. The NSA thing is more important. The Benghazi thing is more important. This Bergdahl thing is probably the least of my worries in the grand scheme of royal screws ups in recent times. This was just something that was supposed to make people forget the whole VA screw up that blew up in their faces or worked exactly as intended.
Let’s close by admitting our own fault in this. Sitting back and watching awful thing happen is just as guilty as those doing it. Everyone thinks that their political party will be the next coming of Christ to save us and fix all our problems. I’ll let you in on a secret: they’re not. We should vote for people that we believe can do it, even if that means crossing party lines. They are, in general, all the same. Even as a registered Democrat, I cannot think of one Democrat I would want as president. Then again, I can only also think of one Republican I would consider a good candidate and he’s probably too smart to run. The other parties often have decent candidates, but they’d never stand a chance in the general elections. So I plead with you, be the change. Let’s take out putting letters next to the candidate’s name on the ballot box so you force people to make educated decisions. Let’s make sure we are able to pick the right candidate, not the party. We can start our own revolution and fixing our country if the politicians don’t want to.

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No Morals, No Service

I don’t pretend I know anything  about being discriminated against. I am a straight white girl from suburbia. The most I’ve ever gotten picked on was for being pale, freckly, and dressing how I wanted to. That pales in comparison to actual discrimination. This doesn’t mean I can’t recognize blatant discrimination that seems to be unconstitutional. Now we’re facing a modern-day civil rights issue.

Instead of having separate facilities for whites and minorities, now we’re going to be watching separate facilities based on who you love. This might be an extreme vision of what might happen if this gets signed into law. (Also, as a side note: why does Arizona always end up passing these sorts of laws that get such media attention?) We’re envisioning something that might not even matter. Once this gets sent to the Supreme Court, it’s likely going to be overturned with the comparisons to the Civil Rights Act and just make a group of people too pissed off to even visit your state. All money is green… until it’s rainbow-colored? Wait, isn’t green a color on the rainbow?

What we are opening ourselves up to is a repeated history. If this is allowed to stay in place, what will stop racists to reopen “White Only” establishments? Then what about “Irish Need Not Apply” rules? How about separate Catholic, Mormon,  Muslim or Jewish facilities, because obviously we don’t want people of different faiths intermingling. This isn’t just an issue about whether or not you approve of homosexuality; it’s an issue if you think any breed of person can be discriminated. I don’t. And if you do, wait until you’re the one discriminated against and I hope you don’t complain because if it’s good enough for other people, it’s good enough for you.

This law is this can of worms waiting to revert us all back to the days before civil rights existed. We are giving a license to create second class citizens based on the way they were when they were born. Privilege will be about religion, sexual orientation, and race. If a so-called “gay establishment” opens up and sends me away because I’m straight, there would be an overwhelming amount of outrage. If you deny that fact, you’re lying to yourself. But somehow, allowing it to happen  the other way is acceptable because you call “religion”. Don’t use religion as an excuse for your hate. My religion tells me to love others. Hilariously, my religion is also the one these hate filled people call as their own. The real sin here is this discrimination, not that they are gay.

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Learning about Boundaries

I remember in grade school how we had to learn about “personal space”. This was demonstrated to us by making us hold our arms in front of us, like we were zombies and walking to make sure that we didn’t touch the person in front of us. We had to hold out our hands when we sat down. A stiff punishment of a recess detention would be doled out if we crossed into someone else’s space. This naturally caused us to go into “I’m not touching you” mode. We did learn boundaries of staying where we belong and don’t belong. No freedoms were impeded on.

In Massachusetts, the Supreme Court is looking at whether this law that places protest free zones around the entrances to abortion clinics. Now as someone who sees these “buffer zone” markings often by my son’s specialist, I can say that it blocks off areas around the entrance to the parking lots into clinics that performs abortions so people can freely get in and out of these parking lots without being blocked by people with signs. It also makes it so people like me can get to the medical office building behind the clinic without having these people with signs harassing me. They have all this space outside of those spots to march and protest. And there is a lot of space.

I’m for your right to protest. You should be able to take a stand against whatever you want. This does not mean my right to protest takes priority over your right to seek medical treatment or anything legal you want to do to your body. News flash: the buildings with clinics in it also have other medical offices in there. Also another news flash, sometimes people go to the clinic for birth control or OB/GYN checks though I’m not sure the exact statistics because I believe that it’s none of my damn business why they are there. Final news flash: abortion is legal and if someone is going to do it, your graphic signs and religious rhetoric are not going to stop them any more than gun control prevents gang members from shooting up school buses.

I wonder how they would feel if people were just outside their private residences to protest. Obviously, not on their property but just at the end of their driveways in the public street. Or what if I went to a church and started a protest blocking their entrance into mass? Would they say “okay, it’s your right to protest wherever you want so have at it guys, we’ll work around you. God bless!” No, they would be pissed that I’m interfering in their business.

I wish I had a larger following. I would call for these sort of protest because I’m all for seeing social theory play out. I like watching hypocrisy try to rationalize itself. I’m interested to see the results of these actions and how the various media outlets report it. I think we should test this theory. See how that affects this law and how the people opposed to it react.

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Random Thoughts 2014

Now that the holidays are over, it’s officially time to get back to business. Today, I will focus on the first “Random Rants” post of the year. A new year is supposed to be about new beginnings but let’s face it, it just feels like another day. You can go to bed with good intentions for resolutions to wake up without even bothering to try. The fact is that any day you wake up is a second chance to make a change in your life.

Now, onto the rants of the year.

It’s POT TIME! Well, if you live in Colorado anyways. People opposed to this say it will encourage people to smoke pot. Seriously? Pot is easy enough to get, and if people want it they’ll get it. Legalizing pot is not going to make a swarm of people who wouldn’t normally smoke it automatically decide they love drugs. What it will do is increase tax money into the government instead of being pocketed by possibly dangerous gang members. What it will do is make sure someone with a dime bag won’t spend the same amount of time in jail as someone with 10 kilos of coke. You’re not encouraging pot smoking any more than legal booze encourages drunk driving. Bonus: Did I mention free money to the government to possibly go to the schools and improve our declining school systems?

Duck Dynasty, the family of bigots? This isn’t newsworthy or even particularly shocking. They are Southern, super conservative Christians that were raised that way. Are they bigoted?  Not my place or anyone else’s. If you’re a real Christian there’s only one person who can truly judge. It’s crazy and has gone on long enough. I’m actually tired of hearing about it on the news. And, for the record the argument of free speech was only intended to protect a civilian from the government not a civilian over another civilian. And if you’re really shocked by this, you must’ve really dropped your jaw when you found out Paula Deen, an old woman from the South, dropped the “n” bomb. Find something actually newsworthy like troops losing benefits so people can sit around and play the PS4 on hard-working Americans dime.

Puffing With Kids? States are considering laws that prevents parents from smoking in a car with a child on the premise of the second and third hand smoke are dangerous for children. People opposed this state the government is over stepping control and it crosses a line. People have liberties, right? Last I checked, you can’t drink and drive.  Should we allow that since anything else is an attack on basic rights of humans? Laws like this exist because people are inherently stupid and must not realize the idiotic things they do and how it affects others. They make laws like this because people lack common sense, just like there are laws against driving under influences or anything else that seems like you should just know better.  Think about how much time is taken off the road to find a cigarette and then lighting it. I bet that math equals sending a text while driving, and texting while driving is illegal. That must be an attack on civil liberties too. The fact is simple: you want lung cancer, or any other smoking related disease that is your personal choice. That isn’t your child’s personal choice to possibly get asthma or worse because you couldn’t last a 5 minute drive without lighting up. And standing next to a “smoke free zone” sign with a lit cigarette hanging from your lip makes you look stupid, just saying.

PS4, why?! I really just wondered why you bothered to release a game system and only like 4 other games to go with it and several months before more are released. This seems like poor planning. I just needed to get that off my chest.

I hope that if you believe in this New Year hoopla that you accomplish your resolutions and get your new beginning.  For everyone else, remember when writing your checks out that it is we 2014. It always takes me until May to remember.

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Always Taking the Path to Minimalism

Some people are okay with the easy way. Some people are okay with mediocrity, especially if it means they don’t have to do anything for it. I am not this type of person.  Do you know how hard it is to write a blog on your phone while chasing down a toddler who is apparently on a mission to destroy the Christmas tree? I’ll give you a hint: it’s infuriating.
There are many times I want to say “screw it”. I want to tell Tom to quit his job and we can live happily ever after in less than ideal conditions on the government dime because they seem to live better than the hardworking people who live according to each paycheck. They are fleeting thoughts though, because my first thought is my children and the lessons they would learn from that. And I remember why I don’t give up: because they deserve better and that is more important to me than anything else. So my husband works away and I make sure the paychecks stretch as far ad possible.
Working a minimum wage job, which it seems the only one I can get at the time being would eat up my entire paycheck for daycare. That is, unless the wage gets raised up to $15 an hour. I’d flip burgers for that in a heart beat. Do I think that’s way too high to raise it? Sure I do. But, I’ve considered a few things.
People like the easy way out, so a job of ease like that, would keep a person employed. And an employed person making more money is less likely to need government assistance. Secondly, some people take whatever jobs they can get, and they should not be forced to feel ashamed if a minimum wage job at McDonald’s is the best they can do for their families. In fact, they should be applauded for their hard work instead of shamed. More people should be like that. And lastly at that rate of money, it will no longer be more beneficial to live off the government than to be gainfully employed so maybe that will get people actually working, than being paid from hard-working lower middle class people’s paychecks to sit around and play Call of Duty Ghosts on that PS4 you bought that most people couldn’t afford on your nicer furniture than the second-hand ones they have to live with. Run on sentence rant, ended.
On the news, I heard Herman Cain say, essentially, “if you work hard, you’ll get raises anyways after 6 months”. In the real world, does that really happen though? In my experience it never happens that way. Maybe every few years you get an extra $50 a check… the real world is not the same place those cushy pundits that talk about the middle class lives. Nothing infuriates me more than someone in designer clothes wearing Louboutin shoes, telling me how I feel about something. They don’t know how I feel about anything, and they shouldn’t presume that they do and pretend to speak for us.
So, do I think minimum wage should be raised? Sure. Do I think $15 is too much? Maybe. I’m not an economist, but I would love to read the math and theory behind how $15 for minimum wage version the money being paid into government assistance and how much money is saved from the government, thus being saved by the tax payers. It might not even be cost-effective, I would just love to see the independently done math to make an educated decision either way. And don’t feel ashamed of your job, whatever it is. I commend you for your strive and other people should too.