Yet Another Republican Governor Takes a Hike

As "The Today Show" blathers on and on about something called "Jon and Kate Plus Eight" (ARGHHH!) I find myself intrigued by the most current reports of a Governor who seems to have something to hide. Hmmmmmm .......... what COULD it be, we wonder?

Republican Governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, seems to have been missing for days. His office couldn't find him ..... his friends looked far and wide ....... even his wife and family had no idea of his whereabouts. A Governor gone missing.

Strange ............ or ......... predictable?

"The lieutenant governor couldn't figure out where Gov. Mark Sanford was. Calls from a state senator and close friend rolled to voice mail. Even his wife said she hadn't talked to him for several days."

Where, oh where could our fair guvner be ...... oh where, oh where could he be?

OHHHHH ........ HIKING, he said, upon his return to his job after four secretive days away. Hiking the Appalachian Trail. Alone. Having told no one ahead of time where he was going.

OF COURSE!

Stay tuned ...............

Our Little News

I've told many people that one of the biggest differences in my new living location and the last one is the NEWS.

After 33 years in Milwaukee, as most of you know, I moved to wee New Podunk, Missouri, where everyone waves, the honking is sparse, the pickups are BIG, and the local news is ... funky.

Today's news poll: "Have you ever passed out from the heat?" No, but I'm about to. That answer was not an option, however. (Click on the title of this blog to vote. You know you want to.)

The same news segments run for days around here ....... DAYS. As a former news junkie, this redundancy makes my eyes twirl in opposite directions. One of the top news stories for an entire week regarded a man who wanted to complain to the City Council in a nearby smaller town. Only problem was, he became vociferous AFTER the hearings had been closed. His opinion was that he had the right to speak his thoughts to the Council whenever. The Council denied him because the hearings were over.

This seems simple to me ...... doesn't it to you? Yet somehow this man kept himself in the news for an entire week as he attempted to speak about an issue which had been decided and closed. Just in case anyone is drawing a parallel to the Skylight Opera Theatre here ........ be assured that there is no parallel. The Skylight never intended to open their decision to any type of openly thoughtful discussion, or even give warning of their impending disastrous actions. (My non-Milwaukee friends will not understand this, but I feel a BLOG coming on about this non-humanitarian situation caused by leadership's lack of foresight at the SOT.)

But I digress. Back to the local news .... again ..... and again. One of my favorite repeat news stories from a couple years ago now concerned a county across the river from us. There was one bar in the county that featured topless dancing. Some county residents wanted to shut down this bar (I said this is Podunk, right?).

Let me tell you ....... this was BIG news ......... BIG! I recall telling Ricardo, one of my Milwacky buddies, about this dire situation. His response: "But where will you work?" Cracked me up for weeks.

I guess slow news is worth something.

What do you think?

Women My Age!

Dang, I'm missing good ol' girl movies. Made with women MY age. Women who've been there, done that, know something, and are willing to share it with their sisters.

Something fun ..... a getawayfromitall kinda thing. Movies made with these three, for instance:








I really needed this today:

Mexico's Drug War?

I am watching "60 Minutes" and their segment on Mexico's "drug war." This, evidently, in addition to OUR drug "war."

First the phrase "drug war." All kinds of wars we have, eh? War on terror. War on drugs. War on liberals (they don't put it that way but ........ you know that's what it has been). Why must everything be a "WAR"? Negative never works. Never. Education works. Ignorance = evil. Even though I don't, as a benchmark of thinking, believe in "evil", per se. EDUCATE people with much of the money used for these "WARS".

Educate people on how to live, how to solve problems, how to WAIT for a reward, how to work to get what they desire, how to live in a community, working together.

Kruschev put it well, and I think of it every time I see these reports about the horrors of what is happening in beautiful Mexico right now. Kruschev said: “I once said, "We will bury you," and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.”

He may not have foreseen the way in which we will bury ourselves, but he was right. The greed of Wall Street and the need of the greedily dissatisfied masses.

What does this have to do with Mexico? Well ....... who do you think imports much of the Mexican drug trade which is at this very moment, as you read this, causing the deaths of many, many good people in our neighboring nation? We are!

There are too many reasons for drug use to go into all of them in this brief composition. But not to be denied is one cause: that of parents who are UNinvolved. Parents who park their children in front of the TV. Parents who do not have discussions with their children. Parents who have no expectations for their own children. Communities, made up of parents, who do not police or even particularly care about the children of their communities. Stay off my lawn, go somewhere else, don't bother me.

We don't wonder why many children turn to drugs as their way of solving their problems, do we?

We don't wonder why Mexicans, who for decades have suffered a poor economy and lack of jobs, have found their salvation in sending their drugs here, making billions of dollars from this trade export, do we?

Yet we think it's not our problem.

I just can't get enough of our new President

Y'all know how I feel about our new President. My life's goal is to have a slow dance with him. Is that strange?

In the interim, watching from afar will have to do. LOVED this:

I love it ...... just love it

All the hubbub that Parah Salin has made over David Letterman's silly jokes (aren't all his jokes silly jokes?) has brought him just about his highest ratings ever. Not that it's saying much since Conan O'Brien was such a POOR choice to assume "The Tonight Show" duties ........ but he's beating out Conan by hundreds of thousands of viewers.

Click on the link in the blog title above to read the story.

All thanks to Parah Salin!



She just makes this so damn easy.

Good First Amendment News

"A federal appeals court has handed down a ruling that a monument displaying the Ten Commandments outside a courthouse "has the primary effect of endorsing religion.""

Why yes, it does. The analysis of this ain't rocket surgery.

I have nothing against Christians (unless or if they are persecuting Pagans - or anyone else for that matter) or the ten commandments. They are, respectively, a religion and religious statements. A plaque of the ten commandments, from the Bible, belongs at the church where people believe and want to worship what has been written in the Bible, translated properly or not.

A small, yet significant victory over those who wish to force their beliefs on everyone else.

The first amendment does not include specifics regarding the separation of church and state, it protects religious freedom (among other things). Its intention is to keep government out of religion, keep a free press, right to free assembly ....... and more.

The argument (right wing radio) has been made that, therefore, a federal court has no business telling a lesser court that it may not have religious monuments placed on or about its (public) property. The argument (love it or leave it syndrome) has been made that the people of that town who do not want the ten commandments placed outside the door of their courthouse may simply leave town. Go somewhere else. Get out if you don't want one religion (possibly not your own) being endorsed over another.

To those who produce this type of (anti) (hateful) logic, I ask if that is how you would feel were we to place a Pagan symbol outside our courthouse. This would not appear to be endorsement of OUR religion?

Again, come on, it ain't brain science. Keep your religion in your personal lives and at your churches. Use it in your daily life to become a better, kinder, more loving and spiritually enlightened person.

But, please, keep your religion away from "justice for all."

Amen.



And in other, yet related, yet better, hugely more enlightened, humorous news:


Pastafarians Rule!




Click on the video below for a TERRIFIC, related story:





Note that the above does NOT hang outside the Hannibal, Missouri courthouse. Or any other, as far as I know.