Making It In America

I wish we had laws that ended ridiculous law suits.  Several years ago, when I was working on the East coast a young man I knew was out playing.  Roaming the neighborhood, he trespassed onto someone else’s property.  There was a pile of refuse there that the owners were in the process of cleaning up.  The young man climbed on the pile, slid and sliced open his leg.  His parents successfully sued the landowner for having an unsafe pile on the land.  Land the young man should not have entered.

Today a woman is suing her personal trainer for working her too hard.  He was too demanding and yet inattentive.  How can you be both?  She is suing for a large amount of money with totally unspecified complaints.  When will we realize that we, even if we are dealing with the most over-zealous trainer,  are in control.  We can say no, back off, you’re fired.  But please-I cannot fathom saying I lost control of my own exercise program and somebody has to pay.

I’ll never forget reading of a man who was successfully sued because two boys entered his property and injured themselves lighting matches over the gas tank they had uncovered.  Are parents not responsible for where their children are and what they are doing?  As long as we can blame someone in the hope of getting money people will be bringing their spare fingers to Wendy’s and suing or placing hot coffee between their legs while they drive and getting money from McDonalds.  Doesn’t almost make you wish you could slip and fall in a Walmart so you never have to work again?  Yeah, me neither.

I don’t pretend to be a political pundit and I truly never hope to be one, but I do have a few opinions.  As I listen to the news, read the papers and watch political programs I really wonder what is going on in this world!

• Why is Nancy Pelosi insisting that she deserves everything any man in her position had?  It isn’t about gender; it’s about the economy.  The planes she has been using-or not using due to cancellations-is costing a tremendous amount of money our government doesn’t have.  She doesn’t seem to care.
• Why does Barack Obama say he is going to get rid of pork spending before he signs a huge bill full of pork spending?
• Why is the common American being told that we must cut back and tighten our belt while Congress gives billions of dollars to those who have demonstrated their inability to handle money?
• Why are we closing Gitmo and considering freeing the prisoners as yet another man released from there is leading troops and killing Americans?
• Why is the ACLU worried about foreign prisoners who are often terrorists but not about the American citizens these prisoners would kill if they could?
• Why do people rant about Democrats or Republicans when the problems we are facing are bigger than any political party?

Questions, questions, questions……but seemingly, no solid answers.  How confusing!  How sad!

I really don’t follow much about Hollywood stars as I have no time in my life for things that don’t affect it.  Still, I catch little bits here and there.  Lately, it seems that the story-chasers must be coming up empty, what with Brittney Spears behaving well,  so that they are trying to manufacturer a good headlining story.

Okay, maybe I’m wrong, but someone will need to explain to me the purpose of cutting away from people getting ready to give out awards (ie Jennifer Aniston) to show her ex-husband’s current woman (ie Angelina Jolie) who is backstage?  The cameraman switches the cameras and then everyone tries to build a Jennifer against Angelina story.   Are we that desperate to have people be hateful, spiteful, jealous, whatever, to try to create this kind of garbage?

I was amused to read, tonight, that Jennifer Aniston says there is no story.  No good guy.  No bad guy.  Let’s face it, the two women have moved on with their lives.  It is time for the story-creators to move on too.  At this point, after three children, does it really matter when the couple started seeing each other?  With another man in her life, is Aniston still pining for someone who would betray her?  She says shes happy.  I say we should leave them all alone and let them work out their own happiness.  Maybe America can find something to do that will actually affect their lives.  Maybe the reporters can find an honest job!

I get so used to reading about offended people in the newspaper or on the internet.  That picture offends me.  Their words offend me.  They said God in a Christian context and I was offended.  And the list goes on and on……so it was with interest that I watched something happen tonight.

Tonight I went to a dinner that was well attended by many people.  Most of them were from the good old United States.  A fair share came for our northern neighbor, Canada.  Our entertainment for the evening was a group of men who, for fun, get together every week and sing barbershop-style music.  They played a diverse set of numbers from ‘Goodnight Irene” to their closing song, “The Irish Blessing.”  The song that caused me to take notice was the second to last song.

They started out telling us that they were going to “do something” on the first part of the song and then we were to join them on the second part of the song.  Then they began singing “God Bless America.”  As the audience got into the song, they rose to their feet.  I noticed all the Canadians in the group.  They, too, rose from their seats and they, too, did their best to join us in singing.  I looked.  Not one face looked offended.  No one needed to make a comment.  No one remained seated.  They didn’t have to sing.  They didn’t have to stand up.  We would have understood.  It seems there was something bigger about them than about the touchy headliners we read about.  It seems that they know that, when the song is done, they will still be Canadians.  Nothing will be lost because they allowed us to sing about God blessing our country and no offense was meant to their country.  Maybe we could learn something from them!

Wow, this is a new era-at least for me.  So many things are happening that have “never happened before” or “hasn’t happened in years.”  For example, legislation has never passed through Congress in a new presidential term so quickly before.  In my lifetime, I don’t remember people worrying about Marshall Law, gun control, losing their freedom of speech or talk of taking our retirement money and letting the government that has already spent our Social Security manage it.   I don’t remember so many questioning the need to equally distribute the wealth to everyone from those who have earned it to those who haven’t even tried.  The expression, “That’s not fair” has been taken out of the classroom and placed in the political arena.  Sad thing for me is that I have always told my children, “Life’s not fair, and then we die.”  Life has never been fair and it never will be so why are we so hung up on it?  Since we are going the route of fairness right now, here are a few fairness questions:

1)  Should those who work for a living be expected to support those who can but do not because they choose not to take the steps to improve their lot?

2)  Should our children and grandchildren pay for a bail-out that covers (mostly) poorly run companies or situations that lack of care created?

3)  Should we worry that every word from our lips will offend someone and that we must apologize for what we technically didn’t say because someone thinks (maybe) we might have meant something by it?

4)   Must every reference to monkeys be considered racial even if it wasn’t a single individual that wrote the stimulus package or various children of differing races are climbing through the trees and “monkeying” around?

5)  Should we have to worry about an attack on our desire to save money?

6)  Should anybody even be able to consider taking and sharing our retirement money?

7)  Should we, in all fairness, have to consider these and questions like them?

We are definitely entering a new era, but I’m not convinced it is all good!

 Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!  What fun it is to show everyone our pets, especially when they are exotic and unusual.  Maybe the recent attack that was experienced involving a ‘domesticated’ chimpanzee will alert us to the fact that, when it comes to wild animals, there’s no place in a private home!

It is time to wake up and realize that wild animals do not belong in the homes of private people.  They belong in the wild or somewhere that they are controlled.  It isn’t a time to point fingers at the poor seventy-year old woman who owned the chimp.  For all those years, it was a wonderful relationship.  She was following the laws of the land.  The problem really lies in the fact that the law allows it to happen.

We all need to pray for the poor woman that was attacked.  And for the dear lady who owned the chimp.  She is suffering on many different levels.  At the same time, we need to change the laws so that another incident as tragic as this will never happen again!

I am outraged about the octuplet outrage!  Late last month eight babies were born to a single mother.  The mother choose not to be identified.  Our wonderful press pushed and pushed until they found someone to “out” her and now they happily carry stories about how outraged their reading public is about a single mother selfishly having eight babies.

It seems to me the name was withheld from the public.  Then a friend told the press it was her friend.  Then her parents aired their dirty laundry with the press.  Finally, the mother did a television appearance.  Now everyone is mad at her.  Good grief, Judith Regan would support O. J. Simpson’s  book “If I Did It”, but she thinks Nadya Suleman is too selfish or an individual for people to want to read about?  She has received death threats?  People are boycotting her publicist?  Really?  And what are those people and what is their value to the world?

I know that we are in hard economic times, but it is time for people to back off and leave this person alone.  Do I think she did the right think to bring fourteen children into the world?  My friend, I wouldn’t have done it, but it is none of my business if she chose to do it.  And frankly, it’s none of yours either.  The one thing I do think is that if this family suffers from any results of her being brought to the public’s view, reporters ought to have to pay for any damages!

It’s amazing to me!  Parents continue to trust the judgment of their children.  This is done in spite of all the examples we have of kids making the wrong decision based on their age-constrained abilities.  And yes, I know, your kids are the exception to the rule.  I may have taught them.  And you might be surprised!

Students as young as eleven (and possibilally younger)  have myspace accounts.  They are easily impressed, lied to and misled.  Yet they are on there, most without their parent’s knowledge.  On the same note, they just removed 90,000 know sex offenders from the same site.  Offenders hoping to hook up with teens and children.  Your teens and your children.

And still, parents put the computer in the children’s bedrooms.  Sometimes they even equip them with webcams.  (Don’t get me started on that!)  With the door shut, you do not know what your angel is doing, and yes, they will lie to you about it.

If you truly want to make your kids as safe as possible, get smart as parents.  Trust them, but not implicitly.  But while your are trusting them, check up on them.  Get the technology that doesn’t belong in any child’s room back out.  Love them unconditionally as you walk past them in the family while they surf the web.  Oh, and when you go to the store or to bed, learn how to lock out the bad sites.  It won’t stop them completely.  I had one student with a myspace account but no computer.  But it will help keep them a little safer.

I am not a wealthy woman.  In fact, I live pay check to pay check with very little in my emergency fund.  I have what I have because I work every day.  I have the education that lets me work because I went to school, ignoring the idea that pregnant teenagers are doomed to fail.  The fourth of my five daughters was born one week after I graduated from college.  I was twenty years old.

When I listen to various people, from President Obama to Jeremiah Wright, to many others, I hear them saying that people who have worked hard, taken successful risks, saved and invested well owe some of that money to the have-nots, I can’t help but wonder why.  Why do the rich owe anybody else anything?  They take the risks and they pay their taxes.  I do not understand why people feel they should pay more, get more breaks and have more of their money taken away from them.

The main reason why I wonder is because the rich often take their own money and reinvest it in the country.   They will create new jobs, new businesses, more taxes.  What can the have-nots do with that same money to add value to the w0rld?  Wouldn’t it make more sense to take money that is wasted on arts like paintings with blood or other objectionable works and use that money to educate the have-nots so they can take care of themselves?  Wouldn’t it be better to teach them a better way of life so they don’t live from hand-out to hand-out.  Remember that old adage, “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day.  If you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime?”  Instead of taking money from the rich and giving the poor a “fish”, let the rich create jobs.  Teach the poor how to fill them and teach them “how to fish.”

When a new president takes office, I like to sit back and see what kind of individual they really are.  The Bible says, “By their fruits, you shall know them.”  Well, I wait and see what kind of fruit shows up on the tree.  On Obama’s first day in office, I wasn’t super excited about some of the decisions he made because they seemed a little hasty to me.  Yesterday, when he said he stood behind Daschle I was a little concerned.  To me, Daschle seemed like a bad choice.

Yesterday, Daschle, the former Democratic leader in the U.S. Senate, withdrew his own nomination.  As a man who made “mistakes he was sorry for” on his taxes, some of those mistakes were directly linked to the position he was supposed to be the best man to fill.  Medicare is a big deal and if he was going to lead it, he really should have known how to take care of his employee’s Medicare.  At any rate, didn’t he have someone help him with his taxes?

President Obama impressed me on Tuesday.  He came forward and stated that he had made an error in judgment with the Daschle nomination.  He took full responsibility for the decision.  He stated that he planned to correct it and make sure such a situation never happened again.  I don’t expect the president to be perfect because no one is perfect.  I enjoy it when they know, too, that they are not perfect.  To step forward and say what the Fonz never could, “I was wrong!” raised the man up a few notches in my assessment of him.  Kudos to you President Obama!