Thursday, March 31, 2011

Original Purposes

Okay-I have some questions again:
1. There is a new product-I probably can't say the name, but its commercials say, "Liquid water enhancer." WTF????????? Just drink some water. If you need to enhance it, heat some ground coffee beans or tea in it. Or ferment some fruits or grains in it. Do we really need another colored powder to put in our water?
2. There is a big scandal in Fort Worth right now because a couple of high school baseball players "sacrificed" a couple of live chickens on the baseball field of their school in the hopes of ending a slump. I heard on today's local news that the story has gone national now, with PETA asking the school to use the incident in order to teach all the school's students about compassion for animals. Good thinking. My uncle used to own a farm with 150,000 chicks squeezed into a long, rectangular "coop." They often killed each other or trampled themselves because their lives were so miserable until they were sold to a guy who posed in a pilgrim's hat that slaughtered them for human consumption. While I don't approve what the baseball players did, and I don't know where those chickens came from, it was probably a more merciful end for the chickens. I am not a vegetarian, though I do consider it frequently. But my only visit to my uncle's chicken farm nearly cured me of that. Can we get some perspective?
3. There is a town north of Dallas that is called Plano. Like so many cities and communities right now, their city budget is going through tough times. There were announcements yesterday of cuts that truly upset some parents, who told news reporters that they chose to move to Plano because the schools were consistently scored very high. But I couldn't help feeling a sense of irony that the news kept taking the cameras into the office of the school superintendent, where there was a plaque with the letters "PISD" on a shelf above his desk. No wonder those parents were upset.
4. Do the people on the right really need James O'Keefe? Do they really take him seriously?
5. How did it work that the bible already had a convenient excuse for when Christians don't do what they claim to believe? (The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, etc.) My father, who was downright anti-Christian until his heart attack 20 years ago, has been a practicing baptist ever since. Yet he is full of hate and judgment, and has negative things to say about everyone who is different than him-liberals, gays, anyone of a "minority" ethnicity, etc. Pop, who tore the pages out of your bible that talk about loving your neighbor and your enemy and your brother? Oh wait, you can't stop sinning, no matter how hard you try, but that's ok-you have an out.. How convenient.
6. There 's a commercial about California that starts with one of the Kardashian sisters saying, "People have alot of misconceptions about California, but none of them are true." Really? Isn't that what makes them "misconceptions?"
7. My last question of this rant is this-what can America do? Every politician claims to want to help the middle class. But every policy enacted helps only the upper-upper-upper class; Wall Street and the defense industry. We have now entered a third war against an Islamic nation, and the president says it won't add to the national deficit. That should make the right happy-since the deficit is the only thing they care about. But yet, we are going through a tsunami of laying off teachers? Could the money we aren't spending on drones and smart bombs be used to pay teachers rather than increasing class sizes to 40? Mr. President, your banker friends do it all the time-move money from one set of books to another. That's how some presidents close their budget gaps-borrowing money from the social security fund. It looks like money just appeared where we needed it the most, and didn't cost us anything. But the appearance is that the government does not care one whit about people who work, and only coddles the very rich. I made a mistake on my taxes in 2006, and we may never be finished paying the IRS that $3,000. But I can think of 4 or 5 government officials who failed to pay taxes on hundreds of thousands of dollars of income, and they keep getting promoted. What if I stopped paying? I know that the taxpaying public would be providing me with room and board for a few years. Why? Where is fairness for the working class? I won't let that happen of course, because the taxpaying public is my peeps. Especially since giant corporations not only don't pay taxes, but some get billion dollar refunds.