I’m going back and cleaning up some work on the blog. All the way back to February of 2008. Seems the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Cloistered Children
February/11/2008 23:04PM
In three short generations children in the US have lost the option and will to play outside. My father spent his whole childhood outside growing up on a farm. That carried over into his adult life. He was a contractor and spent the majority of his time outdoors. His only hobbies were hunting and fishing. When I was 4 my mother had me ride my bike to our downtown area to deliver checks for bills.?In the summer I spent many days never coming home until the street lights came on. My children spent less time outside, but still we felt safe letting them roam the neighborhood and create their own entertainment. When the weather was good they were never in the house.
My grandchildren are rarely outside except for organized activities. Statistics show today’s kids in this country spend very little time outside the house. When they are outside, they are in their own yard. ?Outdoor activities are replaced by digital entertainment.?An adult watches children while they wait for the bus.?My kids walked to school. What does this mean for the future?
Will we continue to grow perverts faster than the law can control? Will bankrupt family values create greater threats to the safety of our kids? Will my grandkids not know the joys of hiking, camping, fishing, and enjoying nature? Why protect the environment since the lack of law and order won’t alloy kids to enjoy it?
Why did this happen? I first point my finger to the ACLU.?They work harder to protect the perverts than the law does to arrest them.?Next come the judges. They are too soft. Too many slaps on the wrist. Next, we seem to have money to police foreign nations but no money for new jails.?Family values come next. What type of home spawns child molesters and worse child killers. Why can’t we restore our country to the type of land where we can turn our kids out again? Why did we let Castro dump his prisons at our doorstep? Why didn’t we ship their sorry asses back to Fidel with a few or our own.?Lethargy.? We?just resign ourselves to this. Why? This isn’t even mentioned in Senator Obama’s change plans.?Why can’t we be tough on crime here? Why should my children live in fear that something bad will happen to their kids if they are out of their sight?
This is a big symptom of how sick this nation is. Where does the cure come from?
.
A Penny For Your Thoughts
February/13/2008 2:55AM
If the USA were USA Inc. with real executives and shareholders would it be run differently? Let’s look at a really simple issue, the penny. With copper costs soaring it costs more to make a penny than the penny is worth. Many other less progressive countries have discontinued their penny equivalent.?Citizens, retailers, and banks all hate the penny.?Why do we still keep the penny? Is it?too much to ask for Washington to step up and make it go away?
Here’s my two cents worth. If we can’t deal with an issue as simple as a penny, how will we deal with those big issues we are facing? In a corporation of even medium size the penny would have gone away long ago.?Until Washington can do more than hold hearings and add pork projects on pork projects , debate endlessly, investigate everything and everybody, and pontificate, we have little chance for real progress.
Someone once said “lawyers are like beavers damming up the streams of progress”. Since the majority of elected officials today are lawyers, maybe this explains the paralysis.
The Cotton Candy Generation
February/13/2008 23:24PM
How did we get to the point where my grandchildren have lost their freedom to play outside and their parents live in fear every day that some low life will harm them? We, those of us who disagree with what has happened to our country, were too busy doing what we thought was the right thing.?Working hard to get ahead and making a better life for our kids. We didn’t have time or take time to put up a fight. If we had, the deck was stacked and we would have lost.
Our family values today were shaped by the ACLU, TV, Hollywood, teachers and professors, the courts, politicians,?and other thought leaders. They took over and we didn’t respond.?In many cases they do this full-time and we could only spend part-time trying to undo what they were doing.?We have accepted that is it OK to have the society we have today. We don’t see a choice.
Why isn’t there an opposite of the ACLU? We don’t we kick in and have a group that defends the people the ACLU destroy.?A group to defend the cop who shot the guy. Every challenge the ACLU makes should be met with a like challenge from the conservative side. Are there no attorneys that would work pro bono for the other side? We are slowly getting choices for news, but too little too late.?We have been so spun we are cotton candy.
Change is not always good. Being soft on crime has not made this a better country. We won WWII by out producing our enemies. More planes ,more tanks, more bombs. We couldn’t do that today. Our environmental zealots don’t want us to make anything in this country.?Worrying more about what goes on in far lands is not better than worrying about what we are?doing at home. Spending time and money on space is not better than super trains that go from A to B with great fuel efficiency.
Do we ever say we’ve had enough and start shoving some of the guilt back down the liberals throats and say” I have a better vision for this country and none of it fits with the crap you are feeding me.”?My vision is for a strong America where we take action on problems and solve them.?If there are trade- offs, so be it. If freaks need to go to jail we build more jails and get every one of them off the streets. Too bad for them, better for my grandkids.?The hard core environmentalists can go off to the Yukon. They are trying to convince me it will be tropics next week.?We will drill the hell out of Alaska, build new nuclear plants, new refineries, mine the coal in Utah that Clinton made into a National Park, expedite new plants than produce anything we need.?We will do what is right and fair for our future generations, not some Ralph Nader future. Remember, Ralph never had a driver’s license.
Until my generation stops being spun like cotton candy, nothing will change and it will get worse. It’s the least we can do to remedy the mess we’ve made by working too hard at work
This is one of the best Blogs you have written. It is so true. Kids today can’t do anything with out there cell phone. It is a crime.