This Time of Year

 It's Christmas.

For retail and online sales, it's been Christmas for months. But now it is Christmas for all. I am a sappy sentimentalist. I buy Hallmark ornaments for my kids (incidentally Classic Cars are sold out and I REALLY need one for my son...). I watch movies and even replays of Christmas episodes of sitcoms and court cases. Yes, I watched the "Matlock" episode this morning with a very young Brian Cranston playing the part of the suspect. I am fully engulfed in every silly, shallow Christmas tradition and my house looks like an alien spaceship landing site. 

I love Christmas. I love it for all the traditional reasons-the Nativity, the celebration of the Birth of Christ and all that rolls out before us in the New Testament originating with this one act. Sadly, I am a Lapsed Catholic. I miss the Advent wreaths and sermons anticipating the birth of Christ. But I left the Catholic Church, for the time being, because of a creeping wokeness that led one misbegotten member of the to use Passion Sunday to lecture the congregation on social justice. That was on top of the previous hiding of predatory priests. My husband and I were (unfortunately) married by Rudy Kos. He was the first domino to fall in that debacle. But I miss the liturgy, the music, the candles, Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve with early breakfast after. I feel like it has been stolen from me thanks to COVID and social forces. I yearn for the sights and smells and sounds like an addict seeking their drug of choice. Its absence saddens me and makes Christmas difficult.

Christmas, like all such events, is a day of happy visits and sad absences. I think of Dad, who died on Christmas Day 2002. Imagine me, still a relatively young mother, coming home with three kids on Christmas night only to get that phone call from East Texas. We were heading there the next day. Instead we had to plan a funeral, driving in the dark of night with three sad sleeping children to sleep on a lumpy bed and plan. It began one of the more difficult periods of my life. It was that point I found out just how helpless my Mom was and how much I would have to parent her along with my own children.

The years passed. Christmas stayed as festive as I could measure. Mom would always be included and her needs accounted for first. My children grew into adults and adaptations to the celebration moved from Christmas Day to Christmas Eve. Our celebration of gifts and gathering became a feast of tamales, enchiladas, beans and all the Christmas cookies you could eat. Our grandchildren could share that night with us, leaving Christmas morning for them to establish their own traditions-a point I believe is important because if you always go to Grandma's house for Christmas, then the traditions you hold die when Grandma passes? Parents of adult children need to learn to allow their children the freedom to create their own traditions. 

I wouldn't lie and tell you I am giddy all the time about Christmas. I work very hard to create events that will make others happy. I don't think I always succeed. There are always misses as well as hits. My daughter is divorcing which is a source of pain for us all. My brother is estranged from the family still, although his war with Dad should've been buried 20 years ago when Dad passed. My in-laws are still somewhat overbearing and demanding. Our nation is at a critical stage with people in charge who seem to embrace evil over good. Those things weigh on me. But I am trying very hard to bear up under the disappointment and resentment that such actions can create. I'm reading uplifting accounts and reading through commentaries on Christmas along with a book of Newberry Award winning Christmas stories. I think as adults, we all seek that spark of joy and a few of us achieve it. But most of us, just like the Magi, will spend the next year searching for the Divine Spark that can delight and heal. 

I wish all of you a Merry Christmas, a blessed New Year and a 2023 that is a delivery from the burders we seem to have chained to our ankles over the last three years.

Yes Things Are Really This Bad in Public Schools.

 I didn't write this, but I agree with much of what this self-admitted leftwing teacher says. Schools are out of control and everything is predicated on race, diversity, intersectionality-in short everything except teaching children how to read, write, do math, understand basic science and relate to our shared American and Global historical events. 

Just Read it. Then share it.

Once again the question is "Why?" And as before the answer comes down to Accountability.

 See if you can spot the problem. Read This story on the Uvalde shooter's mom.

For the last five years, maybe more, I've written blogs describing how young people are being raised without any sort of personal accountability for their actions. Helicopter parenting was a manifestation of this, with parents intervening at every turn to prevent their child from every suffering any consequences for their bad choices. When you start in Pre-K to soften every blow and refuse to let children learn how to function on their own, you risk building an adult who has no feelings for anyone but themselves. 

The shooter's mother, who no doubt has her own burden to carry, says we shouldn't judge her murderous son. But that's the problem with out society at large. We expunge criminals if they give the "correct" political group traction on their narratives. Why should we not judge the teachers who refuse to abide by basic security protocols? Why should we not blame police for not going in? Why should we not blame the Biden administration for lockdowns that have resulted in record teen suicides? The exclaim "Don't Judge" needs to be put to rest. A person who hurts another deserves blame.

We've seen many of these shootings. We've also see way too many politicians jump on their automated bandwagons to get their share of demographics. Let me just say here, no matter what message Beto O Rourke and his followers think he was delivering, a news conference intending to give crucial information and to inform the public is not the place to do it. Beto epitomizes what I despise in the Left. Children are dead and he's crowning himself with the attention. Shameful and disgusting.

We have guns in our home. My husband is licensed in Texas and had to undergo background checks and had to wait as do all other lawful gunowners in Texas. Criminals and psychopaths won't go through these channels. But if it makes people "feel" better go ahead and raise the age to purchase a gun to 21. While you're at it, raise the age to vote back to 21 as well, because if you aren't sober and sane enough to own a gun, you have no business voting. But don't be surprised if down the road some other young psychopath decides to blow things up or become a pyromaniac because people inclined to kill don't really care much how they do it.

Background checks are fine, but unfortunately they often don't delve into sealed juvenile records. I'm tired of juvenile criminals having their slate swept clean so they can continue a reign of terror all over again. I'm also tired of mentally ill teens being treated on an impersonal "medicate and release" protocol which does little but give them more drugs that they can trade for far more dangerous street drugs. We have too few beds for the mentally ill. Back in the day liberals thought mental hospitals were bad, that they unfairly restricted the mentally ill. But now we have mentally ill among us, many are homeless, and some are bounced in and out of jails and hospital wards until they die or kill someone else. It is not cruel to put someone in a facility that keeps them from harming themselves or others, but under the laws today police are unable to do anything until someone gets hurt.

Many will say this is not a topic that a teacher or former teacher should debate, but it does have serious impact on society in that it impacts our youngest citizens. As a teacher I've had students who were deeply disturbed. I've had kids on Thorazine, kids with ankle monitors and one kid escorted into class by an assistant principal who whispered "Just don't make him mad." I've had students so menacing I was afraid of them. I've had students openly planning chaos and violence. And this was in a "good" school. We have a generation of kids who are not all bad, but there are enough growing up without morals or ethics that they come across as almost feral. If I am casting doubt on safety, imagine how children feel.

There are many ways to change this story. First, have armed resource officers on duty every day, all day. The resource officer was gone from Robb Elementary in Uvalde, which I find a strange coincidence. Second, lock all doors leading outside and only have one monitored entrance. At Robb Elementary someone propped open the door near the Teachers' parking lot. I've stumbled across similar things and one time when going up to work during the weekend, I called the police when I found a door propped open. These seems like small things, but they make a huge impact. Third, have staff fully trained under the Guardian programs or something similar. Shooters want to be the center of interest and they will avoid armed buildings. This would help schools stay safer.

As for society, we've got to stop thinking that laying blame is the end of the world and that nobody should ever be judged for their actions. The Don't Judge mantra needs to go away. It should never be taught to children and certainly should be used by adults. 

This Didn't Happen Overnight

 I grew up during the late 1960's and early 1970's. In direct opposition to the sex kittens like Marilyn Monroe, Jane Mansfield and even Tuesday Weld, suddenly as a young woman, my curvy figure was not acceptable. The dawning of the age of Twiggy and the era of mini-skirts and hip hugger jeans shunned the normal figures of young women, preferring the androgynous look of skinny boyishness that included long eyelashes and short hair. Early on I wanted to design fashion and I read about the various designers. No longer were the classic designs of Chanel and Dior and their celebration of the female form popular. Instead a gauntness and lack of curves was pushed through women's and teen magazines.

Is it any wonder anorexia and bulimia came to the forefront during the 1980's? Heroin chic and use of cocaine sped up the idea that all the popular kids, the party kids, were thin. How many stars and celebrities did we lose to anorexia or other eating disorders? Karen Carpenter was the unfortunate poster child for this disorder. And again, we have a new class of celebrity fashion designers, many of the male, many of them gay, who seem to be designing for a figure that is not female. There was a short respite during the mid 80's where big shoulder pads and bow blouses were what passed for feminine attire

The 1990's and into the 2000's, we see advancements in the cause of feminism, Title IX forced many colleges to defund Men's programs to give equal amounts to Women's athletics and while the new message was "be healthy" the reality was the women who were often in our ads, movies and magazines were unreasonably thin and girlish in direct contrast to the population at large. There was an increase in the concept of Unisex dressing. Repeatedly during this period fashions for young women were boyish in nature, often mimicking the same slate of gay male designers who had originally establish the androgynous model. The thin model becomes an icon. Sports Illustrated sells out their issues with gorgeous unrealistically thin female bodies.

In the 2000's  the children who were born after 9/11 start watching Sailor Moon as it came to the US from Japan. They embraced anime via Pokemon and other animated stories. These innocent images would eventually lead many older kids to darker manga, even gender bending, sexually provocative  imagery. By 2009 half the high school kids in the US had cell phones. Once they moved to smart phones, images, websites, cameras were easily accessible. Remember, all during this time girls are still getting messages about being strong, but thin, sexy but innocent. Converging messages at a time when teenagers are already confused.

By the last ten years of the 2010 to 2020, many girls who viewed themselves as weak as females, assumed new personas of males. Some, seeking notoriety over popularity, claimed to be lesbian or bisexual often walking down the hall holding hands with other girls and sometimes even making out in corridors. It was bad enough having to patrol hallways and classrooms for straight couples seeking to act out sexually, but these girls often did it in as public a location as possible. They wanted the new edgy reputation in place of an unattainable image of what fashion designers and people like Wintour placed before them. 

When in 2015, gay marriage was legalized, many on the Right said it was a slippery slope. Too many others said "oh let them alone, they're happy, they got all they wanted." But that wasn't the case. What was originally just an alliance  of gay and lesbian adults, became a spectrum of 70 or more "gender preferences" each with their own impossible to remember pronouns. What is more, since they cannot reproduce on their own, they feel they need to mentor children into gayness, which is what coaching young children in sexual behavior is meant to do. Just as a child seeing violence done to others can desensitize them to violence done to them or those they love, exposing children in what psychologist usually consider a dormant period to sexually explicit material desensitizes them.

I have come to this conclusion. The Left does not like children as a rule. They view they as either burdens to be eliminated or interns to be rigorously trained in every opinion and behavior abnormality acceptable to the Left. Now that we have states like Colorado LEGALIZING MURDER OF INFANTS we have evidently come full circle. The Left has always hate children and while feminists may think as lesbians they are freer now, they fail to realize that girls are being victimized systematically by counselors, doctors and teachers to mutilate themselves for the sake of political cause-not personal joy. 

Realize as well that many parents are allowing this to happen to boys and girls based on temporary whims being reinforced by parental urgency to appear with it. Sadly many of these cases of no fitting in are depression, autism or bipolar disorders. This is helicopter parenting on steroids. The same parents who believe their offspring should suffer no drawbacks in life are the ones trying to "fix" their kids. There are clinics and doctors making fortunes off of this. It will go down in history as the worst child abuse since footbinding and the castrati.

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There are Actions and there is Illusion

 While Germany, Poland, Switzerland and even France, are hitting Russia with major sanctions and acquiring the properties and yachts from Russian oligarchs, why isn't the US doing the same? Why aren't we shunning Russian oil and producing our own energy? What ties does the Biden administration have with Russia these days?

"...The 237-foot Stella Maris, which was seen by an AP journalist docked this past week in Nice, France, was believed to be owned by Rashid Sardarov, a Russian billionaire oil and gas magnate. After publication of an earlier version of this story, AP was contacted Sunday by yacht broker Joan Plana Palao, who said his company represents a U.S. citizen from California who purchased the Stella Maris last month. He declined to disclose the name of the buyer or the person from whom the boat had been purchased..."

I kind of wonder what tech magnate here in the US bought the Stella Maris, don't you?

LINK

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-vladimir-putin-boris-johnson-europe-united-states-10a82777a3b4a6ccafc38c223b659a03

Pardon my cynicism, but I have a serious question about the news we're being shown. I have great sympathy for the Ukrainian people who are fighting for their freedom and even more for the women and children fleeing the violence in their homeland, BUT On NBC News today they showed a clip of how they were trying to keep things normal for the children and in that clip they were presenting a birthday cake and singing "Happy Birthday" IN ENGLISH. I don't begrudge the cake or celebration (although most celebrate their Baptismal day, not their birthday...) but wouldn't a child prefer to hear birthday wishes in their language? Gut instinct tells me something isn't quite right. Is this "news" manufactured for US consumption? If so, WHY?

Biden The Destroyer

First, it is important to know that Joe Biden has always considered himself modeled after FDR. He likes the image of being a rich, elite, liberal socialist imposing rules on people "for their own good." We've seen much of this-COVID mandates, masking, lockdowns, shutdowns, fines are just the top of this particularly nasty iceberg. We also have demands for "green" measures that cost more, trigger inflation and in general hurt average Americans so that the rich liberals can feel good about themselves.

We've seen this Biden administration misstep on so many fronts. They've bungled COVID. They've abandoned Americans and allies in Afghanistan. They've made our military so woke that we're the laughingstock of the world. And none of this seems to bother this president. They allowed untold numbers of foreign nationals to enter our country without so much as a COVID test. Along with those people are cartels agents delivering deadly drugs to their networks across the nation. How many Fentanyl deaths do we need to make this real?

There's homelessness, rising crime, inflation. There are houses no middle class couple can afford and cars they cannot buy. And none of this matters to the Biden administration. They have a Secretary of Transportation that was MIA for MONTHS before announcing he was on family leave. That same goober, Pete Buttigieg, gave his donors $33,000,000 in contracts-a crime that would get most politicians removed, but Democrats can do anything with impunity. We hear this story over and over again.

Hunter Biden's paintings, Nancy Pelosi's stocks, all the children of Romney's, Kerry's, Schumer's and on and on who get six figure jobs with no experience or background knowledge in the industry-are all part of the type of patronage that supposedly went out of fashion when the feudal system ended. Think back if you would to 2009, when Nancy Pelosi rounded up JUST DEMOCRATS to meet behind closed doors with Big Pharma. Who got paid and who made deals? These people are mandating "free" shots that are not free at all. They are paid for with tax dollars, just like those checks that we now have to include as income for the IRS.

This debacle with Ukraine is a symptom of a much larger problem. Ukraine has been corrupt for a long time. Biden knows that. It's the center of lots of organized crime and in that regard Putin, playing global Al Capone, is taking over another gang's territory to run his games through the Ukraine. Make no mistake, this is about having a better posture to influence Syria, Iran and Iraq as well as controlling the crime schemes that flow through that country. On Biden's part there's probably the hope that war will so confuse things that the evidence and witnesses of whatever scam he and Hunter ran via Burisma will disappear.

We have rich despots playing Risk with real lives. And if we don't man our borders, return to a law and order footing, I'm not so sure that terrorists entering via our sieve-like borders will wait patiently. If there was ever a time when Americans needed the Second Amendment, this is it.

Never Thought I'd See This Day

 I am not a nut.

I am not someone easily played, being skeptical on most things.

I am pretty pragmatic, seeking to look at a problem and solve it.

So why am I in such despair over how our government at every level seems to have failed us. The main goal of the Federal government is to protect and defend-to protect citizens and defend our sovereign nation. Both of those goals have be blithely ignored by a feckless arrogant ruling class who seeks far more to enrich themselves and their families as well as accruing status and power. This is the type of tyranny people come here to escape! Yet we have someone who appears to be little more than a puppet being run by a shadow government which controls our elite policing agencies.

I am sick and scared. Sick of seeing everyone else with their hands out while my pension check decreases with every action the Federal government takes. My check is less, but my insurance and prescriptions are more. How dare Joe Biden claim to be helping Americans when even people I know are liberals are bemoaning how the escalation of prices has suddenly made them poor.

I used to support my government and believe we were the last, best hope, but not anymore.

I think we are being duped by a cadre of thugs in the guise of CEO's and billionaires.

They do not care about us and it's beginning to be clear nobody does.

It's in the Blood

My husband has donated blood for years. He has B+, which is relative rare.  When our local blood bank, Carter Blood Care, runs analysis on your donation, you are given valuable information online such as cholesterol and antibodies. My husband and I looked at his most recent donation information and surprise, surprise, he has COVID antibodies. He and I had COVID over a year ago in November 2020. We also got the two shot Pfizer "vaccine" in order to help my aging Mom who was at the time in assisted living.

Fast forward to now and we have a Big Media push to get not just vaxxed, but also boosted. And at 65, my husband and I are the key targets. I'd like to know why. Why should we get additional unknown materials injected into our bodies, when our bodies are producing antibodies just fine. What is more, if you multiply the hundreds of thousands of people like us, whose bodies are producing antibodies, then what is the need to impose yet more mandates to get boosters?

This comes down to two issue-power and money. The people in power are using their status to control people via unconstitutional mandates and media induced fear mongering. But power alone isn't enough. People who desire power also want wealth.  Why perpetuate the artificial need for vaccines, when people have antibodies in play?  If you create a need where none exists, you are guilty of fraud. If you use inside knowledge of an industry such as Big Pharma, to enrich yourself or your family via stock buys, then you are guilty of insider trading-the same thing that got Bernie Madoff in prison and toppled Enron. It's illegal and if, as I suspect, the Congressional Democrats are involved in massive insider trading orchestrated by the likes of Nancy Pelosi  starting with the Democrat only meeting with Big Pharma behind closed doors back in 2009, we have a situation where peoples' lives have been taken for the sake of power and money. Think about it.

Even the Rats Know Part Two

Whether it's a school, an organization, a corporation or a government agency, you know there are problems when key players begin to depart. Oh, they'll give innocuous reasons such as "family" or "health issues" or something that makes the departed sound like noble team players. But the truths lie in the rumor mill-the murmur behind the scenes that are played out in desperate searches for some other mensch to fill the spot. You can read more here.

Consider, if you will, the CEO's such as Jack Dorsey who left or were asked to leave their highly compensated positions. The Big Tech industry has been outed as more or less an amplifier for the DNC. As a result, there's been some pushback by the public and questions in Congress over the validity of things such as Facebook Fact Checking. Given that social media has essentially supplanted the evening news on TV, it's a good question to ask if they are being balanced in their presentations or if they are instead, using their platforms to slant issues for their own benefit. When you realize 94% of Google employees donated to Democrats, it's a fair question to ask. You can read more about CEO resignation in Big Tech in this article and even more in the economy at large as resignations percolate throughout the elites in this article. 

This goes back to our basic "fight or flight" hard wiring. While some resignations were due to age (and more probably need to happen) I think when it comes to government resignations, it is because they are frustrated, unheard or ignored. It was not a joke that Maxine Waters' office churned workers like an old Kenmore washer. Those people were often verbally abused, given unrealistic expectations and treated as if the head honcho was royalty. I'm sorry to say that as a woman, I've personally experienced this far more often from female bosses than male bosses. There are some women who mistake obnoxiousness for assertiveness. I believe that is what is happening in many congressional offices and especially in the Office of VP Harris. 

Why should this matter? It should matter because she is literally next in line to an aging, and I believe unwell, president. The failure to read memos, to attend informational meetings and to basically play out a scenario of Barbie Goes to Washington rather than doing anything in regard to her assigned jobs should put in clear perspective the ego in charge of the VP's office-and this is not about serving the people.