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Small request...
Can you please send some support, love, prayers and energy Carson's way? She fractured her ankle at training last night and is going to be in a cast for 4-6 weeks. NOT great timing. Huge tournament this weekend, season about to start.
Add to that her aversion to sitting, especially on the bench - well, she's more than a little unhappy right now... she's the most mature 16 year old you'll meet, but this has thrown her hard.
Linda
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It is stunning to me that an entire Presidential campaign is running on outright lies, but it is. And if you are not paying attention, shame on you.
As much as I hate the taste of my own bile, I have made myself watch the speeches at the RNC convention. Last night, Paul Ryan took the stage as the VP nom and opened his mouth to spew forth a pile of aural BS wide and deep enough to bury the Titanic.
No matter. Lie was heaped upon lie, but all to loud applause. The cheering of those who have still been pissing themselves over losing in 2008, those who cannot stand being out of power, those who exist on a steady diet of FOX, Rush, and bullshit.
Yes, if bullshit was a menu item, they were well fed last night.
Lies don't bother Romney, Ryan, or anyone bankrolling their bid to "take back our country." (Point of order - no one has yet been able to answer my question, "From what?") They even have their head pollster responding to being called out on the blatant lies with this gem, "We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers."
Translation: Don't mind our pants being on fire. Just listen to what we say.
And their base will. Because their base has some of the lowest effort thinkers in this country. Willfully ignorant, lacking in intellectual curiosity. Simply content to have their inner narratives fed and fed steadily. No matter that the spoon is obviously heaped up with steaming dung - they gladly shovel it into the gaping maws of their suspect gray matter.
Oddly, the biggest call out of Ryan's Pinnochioisms comes this morning from progressive FOX News columnist, Sally Kohn.
Pay attention. I told you this the last time around. If you are not checking facts, digging, CARING - you do not deserve to vote.
Sally's column:
1. Dazzling
At least a quarter of Americans still don’t know who Paul Ryan is, and only about half who know and have an opinion of him view him favorably
.
So, Ryan’s primary job tonight was to introduce himself and make himself seem likeable, and he did that well. The personal parts of the speech were very personally delivered, especially the touching parts where Ryan talked about his father and mother and their roles in his life. And at the end of the speech, when Ryan cheered the crowd to its feet, he showed an energy and enthusiasm that’s what voters want in leaders and what Republicans have been desperately lacking in this campaign.
To anyone watching Ryan’s speech who hasn’t been paying much attention to the ins and outs and accusations of the campaign, I suspect Ryan came across as a smart, passionate and all-around nice guy — the sort of guy you can imagine having a friendly chat with while watching your kids play soccer together. And for a lot of voters, what matters isn’t what candidates have done or what they promise to do —it’s personality. On this measure, Mitt Romney has been catastrophically struggling and with his speech, Ryan humanized himself and presumably by extension, the top of the ticket.
2. Deceiving
On the other hand, to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.
The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth. Said fact checkers have already condemned certain arguments that Ryan still irresponsibly repeated.
Fact: While Ryan tried to pin the downgrade of the United States’ credit rating on spending under President Obama, the credit rating was actually downgraded because Republicans threatened not to raise the debt ceiling.
Fact: While Ryan blamed President Obama for the shut down of a GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, the plant was actually closed under President George W. Bush. Ryan actually asked for federal spending to save the plant, while Romney has criticized the auto industry bailout that President Obama ultimately enacted to prevent other plants from closing.
Fact: Though Ryan insisted that President Obama wants to give all the credit for private sector success to government, that isn't what the president said. Period.
Fact: Though Paul Ryan accused President Obama of taking $716 billion out of Medicare, the fact is that that amount was savings in Medicare reimbursement rates (which, incidentally, save Medicare recipients out-of-pocket costs, too) and Ryan himself embraced these savings in his budget plan.
Elections should be about competing based on your record in the past and your vision for the future, not competing to see who can get away with the most lies and distortions without voters noticing or bother to care. Both parties should hold themselves to that standard. Republicans should be ashamed that there was even one misrepresentation in Ryan’s speech but sadly, there were many.
3. Distracting
And then there’s what Ryan didn’t talk about.
Ryan didn’t mention his extremist stance on banning all abortions with no exception for rape or incest, a stance that is out of touch with 75% of American voters.
Ryan didn’t mention his previous plan to hand over Social Security to Wall Street.
Ryan didn’t mention his numerous votes to raise spending and balloon the deficit when George W. Bush was president.
Ryan didn’t mention how his budget would eviscerate programs that help the poor and raise taxes on 95% of Americans in order to cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires even further and increase — yes, increase —the deficit.
These aspects of Ryan’s resume and ideology are sticky to say the least. He would have been wise to tackle them head on and try and explain them away in his first real introduction to voters. But instead of Ryan airing his own dirty laundry, Democrats will get the chance.
At the end of his speech, Ryan quoted his dad, who used to say to him, “"Son. You have a choice: You can be part of the problem, or you can be part of the solution."
Ryan may have helped solve some of the likeability problems facing Romney, but ultimately by trying to deceive voters about basic facts and trying to distract voters from his own record, Ryan’s speech caused a much larger problem for himself and his running mate.
Sally Kohn is a writer and Fox News contributor. You can find her online at http://sallykohn.com or on Twitter@sallykohn.
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"Teach your children well..."
So goes the line from the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song.
If only more parents DID, perhaps we wouldn't have stories like this one.
Last summer, 17 year old Kentucky teen, Savannah Dietrich went to a party. She drank. She passed out.
So far, unfortunately, there's nothing history making in her story. Underage drinking takes place in every town across this nation. Don't act like it doesn't.
Here in my neck of the woods, a sweet faced 16 year old died last year after drinking at a house party, hitting her head, and being left unattended by the frightened and drunk teens she was with.
It happens. Should it? Of course not. But parents go out of town, teens are left unattended, and the rest is a tale as old as time, Mrs. Potts.
In Savannah's case, no one died. Thankfully. However, her life was forever altered by the pictures discovered after the fact.
When she came to, her clothes were askew and she felt like something was "not right."
"I had my dress back on but my bra was shifted all weird and then my underwear was off."
She was then informed that boys had taken photos of her.
"They told me that it was me on the kitchen floor, passed out, my eyes are closed. My clothes are -- I'm exposed. Someone said one boy had his arm broken at the time and said his cast was in the picture."
Start doing some math here. Underage drinking + disheveled clothing + underwear gone. Nothing good comes from that equation.
At a hearing in June, the boys confessed to felony sexual abuse and misdemeanor voyeurism.
CONFESSED. As in, they did it, perhaps more. It was widely reported that Savannah and her parents were very unhappy with the plea bargaining that had taken place between the state and the boys' attorneys.
But such is our beautiful legal system - the equivalent ot judicial Swiss cheese, with holes big enough for human rats to crawl through and escape full punishment for their crimes.
And make no mistake, we are talking CRIME here.
Think not? Are you sitting there blaming the victim for having the audacity to pass out? Doing the, "well, she was asking for it" dance in your head?
No one, male or female deserves to be violated. I don't care if they are stone cold sober and attacked while out jogging, or passed out at a party. Human decency and decent upbringing should come immediately to the fore and the instinct should be to protect, not perv those who cannot defend themselves.
So, the girl is molested, if not more, her name and face are made public, and those pictures shared by even more shitty and unscrupulous teens.
But because of THEIR age, their names cannot be made public. The court ordered her to not talk about it, or risk 180 days in prison and a $500 fine.
BULL and SHIT.
A five year old knows enough right vs wrong when it comes to private parts to call bullshit on this behavior, yet these young men get away with it, with guaranteed anonymity because of their age?
Their faces and the details of their crimes should be just as out there as the pictures they gleefully shared of Savannah. My opinion.
Savannah's, too.
She took to the teen dominated land of justice, Twitter, and in August 2011 named her assailants. "There you go, lock me up," she tweeted to a couple hundred Twitter followers, outing her assailants by name. "I'm not protecting anyone that made my life a living Hell.”
She also added her thoughts on Facebook: "If reporting a rape only got me to the point that I'm not allowed to talk about it, then I regret it."
Was it a rape, by clinical definition of penetration? I don't know, get Congressman Akin on the phone and we'll talk legitimacy. She was passed out, anything could have happened.
Again, let me stress - these pieces of shit molested her - they CONFESSED to that much to avoid a trial and potential of TRUE PUNISHMENT. They took pictures that they shared via cell phone to cell phone to cell phone throughout their high school. They were proud of what they had done.
THEY outed Savannah. Passed out, exposed. violated. No one protected her identity.
Personally, if this scenario played out with one of my daughters - massive disappointment not withstanding for the underage drinking - I would have said "Fuck the potential jailtime and $500 fine. I'm buying a fucking gross of billboards and plastering their faces and names everywhere. I will buy a website and post their pictures and list of offenses. I will email every college registrar in this country their names and crimes."
Of course, Savannah was hit with a contempt motion filed by David Mejia, the attorney of one of the boys, because...wait for it....
SHE DESTROYED HIS LIFE.
"He's had to move," said legal piece of shit, Mejia. "He has lost all the potential that was there. He was attending high school and was kicked out. He was on course to a scholarship to an Ivy League school to play sports and that may be jeopardized. He's in therapy. He's just overwhelmed and devastated by what started from the conduct of this young girl saying false things as she did."
YOUR CLIENT CONFESSED. YOUR CLIENT SHARED PHOTOS OF A YOUNG GIRL IN A COMPROMISED STATE. OH, AND ASK YOUR CLIENT ABOUT HER UNDERWEAR. DID IT JUST FALL OFF HER BODY?
Mejia's contempt motion drew the expected national ire, so he withdrew it, whining all the way, "When we filed the motion, we wanted our client's names off the Internet and wanted her to know that what she was doing was wrong. [She should] acknowledge what she's done, remove the name and promise not to do it again."
FUCK. YOU. MR. MEJIA.
He then goes on to blame today's technology for his client's current state of affairs.
"I think it's rather astonishing how the Internet changes everything," he said. "Look at [Rep. Todd Akin], the politician from Missouri who was on the news a few days ago and made a comment about 'legitimate rape.' Those comments have now gone viral and he is ruined. Twenty years ago it would not have happened like this. These things just stream with enormous speed across the whole country."
Yes, David, 20 years ago pieces of shit who committed crimes, or made gallingly ignorant and offensive comments were protected by there only be newsprint. How sad for you and your poor wittle molester client that people can now KNOW what he did. That people all over the world are privvy to the GOP attack on women, the shit-for-brains statements made by men like Akin whose sole understanding of female reproduction is that the stork still brings the babies. From Jesus.
How sad for you that the Internet makes it impossible to hide from your actions like back in the day. How you must pine for the days when you could drunk up a girl, molest her in the frat house, and then dump her back at her dorm with no penalty.
Evil cell phones with cameras. Evil Twitter. Evil internet. And don't forget that evil girl your client molested. How dare she want justice?
But back to the line from the song. If more parents taught their children WELL, more children would not be engaging in criminal activity. More children would not be throwing alcohol hazed parties the second mom and dad are out of the driveway. More children would not stand by laughing while others molest an unconscious partygoer.
Parenting is not easy, but by the same token, it is not rocket science. There is right. There is wrong. For both the child AND the parent. If you abdicate your responsibilities as a parent, you can expect no better than an abdication of responsibilities by your offspring. If you have no idea what they do online, shame on you. If you don't check their cell phones regularly, you are stupid. And don't give me the "privacy" whine. As long as I pay for their access and the phone in their hands, it is mine to monitor anytime I see fit. And if you don't have a honest and true answer as to where your child is on a Friday or Saturday night (hell, ANY night), then BIG SHAME ON YOU.
Teach your children well, especially about consequences for their actions, and then perhaps a 17 year old abuse victim won't have to.
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Anyone who has ever watched a Parkour athlete has been humbled (and perhaps stymied) by the fearlessness, speed, and agility involved in this fast running, bouncing, ricocheting-off-walls adventure.
Enter TreT, the Parkour Dog. Or, perhaps it is more apt to call him the Barkour dog.
TreT has been trained in Parkour by his owner for many years, and from the looks of it, TreT enjoys every minute of the adrenaline rush.
One thing is certain ... fetch with this dog would never get boring.
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In what has surely become "The shit heard round the world," another GOP soldier in the war on women's reproductive rights has thrown another grenade of verbal diarrhea.
And the shrapnel has splattered far and wide.
Missouri Republican Rep. Todd Akin, appeared on KTVI in an interview ahead of his election face off with incumbent Claire McCaskill (D). When asked his views on whether abortion in the case of pregnancy from rape should be legal, Akin offered up this buttnugget:
"First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
He added: "But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something. You know I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child."
Wow. Just wow.
If ever there was a poster child for just what a man doesn't know about female reproduction, this asshat is it. And what is truly frightening is that he is an elected leader, capable of bringing this idiocy, lack of intellect, and dismissive attitude to the governance of our nation.
Let's just start with "First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare."
How about you name your sources Akin? I want the doctor who is going to back that statement to proudly come to a microphone and stand beside you. Female conception has to do with CYCLES, not some bodily aversion to attack.
"If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
A "legitimate rape." Oh, please do expound, Todd. You mean the kind when the woman is beaten to a pulp, has copious amounts of the shredded skin of her attacker under her fingernails? Ooo! Better yet, you mean DEAD? Because in terms of "shutting that whole thing down" death is the only way that's happening. Being dead is a 100% surefire, natural contraceptive.
But let's go back to basics, shall we?
The typical woman's body releases an egg once a month. Nothing hard and fast here, but in a textbook world, typically two weeks before her period. It travels along to the fallopian tube where it waits patiently - roughly 24 hours - for a sperm to swim along and fertilize it. If no sperm comes along, it continues in its travels to the uterus where it basically disintegrates, and the uterine environment which has been set in place by the release of the egg, realizes it won't be needed that month, and a period comes along to clean it all out. (See large display of tampons and pads at your local Walmart.)
THAT is how it works, Todd.
We women don't have some magical ability to circumvent the process. (And DGMS on your brethren Santorum's assertion that rape pregnancies are "gifts from God.") We don't "get the vapors" and have our body shut down the biological process out of fear, stress, or violent intrusion. Believe me, if we had that kind of Harry Potter ability this whole abortion debate would be moot because we would be in complete control of our reproduction and no ill timed or unwanted pregnancies would ever occur.
Yes, yes, yes, I know that idea screws with your side's belief that women view abortion the way they view a new pair of shoes - just something you can get for fun. But it is the truth.
"But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something."
Oh, let's do, Todd. Let's assume some female is brutalized in a park, her home, on a date. Perhaps she is 12 years old and raped in her bedroom by her father. Maybe she is gang raped by a bunch of boys in a locker room. Or she is estranged from her husband and he attacks her because "she's his." And that "maybe it didn't work or something."
You mean, like the 12 year old didn't yet get the memo about her cray cray ability to "shut that whole thing down"? Or the woman was unconscious and couldn't roll the 84 sided dice of fate and summon a Level 5 Ice Dragon to her ovaries? Or maybe she was restrained and couldn't reach her magic wand?
OR MAYBE IT WAS JUST THAT PARTICULAR TIME IN HER CYCLE WHEN AN EGG WAS WAITING IN HER FALLOPIAN TUBE.
It is stunning to me that we are in the year 2012 and neanderthals still run freely among us.
Todd Akin's remarks are offensive, yes, but they also need to be seen for what they really are: Ignorance in governance (he is a 6 term congressman), and the continued slippery slope the GOP is pushing women down. Their assault on access to birth control, forced transvaginal ultrasounds, pledge to get rid of Planned Parenthood, and vow to overturn Roe v. Wade.
You know, it is easy to expound this kind of bullshit rhetoric and take hypothetical stances when you know it doesn't touch your life even remotely. Todd, when was the last time you worried about becoming pregnant?
Oh, that's right - YOU HAVE NO OVARIES.
But I bet you have a special little bottle of blue pills in your pocket. Covered by insurance. Because God forbid the old cooters of this country can't continue to get it up into their 90s. Seems to me that Viagra is just as much against God's will as is your belief that abortion is. If your pecker stops working, perhaps God is sending you a message that playtime is over.
Of course, in the face of public outrage over his insensitive, ignorant, bloviating remarks, he has done the predictable political twostep. Say something offensive (or flat out lie), then release a statement that he "misspoke."
This comes today: "In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it's clear that I misspoke in this interview and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year."
Off-the-cuff? No, no, no - you quoted "doctors" who have informed you of how this whole thing works. You made your position clear. And you demeaned anyone who has ever been the victim of a rape.
(Kind of like your remark last year that "at the heart of liberalism really is a hatred for God." You walked that back, too, in a nonapology apology - but your real feelings were out there already. For the record, I am a liberal, I do not hate God. I hate anyone who works to insert religion into governance over an electorate of individuals who are guaranteed by their founding documents to NOT be subject to religious governance.)
And as for your assertion that, "You know I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child" - it is NOT YOUR CHOICE TO MAKE.
A woman does not CHOOSE to be raped and become pregnant by her attacker. And if she chooses to abort, that is a legal, personal choice she can make.
Just as it is a legal, personal choice EVERY woman should be able to make.
STOP. STOP making it sound like all women are whores because we use birth control (seriously, just WHO are we having sex with, Todd? MEN.) STOP insinuating that a women decides on an abortion as easily as she chooses a packet of gum. And STOP catering to the religious base with this utter and complete bullshit. Make no mistake - Religious people get raped. Religious people use birth control. And religious people avail themselves of abortions.
54% of rapes go unpreported. Gee, couldn't have anything to do with the shame you bring on the victims, would it, Todd? You know, how we women all secretly want it, want it bad?
The latest available statistics indicate a woman is raped every 2 minutes in this country. Every. Two. Minutes. 207,764 is the estimate per year - and that is only those over 12. Let's not even think about those nasty little 3 year olds enticing their rapists.
97% of rapists will never spend a day in jail. So much for your big balled punishment system.
Your remarks are heinous, Todd. They reek of profound, willful ignorance. YOU reek of profound, willful ignorance.
You have 6 children, Congressman. A couple of them are daughters. I hope they never are held down against their will, and violated so violently.
But then, I'm certain they won't become pregnant. Surely you and your "doctors" have educated them on their magical powers, right?
Shitbag.
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Tattoos. They are truly one person's trash, another person's treasure.
And that is how it should be. (File this one under: It Takes All Kinds)
We are all different, with varied tastes, kinks, quirks, peccadilloes. I firmly believe that our differences make the world a far more interesting place.
When it comes to inking one's self, the considerations are many. What? Color? Size? Meaning? And of course, the big real estate portion: Location? Location? Location?
People place them everywhere. Once the staple of sailors' biceps, now regular folk turn their shoulders, shins, calves, tummies, backs, necks, thighs, and asscheeks into art. Dolphins, fairies, skulls, hearts, cartoon characters, foreign languages - it's only a talented needlepoint artist's touch away.
While I don't have any, and don't plan on any, I admire the truly talented artists out there. There are some serious specialists who transcend mere black ink outlines or predictable roses and skulls, turning out exquisite works of flart (flesh+art=flart).
They are patient, they have vision, they have a steady hand, and a keen sense of aesthetic.
As I said, they work on every part of the body. I now mean that literally.
The young lady above obviously likes her Body By Crayola, and she must be seriously committment to the cause to open up to the cameras, as it were. But one has to wonder if bleaching might not be in order first. Start with a clean canvass, if you will...
Question: Would you ever give a tattoo artist the one eyed wink? If so, what in the world would you have inked around your turd cutter? The name of an ex? Your boss's image? A half hidden snake? Rush Limbaugh?
?
Toot your horn and let your thoughts waft over the rest of us.
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