Stupidity, 9/11, and the Quran Burning

Photo from Associated Press article (click here).

After 2001, I never thought I’d put the words “Stupidity, 9/11, and the Quran Burning” all in once sentence.  I was wrong.

I also thought that never in this country would one man’s selfishness for his own free speech cause him to position our country to where it looks like Americans are inviting themselves into a holy war with the Middle East. I was wrong.

I also thought that it would take more than one man to make American look like the picture that others paint when they criticise us. I was wrong.

What’s wrong with the fact that this minister wants to burn the Quran in protest of the radicals he believes it represents?  From a a free speech point of view – nothing.

Is it this minister’s right to voice his views via his free speech rights in this country? Yes.

Is is his right to indirectly cause harm to others via his use of his free speech rights? **NO**

That is this issue with this.  It’s not that people believe he does not have the right to do what he wants to do, but the free speech rights we have in this country (and the same rights that other countries are trying to acquire) come with great responsibility.

For the simple minded – that means that you have to be responsible enough in the use of your free speech rights to not put others in danger, get them killed, or cause unrepairable damage to a society as a whole.  Terry Jones has stepped over those lines and abused his free speech rights.  Sadly to other countries this becomes a reflection of Americans as a whole.

So, our vote is to keep our free speech rights and shut down Terry Jones from doing what he is doing.  If not, there is a good chance that he could start a holy war with the Middle East that will never end, and also initiate a domino set of actions that will eventually curtail our free speech rights as Americans.

-SWB

PS – We won’t even offer this guy a “Clueless Award”, we set that for those who have at least a minor inkling of hope ……. but we will say that Terry is a definite candidate for the new set of Dawrin Awards.

The stupidity of holding it in …. politics, and health care

Now, I’m sure many of us watched all of the action during last night’s Presidential speech. If you are clueless, or if you just happened to miss it Click Here for the Yahoo!/Politico rundown.

Now, health care is a huge issue – especially government getting involved, because we’ve seen it done elsewhere with bad results. The good thing is that we’ve seen all the screw ups and can avoid those, possibly creating something viable and substantial for the American people. The biggest obstacle … idiots.

Now, I don’t 100% agree with Obama’s plan, but you have to start with something and tweak. NOTHING works perfect the first time … ever. Are there issues to overcome with this issue, yes. The biggest one being pride … the second one – fear of venting (of course the Republicans may have taken a first step in overcoming that during Obama’s speech last night).

What needs done … a flat-out b**** session between the Democrats and Republicans. Let everyone have have their say (nice or not, respectful or not), get it off their chests and move on from dealing with issues the way grade school kids do. That way all of the politicians can have their pride flattened at the same time allowing them to actually work on something for the American people and not their egos.

Holding in what you feel just feeds pride, getting it off your chest clears your mind to do better things.

But then again, who am I kidding … right?

-SWB

… a politician without pride is like non-alcoholic moonshine.

Be an Adoption Advocate … Advice to the President

While I’m waiting for my wife to wake up on Saturday morning, I re-read an article in Readers Digest called “Memo To The President” is the January 2009 issue. It was advice from statesment and women in politics to President Obama. Read it, it’s is very interesting and contains many things most Americans would also like to say.

The one portion by Grover G Norquist I would like to highlight (part praise and minor rant) is the part on adoption. If you read the article online it is on page or part 3 of the article. If you are reading the regular sized print edition, it is on page 171.

The advice to President Obama is to set a goal to get every child adopted the first year in office. The general advice is great, so rather than summarize, I’d rather have you Click Here to read the article, and then come back to this post and read on.

IN SWB’s opinion, this goal is impossible. Below are the reasons after talk to many friends trying to adopt, or that have. I’ve also heard stories over the years from an Aunt and Uncle that graciously served as foster parents to 124 children (even the hard ones … babies the came from drug addicted mothers, etc). The kind of children that would dream about being in a home.

Reasons:

• The process. It’s too hard, too timely, and too complicated. I agree 1000% for background checking to make sure a child goes into a good home – but many times the government fails in that anyway. The whole checking process needs reformed.
• The financial cost. Due to the long and broken process – many people that I have talked to feel that you can only afford to adopt a child if you have two six digit incomes. The fear is that when all of the legal costs are paid for (yes, there are non profits that help, but their funding is usually tight too), the prospective parents are worried they may not have enough money left over to properly take care of a child. My wife and I would probably be open to adopting a child, but by the time we paid all the legal fees we would probably not be able to support that child.
• The emotional cost. After going through the process, which many say is rewarding, but with the sometimes cost of being emotionally drained by being constantly questioned whether or not you would be a good parent – some wonder whether they would have enough left to give emotionally to a child after the process of adoption or trying to adopt.
• Promotion and help. The government needs make it easier and once that is done, promote how much easier it has been made adopt a child. They then need to provide help for those prospective parents that still feel or think the process may be too hard. Those costs to the government will be much less than the cost of taking care of children with no families.
• Involvement. Don’t just say people need to get involved. Give them ways they can be involved at getting children adopted. Family services in all of our states are forced to waste too much time on bureaucratic garbage which the could be using to get others involved in helping children get adopted.

Now, people have been trained by society (and the news, etc) to say that if you can’t make it through the tedious adoption process you really didn’t want it. SWB completely disagrees. We have met too many people that would love to adopt and would be much better persons to raise children than many that have been granted the right to adopt a child. Therefore, because of the “process” in place, many children remain homeless, and the community’s ability as a whole to raise those children is hindered by that process.

So, SWB’s additional advice to the President is this: Do good background checks on prospective parents (not based on incomes or credit ratings, or even sometimes criminal records), but base them on whether the prospective parents have grown through any of their mistakes (or sins if you want to call them that) well enough to teach a child how to not make those sames mistakes, and how to grown by learning from the ones they do make.

Why did we label this clueless and confused article: We feel the government is “clueless and confused” in that prospective parents have to be or are made to feel they need to be perfect people (which is completely unobtainable) to adopt a child that really needs a family. That issue needs corrected way before President Obama can even become an advocate for adoption.

For those interested, Click Here for a link to The Pennsylvania Public Welfare’s page on Adoption in Pennsylvania. Ther are many other resources (some listed in this link), so please out the link and others on the internet.  Just search on something like “Adoption in {insert your state’s name here}”.

-SWB

PS – If you have the ability by current day’s requirements to adopt, please do it. If you do not want to adopt, fight for those that don’t have as much as you and do want to adopt. Children should not be born to be left out in the rain.

Rate The President

A link for rating the President that was placed on MSNBC was forwarded to me by a friend at work. Since MSNBC is one of the bigger news venues that that people look at when rating polls are taken I figured I’d just post the link instead of trying to do a poll here.  It is a live vote and allows you to rate on a grade level – just like you child gets at school.

Click Here for the MSNBC Live Vote to Rate President Obama.

-SWB

PS – Base your rating on what YOU think … not how your political party wants you to rate the president.

Pitt Ends March on a Cold, Sad Note ….

Along with my face looking like this for my Monday self-portrait, it also looked the same way (with a little more frown and some tears) when both Pitt men and Women mad the Sweet 16, but got knocked out shortly thereafter.

Even with ESPN, WPXI, The President, People in the NCAA having high hopes for Pitt’s men and women’s team … it didn’t happen. But they did try really, hard, made it a long way, and probably feel really sad right now … so if you see one of the team members around town, show them a little caring by patting them on the back and thanking them for trying for our city.

Click Here for an article by Ron Cook of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the Pitt Men’s Team loss, and Click Here for the article by Paul Zeise from The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the Pitt Women’s Team loss.

-SWB

PS – You can stop singing … the ball has stopped bouncing. {sniff}.

Clueless and Confused: Our Political Parties

Normally SWB would give out a “clueless award” in a post like this, but we thought it really warranted the full “clueless and confused” mention.

If you have an encyclopedia, or at least know how to us Wikipedia on the net you can research and look at how well though out or government structure is (don’t worry, weren’t not going to throw all of the boring details out to ya). It was built to make sure as many people possibly knew as much as possible about the candidates they may consider electing to a full checks and balance system to make sure our government did not turn into a raving dictatorship. Some of the “information passing” parts of the government that were created to accommodate the needs of the horse and carriage days could probably be altered or even eliminated … but the basic design is still that of a great government structure. Unfortunately, like everything else that is well designed – it only take a small few to screw it up.

To move onto our real rant … and considering I fully lean towards either party simply because they both have their major issues neither is willing to admit (the best example of deep denial) – a comment from President Obama clearly highlighted the most major issue any political party has ….. and that is “how quickly they forget”.

We’re going to us the Republican Party as our major example today, simply because they are no longer in power have been reduced to being material for comedians trying to get work, and bloggers trying to get hits. Now, the RP never started many of the things it did, nor did the Bushies (although we’ll give credit that Dad was *much* smarter than Son). They merely continued on traditions created by their predecessors. On of them being spending way too much money the nation did not have – hence, the “how quickly they forget” comment.

Watching the news and listening to people such as state representatives bashing Obama for putting too much green out there, simple forget all of the citizens tax dollar they merely gave to their friends in exchange for political favors, pet projects, etc. Yes, there is much of that in the Democratic party also that needs to be trimmed, but just bashing and doing nothing is the biggest tradition passed down within political generations.

Right now, we really do need to allow the current president to “take a shot” – because that is what everyone else did before him. He is also dealing with something very new – a truly global economy that is based on us. If we don’t figure this out, we won’t just go back to being farmers with small homes and out-houses ….. we’ll end up with only the out-houses.

Our best plan of action: Find the five percent of the idiots screwing up our government, remove them, and give them jobs as managers of their own McDonald’s franchises where they can be rendered harmless (I don’t believe anyone should be out of a job).

So, in the end the “clueless and confused” mention goes out to the five percent of the members in each perspective political party that fight hard to maintain the “screwed up” status of that political party – and make the nation of the United States look like idiots to the rest of the countries out there.

-SWB

PS – When you realize that many of the five percent mentioned in the post above were previously “top notch” corporate managers and sometimes are still sitting on boards of major companies ….. their cluelessness immediately makes complete sense.

FYI – SWB will pick on all the other political parties in due time, as we like to be fair ….. it’s just to early to think up useless babble about all of them and we haven’t had any coffee yet.

BTW – they will quickly forget about this article.

Obama supporting clean energy

This is getting filed under “cool stuff” mainly for the article from KDKA highlighting The Energy Plan being part of the new budget.  It will include provisions for loans for small alternative/clean-energy companies to help them get into the start-up phase.  It will also help clean energy entrepreneurs and others doing research in those areas.  Contrary to popular belief, the current President does not only support clean coal burning.

The article from KDKA hits mostly on the subject or budgetary interests for clean energy, but there are many good related stories on the article link.

-SWB

PS – I still say putting hyper dogs in running wheels and feeding them caffeine is the answer … but nobody listens to me.

The President is a hoops fan and picks Pitt

As always Credit goes where credit is due …. and Obama thinks that Pitt deserves fourth spot on his Final Four NCAA bracket. He even kept his promise to ESPN to reveal his pickings Tuesday.

Personally SWB thinks that Pitts deserves first, but then again, we’re a little biased living close to the team.

Here is one of the articles online from WPXI Channel 11 Pittsburgh

-SWB

The Economy May Be Worse Than We Thought

Chains Of Government

No …. really???

Everyone is saying Obama now realizes the economy may be worse than thought and may take longer to recover. Now, I know this man is fairly smart – so I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and figure he is bracing everyone for the time it would take to recover the economy in the first place and let everyone know the God-send that the press made him is not going to make the economy recover any faster.

And, Of course the Dems are making a few trade-offs to get the package moving before the economy crashes beyond the point of no return. And, of course, the Republicans are trying to discredit Obama and the Dems (you get cranky when you lose power).

Who knows, the Dems may fail, making Obama look really bad and discredit the Dems themselves, but then again things may work and the Republicans may lose power for more than four years. The funny thing is that when the Republicans were in power they fully supported (maybe not the way Bush wanted to do it because they were distancing themselves from him) dumping the same amount of money into the economy to help recover it.

Welcome to the real world of politics folks – the systems of “checks and balances” went south a long time ago. I fully envision Lincoln growing hair in his grave just so he can pull it out again in frustration with our current government.

– Just my opinion ….. everyone has their’s.

P.S. The ‘tunnel of doom’ subway that the Port Authority Of Pittsburgh is drilling may just be saved by the recovery package …. YAAAAAAAAAY!!!!! <—- Try to note the extreme lacing of sarcasm in this last statement.