Bench 'em All, Sack 'em All - Their season is over

I will be the first admit, I am not a sports nut. I like the occasional baseball game, I love Wimbledon, most especially the cut outs to the little British cultural bits and the fashion. Venus and Serena Williams have made women's tennis wear fun and high fashion.

I loathed youth soccer, but the little boys loved it. In fact I think sports are healthy for kids in moderation. Being a part of something larger than yourself, learning discipline, team work, driving hard towards a common goal. Those are all very important and impactful lessons.

Over the last few days my Twitter stream (which by the way is my source for news. If the tweeps are talking about it, it is probably something I so at least take a gander at. I also follow the AP news wire.) At first I ignored the Penn State news. Football, coaches, blah, blah, blah - just not on my radar. I blame the Buckeyes, no really I do. One cannot move around this city and not get blasted with some flavor of Buckeye Fever and so I have developed a finely honed protective anti-football talk filter.

This is until the posts in my timeline made it clear that this was sexual abuse or the attempted sexual abuse of children, young boys. Um, what? For years. With witnesses. What? On what planet does someone see a child being assaulted by an adult and does not call the police, scream stop, break it up, jump up and down, yell, all of the above or something equally impactful. Run over and grab the child out of the abusers clutches? There are dozens and dozens of better responses than the doing nothing...

What is wrong with people? I mean we are talking about possible life long physiological scars, which sex abuse and attempted sex abuse leave, verses possibly offending a coach of a football team.

If the graduate student saw a coach, in a locker room, with a 10 year boy and the adult's mouth is on the child's genitals, or worse yet there is the adults fingers, mouth or genitals are in or near the child's anus,  I think some immediate action to stop that is in order.  Do not pass go, do not go for coffee, do not even take 5 minutes to pee, stop the behavior, yell - scream - do something for the love of mike. That behavior is illegal. Period. Beyond that the sexual abuse of a child is immoral. There are somethings which just are not allowed to happen, under any circumstances and the sexual abuse of a child is one of them. Period.  If the kid had his pants down and there was some question, is the coach looking at a possible injury, well then, I think the witnesses should have made themselves known and at least asked a question, "Um, what's the issue? Should we get the team trainer or doctor?"

(UPDATE: After rereading the grand jury indictment a janitor saw something similar two years prior and reported it to his supervisor. Nothing was done. Seriously people, did it not occur to you to intervene and aid the child?)

Instead they go to the head football coach's house to discuss this. What is there to discuss? This is illegal. If you saw it in a mall bathroom, you call security and or the police. In a public park, you call the police, in a train station, you call the police. Is anyone seeing a pattern here?

My eyes about popped out of my head as I read multiple news reports where the lawyers are playing legal semantics. The statute of limitations, the burden of this, the burden of that, the following of internal protocol. We have a strong defense.

Newsflash - you have no defense. You are morally bankrupt. Every single person, who knew what was happening and DID NOTHING has no defense.

Now hear this the lot of you. You are horrible, vile excuses for human beings. Anything short of benching and sacking and throwing the book at everyone and anyone who knew about the abuse of children is unconscionable and speaks to how devoid of common decency we as a society have become. They should all be hung in public stocks and pelted with rotten fruit for days for starters.

These 8 to 10 children had something very important and sacred stolen from them and then they were violated again when other influential people, who were in a position to help them and furthermore prevent the possible abuse of another child, decided that protocol, chain of command, and unbelievably FOOTBALL was more important.

What play book are we working from? What has happened to our society that this was even allowed to become such an issue? Is a National Title really worth that???

You can't have it both ways...

I know - I should avoid topics of religion and politics, but this one bugs me... Blame H, he brought the USA Today home.

I read Thomas S. Kidd's "Time for government to butt out piece" in the October 3, 20011 edition of the USA Today  and I have to say he is both right and wrong. I should preface this with I am probably as close to agnostic as I have ever been and that I left the governing body of my former church very angry and very disillusioned. I also am not a tax accountant nor a lawyer. What I am is a tax payer who is tied of subsidizing companies - like BIG BANKS and Religious Organizations who want to cry separate when they break laws - like say equal opportunity clauses. (Beyond the fact that I find it - as a non practicing former/reformed/confused/angry Christian MORALLY REPUGNANT - that a religious organization would summarily dismiss, likely without an offer of disability, a teacher who developed a medical disability. This, this is their idea of walking as Christ walks and offering charity.)

Here's my take on the situation - if religious groups take any sort of governmental funding up to and including the 503c tax exemptions, then they are SUBJECT to limited governmental oversight. In my mind it really is that simple. If you accept grants from the federal or state government, you are subject to said oversight. If you don't pay taxes, because you seek a "special" exemption - thereby availing yourselves of all sorts of perks - like clean roads, bridges which carry your folk to and from the church, prime real estate at little or no property taxes, emergency services, police, fire, EMS, all without paying your fair share - then YES, you are subject to some federal, state and local oversight. While we are on it - religious institutions pay no sales tax. They take from the local economy every single day.

If this school avails itself of busing provided by the home school distract, it is subject to oversight.

If religious groups want to be SEPARATE, then no feeding off the federal, state and local trough. Hospitals, which take medicare funds, are subject to oversight. Many hospitals are 503c entities, too.

I agree government should have no say in the ministry of particular religious groups. We do not have a state religion - that said - if these groups want to be 100% government free - pay up. Pay your taxes, don't look for hand outs, don't ask for government funds to shore up your programing. Don't look for busing to your schools and don't avail yourself of services you aren't paying for. When your church is on fire or under attack - deal with it... otherwise, be like every other business and make no mistake there isn't a religious group out there that isn't a business, and pay your fair share.

And to Kidd's point -

One cannot imagine a more obvious feature of an establishment of religion, or a clearer violation of free exercise, than the government dictating to a church that it must rehire a religious teacher, especially a person who has violated church teachings or behavioral codes. The Justice Department's position, if vindicated, raises the possibility that courts and bureaucrats may, in the name of contemporary norms of fairness, begin requiring religious organizations to hire any number of candidates who do not accept that faith's tenets. One could easily imagine future decisions forcing churches, synagogues, or mosques to hire employees who do not adhere to the tradition's norms of sexual behavior, for example.

Religious liberty will be severely damaged if faith groups cannot hire and fire according to their beliefs. That's why leaders from such an impressive range of religions are united by the threat of a government clearly overstepping its well-defined boundaries. 

 I think there is a huge difference between firing someone who becomes disabled and hiring someone who's lifestyle choices are incompatible with a given religious groups viewpoint. Either way - if you take government funds -- you march to Yankee Doodle's tune. If you want to be separate, pay up and Uncle Sam will shut up.

While everything might seem legit...

H and I were busy today, minding our business and tackling house projects, planning a nice lunch out, when bang, bang, bang - this horrible noise shook the pipes in the basement.

I was downstairs hanging laundry and yelled up at him to go see what was causing that banging outside. It was a random guy. This random guy told H he was surveying the gas lines.

H came in to call the gas company.

I marched outside and told the guy he cannot be on my property without first knocking on the door and introducing himself and telling he plans to bang the shit out of my gas meter.

He informed me if he had to knock on everyone's door he wouldn't get anything done.

I told him he had no right to be assaulting my property with my permission and he needed to move it along.

At no point in time did he offer to show either H or I his ID or his work orders. His truck is basically a beater with stick on signs.

No PUCO permit numbers, no phone number... not helpful in the verification process at all.

H held with Columbia I am a Pain in the Ass, oops I mean Gas Company for a bit but when he found out it was going to be a 30 minute wait and the guy had left, he hung up. I posted the above photo to the Homeowner's Association Facebook page and tried to google his company. I contacted a company from Fairfield, Ohio who while they have the same name ARE a different company, as they sent a guy out to check on us. He also saw this truck in the neighborhood and assured me my random guy was not with them. This is a good company folks - they were genuinely worried one of their employees had gone rogue... They get an A+ in customer service from me, and let's face it, I seldom hand those out.

This made me feel worse NOT better.

I tried again to find a number for the "Premier Utility Services", who visited my house today. No luck. I nosed around the BBB, PUCO and Columbia Gas's website. Nothing. No mention of a project in this area, nothing.

As I left the development to run errands, I spot the truck and I stop and take more photos. (I love my iPhone. It's camera is powerful.)

Then at my mom's, I try yet again to locate a phone number for this company. Nada.

I then called the police and file a report. What other resources did I have. He was behaving in a suspicious manner. He offered no ID, no work orders and no project specs and fled when I ordered him off my property. You hear about these scams all the time. People posing as utility workers, who aren't. The PUCO did a public service campaign urging people to only allow people with IDs into their homes and onto their properties.

Just tonight a Facebook friend posted that her neighbor's A/C unit was ripped off their house, leaving all sorts of exposed and live wires. Who is to say this guy was not casing my gas meter, with designs on stealing it for its metal content.

It really would have been so much easier had this guy been polite, knocked on our door, warned us he was going to be making some noise as he surveyed the gas lines. (Maybe he could have explained why and how one surveys gas lines. Please if you know, the comments are open.)

I am not holding my breath, that I will ever really know if this guy was legit or not. I have alerted the authorities. I am sharing my story in order to alert other people near and dear to me, I have photos. Should the PUCO, Columbia Gas, or the police contact me, I will gladly share my photos.

If my gas meter malfunctions, I have proof that it was not H or I who messed with it, I can prove that I attempted to verify with the proper people, who was messing with my meter. Columbia, I am a Pain in the Ass, I mean Gas Company cannot pin this on us.

It just isn't good business to enter someone's property and then do stuff with their gas meter - without telling them first. On so many levels this guy was raising suspicions and making it appear that he was not legit. So it is one of two things - he is legit but very poorly trained, employed by a company with zero interest in customer care OR he is not legit and I hope he gets caught, before he hurts himself or someone else.

What's in a name?

I recently discovered that others, who feel the same way about protecting their online identities and exercising their right to choose, how much, when, to whom and under what circumstances they will allow online intimacy to occur have started a new website to share their stories.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my relationship with what has become known as pseudonymity. I referenced the Ting-Ting's songs - That's Not My Name. That post by the way was one of my most read posts in the history of this blog.

I urge you to go check out the website My Name is Me. There are some amazing stories being told. It is important for all of us to have the right to choose, when and how we choose to build intimacy in our day to day lives, both in person and online. Our world is very different now and it is not impossible to have a friend across the globe you have never met before. It is not impossible to build virtual communities.

For some people letting it all hang out makes sense to them, to others, like me, we are cautious for a variety of reasons. As I said before, it really is up to the person disclosing, where they choose to draw the line.

Music Monday: The Ting Tings That's Not My Name

The Ting Ting's That's Not My Name

As a matter of full disclosure, I have not and likely am not going to be checking out Google+ anytime soon. I am social media saturated and I tend to let others feel these new things out, before I invest too much time in these beta testing matters. If anyone has a compelling reason why I must hurry up and jump on the Google+ wagon, please do leave me a comment.

I absolutely love A V Flox's writing. She is a wonderfully insightful blogger on all sorts of topics. Put simply she could write about sock lint and I would eagerly read it many times over because she is a good writer. I also follow her on Twitter. This weekend she put a post up about Google+ suspending her account because it is not her real name. Shockingly she, like so many other writers, artists and performers uses a pseudonym. She is such a trend setter. Mark Twain was Samuel Clemons people. O'Henry was not his real name. Many of our favorite movie stars and television personalities are not using the name on their birth certificate. I don't use my real name on many of the things I have written and published elsewhere. Much of my very best work, is published under the name I picked for myself. I self published my poems under that name.

Here is the deal many writers and artists pick a name that reflects the person they feel they are when writing. They also do it to protect themselves, their families and that fragile creative kernel, from a variety of people. As A V Flox says, she started writing using another name to protect herself from her family's scorn. I renamed myself early in my writing career to keep things separate, to protect my kids, to separate out my writing into categories, which various people close to me might want to be reading. Not all of my writing is political, about my yarden or women in business topics. My poetry can get edgy. My writing can get dark or steamy or ranty. I am a multi-faceted diamond and my various personas separate the art, the creative work product accordingly.

I have written about this before but I think it bears repeating. Writing is incredibly intimate sometimes. Being an artist, a writer can be very tricky. I have had instances where "fans" or "followers" or "creepy stalker types" think they know the totality of me based solely on a piece of writing I have done or a small segment of my writing. They don't. You see what I am willing to share, in some respects it is highly, highly edited. BY ME. I decide what I am willing to share.

For me writing is mental exhibitionism. I actually do enjoy sharing with my readers what I am thinking and sometimes what I am feeling. I enjoy pushing certain buttons in my readers. I enjoy the feedback, I like that I can make you think, squirm, make you smile. Make no mistake, a good writer, someone devoted to their craft wants to form a relationship with their readers, but in the narrowly defined space of the written word.  At the end of the day, however, I control what part or parts of me you get to see. Just because I am willing to write a post about same sex marriage or my yarden for that matter, does not mean you, my reader have the right to trample my privacy. My writing something you enjoy is simply that, an exchange, I enjoy sharing, you enjoy receiving and we go on about our day. Just because I write a poem, which is about romantic love, sex or something very titillating and moving, does not mean I am inviting you over. Even if you are an intimate or close friend, that poem may or may no be about you. It is a work of fiction, it is a creation, it is something I have done, either for the sheer desire to create, in reaction to some stimulus. It might well be a combination of many, many things, some past and some present.

For me, picking a pen name, was my way of controlling the levels of personal intimacy. This is very important to me. I have been, in my online creative world, more than once a bit scared and totally relieved that the creepy admirer knew only my writing persona.

So while on one hand I can see why Google+ would want people to use their "real names." The problem is 15 plus years into the Internet age, is my writing persona any different than the "real me" many of you know? Is Fern Micheal's any less a real writer, a real person, because the name on her birth certificate is different than one who has sold hundreds of thousands if not millions of beach reading paper backs.

At a certain point the writing persona, the artist persona, it is as much a "brand" as it is a name. Seeing something written or produced or designed or whatever the creative output is, there is a "branding" effect. When I think of Picasso I think of cubist reality and when I think of Monet, I think of soft colors and pretty flowers.

So to answer a tweet I saw last night, "What's the big deal about Google+ insisting on real names."

Well for some of us, in certain areas of our lives - That's not my name...

Shh... Yummy Peanut Butter Cups...

So I am conflicted. I want to share this information with you because these peanut butter cups are really that good, but on the other hand, they are so hard to find and they have quickly become a favorite of mine, that if you all run out and buy them and eat them, there won't be any when I want them. (A solution to this is YOU buy some for yourself and some for me. As a gift, for me sharing this tip with you.)

So here they are:

Justin's  Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups

They are yummy and completely me friendly. No tree nuts (which I am avoiding due to high Omega 6 levels), no dairy, no gluten, and no corn starch or corn syrup.

These babies are what a treat should be, simple, rich, sweet and delicious. I can honestly say, one is enough to satisfy a dessert craving. E loves them also, so I have to hide the opened package, if I realistically want to eat the other one later.

I can get these sporadically at Whole Foods. Justin's entire line of nut butters and peanut butter are pricey but so worth it.

(I have received no compensation for this review - but if anyone is motivated to send me dark chocolate peanut butter cups - I would not turn them down...)

Music Monday: I can ride my bike with no handle bars

well not really.

(Flobots)

I did take a great bike ride Friday, the first of the season. Went with a friend who is new to town and I was showing her the trails which wind through my area.

This song is one of E's all time favorites. When it first hit the airwaves, I think he was around 3 years old and he had shown us no signs of being music obsessed the way his sister was from birth. When L was a baby she refused to sleep without her CD playing. (Now she refuses to sleep with the CD playing.) E as a baby refused to sleep with a CD playing, now he refuses to go to sleep without his music.

I digressed. So one day sitting in traffic, this song comes on the radio and I hear his little voice, singing along to the song. Later, I would hear him playing with his toys, humming or singing the refrain to this song.

We generally bike a good bit in the summer. This summer I think will be the first summer we will not make use of the Burley baby carrier for the bikes. I suspect E will ride the bike attached to mine or will finally be ready to go under his own steam. (One can hope.)

Today my friend and I took a tour around the area and then checked out the O’Shaughnessy Dam. There is a new park and observation area. The heavy and sustained rains have filled the rivers and the water flowing over the dam was nothing short of awe inspiring. So much water.

We watched some cranes cruising the area, saw a lone Canadian Goose swoop overhead and then watched some small birds, maybe sparrows, race and chase and come very close to being swept away. With it being spring and all, they seemed rather amorous, and sadly, the joy of spring led to the death of one of the birds, I think. In all their flapping and dancing and picking what has to be one of the most dangerous spots to mate, one little bird appeared to be swept away by the rushing water.

Such is life I suppose.

Friday started out grey and raw but the afternoon gave way to some beautiful sun and crystal blue skies. It really was a wonderful day to break back into biking again.

And just in case anyone wondered - yes I can ride my bike without holding on to the handle bars BUT I am of an age to know that it is best I hold onto the handle bars.

Who owns it...

So - recently I espoused that this is not a craft or cooking blog and it isn't. It is being rather political of late and with good reason.

The Constitution of the United States is taking one hell of a beating of late. This is the document, which is the foundation for our political system and our overall culture I would say. It is what defined us as a nation and it was, in its time, a radical document. It was, not to be punny, REVOLUTIONARY.

It is still relevant today. Freedom is freedom. Liberty is liberty. We must as a nation ALWAYS error on the side of preserving freedom and liberty for ALL. I am not saying we should ignore the law, I am saying when there is gray area, the lens we must use, is the lens that allows for the preservation of liberty and the least intrusion of government in the private lives of citizens.

Human rights, civil rights, states rights and then and only then the rights of the Federal Government.

I am tired of beating the TSA horse - whose policies are  a blanant violation of Americans 4th Amendment rights. (Just so we are clear - I am not changing my opinion, just moving onto another topic.)

I am moving onto the 1st Amendment, which aside from the 4th, is my favorite.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So....

When we as writers write things, which we have factual proof of or are expressing an opinion we hold dear, the government cannot censure it. They don't have to like it, but they cannot censure it. They cannot just come on over and delete my blog. In China, they can. Here in the US, they can't, even though they might want to.

(This includes you Department of Homeland Security, even though you might like to think otherwise, just sayin' Constitutions trumps the Patriot Act and if doesn't - shame on you court system.)

This brings us to WikiLeaks. (who I would link to, but am either being blocked from doing so by Big Brother and Big Business or they truly have not found a new host server.) Here is a reuters news article on the subject.

I am not exactly sure how I feel about the cache of US State Department Cables, which WikiLeaks is slowly feeding out into the Internet. On one hand, as a writer, I want my copyright respected. No one better be publishing my work, without my permission, I own it, unless I have waived my rights. You can quote me, if you link properly. (see what I did with the Amendment 1 quote.)

What WikiLeaks is doing is hardly quoting. It is publishing documents wholesale. Presumably redacted in certain cases.

Also, do the writers of the documents have copyright rights? Is their work product considered the property of their employer, the United States Government and as such, what must the Government do to safe guard that work product.

And let's clear this up, how did WikiLeaks get the information? Was it really that easy for one army private pencil pusher, to download all this stuff and just pass it along. Did he get paid?

If WikiLeaks paid him to "steal" the information, ie it was their idea and they asked him to do, then I am more upset than if they just bought it from him.

What I am ravingly pissed about is that he, this lowly army PFC could get his hands on it at all! Hello - is my government run by a bunch of circus clowns? (emphatic nodding of head YES!)

Furthermore, some of what is said in what little of this I have read is objectionable. It is not professional and it is the kind of thing I would NOT want my employees writing about co-workers, allies, vendors or partners. Everything we write or say in a professional (and frankly personal) context should pass what I call the "would I want to see this printed on the front page of the New York Times." (any doubts - yes this blog post passes this test and frankly if they want to reprint it, it will cost them. I am not waiving my fee.)

Then there is the very real issue of who needs to know. There was a time I would have said that some things need to remain secret. I don't feel that way now. I have about zero confidence in the elected officials in Washington and their appointees. They allowed slanderous material to be stolen and then leaked. What kind of security did they have in place. (Um, poor.)

Freedom is not a game. National Security is not a game. A police state is not what we want. We have to have a balance between Freedom and Liberty and frankly I think it is HIGH time the American public wake up and realize we are not getting what we are paying for in terms of representation and good stewardship of our national ideals.

Members of Congress and the President are public servants. They serve at our pleasure and we pay their salary.

Shifting gears -

There is some speculation that Amazon and other web hosts were pressured to kick WikiLeaks off their servers. I am inclined to believe phone calls were made. I am also inclined to believe that WikiLeaks violated Amazon's terms of service vis a vi the ownership of content posted and hosted via Amazon's web service. (This is what Amazon has said in a press release/comment)

The thing is, in this case, I think it should have gone to court. It would be incumbent on the US and other Nations to prove that WikiLeaks had no legal right to the content. Who owns the documents. Was there a reasonable expectation of privacy?

In my experience, Terms of Service  Agreements are the scapegoat. Is Amazon actively monitoring all of its clients and the material posted to the servers. Not a chance. Did someone with some political clout recommend they take action. You betcha.

I think everyone deserves a slap on wrists here. Amazon for appearing to cave (and as a book seller, that scares me. What if someone with some political power suggests not selling a book about this very case in a year. Will they cave? The press must be allowed to continue.)

The US Government, sloppy with your security of documents and archives much. For shame. For shame that it was that easy to get that amount of information, embarrassing information stolen. You have no one to blame but yourselves and I were the boss - a good number of you would be fired.

WikiLeaks - I am not sure of your motivates. I am not sure you are the good guy. I do think, that you have an agenda that I might not be 100% in favor of, but I do think you are exposing the truth, embarrassing though it might be.

I will leave you dear readers with this. I used to wonder how Hitler did it. How did he get a nation, if not half a continent to follow his insane plans? I could not for the life of me as a young passionate contrary woman get my head around the idea that all those people went along. Hello your neighbors are being marched to a gas chamber. Your co workers are disappearing. Didn't you smell something, anything?

I will tell you how it happens. Erosion of civil rights and then the justified seizure of your basic human rights. It really is that simple. It is systematic and it is brutal and it is happening right now in the US at airports. It happened with your investment accounts right after 9/11 - too bad most Americans didn't notice.

It may start at a train station near you soon.

It may already be happening with our ability to gather information on the world wide web. It may be happening at the largest retailer of books/media, Amazon. (Why can't I get WikiLeaks to come up?)

When the STATE decides what information you have a right to see, that is censorship.
When the STATE decides it is ok to sexually assault you in an airport, that is a police state.
When the STATE decides to exempt themselves from the rules (notice congress members are exempt from sexual assault at airports.) It is the slippery slope to Big Brother running rampant.
When the STATE decides to run it citizens to the ground in a public square with tanks, that was China, it could just as easily be the United States.

When WikiLeaks leaks largely unedited and highly embarrassing documents, which it easily obtained, I think it is unethical on one hand, but way preferable to being felt up in an airport and being told what to read by the State.

It is preferable to being forced to join the Hitler Youth and hiding in my cellar as Nazi soldiers ransack my family home and physically and perhaps sexually intimidate my mother, which is EXACTLY what my mother in law experienced as a girl not much older than my daughter, in Germany during WW II.

Let's be careful what we wish for, as we level judgment on those who publish the truth. WikiLeaks did not write these documents... they are merely exposing those who did.

The real question is - is the tone and tenor of those documents the tone and tenure we want our elected official and government employees to be using? Is this what are tax dollars should be spent on? Should we believe what the President says because he is the President? Or should we be more critically thinking about how we are running this nation. Do we want to follow (goose stepping along like lemmings) the "this is what WE decided is best for you" bandwagon?

Those are the questions, which we must answer.

A flying...

F*CK!

This phrase has always struck me as bit off. I imagine little fairies or cherubs or 300 pound men on Circus trapeze, whatever. When kids would say this in High-school, or more correctly yell it, I was always puzzled. I digress.

I picked this title because a friend made a very funny funny and it inspired me. (Thank you R!)

If you are somewhat awake and following the news, you know that the TSA has been busy of late. Want to bone up on the full body scanners and enhanced pat downs - go here for a primer.

I will also note, H had an incident this week, at an airport, where these new procedures are in play. A butter knife was found and H followed protocol and the head of TSA for that airport came and that clown asked H if he wanted to search the plane or not. H is like, heck ya I wanna search the plane, I want to see what else you missed.The passengers deplaned and they all got re-screened and the plane got a thorough going over (all except the cargo, that is.)

I will let you in on a little secret. I dislike Big Brother (who now is turning into Creepy pervy - in a bad way - Uncle!) I have a real problem with people in authority who are stupid. While we are at it, I have zero tolerance or patience for stupid in general. I also have a BIG problem with my basic rights being violated. Convicted criminals cannot be subjected to this type of invasion of privacy without proper cause and yet we the American flying public are paying to be subjected to groping and radiation and news flash - it isn't doing anything to make us safer. Not when cargo goes unscreened or under-screened and airport employees are only randomly screened.

So while those of us who choose to fly (which is not me - after my trip to Cancun, I plan to stay firmly on terra firma for awhile.) are stripping down to our underwear, being zapped with what cannot be a safe amount of radiation, by people who may or may not be saving those images, and then poked and prodded in a manner that would get the average horny guy in a bar arrested and on a sexual predator list - millions and I mean millions of pounds of cargo are flying on commercial airliners - unscreened or under-screened. H says he routinely gets a manifest which includes cargo, that NO ONE had screened since it has been entered into the system and then it is likely the shipper answered some yes or no questions, and not enduring a groping.

Go with God, darling. Go with God. Especially when this is the US attitude toward screening of cargo.

U.S. Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole, who also attended the conference, said a delicate balance needs to be struck to ensure that the enhanced security requirements for air freight do not disrupt global trade.
"The flow of global commerce is key to economic recovery," Pistole said. "Security cannot bring business to a standstill."

So while we consumers, air travelers and normal Joe's are being subjected to draconian and I think illegal searches of our person and property, cargo, stuff in boxes is flying first class, unsearched and unscreened.

This Article has a great graphic detailing how cargo is processed. While there is some screening, it is not nearly as invasive or as thorough as passengers are enduring. Nor is cargo stored in a sterile area. It is often left unattended, on the tarmac, on a truck or in a warehouse.

Now if I were of a mind to wreck havoc, I would go for the airport employees - who come to work and largely get to pass through unscreened. While nosing around, I found this article about what the TSA says it is doing. I am not buying it. H says he has never, in all the airports he has been in, seen it either. I think that every employee of an airport should have to submit to the same screening as passengers everyday. Why should they be any different than the guy who flies two to three times a week? They are the door in. Let's face it, they are paid peanuts. Many are foreigners or new to the US and money is an issue. I am not sure how easy it is to do a 10 year background check on a tarmac employee, who is from Kenya or Somilia or Mexico and been in this country for a few years. I am sure those governments, in the developing world have great record keeping methods and I am sure they are super willing to share that information.

Also I recall rather fondly the time, I discovered while doing a client's 401 K pre-test audit and discovered that there were 17 different employees, at three different plants, with the same social security number. Fake ID's anyone? The terrorists who brought us 9/11, many of them had valid State issued ID. While it is illegal to lie to the BMV, a guy or gal who wants to blow something up, I seriously doubt lying to a quasi government agency, a government they have great contempt for, is a great moral quandary.

I am not the only one concerned about this. This article speaks to the perils of swipe cards and security by-pass procedures, which are the rule at US airports, not an exception. (Read more here and here )

So I do give a flying f*ck. My Sweetie, goes to work and his office is 35,000 ft off the ground. I want him to be safe and if I was assured that all the other loop holes were closed and the only way we could assure his safety was for me to strip naked and walk through the airport, get my thyroid fried with radiation and let some pervy, underpaid, under educated goon grope me, I would do it. Heck I might kiss the goon.

But that is not the case and until we close those other loop holes - this is a classic case of the government being lazy and stupid and motivated by corporate interests. Don't hold up cargo. Don't make my employees have to go through security, it eats into the work day. Why should I pay to have them groped. Blah, blah, blah.

The metal detector and the wand searches are enough. They are not 100%, but I think H's experience this week proves they are just as effective as the searches which steal our human rights. I would rather take my chances on what works reasonably well and maintains my dignity than what clearly doesn't work and puts us on the slippery slope to a police state.

Short term thinking breeds long term problems

I saw this link on several FB friends' pages the other day. The article, I think get's it about half right. I think we are seeing the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but to aim the ax mostly at US corporations is disingenuous. To blame this administration or the past two is likewise not the answer either. The American consumer, as much as the American worker also shoulders some of the responsibility.

For every bit of Chinese manufactured bit of fluff purchased at Wal*Mart or Target or where-ever that is one less manufacturing job in the US. The quality is sometimes shoddy, but hey it is cheap. It will likely break in a few months, but then it did not cost that much so what's the big deal. The big deal is the rich get richer and the poor, well poorer.

The REAL problem is as someone in the comments section of the article stated - it is all about short term solutions. In both business and government, and dare I say our culture in general we favor the short term quick fix to long term problems. ...Couple that with corporations being encouraged by Wall Street, to MAX out profits - notice I did not say be profitable - but max out profits quarter over quarter that you have CEOs and CFOs making short term profit maximization decisions and not decisions with an eye towards long term longevity and sustainable profitability.

The tipping point will be, I think, when the American consumer, cannot afford even goods and services using what I call the Walmart pricing model. That or we will all collectively stop supporting companies who fail to match their corporate strategy with our personal value systems.

We need less government intervention. I am very much a free marketer. We will live to regret not letting capitalism work its ruthless magic and allow Wall Street to implode itself. Someone would have stepped in with a business solution, not a tax payer funded solution. Money is like matter, it is never created or destroyed. Someone has money and will move to spend it, when the price is right. Governments creating artificial funding sources, just make matters worse and rarely better. Sometimes we only learn from terrible and painful lessons.

When I worked for Merrill Lynch a deathly hush fell over the office when Greenspan testified, I said then and I say now, it is dangerous fun to put so much focus and reliance on the ideas and theories of one man, no matter how much or little you think he knows. It was too much power, centralized in one part by the government and one part by the media. Was he brilliant, maybe. Was he savvy, you betcha. Could he read a crystal ball? Only at parties and only for fun. He got it wrong as much as he got it right.

The real issue is this, we lack a real sense of who we are and what we want to represent and the most worrisome statistic in the bunch to me is this one:

In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.

This is the crux of a major issue in American business, the fleecing of the stakeholder and the employees. There is no reason for this type of wage inequity. I have YET - to see a CEO who warrants this type of pay. In fact most CEOs of most US companies are not worth a plugged nickle and some hog spit. A leader leads by example. He or she does not fleece the business, cut the wages of the rank file, to enrich themselves. In my opinion, CEOs who cannot produce sustainable, ethical profits for a business, year over year, should earn nothing. It should be a commission based job. No golden parachute for a crappy job, no bonus if you have cut shareholder returns and slash rank and file pay. Earn your keep, like the rest of us.

Not accounting hocus pocus, but real income, real profit. No fancy accounting gimmicks or games of depreciation. I am talking about selling a product and banking real cash. Providing a service, providing it well and banking the profit. Let's pick on my industry du jour - the airlines. The CEO's of all the big ones, need to be put on a CRJ and pelted with garbage, becasue that is exactly how they treat their customers. They should not pass GO and they certainly should not earn 8 figures. The CEO of BP, who is stepping down. He should not get his golden parachute, he should get some hip waders and a one way ticket to a FEMA trailer on a beach on the Gulf Coast and a roll of bounty towels, to wipe down water fowl. That would be leadership. That would be making a difference. All he has done thus far is fail to come up a solution, look stupid and tank the stock.

Business used to be honest and straight forward. When we return to that, to a time when a hand shake meant something - and no double talk and loopholes, then and only then will we start to see a level playing field. It is about an honest days work and a job well done.

I also am totally against any more regulation, let's enforce the regulations we have. Look back on my blog, I have advocated for some time some real accountability. When people who commit fraud and fleece the American taxpayers and corporate stakeholders, they should do hard time, then and only then will it be a deterrent.

There is more than enough blame for this situation to go around. So next time you are trotting off to Wal*mart, with the remains of your ever diminishing paycheck, ask yourself, what am I doing to send the message to businesses that I am serious about keeping the Middle Class and American jobs stateside.

Understand, I am not picking on Wal*Mart exactly, but it is the idea that we think cheaper is better... sometimes it is and in the longer term, sometimes it just isn't.

SPAM is canned meat

In American studies 201, our Prof, Prof Martha gave us an assignment. She brought in these cans, gift wrapped and made us write about them. They were cans of SPAM. I was a practicing vegetarian then and was totally grossed out. Needless to say I did not eat it as part of the assignment. Knowing me I donated to the local food pantry or a friend who would eat it. Ugh! I can safely say, I have never and hope to never have to eat SPAM. I am thinking it can't possibly be gluten free.

Canned meat is not the topic of this post.

I have been thinking and writing a good deal about SPAM. Wanna see what else I have written? Go here.

I think the idea of SPAM email is fascinating. I just do. Recently I posted this to Twitter - which feeds my facebook...

I should like to meet some Spammers to better understand what their overall goals are. I have been getting some rather inventive UPS spam.

Which gardener this comment from a friend:

The goal is to separate you from your money. How about you give me a hundred bucks and we call it even.

And I replied:

See therein lies the problem, generally in commerce the exchange is based on a good or service of value. Where pray tell is the value here?!? ;)

Now my friend was teasing me and I was tongue in cheek responding, well kind of, I was serious.

I know SPAMMERS are trying to make a buck. But how in this case. How do they benefit from sending me a virus laden email, pretending to be UPS. Brown knows where my package is thank you Ms. Osma from Odessa. Brown also knows how to contact me, and frankly their English is impeccable...

Once while visiting my very good friend in Boston, SS and I took the T to Feline's. It was a decent ride. At the stop after we got on, three homeless people got on the train. Two middle aged men and an older woman. Clearly they were homeless. I am going to go with mental ill and/or struggling with substance abuse issues also.

They were hatching some kind of plan for the day for the balance of the ride. It was fascinating. In another context, in a perfect world, in suits, around a board room table these three could have ruled the world. Donald Trump cannot negotiate as well as these three. I remember being in awe of their attention to detail, their carefully constructed back up plans, evaluations of alternatives and barriers to execution.

It was an example of good business sense at its finest.

Yesterday while snowboarding with friends, I was noting that I thought the resort had not known about the school holiday and had failed to staff accordingly and that would hurt business, that good businesses know about events in the community and plan accordingly. My friend, a small business owner himself, chuckled and said, "You just can't turn it off, always thinking with the business half of your brain."

Well yes actually.

I think that is what has be so intrigued by the Vicodin SPAM and the fake UPS spam messages. The drugs I get, if you are running a bootleg pharmacy company, I can see SPAM being a viable marketing ploy, although fairly risky. Most drug dealers try to operate with a modicum of discretion. You may know which corner they are on, but it is word of mouth marketing and I can tell you there are no signs advertising why they are milling around on the corner. Vicodin email sort of makes the DEAs job that much easier I should think.

With the UPS spam it is anyone's guess I think. My anti virus software jumped on those emails like stink on a skunk. What possible economic incentive is there to sending me a virus and making my computer stop working. I cannot visit your bootleg sites if I am unable to connect to the Internet. Seriously. I doubt these folks with bad spelling but creative minds are working for the local computer repair shop. That folks makes some economic sense though, it is illegal but it makes sense to me and my MBA brain. I suppose sending me a snooping virus might make sense, but really if the virus mucks with my machine, it is not going last long, it will be found and then I am not working on the computer. As a freelance writer, that messes with my productivity and makes it less likely for me to visit your pay per click site...

What I find amazing is these folks have a handle on the business model, for the most part. They get marketing and they have an idea how the Internet works. Why not apply it to a legitimate business and work the hell out of it? Like the group on the train. They had a handle on the business model and I have no doubt that they executed their plan. I think their survival depended on it actually. It was a cold and snowy day. They had little room for miscues. So I ask the SPAMMERs out there, "Why not take this knowledge you have and apply it to a legitimate business. You have skills and creativity and that is half the battle."

I would love to have coffee with a SPAMMER. My MBA brain just cannot figure it out. In business the exchange or the balanced equation is easy - it is a trade for something of economic value... I have X and you want X and you have Y and I will exchange X for Y, it is that easy. Really, it is... it works - it has worked for years...

Being a single mama, sort of...

I have said in the past that I am often a single mama with a husband. That is what it is like being a pilots wife. As I consider my options with my business (which is struggling) and what to do now that I have completed my MBA I am stumped.

I never planned on being the stay at home parent, much less the primary childcare provider for days at a time. With H's change in bases, I am very much about to be back on the single mama train. He will be gone for 4-5 days a week, every week, all the time. When he was in Detroit, sometimes it felt like he would pop in once a week just for dinner.

I have a hard time working now as it is on my business. Evening networking is extremely difficult. Having a social life is difficult also. The only time I have that is mine is M-W-F between he hours of 9:30 am and 3:00 pm. Not alot of work time... and seriously school is always out it seems. Today was to be a work day... Friday is a day off also... and oh wait... Monday too...

And it is not as if I do not enjoy the kiddo time, but I have tons of it on the weekends and what I do not have much of is dedicated work hours, which are not in the evening and frankly after three years of freelancing mostly after lights out, I am over that. The evening is me and house time, not work time...

I am wondering if I should just look for a traditional job, but honestly, that is also a challenge. No one to help with drop off and pick up and I am not sure I want to put the kiddos on the rat race treadmill. Did that once with L was a baby. It was brutal.

I also worry about my health. My gut can only take so much stress and then it rebels. I am finally feeling really good again. I feel strong and healthy again. I need to be good to my body...

So as I sip a glass of wine and think about my options, as H packs for NYC, I am not really thrilled with any of them... not thrilled at all.

Orange

Arguably orange is E's favorite color. L told him so when he was a baby and it has stuck.

"I like all the colors." he will say, "except white and most of all orange." He is so diplomatic.

I really have no thoughts about orange, nice in sunsets, I never thought I would like to have walls in the house painted orange, but my office is a very pleasing shade of pumpkin.

Last night for dinner, I managed, without even thinking about it to make only orange foods. H and I had butternut squash risotto. Yumm-o and very very orange.

The kids had mac and cheese, made with cheddar, so it was lite orange. I par boiled carrots, also orange and for desert they finished the pumpkin pie.

Today I checked out what the color orange might mean.

One site says: "Orange combines the energy of red and the happiness of yellow. It is associated with joy, sunshine, and the tropics. Orange represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation."

Not sure what it means in terms of food, but boy am I happy the walls of my office are that pleasing pumpkin.

Drivers Ed

So H, as a pilot, has to go to ground school once a year and then to simulator training once a year. Basically he is being retrained or being offered a refresher.

The last time I had a refresher for driving a car, well let me think, um, yeah never!

Clearly no one else on the road has had one either. I swear in the last week I have been cut off, honked at for not turning left on red, honked at for not turning left into on coming traffic, honked at for stopping when the green arrow faded on a rainy evening in the dark - so as to not be in the middle of a huge intersection and yes, oncoming traffic. I have been yelled at for yielding to a pedestrian in a CROSSWALK and almost hit while walking my bike across the street in a CROSSWALK with a sign, that for the picture challenged means yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk. Google it.

I am the first to admit, I am not the best driver in the world. I took out the neighbors mailbox on 7-7-07 (search the blog, that was a crappy day for me.) I struggle with parking and backing up, I sometimes forget I am driving, so busy thinking about whatever idea is dancing in my head, but I also tend to error towards the side of safety. If I think I can make the left, I do and if not I wait. I am never in that big of a hurry as to endanger the lives of my kiddos or someone else.

I think you are more likely to get killed driving your car than flying an airliner, so why is it then that H has to do all the retraining and refresher classes, we get our drivers license at 16 or 17 years of age and that is it. Honestly I am astonished there aren't more accidents.

Saddle Up those Fish?

So I will admit it, I like to watch Top Chef on Bravo. I stayed up last night to watch the "all new" episode at 10 pm and wish I had not bothered. It was not that exciting and frankly all those chefs, who took fish, to cook in the back country on a Dude ranch need their heads examined.

Who eats fish in the desert? What cowboy, camping eats fish, other than the fish he or she catches?

Duh?

Part of being the Top of anything is, knowing what is appropriate. Is it any wonder the guy who won served some smoked meat with polenta. Well Boy Howdy, that sounds like camping food to me. Hello - we camped in an RV and I did not bring fish. I would have cooked some if we caught any, but taking fish and trying to keep it cool is nuts - in a desert.

I was under impressed by this episode. Just saying...