President Dwight D.Eisenhower, 1953:  “It is fitting and proper that we devote one day each year to paying special tribute to those whose constancy and courage constitute one of the bulwarks guarding the freedom of this nation and the peace of the free world.”

The Honorable Melvin Laird, 1972 Former Secretary of Defense:  “At home and abroad, military men and women are showing purpose and dedication in defending American ideas. They are performing in our country’s best traditions under circumstances both difficult and complex. Thanks to their determined spirit of patriotism and professionalism, our country has a powerful and unified defense team, employing its forces in the constant quest for peace and freedom.”

Three teenagers are facing charges of sexual battery, dissemination of child pornography and possession of child pornography in connection with their assault on 15-year old, Audrie Potts.

First of all, I hate that the media refers to these savages as “16-year old boys.”  When you turn 13, you’re a teenager; you’re no longer a “boy.”

But, whether they’re ever going to be referred to as “sociopaths” as I have, I won’t hold my breath.  Let me tell you why I think they’re sociopaths “whose behavior is antisocial and who lack a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.”

After drinking too much and passing out at a house party last Labor Day weekend, Audrie, a Saratoga High School sophomore awoke, looked down and realized she had been sexually assaulted;  she saw crude messages scribbled on her body and her shorts had been pulled down.  The humiliation continued when she learned a cell phone photo of her circulated around campus.  A week later, she committed suicide by hanging herself.

Now there are civil lawsuits which allege these three “digitally penetrated her, and/or penetrated her with a foreign object, and/or sexually abused her”; questions have arisen why these guys weren’t expelled from school (but were removed from the football team); criminal proceedings are pending raising the question whether the perpetrators should be tried as juveniles or adults, etc., etc.

These three guys were Audrie’s friends; they went to the same school; they all knew one another.  I haven’t read anything that said they were abusing drugs or alcohol and didn’t know what they were doing.

I would’ve been horrified if this story involved strangers.  But the fact that the assailants were Audrie’s friends makes it completely incomprehensible to me.  One comment I read was from a guy who said he graduated in 1983 and when he and his buddies got drunk the worst thing they did was shave off each other’s eyebrows or painted their fingernails.  According to him, they watched out for one another.

Apparently, not anymore.  Where were her girlfriends?  Did anyone know where she was?  Who she came with?  Wasn’t anyone concerned when they didn’t see her at the party?  Did anyone try and stop these savages?  Are their parents proud of them?  What about their sisters/brothers, aunts/uncles, etc.?

What kind of mutant would do this to a friend, then take pictures of the assault, and then circulate the photos around school?

And, by the way, if these barbarians were brave enough to write their names on Audrie’s body, I don’t know why their identities can’t be released to the public so their neighbors are made aware of who’s living next door to them.

If I were Empress of the World, these guys would be tried in adult court; if they were convicted, I’d sentence them to hard labor for decades.  Anyone who starts off in life at 16-years of age and behaves like this, fails to take moral responsibility for his actions, expresses no remorse, and lacks any sense of social consciousness, is hopeless and should not be allowed the freedom of roaming the street.  Yet, in California, they’ve been released and placed on home arrest pending disposition of their case.

If you think I’m being too harsh on these brutal creatures who have yet to be convicted, please let me know if you wouldn’t mind having them living next door to you or dating your daughter.

I don’t get it, but if you do, God bless you.

I don’t know if we’re turning into a bunch of spineless, whiny, wussies or if we’re just going nuts.  This endless quest to be politically correct in all areas of our lives is just plain crazy.

Take for example this pathological need to change how we normally speak.  The University of North Carolina will no longer use the word “freshman” and instead insists on the term “first year student.”  Has any woman out there felt the least bit slighted when referred to as a “freshman”?  If you have, put on your big girl panties and live with it.

And for all you actresses, yes, actresses, who prefer to be called “actors,” I’ll be sure to suggest to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that it eliminate the category of “Best Actress” and “Best Actress in a Supporting Role” and you can all compete for Best Actor.  How would you like that?

Last year, the House approved a Senate-passed bill striking the word “lunatic” from federal law, without removing a reference to “idiot.”  The advocates of this waste of time consider “lunatic” an outdated, offensive term for mental illness from the U.S. Code.  If I had any confidence that the “idiots” in Congress could actually multi-task, this wouldn’t bother me, but I’m not confident that anyone in Washington can walk and chew gum at the same time.  With all the serious issues facing this country, you’d think this kind of “busy work” would be low on the list.  And how much did this waste of time actually cost the taxpayer in copying costs, time, energy, manpower (oops! perhaps I should say peoplepower)?

And in my state of Washington, our fearless leader, Gov. Jay Inslee, just signed a bill which bans gender-specific words in state laws, calling for the massive rewrite of legislation that mentions terms like “fisherman” and “journeyman plumber” – which will now read “fisher” and “journey-level plumber.”  Even “penmanship” has gotten the boot and will be replaced with “handwriting.”  Can you believe this crap?  Our ever vigilant Democrat state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, the bill’s sponsor said, “mankind means man and woman … [but] no good reason for keeping our legal terms anachronistic and with words that do not respect our current contemporary times.”  Well, if “mankind” means man and woman, then why do I hear people use the term “humankind,” Senator?  By the way, Sen. Kohl-Welles ranks #5 on the Freedom Foundation’s Big Spender List, having proposed over $24 billion in new spending.

“Person of color” is alright, but “colored person” is not.

An “illegal alien” is now an “undocumented immigrant.”

Even the real estate business is getting in on the act.  “Master bedroom” is a no-no – it’s now called the “owner’s suite” or “owner’s bedroom.”

People too stupid to know that the word “niggardly” means stingy or miserly are actually offended by the proper use of the word because it sounds like a racial slur.  Same goes for the word “niggling.”  Is this the dumbing down of American or what?

I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised when our Administration continues to use the words “workplace violence” instead of terrorism when it refers to the Ft. Hood massacre or when it refuses to say that the Boston terrorist attack was perpetrated by Islamic jihadists.

What’s really amazing is that everyone is so concerned about whether someone is a “Chairman” or holding the “Position of Chair” or whether the guy is a “brakeman” and not a “brake operator” or whether the “flagman” is actually a “flagger” but no one seems to care that the word “fuck” is nonchalantly used in public, in books and repeatedly used in movies.  That word apparently doesn’t disturb any of the PC kookaloonies.

I guess all this touchy-feely nonsense is supposed to make us feel good; we’re not supposed to make any one feel excluded.  If any of this would solve a real problem, I’d say, “ok.”  But it really doesn’t.  It’s all a mere distraction from our real problems.

I don’t get it, but if you do, God bless you.

When I read an article a couple of weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “How Do you Spell Hipster?  It Could Be B-I-N-G-O,” I laughed out loud.

Why?  Because even though I was a closet bingo player in my youth, I believed the perception people had of bingo enthusiasts back then was that only little old ladies in church basements, smoking cigarettes, with rows of cards on the table in front of them and a pile of pennies to mark them, enjoyed the game.  Little did I know that in 40 years young people would come out of the closet and raise their bingo cards and dabbers proudly.  But back then, it just wasn’t “cool” and, being young, I had to at least appear to be “cool.”

One night back around 1970, I went to bingo with a friend.  My exceptionally-“cool” older boyfriend called the apartment and my Dad answered the phone.  When asked to speak with me, my Dad said, “oh, she’s at bingo.”  Well, the next day, when I spoke with my boyfriend, he simply said, “I called your home yesterday and your Dad said you were at bingo.”  Even though he didn’t say another word, I immediately tried to cover my tracks and said, “Oh, well, huh, that’s where I tell my Dad I’m going when I’m really going somewhere else.”  Although I doubt my boyfriend thought anything of it, I was absolutely horrified and later screeched at my Dad, “How could you say that? How could you tell my boyfriend I was at bingo?”  My poor father was used to my screaming and ranting and just walked out of the room.

Forty years later, bingo is now enjoying a growing resurgence among young people, along with knitting, bowling and euchre (which I actually had to google to find out what it was).

In a suburb of Chicago, an upscale tea shop (owned by Billy Corgan, frontman for Smashing Pumpkins) hosts monthly bingo nights for 30-something hipsters with the numbers being called by different local celebrities, including Chicago news anchor, Bill Kurtis.  Winners are promised prizes ranging from a jar of honey from Mr. Kurtis’s farm to a greeting from him for their voice mail.  (He does have a great voice.)  Proceeds go to non-profits.

What was a dying game is not only making a comeback in the states, but some other enterprising guys accidentally came up with the idea of “Rebel Bingo,” and have hosted bingo nights at music venues in 35 cities around the world drawing anywhere from 800 to 2000 people, usually ranging in age from 21 to 30.

When a pizza pub in Portland, Oregon began hosting Bingo and Bourbon it turned a usually dead Monday night into a full venue and significant sales.

So with so much technology out there and news of horrific events bombarding us whenever we turn on our television or computer, it’s nice to know that something as simple as a low-tech game of bingo is still capturing our attention.  Now if shoulder pads would just come back into fashion …

In this case, I’ve always loved bingo so I totally get it, but if you don’t, God bless you.

Almost two years ago, I wrote an article, “Drug Free for Free Money,” in which I applauded Florida Governor Rick Scott for requiring adults applying for welfare assistance to undergo drug screening.  I thought it was a great idea and still do.

But, then, I don’t wear a black muu muu.  Immediately after the law went into effect, the ACLU, of course, filed a lawsuit and a local court temporarily suspended the requirement.  The case eventually went to the 11^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals which decided in February that Florida hadn’t shown a “special need” that justified suspending the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.  The case isn’t over yet and several other states have enacted similar laws.

I accept the ruling but I don’t have to like it.

I still don’t get why someone doesn’t need to drug test in order to get money from the hard-working taxpayer.  This is a no brainer for me.

We’re not talking about close personal relationships with friends and family who are entitled to our unconditional love.

We’re talking about people who aren’t entitled to anything so why shouldn’t he or she be required to prove that they actually need our money to feed themselves and their kids and will not be shooting it into to their arm or snorting it up their nose?

The real problem with this whole mess is that there is no government accountability.  Government is absolutely impotent and either lacks the skill or willpower to oversee the payments and to account to the taxpayers.  Instead, it continues to hemorrhage money with no consideration to where the money came from – the taxpayer.  (Another example is the missing $700,000,000.00 that went to Hurricane Katrina “victims.”)

Frankly, I have no idea why these types of programs aren’t implemented by the private sector.  Communities and churches are in the business of helping people and should be the “helping hands” for people in need.  Not the government.  Local people know who really needs help and who’s scamming the system.  Friends and families should know whether their children are being fed and cared for.  How can the government possibly know what their needs really are?  It can’t.  Pure and simple.

An argument can be made that there are just too many unfortunate situations which cannot be handled solely by the communities and churches.  To that I say, “Maybe it’s just too easy to get money from the government so those who aren’t needy apply and get benefits they’re not entitled to because they know no one is checking.”  I know one person who found a job after her 99 weeks of unemployment benefits ran out.  If anyone is going to try to convince me she was looking for work those 99 weeks, don’t even try.

As I’ve written before in “Who’s Rich? Who’s Poor?”, if we’re taking the care of the less fortunate in society out of the hands of families, friends and communities and placing it in the hands of the government, when will recipients be accountable to the government, and, more specifically, to their fellow Americans who actually foot the bill for all these entitlements?

As a taxpayer, and as someone who’s seen plenty of people scam the system by manipulating their drug screens to show up negative or by selling their food stamps, bus passes, and just about any other type of government assistance, in exchange for money to buy drugs, I’d really like to see some oversight and accountability.  Bottom line:  Drug abusers shouldn’t be allowed to live off our tax dollars and if it requires non-drug abusers alike to drug test, then so be it.

I don’t get it, but if you do, God bless you.

Ariel Knights, 22-year old unwed mother of a pre-schooler, found herself pregnant again, even though she learned during her first pregnancy she had uterine didelphys.  The genetic condition results in a double uterus with individual cervices. After being told the second pregnancy could put her life at risk, she went to a clinic to have an abortion, but, after a week, she was in an E.R. and learned she was still pregnant.  She went to yet another abortion clinic and was told they wouldn’t treat her for “somebody else’s mistake.”  Seven months later, she gave birth to a healthy 6-pound baby girl.  She’s now suing the first abortion clinic for not killing that same healthy baby girl.

This story got my head spinning with the many issues it presented.

Miss Knights knew she had this genetic condition.  She carried her son in her left uterus without any complications, and I’d be surprised if her doctor at the time didn’t warn her that another baby, if carried in her right uterus, would be cause for alarm.  Yet, she went ahead and got pregnant again.

She says she has a “fiancé’” and my response is always, “show me the ring.”  And why didn’t they get married during the second pregnancy (the report doesn’t indicate if the “fiancé’” is the father of the boy or the girl) or after the daughter’s birth?  If she was so concerned for her health and future pregnancies, why didn’t she have her tubes tied when her son was born or using more than one means of birth control?  Was she even using one form of birth control?

If this lawsuit goes anywhere and if she receives any settlement whatsoever, I hope she puts this money away for the therapy her daughter is going to need when she finds out her mother sued an abortion clinic for not killing her.  How do you tell your daughter that your intention was to kill her?  How do you explain it when her daughter eventually finds out?  Miss Knights now says she’s blessed with a beautiful child and considers her a “miracle baby,” so why the lawsuit?

I’m hoping when the child is old enough she’ll find a creative lawyer who’ll file an attempted murder charge against her mother.  My advice:  I’d tell her to forget about Mother’s Day.

I don’t get it, but if you do, God bless you.

In a recent column by Bill McClellan in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, he suggested, as a way to cut government spending, that we eliminate military funerals for all veterans except for those who died in combat.  He states that buglers who play “Taps” make $24.50 per service and, although, not excessive, the government is just “tapped out” and needs to cut spending.

I saw an interview with Mr. McClellan and Laura Ingraham and he seems like a nice enough fellow.  He served his country during the Vietnam War, and for that, I thank him for his service.  But, as he wrote in his column, “most veterans did nothing heroic” and, as far as he was concerned, the country paid him back with the college education he derived from the G.I. Bill.  His solution for the fiscal problem was that if a veteran wished to have a military funeral, he should join a veterans’ association and let the association provide military honors at the funerals of their members.

I would have to disagree with Mr. McClellan on two points.  First, I question his definition of “heroism” and the second, I don’t agree with him about the government expenditure for military funerals.

I don’t know whether Mr. McClellan was drafted or enlisted.  If he was drafted, (and if my memory serves me well) he could’ve gone to Canada, he could’ve gotten a student deferment, he could’ve feigned or overstated a medical problem, he could’ve gotten married, or he could’ve applied for a job in an “essential” civilian occupation.

On the other hand, if he enlisted, as our current men and women in the military have done, he made a deliberate decision to serve his country.

In either case, being drafted or having enlisted, anyone who serves in our military is a hero.  Women who enlisted in the Marine Corps during WWII were never in combat but held vital jobs behind the scenes such as radio operators, parachute riggers, drivers, cooks, bakers, auto mechanics, etc., all jobs that would’ve had to have been filled by men, thereby reducing the number of combat troops.  The same probably holds true today.  To say that any person who wears a military uniform in this country is not a hero is a misjudgment.

Getting out alive doesn’t make one less of a hero than someone who died on the battlefield.  The sacrifice is different, but sacrifice, in whatever form, should still be honored and revered.

Anyone who puts on a uniform with the potential of being in harm’s way in order to protect the interests of our country and we, its people, is a hero to me, including Mr. McClellan, even if he doesn’t see himself as one.

On the second point, fiscal responsibility, anyone who’s read my articles knows how crazy I get about government waste.  Providing military funerals for all our veterans is not an item I would eliminate from our balance sheet.

Today, when our government is hemorrhaging money in handouts to people who give back absolutely nothing to America and are not required to account for it (e.g., no drug testing required for welfare) or even perform community service or some type of volunteer work in exchange for those handouts, I have a real problem with people who think that our military’s men and women should not be accorded a military funeral.  Whatever the cost of the bugler, or any other expense attributable to the military funeral, should be gladly paid by the taxpayer with a smile and a big “thank you!”

I’m not at all interested in teaching Moroccans how to make pottery at a cost of $27 million, or spending $1.5 million to find out why some women homosexuals are fat while homosexual males are not, or spending $325,000 to build a robotic squirrel or $682,750 to study shrimp on a treadmill.  There’s plenty of room for government to cut back, including footing a $585,000 bill for Joe Biden’s recent one-night-stay in Paris.  Cutting back military honors for our veterans is not one of them.

I don’t get it, but if you do, God bless you.

On January 20, 2009, the day President Obama took office, the national debt was $10.6 trillion.

Today, it’s $16.7 trillion.

On this day, in 2017, it’s projected to be $22.2 trillion.

With all the political correctness, secular progressive propaganda and outright craziness going on in schools today, I wonder if kids are actually learning anything at all.  In my world, you went to school, learned a skill (as I did in my vocational high school), and got a job.  Higher education came much later for me.  I was expected to work out of high school.  I can’t imagine how I would’ve supported myself if I had to endure the kind of dopeyness I read about today – starting in our elementary schools all the way through college.

A new policy in Chicago will require sex education in every grade, including kindergarten.  Fortunately, parents can opt out of this program, but, one would think, with one of the highest drop-out rates in the nation, Chicago would be a little bit more interested in the basics or is reading, writing and arithmetic a thing of the past?

A mother of a fifth grader in Corpus Christie, TX, objected to a test question following the viewing of a film entitled, “Remembering September 11^th,” which read, “Why might the United States be a target for terrorism?”  The “correct” answer was “Decisions we made in the United States have had negative effects on people elsewhere.”  The other options were “Other people just don’t like Americans,” “Terrorists hate everyone” and “None of the above.”  When did it become okay to teach our children that we caused the atrocities of 9/11?  Why wasn’t the correct answer, “Because Islamic terrorists hate freedom and everything else the U.S. represents.”

In Houston, an elementary school held an assembly entitled, “A Dream Come True – Living in the present by remembering the past and looking forward to the future.”  The lyrics of the first song, “Feels Like Change”:

Oh, I tried to believe in George Bush,

I tried to trust,

But it’s ashes to ashes now,

And it’s dust to dust.

Do you feel it baby?

Oh, do you feel it?

It feels like change!

The rest of the program, with the exception of a couple of songs focused on Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., was a lovefest for the President Obama.  Talk about indoctrination and propaganda.  (After the program was put on and after reviewing the lyrics, the principal agreed that some of the songs were “overly political” and shouldn’t have been included.)

Recently, a Florida teenager, along with two others, forcibly disarmed a fellow student who allegedly pointed a loaded gun and threatened to shoot another pupil on a school bus.  Instead of praising these heroes, they were suspended for three days.  Now it’s up to them to fight to remove this suspension from their records.

In McAllen, Texas (what the hell is going on down there?), a teenager now has to sue her school because she was punished for not reciting the Mexican national anthem and pledge of allegiance (to Mexico) as part of her intermediate Spanish class.

And now we come to Massachusetts.  Earlier this year, the Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education released an 11-page document ordering the state’s K-12 public schools to permit “transgender” boys and girls to use the opposite sex’s locker rooms, bathrooms and changing facilities as long as they “claim to identify with that gender.”  Neither a doctor’s note nor parental permission for a child to “switch sexes” is needed.  If a boy says he’s a girl, as far as the schools are concerned, he’s a girl.

A friend of mine went through sex-reassignment and was required to go through years of psychotherapy, hormone therapy and living as a person of the opposite sex for an entire year before his surgery was approved.

How does a kid, somewhere between the ages of 5-17, get to make that decision without medical supervision or parental knowledge?  This is absolute insanity.  Some schools include kindergarten through 8^th grade, which means, that boys as old as 14 could share toilet facilities with girls as young as five and vice versa.  If a boy who “identifies” himself as a girl doesn’t want to use a urinal in a boys’ bathroom, then he should use a stall.  And what about a girl?  How does a girl who “identifies” herself as a boy use a boys’ bathroom any differently than a girls’ bathroom.  Does anyone really want to think about a 14-year old girl using the same changing facilities and showering with 14-year old boys?

According to the guidelines, if a female student is uncomfortable and objects to a boy’s presence when she’s in the bathroom, the rules say, the complaint “is not a reason to deny access to the transgender student.”

Finally, Ryan Rotela, a Florida Atlantic University student, is accusing an instructor and local Democratic party leader of suspending him for refusing to stomp on a piece of paper with the word “Jesus” written on it.  This “exercise” was part of an intercultural communications class (whatever that means) and was supposed to encourage discourse.  Could you imagine if a student was told to stomp on the name “Mohammed” or even “Obama”?  Fortunately, Ryan has received an apology but the instructor has been put on administrative leave for “safety reasons” whatever that means.

I don’t get it, but if you do, God bless you.

A couple of years ago, a story went viral surrounding the re-naming of Easter eggs “Spring spheres.”  It has since morphed into an urban legend.  The “story” was never confirmed but said to have originated on a radio program here in Seattle when a 16-year old from a private high school purportedly called in and told the DJ that she wanted to volunteer in a third grade class at a public school as part of her community service project during Spring break.  She said she suggested to the teacher that she’d like to fill little plastic eggs with treats and jelly beans and other candies and give them out to the children.  She got the teacher’s approval but only if she called the treats “Spring spheres.”

Well, it was only a matter of time before the secular progressives in this country would start getting their way.

Two years later, in 2013, this absurdity is now a reality.  School districts in East Meadow, NY, Manhattan Beach, CA, Flat Rock, SC and West Shore, PA, have changed “Easter” eggs to “Spring” eggs.

I thought the secular progressives in this country would be content with attacking Christmas, pressuring municipalities to change Christmas trees to holiday trees, but I was mistaken.  Now, they’re going after Easter eggs.

While Easter is a major Christian holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the holiday is also secular.  Springtime is the time when we see lots of chocolate Easter bunnies, jelly beans, and, of course, children decorating Easter eggs.

Manufacturers such as Peeps, Dove, Cadbury and Hershey’s sell Easter favorites of their candies.  Coloring kits, grass and baskets are marketed as items used to decorate and display Easter eggs.

I’ve read the egg was a pagan symbol but later adopted by Christians to symbolize the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  I’m guessing most people don’t know this and if you asked most children, they’d probably say they love eating the chocolate ones and coloring real eggs and haven’t clue about the religious component of Easter.

So what exactly are the secular progressives so afraid of?    What’s so offensive about an Easter egg?  Are they concerned about cholesterol or are they really trying to make something into a religious symbol that nobody really associates with Christianity?  I know their overall goal is to marginalize, if not eliminate, religion in our society and those who have faith, but “Easter” eggs?  Really?

What amazes me is that someone wakes up in the morning and makes something like this their goal in life.  I don’t have the time or energy; heck, I barely have time to read about it and type a few words.

What’s infuriating to me is the amount of time and energy is wasted on something so ridiculous.  I can only imagine the number of meetings and staffings, memos, emails and phone calls that were had in the school districts to save the children from the dangers of perceived religious indoctrination in the guise of Easter eggs.  Why focus on education when there are far more important issues like eliminating the “Easter” egg?

So, what’s next?  Are the secular progressives teaming up with Elmer Fudd to exterminate the dreaded Easter bunny?  What was a hoax in 2011 turned out to be reality just two years later.  The Easter bunny better watch out… it’s only a matter of time before he’s targeted.

In the meantime, I’ll just sit here quietly, eating my Dove dark chocolate Easter egg while contemplating the fate of Easter Island….

I don’t get it, but if you do, God bless you.