Free Republic

I often see comments about kids who die in stupid ways citing them as Darwin Award candidates. Toddlers and teens, you know--all little self-destruction machines. Always makes me kinda sad as we all know it's a child's job to be Sweetpea and a grownup's job to be Popeye and chase him around while he's crawling through construction zones, et cetera. It could almost be a reality show if it weren't so real.....

/remembering the harrowing days of early childhood

I wonder how many hikers saw Elizabeth Smart with her captors, even early on, and didn't want to butt in or seem nosy. I mean, the guy was making her go veiled to parties with him and the Barzee woman. Lots of people must have felt that something was not right.

If I saw a twelve-year-old-girl in a camp on public lands with a white-haired-old guy, I'd call the cops too, because my first thought would NOT be that he was her loving father. I'd be glad if that turned out to be the case. But my first thought would be "abducted and endangered child," not "Oh, they're living off the land, isn't that cute."

I also want to point out that public lands are public lands. Parks are parks--set aside for a reason. There would be no parks at all if people without homes just moved into parks and started digging out the hillsides. This is not an acceptable alternative for housing. If you want land, buy some--that's how it's done.

Once you have land, of course, the government should leave you alone so long as you're not contaminating groundwater, raping children, or otherwise afflicting someone. Wanna live in a dugout? in a tent or a yurt or an igloo, without electricity or running water or a permit for anything? You should be able to do it if that's what you want, on your own land.

If you want to do the Sam Gribbley thing, you do it on the Gribbley farm.

I wrote to Dear Abby to tell her that I do not believe she has the right to use her column to campaign for one candidate or give him, for free, a better light than the other--and that I will not read her column if she does so. She should be ashamed, and I'm positive she has permanently lost readers as well as credibility. She certainly has the right to her own political opinions, but her advice column is not the place to express them--and that should be obvious to her.

President Bush is not some cruel oppressor of women and girls and by publishing Kerry's letter and praising him, Dear Abby makes the unspoken assertion that anyone who believes a girl should be able to grow up to be President ought to vote for Kerry not Bush.

Nor is the letter even factually correct--one of my daughters might well become President some day, but my autistic son certainly does not have an equal shot at it, nor would it be appropriate if he did. Kerry's privileged background (as the President's) clearly demonstrates whose chances are better!

Perhaps Kerry believes in some kind of by-lots election system! But if we had one, his greater chance to become President because of the money he has married certainly would be lost, wouldn't it?

You know, if I ran an organization like that I'd have someone around in a wedding dress and someone else in a tux, just so I could shriek "they shot up a wedding!" if we got caught and attacked. What kinds of props does it really take to claim it's a wedding, in a place like Iraq, when you know the media will ignore any weapons, presence of known wanted terrorists, et cetera.

I think this story (hard case indeed!) would have given me incentive to oppose family pressure on the subject of circumcising my son. I still can't believe I gave in to that.

And the doctor lied and said the baby would be given pain relief--and he wasn't. He suffered a great deal from the procedure.

I'm not foolish enough to imagine that the circumcision of a baby (when it goes well!) is some kind of lasting trauma for a boy, and I think many the websites out there that rage against circumcision of baby boys are irrational. There are guys out there who apparently think their parents mutilated them, blah blah blah, ruined their sex lives (how could they know?) and so on.

I know an adult who had to have the procedure in his thirties, after an infection, and it was clearly no picnic--he was off work for a couple of weeks. Still, if religion isn't the reason, it can't be THAT hard to learn to take care of it, and I sincerely doubt that any boy would need much of an explanation of why his doesn't look like Daddy's. "Daddy was circumcised, you weren't." How hard would that have been? Would it really have been harder than "Daddy has blue eyes--you have green eyes"?

I didn't pierce my daughters' ears, either, when they were infants, though that is all the rage and I had pressure on that too from some of the family, even offers to pay for it, dismay when I refused. That will be their decision when they are in their late teens, and after they wash my car about sixty thousand times. ;-) That's a lot of leverage there that many people are just throwing away!

Wish I had stood up for that with my son--his body was fine the way God made it. It didn't need cosmetic surgery when he was 2 days old just so he would look like his father there. It just wasn't a necessary procedure, especially if he waits till marriage and is faithful to his wife--the uncircumcised-guys-spread-cervical-cancer argument evaporates if one doesn't engage in those behaviors....

I'm sad for this man and the way he suffered, but it is too bad that he did not seek treatment for his depression. Probably he'd had more than enough of doctors messing with his head and his life, though.

Thanks.

/insert obligatory joke about liberals who could feed a third world village if they'll just give up one snack a day

Thank you very much. I stole it from Neopets...which is about to invade a McDonald's near you....

EEP!

Mom?

/smile

She looks exactly like me when I was twenty years younger. How startling to see one's clone in such a photo!

You know, I don't think that's too bizarre at all.

Or maybe the media....

But still, deployed military members who would TAKE money to do such a thing shouldn't be in the service either.

Well, "should be" is perhaps far more optimistic than anyone inheriting Clinton's military should have been. :-(

Her chain of command is nevertheless culpable for this. She followed unlawful orders if she's telling the truth; if she is not, she and the others were inadequately supervised and trained, to say the least.

How many links up should the courts martial go? I think even Rumsfeld knows there may be no limit, legally. :sigh:

How will our sons learn to cope with these asshats, when we who are neurologically more typical are driven to distraction by their stupid callousness?

I don't suppose they will learn to cope. :sigh:

Okay, then, I guess we can say that there have been two perfect human beings on the earth so pure they may judge the rest of us.

"There's less evaporation out of pans of water all around the world, and that's consistent with global dimming," he said ...

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Bracing for the next ice age....

I've seen countless fatties parking in handicapped spaces, when their only visible handicap is severe obesity.

My, my, my. Perhaps someday you'll be on your fifth course of steroids to try to save your life, knowing that no matter what you do, you will gain twenty pounds. You keep having surgery, and complications from surgery, so that you spend months and months recuperating, just in time for the next surgery. The compression fractures in your spine will worsen, the joint pain that makes it impossible to exercise will be exacerbated, and you'll find yourself that much closer to bedridden. You try to get out and at least do something, because if you ever let the pain win completely and stop you, you'll never get out of bed again.

What joy you'll find in being judged for your body fat percentage, when there are very few people who are fat who are that way by choice, and more and more the research is pointing toward other causes than moral weakness.

Or perhaps some of those "fatties" you condemn are like my mother-in-law. Her abdomen is grossly distended because of fluids from her third round of cancer. I suppose since she has given up on chemo and has hair again, you'd think she is a fattie, and have contempt for her too, seeing her park in a handicapped spot to go in and have what might be her last ice cream cone (if she can keep it down.) You probably wouldn't notice that her arms and legs are like sticks--that would be going beyond appearances.

There but for the grace of God go you, and you don't realize it.

If it is, I won't use it again!

I am, and thank you for the ping. I think however that if I want to stay calm and relatively happy this MOther's Day, I'm going to refrain from reading the often idiotic comments by people who believe that if something's wrong with you, it must be a moral failing.

If you're going to eat bugs, what are you washing them for? What could possibly be on them that would bother you?

Squirrels eat bugs????