Get Incensed

I missed you all yesterday, but hopefully I can make up for it with this story!

President George W. Bush is going to be visiting the ancient Guatemala ruins at lximche during his five-nation tour of Latin America. Well, the Mayan priests are not at all happy with this! I found this very funny!

Mayan priests are planning a clean-up session, or spiritual cleansing, as it is appropriately called, to get rid of “bad spirits” once Bush leaves the ruins. According to the Mayans, Bush is thought to bring some bad air with him.

This quote was taken from an article on this story:

“That a person like (Bush) with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked is going to walk in our sacred lands is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture,” Juan Tiney, director of a Mayan non-governmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, told The Associated Press.

Okay, so I’m not at all religious, and therefore I cannot side with the Mayans based on their religious beliefs, but I have to say that I don’t blame them! I don’t support their religious views, but I love the statement this makes!

Mr. Christian himself is held accountable for his hypocritical behavior. Bitter sweet, isn’t it? I think this just feeds the stance that religion and government do not mix! The United States should be conducting foreign politics without reference to religion, meaning Bush should keep his you-know-what out of their sacred places, and leave God (all of them) out of it!

In the news today, the New Jersey American Civil Liberties Union has announced that they are suing a public school in Trenton, New Jersey for holding their high school graduation at a Baptist chruch. I say… heck yeah!

The reason for the lawsuit aggrivates me a little though. What sparked the ACLU’s involvement was that the Baptist church location did not allow for a Muslim student to attend, because Muslims aren’t supposed to walk into buildings with pictures or statues of a religious nature. Therefore, the Muslim high school senior missed their graduation.

I feel horrible for the Muslim student. No one should be excluded from such a joyous occassion, but the reason I’m aggrivated is because the case doesn’t seem to address the bigger problem here. The way I see it, the main problem is the fact that a public school held a graduation in a place of religious worship.

I’m sure that underlining problem will come out during the course of this lawsuit though. I will sit back and have “faith” in the justice system. I believe that they will uphold the Constitution, and set the record straight on religious influence in a secular school.

If they don’t, they’ll be hearing from me… and you, I hope!

I was just reading a news brief on the case of the rape and murder of the nine year old Jessica Lunsford. Stories like this make me sick, and I normally avoid them, not to remain ignorant, but keep my sanity.

A picture of Jessica Lunsford, which I was not able to download in order to share with you, caught my eye, and I had to read the brief statements. I learned something that I did not know. Did you know that she was buried alive, after being raped?

Typing through tears is hard, but I feel like I have to right now. I have five children, and I can’t help but think what… what that would do to a mother, a father, or worse yet, what that child was forced to endure before the release of death. AHHHHHHHHHH! I just want to scream and hit something hard!

When I read that John Evander Couey, the child molester and murderer that caused Jessica the kind of agony that no person should ever have to endure, “could face the death penalty”, I was infuriated! What do they mean, “could?” That’s bull*#%@ !

I think that any convicted child mmolester and/or murderer should be put to death! No waiting - just kill them! The risk of them getting out of prison is not worth it, not to mention I don’t want a penny of my tax dollars going to feed them! Let ‘em starve! Lethal injection is too nice for them too! Hangings should be brought back just for these people, if you can call them that.

I look at that picture of Jessica, and can’t help but to think of my children. I wonder, is the stranger-talks and news clips I share with them of these tragedies enough to keep them aware and safe?

Friday will mark the beginning of the hearings for 14 terror suspects that were being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The suspects have now been moved to secret CIA prisons to await their hearing. Word on the street is that no reporters will be allowed to witness, and subsequently report on any of the hearings.

I’m not sure how normal or out-of-the-ordinary this is (not allowing reporters into a suspected terrorist hearing), but I’m not sure I like it.

Only edited versions of the proceedings will be released. Supposedly they will be removing the parts that could compromise US national security. Okay, I understand that. I wouldn’t want to make a bad situation, worse, but isn’t it hard to trust our government these days?

Maybe it’s all the bad news that has been centered around Guantanamo Bay recently, and the suspicions about those secret prisons that make an announcement such as not allowing reporters into the hearings, upsetting. I don’t know enough about any of this Guantanamo/prison stuff to really talk about it, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth anyway.

Don’t get me wrong, regardless of what mistakes this government has made post 9/11, I still want to see those who participated in the planning of 9/11 to be punished. Most all of us do. I’ve just been hoping for more honesty from our leaders, which may be silly of me. In my head, where everything turns out just fine, I would think that we could find 2 or 3 reputable reporters to sit in on the hearings, and have the capacity to report only that information which did not have the potential to harm national security. Is that really not possible? Or is our government afraid of something other than a security breech?

Check out this article discussing the hearings:
“At Gitmo detainee hearings, no journalists allowed”

When I think if gastric bypass surgery, I think of adults, not kids or teenagers. As it turns out though, according to a March 5, 2007 article on CNN.com, the number of obese teenagers that will be getting gastric bypass surgery this year is expected to triple! What the heck is going on?

It also seems that teenagers 12 to 19 years old have a shorter recovery period. So far, no teens or young adults have died, but in comparison there has been 212 adult deaths. Does this make anyone feel better about putting their 15-year old child under the knife to lose weight?

Well, check out a couple of these quoted statistics from the article:

“Children spent an average of about 3.2 days in the hospital in 2003, versus 3.5 days for adults.”

“Total hospital charges also were lower for pediatric patients, $30,804 per patient versus $36,056 for adults.”

Does that help make the idea easier to swallow? Not for me! I have mixed emotions about it, mostly about need vs. lazy, but there have been children as young as 12 to have gastric bypass surgery! Yes, 12! I understand that in many cases, it’s a life or death need, but it’s still not a lifestyle change! You don’t get obese because you have a large stomach - you get obese because you stretch the stomach beyond normal limits! The quick solution may be surgery, but it’s the lifestyle that needs treatment!

I don’t know. Maybe, I have to have a child in that situation to understand the choice. Am I just ignorant to think that childhood obesity is preventable? We’re not talking about just overweight, or those extra pounds we pack on during our awkward puberty stage, we are talking about 80, 100, 120 pounds or more overweight! Isn’t there a way to prevent it? Why does it have to be so hard? So expensive? So life-consuming? I ask again, what is going on?

Check out this picture! This an award-winning photograph by Spencer Platt. I got it off one of my favorite sites, NPR.org.

I have to admit that when I first saw this picture, before reading the caption or story, I thought it was of a bunch of spoiled, early twenty-something girls, probably from California checking out some recent US disaster (such as the recent tornadoes), and taking pictures on their camera-phone like rich tourists. Now, that may be stereotyping or whatever, but I’m just being honest - that is the first thought that ran through my mind. This is definitely something you would see here in the United States. (Oh, you can’t say it isn’t!)

I was surprised to read that this was actually a picture of young Lebanese women driving through Beirut, to view the war damage. This photo was announced as the “Photo of the Year 2006″ by World Press Photo. It took me a second to get it really. However, now that I have paused to take in all four corners, as well as the girls in the middle, I can truly see why World Press Photo took a liking to this photograph. World Press Photo was quoted on NPR.org as commenting that the photograph “has the complexity and contradiction of real life, amidst chaos.”

Well, I couldn’t have said it better myself. That is exactly what it has! It is real life; those more fortunate looking at those less fortunate through sunglasses and a camera lens. You can’t get too angered by it though; it’s what we as humans do. We are drawn to look at devastation, poverty, destruction and pain. Why are we that way?

Without hatred, pain and devastation, we can have no love, bliss and wealth. Without one, we cannot know the other. By looking at destroyed lives, we learn how valuable ours is. Love it or hate it, that’s just the way it is.

How many of you men and women out there can say that you had a teacher, in either middle or high school, that was h-o-t, hot!

There were a ton of boys at my middle school that would talk about the “hot English teacher.” She was very young, fresh out of college, and very beautiful. I wondered several times why she would choose a profession that didn’t display her beauty. I thought she could have been a model. The girls would get jealous when the boys didn’t pay them any attention during English class, and they would try very hard to point out the few flaws that our “hot English teacher” did have.

Adolescence is a horrible and wonderful time! I’m sure that our “hot English teacher” knew what was going on, and she used the boys’ interest in her to engage them in the subject. Looking back, it was quite brilliant of her! There was a clear line drawn though; it was comprised of the teacher’s professional attitude, the picture of her very mature boyfriend on her desk, and the boys’ lack of confidence in the ability of their pimply faces to win her over.

Well, there are five boys in Clinton, South Carolina that crossed that line, or rather the 23-year old teacher did.

Allenna Williams Ward, a middle school teacher in Clinton, South Carolina was recently arrested for having sex with five, yes five, of her students! She did it with 14 and 15-year old boys at motels, a park, and even at their school! Now that’s bold, or is it just flippin’ crazy!?

Yeah, I’m voting for crazy! Allenna didn’t look that hot to me in her mug shot, but how hot does a 23-year authority figure really have to be to take advantage of hormonal adolescent boys? Not very, I would imagine! This is what makes me so mad! The boys are probably embarrassed right now, but secretly getting high-fives from their friends.

I actually think that there will be more trauma caused to the boys by the publicity of all of this, than by the actual sexual acts. And while I can find some humor in this story, I do think that this teacher should be put away for a long time! Right now she is charged with criminal sexual conduct with a minor, and six counts of lewd acts on a minor. Well, it’s time her to be taken advantage of by a cell-mate named Big Bertha! Have fund Miss Ward!