Where's the Outrage?

I'll tell you where.  It's everywhere.  Following are just a few of the outrages found in various parts of the country recently.

In a Norfolk, Virginia, a teacher thought it would be a great idea to teach the Civil War by separating black students and let the white students auction them off. 

In the same school district, a teacher decided to take it upon herself to baptize a student with holy water because she thought the student's parents were atheists.

Another time, in the same school district, a tacher handed out flyers to 8 year olds to take home to their parents, urging them to vote for to vote for making medical marijuana legal.

And, again, same district, a teacher made her students wear necklaces which sported tiny fetuses, as a pro-life gesture.

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The Maine legislature is about to legalize switch-blades, but only for people with one arm.

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Once again, the powers that be at the Masters have enraged untold numbers of women. They did not allow female reporters to go into the locker room and interview the golfers after the tournament, while the male reporters were welcomed.  The Rednecks will never learn.

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I saw a commercial in which three worried-looking women were agreeing that "It's time to talk about what's really going on in the bathroom."  We've come a long way from "Please don't squeeze the Charmin."  A long way, the wrong way.

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And in Britain, scientists have confirmed the theory that the brains of Conservatives and Liberals are different. Conservatives' brains are much smaller and smoother. OK, I made up that last sentence, but not the first one.

Stay tuned.

And Baby Makes 18 !?!?!

Ye, Gods, they’ve been at it, again. The Duggars are expecting their 18th baby on New Year’s Day – or thereabouts. If I were his wife, I’d have soldered all his zippers shut 15 babies ago. But, that’s just me.

They made the papers, again, on Mother’s Day, when they went, en masse, to the buffet at the Peabody Hotel in Little Rock. It reportedly set them (or someone) back over $500. Try to imagine looking up from your meal and seeing two parents and 17 kids storming the buffet tables. I feel an anxiety attack coming on.

You remember Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar. They live in Tontitown, Arkansas, located in the Northwest part of the state, not far from Springdale and Fayetteville. He served in the Arkansas House of Representatives in 1999. He ran for the U.S. Senate in 2002 and lost to Tim Hutchinson. Then, ran for the Arkansas State Senate in 2006 and lost.

They are Conservative Baptists who endorse the teachings of Bill Gothard, who claims to have dedicated his life to helping teenagers and their parents. Gothard is relatively unknown outside his gilded realm. He rarely speaks to the press and photos of him are hard to find. He heads an Institute in Basic Life Principals, generally thought of as a cult, which teaches, among other things, “married believers should eschew birth control and have as many children as possible.” Easy for him to say. He is unmarried and has no children.

To give you a sense of what he’s about, a few years ago, Gothard tried to get Cabbage Patch Kids off the market because he claimed that they were “causing strange and destructive behavior in children that could be alleviated when the dolls were removed or destroyed”. If you want to know whatever there is to know about him and his cult, you can Google him. There are several articles, and one of them even connects him to our former Governor and Presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee. But, back to the Duggars.

Duggar has not been specific when asked how he supports such a big family other than a vague reference to real estate, but says that he and his wife live debt free, “the fruit of a financial freedom seminar” he attended about 20 years ago. This seminar was sponsored by Gothard, and taught by Jim Sammons. Its purpose is to help people understand what the Bible teaches about money. I suspect that Duggar is on Gothard’s payroll, somehow, maybe as a “recruiter” of some kind. As always, I could be wrong.

The Duggars live in a 7,000 square foot house that they claim was built by family members and friends, and carries no mortgage. Michelle has been pregnant for 135 months (that’s eleven years) of her life. She estimates that they use 90,000 diapers per year and does 200 loads of laundry per month. She says they feed the brood for less than $2,000.00 per month.

She says that they will keep on having children as long as God wills it. They have had a baby about every 18 months, on average. She’s only 41 years old, so God still has plenty of time to work His will. Let’s see, it seems to me that not very long ago a 63 year old woman had a baby. If Michelle lasts that long, she could have…….you do the math. I can’t stand to think about it.

All the children have names that start with the letter “J” and they are home-schooled. Of course they are. I’ll bet some of them are barefoot, too. Can you imagine what it costs just to keep them in shoes? Wouldn’t you love to be the youngest, wearing hand-me-downs from 16 older siblings? Would anything match?

Imagine, for a moment, if you can, bedtime in the Duggar household. “‘Nite, James. ‘Nite, Jana. ‘Nite, John-David. ‘Nite, Jill. ‘Nite, Jessa Lauren. ‘Nite, Jinger Nicole. ‘Nite, Joseph Garrett. ‘Nite, Josiah Matthew. “Nite, Joy-Anna. ‘Nite, Jeremiah Robert. ‘Nite, Jedidiah Robert. ‘Nite, Jason Michael. ‘Nite, James Andrew. ‘Nite, Justin Samuel. ‘Nite, Jackson Levi. ‘Nite, Johannah Faith. ‘ Nite, Jennifer Danielle.

I’ll bet even the Pope would be appalled.

I'm Appalled

The owners of such restaurants as Outback Steakhouse, Bonefish Grill and Carraba's Italian Grill, among others, have decided that their servers are making too much money from tips.

Those dastardly credit card companies have the nerve to take a 3% fee, which is just too much for the restaurants to handle, so they have decided to make their servers chip in 3% of their tips. This means that if a diner leaves a $20.00 tip, the server will get $19.40. Then, he or she shares 3% of that with kitchen help, busboys, hosts/hostesses and bartenders.

Apparently, the restaurant owners of America, who pay servers an average of $2.63 an hour, are under the impression that the servers aremaking out like bandits on their tips. Some of them have as much as said so. This is how they justify picking the pockets of the lowest paid group of workers in the country.

Shame on them!

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A letter to the editor in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette this morning comes from one of these people who, back in the 60's we used to call a "Male Chauvinist Pig". While I am outraged by his letter, he is, in turn, outraged by Jessica Simpson. He seems to think that she is the reason the Cowboys lost one of their games because she selfishly hogged the limelight, as the girlfriend of Tony Romo, "putting her career above his" by distracting him from the business at hand.

He says this "smacks of the women's liberation movement of the '60's and '70's, now in its second generation. " He goes on to say that "all this comes as we prepare to elect the first woman president, born of the same era. We have since then elevated and promoted the influence of women. "

He warns, "We are headed in the same direction and, in my view, with the same results, with social balance at stake...."

Hey, Mister, some of us think this could be a good thing!

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Our very own Huckster is running out of money, but not chutzpah. He called the Kenneth Copeland Ministries, begging for money, so they passed the plate and came up with over $100,000 for his campaign.

Copeland is under a congressional investigation because he refuses to turn over a list of his contributors. Seems Sen. Grassley has a crazy idea that Copeland might be a, dare I say it, charlatan. What? Just because he preaches that God wants Christians to be wealthy? This has been dubbed the "prosperity gospel". Well, Copeland has certainly prospered.

And, so has the Huckster. Stay tuned.

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I have to admit I was surprised that Ted Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama. He doesn't usually endorse anyone, and then backs the person who wins the nomination. So, I am asksing myself, "Self, wouldn't you like to know the real reason behind this ensorsement?" Since he appeared to be pretty thick with the Clintons, was it really Bill's heavy-handed attempt to make the campaign about race?

Or, could it be that Ted doesn't like Bill and Hillary as much as they think he does?