Why Are Atheists Driven to ‘Prove’ Something That Cannot Be Proven?

The recent surge in activity of atheist vs. believers is almost ‘campaign-like’. I get the impression atheists have a single-minded drive to ‘prove’ two things:

1-that they are superior in their belief

2-that those who believe He does exist are foolish.

The following is a sentence taken from the current TV blog:

A new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that most religious Americans don't know shit about their own religions. Sample fun finding: "A majority of Protestants, for instance, couldn't identify Martin Luther as the driving force behind the Protestant Reformation."

The use of the word ‘fun’ to describe this finding backs up what I said in my opening paragraph.

All this finding shows is that believers are not receiving a religious education. Just that simple. Ignorance of religion-based facts does nothing to prove existence or non-existence.

I believe that if you go to church you should at least be taught why you are there. Then if you choose not to believe in it then walk away.

How atheists can consider themselves ‘enlightened’ when there is no actual proof of either existence or non-existence is beyond me. To whip themselves into an almost, dare I say it, ‘religious fervor’ to ‘prove’ that which cannot be proven borders on ridiculous.

What is the point? If religious followers want to believe in God then so be it. If atheists want to believe there is no God then so be it. Why should either side campaign to prove their superiority?

There truly are more pressing matters that we should all, as Americans, be concerned with. For instance, we all need to learn:

1. how to accept others regardless of their beliefs
2. what it takes to be an American
3. that we have a responsibility to fight for our constitutional rights
4. how to manage our money (stop allowing the rich to leave the rest of us behind)
5. how to educate our children so they can actually compete with the rest of the world
6. that intelligence has a higher priority than simply ‘looking good’
7. anger management

If anyone has anything to add to this list I am always willing to hear you out.

Education Begins With Reading

Sounds simple, right? If you can’t read your ability to learn becomes severely handicapped. As a parent I want my kids to have every benefit this life can give us, and judging by the direction our education system is headed, the earlier we get started the better.

You cannot and should not expect public education to motivate our children to learn. That is the responsibility of the parent and it needs to be taken on starting from the day a child is born. Some people say it can start before the child is born. I’m no expert in this so I’ll leave the accuracy of statement to them to prove.

The desire to learn beyond basic survival instincts must be taught. And developing the desire to learn begins with reading. Simply showing children that there is a world beyond the four walls of their home is one of the greatest first steps they can take. But it is up to the parent to get them started.

Reading to your children will spark their imagination. Exposing them to a wide variety of topics will ignite that spark to the point it will never be extinguished.

Our library system is stocked full of every type of book you can imagine. And every book, magazine, CD and computer in it is free for us to use. Please utilize this resource to show how much we appreciate having it made available to us.

Libraries are not there only for entertainment. You can receive a complete and well-rounded education just from reading books from our public libraries.

Show your children the value of reading. For some fun exercises, assign your child the task of writing an essay on whatever topic you can think of. Make it a fun topic. They may protest they may rebel but in the end it will another one of the greatest memories they have of their childhood. It could be the very earliest steps of creating a career path for them. It’s possible.

Reading unlocks so many possibilities like nothing else can.

I have to admit that my writing this post is more than just for the sake of kids I don’t even know. I have my selfish reasons too. Just think for a moment that every person in the country, in the world, could read and did so on a regular basis. How much more educated do you think we would all be? Do you agree that a better educated person has more opportunities to succeed than an under-educated person? If more people were educated can you agree with me that there would be far less poverty, far more self-reliance, far less need of a government to care for us and therefore far less financial strain on our entire economic system. So you see I do plead with everyone to become better educated so that all of us can enjoy a better quality of life.

It is a world that is possible to create. Think about some of the reasons people do not learn to read. Certainly there are medical reasons, but putting those aside, I believe the single most inexcusable reason for not being able to read is a lack of conviction that reading is necessary.

While I am on the subject of education, I have to say a few things about writing. We are losing our ability to write because of the computer. I think everyone can agree with this. I don’t think that we should throw away our computers just to save writing, but I do believe that we need to work on spelling and grammar. We can get by fine without the need to write letters, we have many other ways of communicating, but when I hear an adult utter this phrase “I ain’t got no . . .” it makes me cringe. I don’t consider myself a grammar nazi, but my God, please try to take some pride in yourself and get an education.

If you have children, please read to them. They deserve as good a chance at a good education as anyone. Those children who are being read to are going to fair much better than those children who are not read to. Reading really is that important.

Teaching adults to read is also very rewarding. Their gratitude and excitement at being able to read on their own is genuine and much appreciated. When I see them read on their own knowing I played a part in teaching and encouraging them to do so is very exhilarating.

 

Some people state that when foreigners some to America to live they should speak our language. I agree, but not all of them can. We can step up and help them learn to speak English. There are programs in every large city that offer facilities to help adults learn to read as well as speak English. Volunteer and know that you are doing something instead of just complaining.

A Bit of Perspective

Witness America’s Long Slide into Oblivion

Barbara Bush says she hopes Sarah Palin stays in Alaska. You and me both sister. But merely hoping for it is not going to make it so.

The Republican Party has already let this unwashed mouthpiece out of the box and they have no intention of giving up on a project that they have spent so much time and effort grooming.

It’s no accident that Sarah Palin was chosen for this project. She very closely resembles what the majority of Americans are becoming. She is a product of an educational system that has failed America. She represents the erosion of culture in this country, thereby making her easy to be handled. Her ego allows her to believe that ‘she’ is the person the public wants, when in fact she is merely a tool used by the GOP to keep their party in power no matter the cost.

She was chosen because she exemplifies the misplaced optimistic view that the American public is in control of its own destiny.

Education is what we so desperately need right now. Education…not just what to think but how to think…to give us the ability to see beyond what is being placed in front of us and deduce the true meaning of why it is being placed in front of us. The lack of this ability is why it is so easy for us to be manipulated.

And make no mistake, the American public is being manipulated. The media is being used by practitioners of what Karl Rove so expertly used to put an under-qualified George W Bush into office. Their goal is to win at all costs and the loser will once again be the American public.

The media has been speculating about Sarah Palin laying out the ground work for a run at the Presidency. No, she is not, the GOP is. Her ‘handlers’ are keeping her in the lime light for just this purpose. Mind you she doesn't need to be pushed too hard because she has enough ambition, drive and ego to push herself, but she needs the expert talent that her backers provide to know where and when and at what pace to keep her name in the public's face.

The main problem I have with the circus that the presidential campaign has become, is that the democratic process of choosing our candidates has been denigrated into a “win at all costs” mentality backed by unlimited funds. What’s best-for-America no longer has anything to do with choosing the best candidate.

When someone from her own party hopes she stays in Alaska and out of the presidential race, you just know we are in trouble.



Here’s a must read along the same line as this post:
Best of the Blogs Appaling Ignorance. The Know-Nothings of 2010 Have a Leader

The present bunch of morons who scream about “FREEDOM!!!” and “PATRIOTISM!!!” wouldn’t know what this country is all about if Thomas Jefferson hit them in the head with a rolled-up Constitution.

Don’t get me wrong-I know that Caribou Barbie is an idiot. That’s been clear from the day John McCain decided to screw this country good and hard by elevating her to national prominence. But, even given that we all understand she’s an idiot, some of the things that this stupid bimbo says STILL surprise me.

Short attention span society

Wait. What? A post on Daily Writing Tips called Web Usability Revisited says that I have to resort to trickery to get you to read past this first paragraph. The inference is that a large segment of our society is too busy, or too jaded, to read more than the first paragraph of anything written. And that in order for me to get you to move on to the second and subsequent paragraphs I should use crutches like bolding, sub-headings and bulleted lists. And that I should place the conclusion of my post here in this first paragraph.

I believe the problem is that we have been conditioned to have short attention spans and that since we are inundated and bombarded with so much information at such a tremendous rate, most of it remarkably inane, from the moment we climb out of bed until we fall asleep again, we don’t know where to spend our time. And our ability to learn new things is suffering.

Does this mean that since we don’t read past the first paragraph we are forming opinions on that post based on just those first few words and accepting it as fact? Does it mean that we are absent mindedly surfing the information super highway without any thought process at all, stopping only on flashy graphics?

If so, why am I continuing to write this post since the majority of web surfers have already moved on either with or without the possibility or learning some new insight into our society? Indeed, what is the point of ever writing anything longer than one sentence if it doesn’t describe some awesome photograph or scream out some supermarket-rag headline like Brittney and Paris are having my alien babies?

Information overload is affecting us in ways that we are not even conscious of yet. Our brains absorb what is thrown before us and because of the amount of information we are exposed to, we expect it to be as condensed as possible, and presented as efficiently as possible, in order to take in the maximum amount of data in the shortest amount of time.

Television delivers short programming segments interrupted by a series of shorter segments during commercial breaks, and I believe that this constant barrage of short segments from the time we are infants is conditioning us to have short attention spans. As a result, we expect every bit of data to be delivered in short bursts, and if it isn’t able to grab our attention quickly then the chance of receiving it is lost.

Thanks to StumbleUpon, those short bursts can be delivered even quicker than ever before. We can sit in front of our computer monitors for hours and have access to millions of websites just for the pure joy of accessing as many as we can. If our attention is so short then this type of browsing experience would serve no other useful purpose than to add quantity to our web experience. The sites that get the most thumbs up are the most graphically intense.

As a result of our short attention span, reading rates are falling along with reading comprehension. The National Endowment for the Arts recently published findings that show the literacy rate for the general public was less than 50%. Reading books for entertainment or as a source of information is becoming a thing of the past. And I cannot imagine that reading on the internet is taking up the slack. As a result of less reading our language and writing skills are abysmal.

Articulation is suffering and therefore the ability to communicate in an ever more complex and technologically advanced world is suffering. The English language is butchered on a daily basis and this new hybrid is being accepted as the norm. There simply is no desire to be articulate. This is why so many mediocre authors are able to get their books published. Without good writing to stimulate people into becoming educated, adaptive, logical thinkers our future is looking very dim.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

- Ray Bradbury

Certainly, we have some great authors writing some fantastic prose today, but the big money is in motion pictures. Why? Because the majority of people would rather watch the movie than read the book. How much crap do you suppose is accepted as entertainment because it is flashy and graphic?

Our libraries are becoming little more than museums to books that get read by an ever decreasing number of our society. Who checks out books from libraries? Students for class assignments, mostly. And a handful of people who still want to experience the richness of the written word, but the body of that satisfying richness is dwindling. A best-selling author can only hope to sell a mere 135,000 copies to a public of 300 million!

We buy magazines loaded with pretty pictures and after viewing them the magazine is tossed onto a pile and collects dust without the articles being read.

The relationship between the internet and the media is a perfect match for our attention-depleted public because we only have to read one line in the highlights section to get ‘up to speed’ on current events. Try talking to someone about any news topic, they will probably say “yeah, I heard about that but I didn’t get the details”. You know why they only ‘heard’ about it but didn’t get any ‘details’? Because they skimmed the headlines without clicking to the story. This has become the new ‘USA Today’ approach to getting the news. Remember when USA Today first began publishing? Their novel approach to getting the news out was to put as many headlines and pictures on the front page as they could because most people did not want the details. They could just skim over the front page on the way to their jobs.

While we allow ourselves to be dumbed-down by not taking the time to read the rest of the world is surpassing us in education, technology and industry. American eighth graders rank ninth worldwide in science scores--and 15th in math, behind students in Estonia, Hungary, and Malaysia. And for years, U.S. students have been migrating away from hard sciences--which tends to be the source of cutting-edge new products and other innovations.

We are just not hungry enough anymore. We have grown complacent with being number one for so long that we have taken this fatal attitude that we can sit back and watch the number two’s grovel to keep up. I’ve got news for all of you. Number two is getting smarter and hungrier by educating themselves, by reading. And they are not doing it by watching television or surfing the internet for cool pictures.

We need to get our children motivated enough to get our education level back up in order to compete with the world again. We need to reopen our minds and get those creative and innovated juices flowing again. We need to get our stagnated free-thinking logic working on technology that will allow us to survive the major problems facing us today and in the future.

The best way to do all of this is to read everything we can get our hands on. Effective communication with the rest of the world depends entirely on literacy. We cannot afford the luxury of watching life go by without finding and celebrating the intelligence that we could find if we would only take the time to read it.

Home schooling vs. public education

A California judge could possibly rule that parents who teach their children at home must be credentialed by the state or return their children to state approved schools.

Upon first reading this I was infuriated that yet another judge could take away another of our individual freedoms and thereby create a larger burden on the majority.

Home schooling has been an acceptable practice for families not wanting to enroll their children in public schools since colonial days.

When I first heard of home schooling I thought it was a bad idea due mostly to my not understanding how parents, who most likely hated school themselves, can instill in their children the love of learning that makes teaching so much more rewarding. How are they motivated to give their child every benefit of education they deserve? They are setting their children up for failure!

I decided to learn what I can about home schooling to see how it works and how it compares to public education. Over my course of research and discovery I have learned that home schooling offers some unique benefits not found in public schools. I have learned that there is a system in place to ensure home schooled students maintain a comparable level of education with their peers in public schools.

My personal prejudices aside against the inefficiency and stagnation of creativity that takes place in public schools, I have learned that home schooling is superior to public education in some ways and not so much in others. Home schooling is not for everyone.

History of home schooling.

In colonial America, home schooling was naturally the only system of learning available, aside from on the job training, as it were, to learn what you need to survive. Formal classroom settings were slow in arriving. Most children were taught at home by their parents in their spare time between doing the everyday chores related to survival.

Education developed into religious training as many of the universities in the Ivy League were established to train ministers. Eventually, communities and states began to establish schools supported by government funds; however, these schools continued to have a very distinctive religious flavor as evidenced by the use of the New England Primer which was so popular at that time. In fact, the Catholic parochial school movement began in this country as a response to what Catholics perceived as the overt Protestant nature of the public schools.

By the late nineteenth century many communities felt that the state had a compelling interest to make sure that every child received an education so that they might be productive citizens. Others felt that requiring their children to go to a state sponsored school was eroding the authority of the parents by making the state the final authority rather than the parent. One by one states passed compulsory attendance laws, but public schools continued for some time to have a distinctly Christian character.

In the early 1960s, the United States Supreme Court issued a series of decisions that would dramatically change the face of public education in this county and set the stage for a return to home schooling. The U.S. Supreme Court declared that it was a violation of the Constitution to read the Bible, pray, or even post the Ten Commandments in a public school.

As a direct result of these changes, private Christian schools began to spring up all over the county. The proliferation of such schools was an attempt by parents to give their children an education integrated with the values that they held. Ten years later, the circle was completed as parents began to teach their own children at home.

Benefits of home schooling

Home schooling provides relief from the overcrowding that is inherent in public schools. The ratio of students to teacher is growing annually and is greater than ever. A parent, teaching several children at one time can afford more time per student than a public school teacher with as many as 50 students or more.

Overcrowding creates a stress not likely to be found in the home. Frustration felt at not getting the proper attention can lead to a student to give up on doing their best or, in the worse case, even trying. The feeling of being lost in the crowd stifles many students so that if they do get through high school and enter college, they are not as likely to fully participate in the education process and therefore society as a whole misses out on another possible brilliant contributor to our general well-being.

Due to the more relaxed and flexible atmosphere in the home, the extra attention given a student can lead that student to a greater appreciation of the educational process. They are allowed to more thoroughly savor the ability to learn, even though they don’t consciously realize it, the desire to learn is becoming ingrained in them. The process of new discovery is a heady experience that should never be restricted, it should be allowed to soar unfettered in order to open new avenues of discovery leading to new opportunities that will further encourage their inquisitive nature.

Areas of interest are more likely to be pursued without arbitrary rules set up for the purpose of crowd management, as is the public school setting.

Being home schooled strengthens the bonds between parent and child. Something that I personally feel is sorely missing in today’s society as this lack of familial bonding contributes directly to a host of society’s ills.

Remaining at home for longer hours reinforces valuable behavior and deemphasizes undesirable behavior in a natural manner.

Children don’t bring home as many illnesses when they aren’t exposed to the crowds of other school children.

Being at home allows children to see what adult life is about. They develop an interest in what adults do and how they interact with one another. This only serves to increase their curiosity in what is available for their future.

Drawbacks of public schooling

One myth is that socialization of children will suffer. On the contrary, the individual attention given a home schooler instills a sense of pride and the strength of individualism that allows the student to think and make decisions on their own without the peer pressure that is so evident in public schools. The cliquish behavior of school age kids tends to too often alienate others and interfere with education.

Public schools don’t recognize the difference between learning-disabled and learning-delayed. If a student is unable to maintain the level of education that their age dictates, according to public school guidelines, then the child is recommended for drug induced special-education for the learning disabled. School systems are the leading cause of Ritalin addled children.

This system tries to be everything to everyone. We are unfairly placing more and more responsibility on the public schoolteacher. Sex education, should be taught in the home. Responsibility for oneself should be taught in the home. Respect for one another and yourself should be taught in the home. A duty to your family and society as a whole should be taught at home. Religion should be taught in the home and at church. We have blurred the lines between teacher and parental responsibilities and far too many parents have welcomed shirking these important duties and putting them off onto the overburdened school teacher.

Children are forced to stay within their age group rather than move on along with their classmates. I.e., a fourth grader might be learning at a fifth grade level but must, due to age, stifle their learning in order to satisfy this archaic school system requirement. Likewise, too often a student who is falling behind his/her peers is pushed into the next grade level to make room for the next group. This process stigmatizes students to the point many give up on school or they resign themselves to being outcasts. We are doing a grave disservice to both of these students and society.

In forcing our children into the public arena at such an early age we are socializing them into peer dependency, a social cancer in which students lose family closeness and values and provide a precise breeding ground for drugs, ill-advised sex, etc. Many public schools acknowledge this.

Individual interests are squelched at the expense of a uniform rate of learning that produces a sameness, a vanilla-flavor of education.

Schools only teach children how to take tests. They memorize what they need to pass the next test and then throw it out to make room for the next list of items to memorize for the next test. Granted, some of this memorization sticks with the student but the experience becomes viewed as a waste of time and is so distasteful to some students that they drop out of school.

The artificial structure of the classroom setting, does not prepare the student for the real world where the demand to “think outside the box” creates frustration for those who have acclimated themselves to the classroom structure and expect real-life to match their expectations. We are setting them up for failure or to be relegated to that group of timid souls who never exercise their individualism and whose opinion will never be heard because, through peer pressure and fear of being laughed at, they were taught to never think for themselves. Welcome to middle-class America where the silent majority quietly and obediently perform their day-to-day functions as good little taxpaying, couch-sitting, television-watching, fast-food-eating, consumers who never get ahead because their individualism has been stifled by a public school system that told them they never will.

Our schools are overcrowded, the teachers are underpaid and have been handed the extra duty of being mommies and daddies to children who have not been properly taught in the home how to behave in public. Many of their efforts to teach are stifled by a top heavy and bloated administrative structure that spends way too much time and effort on politics than actual administration. There are outstanding teachers who put their students learning ahead of everything else, just as there are those who only go through the motions for a paycheck.

I come away from this research convinced that home schooling is by far superior to our public school system but only if the parent is educated enough to take the place of the public school teacher. Good intentions can get you only so far. If you don’t feel you can provide a better educational experience for your child, even with the safeguards that ensure your child is not left behind his/her peers, then please don’t get into this.

Home schooling is just one philosophy of teaching our children. Another is the Montessori method. Public school system includes Charter schools and Magnet schools. For more information see below.

Our children deserve, and our society deserves, to be well-educated so no matter which avenue you choose to educate your child please be involved to ensure they are getting a good education. Don’t just assume the teacher is doing everything possible.

Center for Education Reform (Charter Schools)

About Montessori schools

Public School Review

Average has become the new genius

Every time I read about or hear about proof that the average American citizens’ intelligence level is lower than that of a common chimpanzee I cringe until my blood begins to boil.

There is no excuse, whatsoever, for adults to not live up to their intelligence potential. We are given the opportunity to get a free education until the 12th grade and most (the vast majority) squander the time spent in high school as an excuse to ‘hook up’ with their friends or plan parties. Parents are happy to get the kids out of the house for six to eight hours a day so they get time alone away from them. Opening books and studying for the barest information possible required to pass the next test is the only brain exercise these kids get. And they do not want to do anything more than what is minimally required to get into the next grade level with only one goal in mind, to graduate. By the time they do graduate they can’t even answer what are considered high school level questions.

Jay Leno occasionally does a segment on the Tonight Show, called “Jaywalking”, where he goes to a college campus and asks college students high school level questions about various subjects. The responses he gets make me want to cry. I want to cry because I am so embarrassed about being an American citizen and, by default, lumped into the same pin with these morons. The fact that these ignorant asses just laugh off their stupid responses just shows how little regard we Americans have for education.

You can find examples everywhere of how under-educated America has become. It has become commonly acceptable for Americans to not watch the evening news, or any news program. Current events is treated as a plague to be avoided at all costs. Proper English, the very tool of communication we have been born and raised to speak and write with has not been used in this country for years, possibly even decades.

There is a television program called “Are you smarter than a 5th grader” where adults subject themselves to be pitted against actual 5th grade students. The creator of this program must have the same cynicism that I feel towards American adults. I gave up watching television for entertainment years ago but my father-in-law was watching this particular program as I passed through the living room the other night an just for the hell of it I decided to watch part of it. A grown man was struggling to identify what a bear’s offspring is called. As I watched this moron actually take the time to vocalize the elimination of three of the four possible answers, I could not help but picture everyone backstage laughing at this product to our education system. The fifth graders had already written their answer on a piece of paper and were patiently waiting for him to come up with an answer. This show has to be scripted. There is no way an adult is going to stand in front of an audience and humiliate himself like this. At least I was praying this was not for real. Is this the level that television has been lowered to? What a colossal waste of airtime.

You quiz any group of adults about history, math, science, politics, etc, any high school level subject and the great majority of them will fail that test. You may ask, does it matter? Hell yes, it matters. Why? Because the dumbing down of America plays directly into the hands of the people who run this country. These people depend on an ignorant population to keep them in power. If we get too intelligent then we will figure out what is true and what is pure crap. Politicians live on crap. If the voters became more intelligent then the politicians would have to become more intelligent. We get what we vote for.

We are all born with the equal ability to be great thinkers. We all have the same capacity to think for ourselves. Yet we freely give up that potential in exchange for being cool. Do you remember someone in high school who was obviously eager to do well and always studied to get good grades? Do you remember how that person was treated? That person was labeled a geek and was ostracized from all of the ‘in crowd’ activities because that person did not ‘fit in’. The people who did ‘fit in’, those who thought they were cool because they shunned education to party and hang out with their friends now have low level jobs, dead end careers, and appear on television shoes like “Are you smarter than a 5th grader” and are happy about it. The ‘geek’ owns a business, drives new cars, has lots of money.

You see, high school isn’t all about education. It is a means of teaching you to plan ahead, do the research, be industrious, think for yourself in order to become a leader and not a follower. It teaches you self-reliance. Some kids pick up on this early on and are the most likely to succeed. Others decide they would rather party and ‘be cool’.

Things have gotten so bad that if you exhibit average intelligence then you are the person who is most likely to succeed. Although, you still will probably not get to the top unless you really apply yourself. But in most cases, all you have to do is show a little bit of intelligence and fortitude and most people around you will think you are a freaking genius. This is truly sad.

Cost of Cheap Labor

I received this email and there is no author (it had been forwarded three times before it got to me) but it sounds very much in tune with reality.
Subject: Beware of Cheap Tomatoes

Tomatoes and Cheap Labor

Cheap Tomatoes; This should make everyone think, be you Democrat, Republican or Independent

From a California school teacher - - - "As you listen to the news about the student protests over illegal immigration, there are some things that you should be aware of:

I am in charge of the English-as-a-second-language department at a large southern California high school which is designated a Title 1 school, meaning that its students average lower socioeconomic and income levels.

Most of the schools you are hearing about, South Gate High, Bell Gardens, Huntington Park, etc., where these students are protesting, are also Title1 schools.

Title 1 schools are on the free breakfast and free lunch program. When I say free breakfast, I'm not talking a glass of milk and roll -- but a full breakfast and cereal bar with fruits and juices that would make a Marriott proud.

The waste of this food is monumental, with trays and trays of it being dumped in the trash uneaten. (OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK)

I estimate that well over 50% of these students are obese or at least moderately overweight. About 75% or more DO have cell phones.

The school also provides day care centers for the unwed teenage pregnant girls (some as young as 13) so they can attend class without the inconvenience of having to arrange for babysitters or having family watch their kids. (OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK)

I was ordered to spend $700,000 on my department or risk losing funding for the upcoming year even though there was little need for anything; my budget was already substantial. I ended up buying new computers for the computer learning center, half of which, one month later, have been carved with graffiti by the appreciative students who obviously feel humbled and grateful to have a free education in America. (OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK)

I have had to intervene several times for young and substitute teachers whose classes consist of many illegal immigrant students here in the country less than 3 months who raised so much hell with the female teachers, calling them "Putas" (whores) and throwing things that the teachers were in tears.

Free medical, free education, free food, day care etc., etc., etc. Is it any wonder they feel entitled to not only be in this country but to demand rights, privileges and entitlements?

To those who want to point out how much these illegal immigrants contribute to our society because they LIKE their gardener and housekeeper and they like to pay less for tomatoes: spend some time in the real world of illegal immigration and see the TRUE costs.

Higher insurance, medical facilities closing, higher medical costs, more crime, lower standards of education in our schools, overcrowding, new diseases etc., etc, etc. For me, I'll pay more for tomatoes.

We need to wake up. The guest worker program will be a disaster because we won't have the guts to enforce it. Does anyone in their right mind really think they will voluntarily leave and return?

There are many hardworking Hispanic/American citizens that contribute to our country and many that I consider my true friends. We should encourage and accept those Hispanics who have done it the right and legal way.

It does, however, have everything to do with culture: A third-world culture that does not value education, that accepts children getting pregnant and dropping out of school by 15 and that refuses to assimilate, and an American culture that has become so weak and worried about "politically correct" that we don't have the will to do anything about it. If this makes your blood boil, as it did mine, forward this to everyone you know.

CHEAP LABOR? Isn't that what the whole immigration issue is about?

Business doesn't want to pay a decent wage.

Consumers don't want expensive produce.

Government will tell you Americans don't want the jobs.

But the bottom line is cheap labor. The phrase "cheap labor" is a myth, a farce, and a lie. There is no such thing as "cheap labor."

Take, for example, an illegal alien with a wife and five children. He takes a job for $5.00 or $6.00/ hour. At that wage, with six dependents, he pays no income tax, yet at the end of the year, if he files an Income Tax Return,he gets an "earned income credit" of up to $3,200 free.

He qualifies for Section 8 housing and subsidized rent.

He qualifies for food stamps.

He qualifies for free (no deductible, no co-pay) health care.

His children get free breakfasts and lunches at school.

He requires bilingual teachers and books.

He qualifies for relief from high energy bills.

If they are or become, aged, blind or disabled, they qualify for SSI. Once qualified for SSI they can qualify for Medicare. All of this is at (our) taxpayer's expense.

He doesn't worry about car insurance, life insurance, or homeowners insurance.

Taxpayers provide Spanish language signs, bulletins and printed material.

He and his family receive the equivalent of $20.00 to $30.00/hour in benefits.

Working Americans are lucky to have $5.00 or $6.00/ hour left after paying their bills and his.

The American taxpayers also pay for increased crime, graffiti and trash clean-up.

Cheap labor? YEAH RIGHT! Wake up people. THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS WE SHOULD BE ADDRESSING TO THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES FOR EITHER PARTY. AND WHEN THEY LIE TO US AND DON'T DO AS THEY SAY, WE SHOULD REPLACE THEM AT ONCE!'

THIS HAS GOT TO BE PASSED ALONG TO AS MANY AS POSSIBLE.

Driving needs to be taken more seriously

A van driver ran a stop sign at 7 AM where children were waiting for a school bus. The van was struck by a pickup truck with such force that the van was knocked onto the sidewalk where the children were standing. The van struck two children injuring them both.

A witness was so enraged at this van’s driver that he began beating the driver with a pipe. I say good for him for inflicting punishment on this van driver that the court system does not have the balls to.

I am not an advocate of this type of violence but the frustration that this guy showed that drove him to this violence is felt nationwide at the carelessness of our fellow drivers.

There are several things wrong with this picture, every one of them are preventable and should be paid a hell of a lot more attention than what we do.

Drive the speed limit. These speeds are posted with safety in mind., not to punish you for being late.

Obey stop signs. Where is the confusion here? You see the sign. Stop!! Look around for anything and everything before proceeding.

Pay attention!! You cannot predict anything! You don’t know when someone or something is going appear in your path. Now, because you are speeding you have complicated matters because there is an even less of a chance of stopping in time. Do not divert your attention to anything that takes your mind off of the road. Things outside of your control happen way too fast when you are watching and anticipating, you cut down your response time even more by not watching.

When children are around, slow down!!! You cannot predict what they are going to do. What does it matter if you are late, or what does it matter that you piss off the guy behind you for driving slower than they want to. You could actually save a life by slowing down. Which is more important to you?

Drive defensively!! We first heard this advice before we ever started driving and again when we first picked up a drivers manual. For most people it is probably the only time they ever picked one up. why do people have to be so damned aggressive on the road? Forget the car commercials that tell you how fast your car can go. Safety and arriving alive is the only thing that matters.

Never, never, never be in a hurry behind the wheel of any automobile!! You really do not save time by driving faster. There are always traffic lights and there is always traffic to slow you down. They all want to get to where they are going and you are only compounding the problem of driving safely by being an object they have to focus on due to your carelessness. You are not in a race with anyone.

Every one of these things I have mentioned here are just plain good common sense and yet every one of them becomes secondary when most people get behind the wheel. Why???

Why are we so convinced that nothing is ever going to happen to us? We see it on the news every day that someone was involved in a car accident. Do you suppose they thought nothing was every going to happen to them? Do you think the victim of that car crash was convinced that since they are such good drivers they will never be in an accident?

Not enough attention is being focused on drivers habits. These vehicles are not toys. Yet too many people are too careless behind the wheel. They think they don’t have to obey traffic laws. Too many people use their vehicles to intimidate others to get out of their way. Too many people change their demeanor once they get behind the wheel. They think they are invulnerable and that everyone else is in their way.

Why is there such a shortage of common sense?

We are all intelligent enough to know that we cannot predict what someone else is going to do yet I have seen a driver speed up when someone in front of them is going to turn with the anticipation that by the time they get there that vehicle will be already turned and out of the way.

We make foolish assumptions like this all the time. Why??

I’ll bet when this guy got into his van this morning, being involved in an accident was the farthest thing from his mind. He obviously choose to think about something else besides the most dangerous activity he was to be involved in that day, that being driving a vehicle.

Yes, it is the most dangerous thing we do everyday. Safety should be the first thing we think about. We are stepping into a vehicle weighing anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 pounds that can easily kill and we think it will never happen to me. We allow ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security in the fact that since I know I won’t be the cause of an accident then it cannot possibly happen to me.

Fools who choose to impair themselves and then get behind the wheel are on the road daily. This is a proven fact. You have to watch out for them. People do foolish, careless things all the time, you have to watch out for them.

Driving is not a sport. It can be dangerous and you never know when your full attention will be required to prevent an accident, so give it, 100%, all the time.

Another sales gimmick

A consumer watchdog group Center for Science in the Public Interest submitted a petition last November to the Food and Drug Administration advocating a national system of symbols to adorn packaged foods. The idea is to create an easy method for consumers to spot healthy food products so they don't have to read through the fine print while grocery shopping.

Are you freaking kidding me?

Is this group made up of a bunch of kindergarten teachers? Do they think people are too stupid to read the nutritional labels on food products? They have to give us little colored dots to tell us what foods are good for us and what foods are bad?

Are they next going to devise a plan to give good, healthy eaters gold stars?

This is an insult to consumers.

They are denigrating the fact that food shopping for nutritious foods is a very important process and should not be trivialized by using colored labels.

It is bad enough that food manufacturers have resorted to using cartoon characters and flashy pictures and symbols to appeal to children to buy their sugar drenched crap that passes for food, now consumer groups are talking down to us too.

Maybe they think our lives are so hectic and tightly scheduled that giving us colored dots will get us through the trauma of shopping so we get out of the store faster.

Maybe they think we can’t understand what the hell the food companies are printing on their labels.

“Gee, I don’t know, 13 grams of fat seems awfully high, Marge? Oh, I don’t bother with that old-fashioned, indecipherable printed label anymore. I just look for the green dot and place all of my faith in the company that made the product, they wouldn’t lie to us.”

I am all for forcing food makers to label their products so we know what we are eating, I also advocate restaurants telling us the nutritional value of their menu items. But we are not five year olds.

Maybe food companies are behind this campaign so they can cover up what is really in the package. Use symbols so people won’t look at the printed nutritional labels. Eventually they won’t even print the nutritional labels anymore. They will just go down to the local stationary store and buy up a bunch of colored dots and slap them on the package instead.

“Hello, Local Stationary? Yeah, send over some more of those green dots. No, don’t bother with the red dots, sales on those items are down. That’s right, and throw in a few yellow ones just to make consumers think we are actually rating this stuff.”

Our education system is crap and outdated compared to the rest of the world and this illustrates why. The people who came up with this gem are products of that same education system. This scares the hell out of me.

We need to start teaching more real life subjects like food nutrition, money management, critical thinking, ethics and social skills (which should include a healthy dose of anger management). Something that will actually prepare us for the real world. More emphasis on current events, science and math would help a lot.

The FDA is tasked with protecting the public's health and safety from products created and sold in the U.S. market. It is a monumental undertaking by an organization that is understaffed facing a mountain of new products every year. Drugs and food items are submitted to the FDA along with results of testing conducted by the manufacturer of these same products. This system is inherently flawed, as evidenced by this example. There are a host of other examples we hear about, only after the product has been on the market and usually after peoples lives have been damaged or lost.

If you leave it to food conglomerates to come up with their own labeling they will use cheery, cartoonish symbols designed to catch the consumers eye. Use of these labels will lead to abuse and consumers still will not be any better informed than they were with the printed labels.

The FDA cannot save everyone from themselves but they can treat those of us who actually use our abilities to read to think for ourselves about what is nutritious if we only had a definitive guide of what levels of nutrition we need.

The claims that organic food is best for us have been so skewed by companies jumping on the bandwagon with products that cannot possibly be organic that we don’t know what is best for us.

We hear claims that studies show that such and such causes cancer or organ damage and then we hear contradictory studies that ‘prove’ otherwise.

Vegans preach how eating only vegetables will give you a longer, healthier life. Meat eaters retort that humans have gotten stronger through eating meat. Studies can be found that contradict or prove both.

We consumers are alone in determining what is best for us to eat. We cannot count on the government to protect us. There are just too many untrustworthy people selling items with false claims. Sure, some companies get punished for their misconceptions but the tide is too great.

Using a bunch of brightly colored stickers and cartoon characters will not help us at all. They are only designed to sell, sell, sell.

Americans: ‘fatter and dumber’

Democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel made this statement on an online Democratic candidate forum yesterday, Sep 13, 2007. He said that American people are getting fatter and dumber.

He may not win any votes making this statement, but he is absolutely correct in his assessment. I will take this opportunity to add two other adjectives that immediately come to mind, ‘Apathetic’ (which is why politicians can get away with the crap they do) and ‘Lazy’ (which is why immigrants have gained such a foothold in the U.S.). There are several others but I will spare you my take on the full picture of what we have become.

Look around you and make your own honest assessment of your fellow Americans, and yourself.

What is the percentage of overweight people around you? Do you see more overweight people than you did, say, 10 years ago or even five? How many people do you know who exercise regularly? How many eat balanced diets? How many eat at fast food restaurants? Are you overweight? Do you exercise regularly?

Ask high school level questions of those people you know. How many people can do math beyond simple addition and subtraction, without using their fingers? Multiplication and, especially, division really tax most peoples minds. How many people can tell you who our first three presidents were? How about geography, how many people know what the capital of Pakistan is, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or even where these countries are? These countries are part of current events so it is not unfair to ask these questions.

How many people do you know punctuate their speech with these words: “like” and “you know” and “kind of” and “sort of”? Here’s an example, “I was, kind of like, blah blah blah, like, sort of blah blah, you know?” High school English teachers everywhere cringe when they hear high school graduates speak like this. But then again there are more and more high school teachers speaking like this too. Have they given up and just going with the crowd to get along? Do they realize they have lost the battle to educate kids who see no real reason for going to school other than the fact that they are forced to be there. Or is it that this is what they have been exposed to all their lives and therefore this is all they know of how to speak?

Seriously, our overall education has been going down the tubes for a very long time. Kids don’t see the importance of learning anything from school. It is up to the parents to instill in them the need to learn everyday, everything they can about everything. How many parents really care about education? Very few. Their only incentive to go to school is to get it over with so they become adult and do ‘fun’ adult things, like drive their own car, and drink legally. These are not very lofty goals. These kids have no idea what it means to be an adult. They see their parents go through the routine of leaving in the morning to go to work somewhere and then there is food on the table and they get clothes to wear and they might get an allowance for some menial job around the house. But they don’t really know the real reason for an education.

How many people do you know actually pick up a newspaper or browse the internet for real, meaningful news of current events? I am not talking about the entertainment section or the fashion news or sports. I’m talking real life hard hitting facts about the state of our world and nation that affects each and everyone of us. How many people turn to a radio for other than the latest top musical hits, this being the only reason they ever turn on a radio?

How many people turn on the television for any real news? Actually this question is unfair, because there is nothing worth learning on commercial television. Even the news programs have turned to an entertainment slant. The only exception is Public Television and they have to beg for money to keep them going. In general, television has become a vast wasteland of meaningless entertainment geared toward the lowest common denominator. The number of commercials have become obscene. Advertisers have become obnoxious in their attempts to sell us inane, meaningless crap that none of us really need, especially new cars. Have you seen the proliferation of ‘reality’ shows? This concept is one of the biggest piles of dung that television has ever produced. And the fact that they are so popular goes a long way toward telling just how dumb we Americans have become.

How many people do you know actually vote? And of those people, how many make informed decisions about a candidate or issue based on what they read and not what they accidentally heard in a ‘sound bite’ on the radio news at the top of the hour while waiting for their music to come back on?

There are people who can recite sports stats about all of their favorite athletes and cannot tell you who our vice president or speaker of the house is. There are people who can tell you the names of every person their favorite celebrity has ever screwed or screwed over but can’t tell you why we are exploring outer space. And there are way too many people who think that looks count for more than anything else. Unfortunately, these very same people get into positions of hiring people and hire only ‘pretty’ people or sexually promiscuous people who are under-qualified for the position while the person who has spent their life educating themselves for that position go unrewarded and under-valued.

These are all basically intelligent people, they just don’t see any reason to apply themselves beyond what they need to get by on a daily basis. Those people who do have a genuine desire to get an education are already so far ahead of those who just go through the motions but things have gotten so bad that even education does not guarantee you success.

Why do we need to know current events? Why should we be as healthy as we can be except to satisfy our own narcissistic reasons? All you have to do to get a job is ‘look good’ and ‘suck up’ to the right people. Then when you are in the door, all you have to do to ‘climb the ladder’ is to ‘look good’ and ‘suck up’ to the right people. This is very cynical, I know. But I have been bypassed during my working life by these people and I know many others who have been as well. Education does not have as high a value as ‘looking good’ and ‘sucking up’. Just look at Hollywood to see what I mean. You get the vast majority of those people away from their cue cards and their writers and see just how under-educated and shallow these people really are.

Let’s face it America, we are getting fatter, we are getting dumber. It is a fact that only we can change. Do we have the drive to make that change? Sadly, I don’t think so. And this is where those other two adjectives I spoke of earlier, “Lazy” and “Apathetic”, come into play. If we had the drive to keep ourselves fit and well educated we would not have let ourselves go in the first place. I challenge everyone to prove me wrong but I’m not going to bet on it happening.

Parenthood

I found this on the internet, sorry about not giving credit where due, but no name was given with it.


What my mother taught me…

My mother taught me to appreciate a job well done:
“If you’re going to kill each other, do it outside – I’ve just finished cleaning!”

My mother taught me religion:
“You’d better pray that stain will come out of the carpet.”

My mother taught me about time travel:
“If you don’t straighten up, I’m going to knock you right into the middle of next week!”

My mother taught me logic:
“Because I said so, that’s why.”

My mother taught me foresight:
“Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you’re in an accident.”

My mother taught me irony:
“Keep laughing and I’ll give you something to cry about.”

My mother taught me about the science of osmosis:
“Shut your mouth and eat your supper!”

My mother taught me about contortionism:
“Will you look at the dirt on the back of your neck!”

My mother taught me about stamina:
“You’ll sit there until all that spinach is finished.”

My mother taught me about weather:
“It looks as if a tornado swept through your room.”

My mother taught me how to solve physics problems:
“If I yelled because I saw a meteor coming towards you, would you listen to me then?”

My mother taught me about hypocrisy:
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times: don’t exaggerate!!”

My mother taught me the circle of life:
“I brought you into this world, and I can take you out.”

My mother taught me about behavior modification:
“Stop acting like your father!”

My mother taught me about envy:
“There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don’t have wonderful parents like you do!”

Thanks, Mom!


Mothers are such a wonderful gift.
Sounds like such a silly, trite thing to say, doesn't it? It just seems so obvious that it doesn't need to be said.

Well, sadly, there are Mothers out the that don't take this gift seriously enough to hold the honor of being called Mother. They don't want the responsibility. I'm not saying that every woman should 'strive' to be a Mother. Not at all. Some women should never be a mother. But, unfortunately, some of those very same women are mothers.

And the same thoughts I put forth here are applied to fathers as well.

Parenthood is something that should be taken much more seriously than it is. It is a grave responsibility.

It is the very fountain from which we all learn basic societal values such as integrity, responsibility (to ourselves and to others), how to love (how to give love and how to accept love), respectability (of ourselves and of others), how to learn (to know the joy of expanding our horizons to further ourselves). Sadly, too many parents leave the bulk of learning all of these things to our school system. This in itself is being taught to our children, to put responsibility off onto someone else.

I believe that parenthood is too big of a responsibility for some people. It can be overwhelming to some. We, as a society, should be able to receive help from others in raising our children. We, as a society, should be able to step into a situation where we see a parent is struggling with a child. Perhaps someone has experience in a given situation that another parent does not and is failing terribly. There should be no stigmatism at not being able to handle 'every' situation perfectly. That is a lot of pressure.

Being a parent should not be a 'hit or miss' proposition. We do get only one chance per child to do it correctly. Something this important should not be such as crap shoot.

Overall, we are not doing a stellar job at raising our children. We are not all experts at it. Who is? Why can't we have some repository where we can go to learn from mistakes that others have made so that we can learn how to handle a given situation, or be given the best advice on how to behave in a given situation.

Wouldn't it be great to be able to take lessons, or whatever, to learn how to be a parent, how to raise a child. We could all learn what is needed to 'mold' them into being better (I mean more productive) citizens. I know this sounds too much like mind control, but isn't that what rearing children entails?

We could raise people who know of the importance of pulling our own weight, of not being a burden to others. We could all learn that when we hurt others we are truly hurting ourselves.

I for one think we could be so much better off without those 'leeches' in our society that 'live off of' the rest of us. Everyone knows who I am talking about. The criminal element who would rather steal from someone else than work for what they need to live. And those people who kill someone, often for very selfish, short-sighted reasons and then become someone the rest of us have to support.

Think of how much more productive our society would be if we did not have to support the prison system, welfare, greedy CEO's who get paid way too much, thieving people in positions of power who think it is their 'right' to take from others who depend on them. I know these human traits are just human nature and everyone says we cannot doing anything about it. But that is just a cop out.

Many of these values I would like to see more people display could be learned through a religious education. Unfortunately, the connotation of a 'religious education' leaves a bad taste in many people's mouth's, mine included. But you see, even something as 'good' and 'beneficial' as learning how to 'love thy neighbor' has even been spoiled to the point that too many of us can't bring ourselves to try to teach that to our kids.

I don't know if people think that if you go too far with religion that you are opening yourself up to others taking advantage of you. I guess there is some reality in that fear, and that is very unfortunate.

We are sinking, quickly. We are all losing faith, in ourselves, in others, and in what we know is right.

We need some 'heroes'. We need someone we can look up to. We need mentors who will not be found out to be taking advantage of us. If there is someone out there who is not just in it for themselves, I really wish they would step forward.

The 'heroes', the 'mentors', the 'leaders' we have known throughout history have all been found to have faults. After all, they were just human and we all have faults. I am willing at this point to accept some faults if the right 'hero' or 'mentor' would only show up but the frequency at which these people come along seems to be getting less and less.

It used to be that they could be found almost anywhere, a politician, perhaps a policeman or a firefighter, maybe a judge, a carpenter, or even a parent.

Lack of education in adults.

Has anyone noticed the poor English that people speak?
I’m talking about adults who have ‘graduated’ from America’s high schools. It is illustrative of the poor education we are receiving or should I say the poor education we are leaving high school with. Blame rests on the shoulders of both educators and students.

I have been hearing poor English spoken for years and I finally just have to say something, it is getting worse.

I have several examples to illustrate my point: this sentence “Where you at?”.
Any sentence that ends with the word ‘at’ will make an English language teacher cringe.
For those of you who use this sentence let me inform you that the correct wording is “Where are you?” Doesn’t that sentence sound more intelligent? Doesn’t it paint a more favorable picture of that persons educational level? The person that says “Where you at” displays his/her education level somewhere around grade school level. To hear grown adults speak like this is just embarrassing.
It is not cool to use this language. It is not cool to dumb yourself down. Take some pride in your native language.

Here is another example to illustrate my point: using phrases such as ‘like’ and ‘sort of’ and ‘kind of’.
As an example: “He was sort of walking down this road.” Think about how dumb that sounds. He was either walking down the road or he wasn’t. You cannot ‘sort of’ walk down a road. I don’t know, maybe he was crawling down the road, if so then say he was crawling down the road. If he was stumbling down the road then use the word stumbling. Being articulate paints a much clearer picture of what is happening. After all we speak in order to communicate ideas to each other. Don’t you want to communicate accurately? Don’t you think you have the ability?
This example also shows a lack of belief in what you say. Take a stand. When you express yourself by saying ‘sort of’ or ‘kind of’ you are putting forth the fact that you don’t truly believe in what you are saying. Show your intelligence by saying that he actually did walk down this road, don’t leave us wondering whether he did or not.
Take some pride in your intelligence and your native language? Does it no longer mean anything that we are intelligent human beings?
Next time you speak, make a conscious effort to leave out these phrases and see how people around you respond to you. You will be surprised how their view of you will change for the better. They will start to think of you as being intelligent. Which you are! You are choosing to ‘dumb yourself down’ by being inarticulate.

Another example is seen in the use of profanity as a language substitute. Using profanity only illustrates your lack of education and your lack of respect (for yourself and for others).

It especially bothers me when the news media use poor English. These people are paid to communicate using the English language. The least they could do is actually speak proper English.
They are continual examples of how to communicate ideas. They should realize that they illustrate, by example, how ideas are spread. If they use improper language then that improper language is accepted and will then perpetuate. If they use proper language then the use of proper language will spread.
It is not that they themselves are this ‘all-powerful’ and influential force that teaches people how to speak, but their example can go a long way.
When they speak poor English they illustrate that getting a good education doesn’t matter.

Everyone knows it is true that it is easy to spot an intelligent person, just listen to him/her speak. Do you not want to sound intelligent? Do you not want to use your intelligence to advance in whatever field you work in? We are all born with this intelligence, the ability to be intelligent. Why do we choose to suppress it?

Listen to a successful person speak, and I’m not gauging success by the amount of money someone has. Being financially wealthy does not in itself make someone successful.
Trust me, there are illiterates who have a lot of money. You only have to listen to sports people or entertainers speak in order to find some under-educated people. Don’t get me wrong, I am not knocking all sports people and entertainers. But it seems to me that when some of these people speak our collective intelligence level drops another notch on the human evolutionary chain.
I hope everyone realizes that a lot of entertainers are told what to say and how to say it. It is only when they are one-on-one without cue cards that their true intelligence or lack there of comes out.
Have you ever heard the phrase ‘brain over brawn’? An intelligent person will quickly rise above others in every situation.

You might think I am being overly critical of this subject. I believe that in order for America to gain a more respectful role in this world community we had better get our education level up. We are falling behind, regardless of what statistics say. Statistics can be made to say whatever we want them to. Speak to the everyday person on the street and it is appalling what they don’t know. Has anyone watched Jay Leno of the Tonight Show do his ‘Man on the Street’ routine? He asks college students questions concerning very basic high school level topics and current events. These college students should be ashamed of themselves concerning the answers they give, as well as the ‘educators’ that allowed these students to leave high school in this condition. As I watch this I see the majority of these ‘dumbed down’, under-educated students just laugh it off. Their response to being found out to not to be as intelligent as they would like people to think they are is to make a joke of it. Well, it is a joke. But they are the punch line.

Take a look at our president George W. Bush. There have been all sorts of jokes about how dumb this guy is. And he made it all the way to the presidents office! This is astounding! Do you think our reputation has been damaged by having this man as our president? Of course it has. World leaders laugh at him behind his back and it reflects poorly on the rest of us.

I have no answers that will correct this situation, at least nothing anyone wants to listen to. My ideas would require parents and children to change their behavior toward hard work, responsibility, respectability and the belief that it would all be worth it in the end. We have become a nation of sloppy, lazy, narcissistic, arrogant people who think that we have a God given right to be ourselves without any regard as to how other people view us.

If history recalls, every great civilization has reached this same point, and they no longer exist. The cycle will continue and at some point some other nation will unseat America. You can on it, unless we change our ways.

Immigration

I am angry that this immigration debate has not been resolved.

The reason it has not been finalized is that this country needs illegal immigrants to work here. If there were no illegal workers (Mexicans in particular) this economy would fall flat on its face.

I used to be upset about these particular immigrants (remember there are more than just Mexicans coming over here illegally) coming to the U.S. supposedly taking jobs away from U.S. workers. I now understand that U.S. workers have opened up these opportunities for foreign workers. They have done this by demanding too high wages. They have done this by not wanting to do certain jobs. They have done this by placing themselves in the ‘Prima-Donna’ position of thinking they are too good to do these everyday low-level jobs that need to be done.

Think about this. If these immigrants were not here, who would do the jobs they do? It would not be Americans, for the reasons I just gave. Still don’t believe me? Think about this, if Americans would do these jobs in the first place at a reasonable pay rate then why were immigrants hired to do them? Why did the employer who hired immigrants look outside the American workforce? Americans were already here. Americans said they weren’t going to do it.

We all benefit by having the immigrants here in this country cleaning our homes and offices, mowing our lawns and putting food on our tables. We all benefit by having immigrants here working in construction jobs. You think prices are high now? Think about how high they would get if we had to pay an American workforce to do these same jobs.

Now the part that really ticks me off about this issue, is that while American politicians refuse to find an agreeable solution to this problem (I think the reason is that politicians benefit from having them remain illegal), the Mexicans are taking their hard earned American dollars and sending it all to Mexico. Don’t you think the money they earn here should be spent here?

Give them legal status, it won’t be long before they become Americanized and we will have to find some other illegal immigrants to come in and do our ‘dirty work’.

Switching gears a bit, I want to touch on the ‘endangered educated American’, which is another side of why we are in this mess.

A recent article in Industry Week entitled ‘American’s workforce talents fall short of industry needs” states:
"Manufacturers across the country are facing labor shortages despite the availability of good, high-paying manufacturing jobs". "These jobs are going unfilled due to a lack of employees with the qualifications needed in modern manufacturing. If the U.S. wants to continue being a leader in manufacturing -- and we do -- then we must ensure that every student has the knowledge and skills necessary for a high tech workforce."

I am pretty sure I have been hearing this said for the last 30 years. Why am I still hearing it? Because our education system sucks. It isn’t just the fault of the educators. There are some fine teachers out there. It isn’t just the fault of the students, there are some who really want to learn. The problem is, there isn’t enough of either group to improve our situation.

In another report, this by the National Advisory Council on Continuing education, only thirteen percent of all adults participate in continuing education. That number is really quite sad and depressing.

CEO’s have been saying for several years that our American workforce is falling behind the rest of the world. The number of American math and science graduates is dwindling. The number of foreign students being attracted to American universities is increasing. These foreign students are reluctant to stay in America so they are taking their skills to their homelands. India and China are increasing their number of engineers and will soon take over America’s role as the technological leader.

I have said it before and it bears repeating, if we don’t get our educational level up to world standards then we deserve the fall that is surely coming. We are losing our status as world leader in just about every category and industry.

The fact that there aren’t enough skilled American workers and very few who want to improve themselves coupled with the fact that American workers don’t want to do menial jobs means that America is headed toward a gloomy future. It just further illustrates what I have been saying, that American workers have become Prima Donnas. They think they should have it all just given to them. One cause of this starts right in the home. Parents, you better start teaching your kids some responsibility and stop giving them every thing they want. Make them work for it. We all want the future to be brighter for our children than it was for us, but not teaching them responsibility is not the way to make that rosy scenario come about.

Our jobs are being given to foreign countries, everyone knows someone who has lost their job due to their company moving overseas. We are left with only low-paying service jobs. One day we will be the illegal immigrants in a foreign country trying to earn more money than we can here at home.

What each of us does individually and locally does affect each of us collectively and globally. The entire global economy depends on our actions as a nation. We are loosing our grip on world power.

George W Bush has placed all of his bets on military power and that is a fatalistic move. He will only help his good friends and he is running out of those. The rest of us better stop fighting illegal immigration and start helping our neighbors improve themselves. Embrace the fact that we are no different than they are because one day, my friends, we will be in their position.