http://www.letssaythanks.com/Home1280.html

via KR Connect

The excitement is mounting. On November 20 we’ll be in Dubai watching Kylie Minogue open the most incredible hotel in the world, Sol Kerzner’s Atlantis on The Palm. Sol is the original ‘Nothing is Impossible’ man. 18 million liters of water in the adventure park, 11 million liters in the aquarium, 1.4 kilometers of beach, 65,000 marine animals housed in the Ambassador Lagoon, 1,539 rooms, a 924 square meter bridge suite, a 27.5 meter ‘Leap of Faith’ waterslide. At a cost of $1.5 billion.

I wonder what made them change the title? Probably mean parents that want to keep their kids morality. Loser parents. Go Hollywood. You do so much for the children!

When I was really young I went trick or treating one time. I was batman and I had one of those hideous plastic masks that you strapped to your face with a piece of elastic string that invariably stung when it was snapped into place and then the mask limited your breathing and visibility. That year I truly was “blind as a bat.”

Soon after my first trick-or-treating experience we became Christians and we shunned everything in the world that smacked even remotely of sin or wickedness. This was a part of Christianity that I wasn’t too happy with at such a young age. To be stripped of this delicious priviledge - a night of free candy and fun costumes - was about as cruel as being born in a third world country and forced to grow my own food. It was so unfair!

Fortunately, the Christian church created fall festivals for those of us kids who didn’t partake in this forbidden candy apple and we were allowed to dress up as Biblical characters and spend the night in a safe environment surrounded by parents, friends and God.

I didn’t lament my loss of Trick-or-Treating as a child and fully understood the evils that surround All Hallows Eve. If you know anything about religion and history then you may know that the Christian church merged our holidays with the pagan holidays. If you can’t beat them, join them right? I’d heard of this practice but I had never seen a Wiccan holiday calendar until one day at work I saw it on a coworkers screensaver.  Easter, Christmas, and Halloween are the most obvious collaborations and we can look at each of these and see the Pagan influence.

If you look closely at Halloween you will find that for Wiccans this is their new year.

“Samhain (Sow-win, Oct. 31), Witches’ New Year, marks the death of the God and his the arrival in the Land of Youth, where he opens the gates so the souls can revisit their loved ones. It is said to be the day when the walls between the worlds are to be the thinnest and when contact with one’s ancestors can tack place. It is celebrated with the Festival of the Dead. This is a time of reflection on the year and a celebration of our ancestors.

So, there you have it, a holiday that celebrates witchcraft but one that we’ve slapped a bag of candy on and turned into something sweet. I’ll admit it, when it comes right down to it I don’t see anything wrong with trick-or-treating, it is the intent behind an action that makes it bad, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t educate my children to the truth and the dark side of this nefarious holiday.

Personally, I like to celebrate this time of year by celebrating the coming of Fall. You might see a pumpkin at my house and some fall colors, but you won’t see anything that is specifically tied to Halloween.

What are your thoughts on the matter?

I have been reading these blog entries about women who have suffered tragically from having to terminate their pregancies. They’re sad and poignant stories and I can’t begin to understand what it must be like to have to make a life-threatening decision. However, the real issue is that people don’t want to take responsibility for their actions. We live in a society that medicates instead of dealing with the root cause of the issue.  I have to admit that sometimes there is a gray area when it comes to the life of the baby and the life of the mother. In those extreme situations I can say that women and the doctors should make that decision and the law should allow for these types of situations, but when a girl and guy have sex without using condoms or birth control they know that their may be consequences. 

What is interesting to note about our culture is how quickly we are “evolving”. When I was in 8th grade everyone talked about sex, but very few people were actually having it. But now, kids are having sex as soon as they hit puberty.  Why not? I mean, no one is saying not to, on the contrary, everything in our culture encourages it. 

On this site I found a person saying this about an abstinence video:

The Department of Health and Human Services’ latest abstinence ad commands the viewer to “tell your kids you want them to wait till they’re married to have sex.” That’s the Bush administration for you: Forget about the heaps of data that show a strategy doesn’t work and just keep throwing money at it.

Besides, is it even psychologically healthful to wait until marriage to have sex?  The ad might as well say, “Tell your children you want them to be that weird guy in the dorm who takes really long showers.”

If you watch the video, these are young kids who should be waiting! You can’t even vote until you are 18, you can’t buy alcohol until you are 21, in some states you can’t even get a tattoo until you are 18, but sex, pshh, it’s not big deal. Yes, you may get a life threatening disease, sure you might end up with genital herpes for the rest of your life, yes, you may get HPV or Pregnant, but we can deal with all of those things. It might not be pretty, but we can deal with it. 

Personally, I’d rather not have my daughter having sex with some boy at 13 or giving oral sex in the back of the bus. The people who cry out, “We have rights! We need to educate our children” are normally ignorant to the reality of what goes on in high schools, junior high and now even 5 and 6th grade. 

Recently there was an episode of Private Practice where this 14 year old boy was planning to have sex with his girlfriend and he didn’t know he had AIDS. His parents knew, but they didn’t want to tell him and they hadn’t expected him to and be healthy for as long as he had.  The doctor couldn’t tell the parents that the boy wanted to have sex and he couldn’t tell the boy that he had AIDS. Finally, he called the parents into the office and said, “You need to talk to your son about him having HIV.” The parents were irate and stormed out of the office. A couple of days pass and the doctor gets both the parents and the boy in a room and the doctor tells the parents, “Your son wants to start having sex.” The crap hits the fan everyone is upset and later the boy tells the doctor, “I trusted you. Why didn’t you tell me? My girfriend and I had sex last night.” 

It’s easy to make bad decisions when the consequences aren’t all that great. Humans seem to think they are immortal and we have such high expectations from life. We expect to get everything we want, even when it might hurt us, or in the case of abortion, an unborn child.

Recently I watched the recap of the Palin/Biden debate and then I went to Twitter and there was nothing but negative remarks about Palin and how she is a liar. What I find the most interesting about Democrats is that they are extremely vocal with the negative criticism. Why not focus more of that energy in proving why your candidate is the better choice and less bitching about the opposition?

I think as Americans we all know that people will say whatever they think the public wants to hear. Every president has made promises that they were later unable to keep,it didn’t mean that the time those promises weren’t heartfelt, it only means that the circumstances changed and they can’t call a press conference every time they have to go back on their word.

I watched this link on Obama’s website and I have to disagree with his comment that small businesses are the backbone of our economy. It is true that small businesses make up 95% of all businesses in the U.S. but they only generate 5% of the income. I work for a big company and I have to tell you that my pay is excellent and my benefits are outstanding. Tax breaks for corporations allow them to get started in areas and then later the community reaps the rewards from those taxes that are later incurred.

I also read on McCain’s site that he proposed limiting the gas tax from Memorial Day to Labor day. I am not sure if this is a good strategy for the economy, why not just make the tax less year round? I realize American do more driving during the summer, but this seems like one of those ideas that sounds good on the surface - like the Lottery, but in reality it is just a way for someone else to make money.

John McCain believes we should institute a summer gas tax holiday. Hard-working American families are suffering from higher gasoline prices. John McCain called on Congress to suspend the 18.4 cent federal gas tax and 24.4 cent diesel tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

• Reuters: Gas Tax Holiday “Of Most Immediate Effect To Consumers.” “Of most immediate effect to consumers was his appeal to the U.S. Congress to suspend the 18.4 cent federal gas tax and 24.4 cent diesel tax from Memorial Day at the end of May to Labor Day in early September.” (Steve Holland, “McCain Proposes Tax Cuts And Lashes Democrats,” Reuters, 4/15/08)
• USA Today: “A USA TODAY Analysis Showed That McCain’s Gas-Tax Proposal Could Save Motorists $6.8 Billion In Taxes During The Summer.” (Kathy Kiely, “Gas-Tax Holiday Among McCain’s Plans For Economy,” USA Today, 4/16/08)

I’ve still got a lot of research to do, but when i asked some of my friends that live outside of the U.S. who they would vote for they immediately, without hesitation, said Obama.

Either way it will be an interesting election year and my vote is still undecided and so if you have some good information to swing me one way or the other, I’d like to hear it.

Indulge me for a second and consider this scenario: let’s say you’re given the opportunity to donate some money to a desperate family who would use it to feed their children, but were only able to do so if you donated the same amount of money to someone you knew would use it to buy crack. Would you do it?

I responded with the comment below and right after that I saw a comment that someone posted right after me and I wanted to shout “Amen!”

I was only 6 years old when I saw the people in downtown Dallas rallying around city hall. My mother was there for an abortion protest, but my Dad had gone to drop her off and there were all these people shouting out, “Freedom, Yes, Apartheid, No.” The word meant nothing to me, sounded like nothing I’d ever heard and I couldn’t break it up into syllables and further discern it’s meaning - but now I am fully educated in Apartheid and I understand the struggles that black Africans went through in order to be treated as equals in their own land.

Apartheid only ended in 1994 after years of racism and segragation. In Africa, blacks had a curfew and had to carry around pass books in order to move about freely during the day. At any time a police officer could stop you and ask to see your pass book and if you didn’t have one you could go to jail.

There were separate eating sections for black in restaurants and separate stores for them to shop in. It was a type of legal segragtion.

Like any law, when it was put into practice it probably made perfect sense at the time.

Many black Africans were part of these savage tribes that were extremely volatile and would not tolerate each other. One of the largest tribes that still exists today is the Zulus. These were some of teh fiercest and most feared warriors and even as a kid I remember the name - Shaka Zulu. Shaka was one of the greatest rulers ever of the Zulu empire and his “influence still casts a long shadow over Zulu history today.” (Wikipedia)

After reading a book called RAGE by Wilbur Smith I was able to better understand not only Apartheid, but the cruelty of segragation and slavery. What is more, I started to become proud of my African heritage for the first time in my life.

If you dig into the history of African people you see that they were some of the greatest warriors, hunters, trackers that ever lived. They killed lions with spears and hunted down elephants and shot them with bows and arrows that you had to use your entire body to shoot. Elephants have such thick skin that in order for the arrow to kill then they would construct these bows that you would hold with your feet and then pull the string back with two hands and while lying on the ground just ten feet away they would shoot an arrow the size of a spear and pierce the elephants heart.  All of this would be down wearing nothing but a loincloth over rough terrain and unbelievable heat.

I can’t imagine being one of these brave, proud warriors and then having some man, a white man of the likes that I had never seen, come into my village with a gun that made a sound that I had never heard and then chain up and drag me and my family away after having killed many.

Anger and fear and rage, the emotions that these people must have felt. I cannot even begin to imagine the horror.

I think many African Americans are still ashamed and trying to overcome the stereotypes and the racism that still exists in America today, but that is party our educational systems fault. We are taught about slavery and emancipation, but we aren’t educated about how the Africans were kidnapped from their homes and their babies were murdered.  We aren’t told about the sexual abuse or the fact that humans were treated worse than animals.

I think that if all Americans were given a history lesson and took a moment to learn more about all the people of the world and where they have come from, then maybe we would have a new respect for our brothers and sisters. We wouldn’t make fun of the way some people talk, we’d delight in it. We’d be in awe of African Americans who excel at more than just sports.  We wouldn’t talk about our Indian gas station owners in a negative way and we wouldn’t make racist jokes about hispanics and landscaping.

We all have a story, people should take the time to hear it.