MORE CONSERVATIVE BS!!

Will people ever stop corrupting something positive to push their own agendas?  Probably not, but we can hope.  I think this is a thinly-veiled effort to promote hypocrisy and hate. Nest week these same idiots will be complaining the schools aren't doing enough to combat bullying.  As for the schools that bailed over this lunacy, shame on you!  Props to those the had the intestinal fortitude to not be intimidated by these slimeballs!

Anti-Bullying Campaign Called Gay Indoctrination By Conservative Group

Mix It Up at Lunch Day encourages students to identify, question and cross social boundaries. (Getty Images)

 

Wull people ever stop corrupting something positive to push their own agendas? 

By COLLEEN CURRY

Oct. 15, 2012

A national campaign encouraging kids to befriend other kids who are different from them has come under fire from a conservative family group, which claims a pro-gay agenda is being foisted upon American children.
The American Family Association has taken issue with the annual "Mix It Up" Day organized by Teaching Tolerance, the anti-bullying project of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Maureen Costello, director of Teaching Tolerance, said the group started the national campaign 11 years ago, organizing it so that schools can participate on their own terms by encouraging students to sit with those they don't normally hang out with during lunch.
"Hey, the cafeteria is in fact where kids tend to self-segregate," she said. "We're trying to get them past the idea that you have to distrust people in another group. So we started Mix It Up Day. For one day, kids will be assigned to randomly sit with other people who they wouldn't normally sit with."
Costello said that thousands of schools and millions of children have participated in the program over the past 11 years, and another 2,500 schools have signed up to participate this year.
But schools that had signed up with the SPLC to host Mix It Up Day this year have become the target of a campaign that views SPLC as a "fanatical pro-homosexual group."
"The Southern Poverty Law Center is using this project to bully-push its gay agenda, and at the same time intimidate and silence students who have a Biblical view of homosexuality," the AFA wrote on its website on Oct. 1.

Getty Images

Mix It Up at Lunch Day encourages students to... View Full Size

Getty Images

Mix It Up at Lunch Day encourages students to identify, question and cross social boundaries.

The group called for parents to keep their children home from school on Oct. 30, the national day when schools can implement Mix It Up activities. They also prompted their supporters to write letters and place phone calls to participating schools encouraging them to pull the plug on Mix It Up Day plans.
"The problem is pushing the normalization of homosexuality in schools," said Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis for the AFA. "You see the same thing happening with anti-bullying legislation. It winds up being used as a hammer to silence Christian students who oppose normalization of homosexuality. If you say a word criticizing homosexual behavior, you get accused of hate speech."
"This is a thinly-veiled effort to promote homosexuality," he said.
The group said the "radical" SPLC was using the anti-bullying campaign as a "gay indoctrination" program.
"It was just so bizarre," Costello said of the AFA's criticism of Mix It Up Day. "You could look through every page of Mix It Up (materials) on diversity, and the only reference to LGBT issues is that at some point we have an activity that helps kids end their use of comments like 'don't be a retard' and 'that's so gay.' That is it. That is the sum total."
"We don't tell schools what to do on mix it up day. We suggest activities, none of which have to do with sexual orientations. We used to focus on divisions of race and social class, but now we encourage schools to focus on what they're own school issues are," she said.
The AFA has asked the SPLC to publish a disclaimer making it clear that Mix It Up Day "should not be construed to imply the endorsement or support of homosexual behavior," Fischer said.
The Teaching Tolerance program countered with their own publicity materials, pointing out that AFA has been named a "hate group" by SPLC for their views on homosexuality, she said. Fischer called that an "entirely false designation."
Some 200 schools have asked to be removed from a public list of participating Mix It Up schools since the AFA launched their protest, Costello said.
In the same two-week span, 180 schools have signed up to participate, she said.

FACT CHECK: Ryan takes factual shortcuts in speech By JACK GILLUM and RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR | Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Laying out the first plans for his party's presidential ticket, GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan took some factual shortcuts Wednesday night when he attacked President Barack Obama's policies on Medicare, the economic stimulus and the budget deficit.

Sen. Rob Portman, a former U.S. trade representative, glossed over his own problems when critiquing Obama's trade dealings with China. A day earlier, the convention's keynote speaker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, bucked reality in promising that GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney will lay out for the American people the painful budget cuts it will take to wrestle the government's debt and deficit woes under control.

And former senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum stretched the truth in taking Obama to task over his administration supposedly waiving work requirements in the nation's landmark welfare-to-work law.

A closer look at some of the words spoken at the GOP convention in Tampa, Fla.:

___

RYAN: "And the biggest, coldest power play of all in Obamacare came at the expense of the elderly. ... So they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama."

THE FACTS: Ryan's claim ignores the fact that Ryan himself incorporated the same cuts into budgets he steered through the House in the past two years as chairman of its Budget Committee, using the money for deficit reduction. And the cuts do not affect Medicare recipients directly, but rather reduce payments to hospitals, health insurance plans and other service providers.

In addition, Ryan's own plan to remake Medicare would squeeze the program's spending even more than the changes Obama made, shifting future retirees into a system in which they would get a fixed payment to shop for coverage among private insurance plans. Critics charge that would expose the elderly to more out-of-pocket costs.

___

RYAN: "The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare and cronyism at their worst. You, the working men and women of this country, were cut out of the deal."

THE FACTS: Ryan himself asked for stimulus funds shortly after Congress approved the $800 billion plan, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Ryan's pleas to federal agencies included letters to Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis seeking stimulus grant money for two Wisconsin energy conservation companies.

One of them, the nonprofit Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corp., received $20.3 million from the Energy Department to help homes and businesses improve energy efficiency, according to federal records. That company, he said in his letter, would build "sustainable demand for green jobs." Another eventual recipient, the Energy Center of Wisconsin, received about $365,000.

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RYAN: Said Obama misled people in Ryan's hometown of Janesville, Wis., by making them think a General Motors plant there threatened with closure could be saved. "A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: 'I believe that if our government is there to support you ... this plant will be here for another hundred years.' That's what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year."

THE FACTS: The plant halted production in December 2008, weeks before Obama took office and well before he enacted a more robust auto industry bailout that rescued GM and Chrysler and allowed the majority of their plants — though not the Janesville facility — to stay in operation. Ryan himself voted for an auto bailout under President George W. Bush that was designed to help GM, but he was a vocal critic of the one pushed through by Obama that has been widely credited with revitalizing both GM and Chrysler.

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RYAN: Obama "created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way and then did exactly nothing."

THE FACTS: It's true that Obama hasn't heeded his commission's recommendations, but Ryan's not the best one to complain. He was a member of the commission and voted against its final report.

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CHRISTIE: "Mitt Romney will tell us the hard truths we need to hear to end the torrent of debt that is compromising our future and burying our economy. ... Tonight, our duty is to tell the American people the truth. Our problems are big and the solutions will not be painless. We all must share in the sacrifice. Any leader that tells us differently is simply not telling the truth."

THE FACTS: Romney has made a core promise to cut $500 billion per year from the federal budget by 2016 to bring spending below 20 percent of the U.S. economy, and to balance it entirely by 2020.

His campaign manifesto, however, is almost completely devoid of the "hard truths" Christie promises. In fact, Romney is promising to reverse $716 billion in Medicare savings achieved by Obama over the coming decade and promises big increases in military spending as well, along with extending tax cuts for everyone, including the wealthiest.

The few specifics Romney offers include repealing Obama's health care law, cutting federal payrolls, weaning Amtrak from subsidies, cutting foreign aid and curbing the Medicaid health care program for the poor and disabled.

But it'll take a lot more than those steps for Romney to keep his vague promises, which are unrealistic if he's unwilling to touch Medicare and Social Security in the coming decade. Even the controversial budget plan of his vice presidential nominee, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., largely endorsed by Romney, leaves Medicare virtually untouched over the next 10 years.

What's left for Romney to cut is benefit programs other than Medicare and Social Security, which include food stamps, welfare, farm subsidies and retirement benefits for federal workers. The remaining pot of money includes the day-to-day budgets of domestic agencies, which have already borne cuts under last year's budget deal. There's also widespread congressional aversion to cutting most of what remains on the chopping block, which includes health research, NASA, transportation, air traffic control, homeland security, education, food inspection, housing and heating subsidies for the poor, food aid for pregnant women, the FBI, grants to local governments, national parks and veterans' health care.

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PORTMAN: "Take trade with China. China manipulates its currency, giving it an unfair trade advantage. So why doesn't the president do something about it? I'll tell you one reason. President Obama could not run up his record trillion-dollar deficits if the Chinese didn't buy our bonds to finance them. Folks, we are as beholden to China for bonds as we are to the Middle East for oil. This will end under Mitt Romney."

THE FACTS: Portman is an expert on commerce, having served as President George W. Bush's trade representative from May 2005 to May 2006. But he didn't fare particularly well in stemming China's trade advantage, either.

Under Portman's watch, the U.S. trade deficit with China soared by 25 percent in 2005, and the next year it climbed more than 15 percent. By contrast, the deficit rose 10 percent over the first three years of Obama's presidency, according to U.S. government figures.

Both the Bush and Obama administrations have launched unfair trade cases against China at the World Trade Organization, but neither has been able to rebalance the relationship.

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SANTORUM: "This summer (Obama) showed us once again he believes in government handouts and dependency by waiving the work requirement for welfare. Now, I helped write the welfare reform bill. We made a lot crystal clear. No president can waive the work requirement, but as with his refusal to enforce our immigration laws, President Obama rules like he is above the law."

THE FACTS: The administration did not waive the work requirement. Instead, it invited governors to apply on behalf of their states for waivers of administrative requirements in the 1996 law. Some states have complained those rules tie up caseworkers who could be helping clients directly.

In a July 18 letter to congressional leaders, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that to be eligible for a waiver, governors must commit that their plans will move at least 20 percent more people from welfare to work. Moreover, states must show clear progress toward the goal within a year, or lose the waiver.

"We will not accept any changes that undercut employment-focused welfare reforms that were signed into law fifteen years ago," Sebelius wrote.

Ron Haskins, a former senior Republican House aide who helped write the welfare-to-work law, has said "there is merit" to the administration's proposal and "I don't see how you can get to the conclusion that the waiver provision undermines welfare reform and it eliminates the work requirement."

Haskins, now co-director of the Brookings Center on Children and Families, says the administration was wrong to roll out its proposal without first getting Republicans to sign off on it. But he said the idea itself is one both parties should be able to agree on, were it not for the bitter political divisions that rule Washington.

TOP 10 FACTS OF OBAMACARE

 

 

1. No lifetime limit on coverage for 105 million Americans.

2. Up to 17 million children with pre-existing conditions can no

3. longer be denied coverage by insurers.

4. 6.6 million young adults up to age 26 have taken advantage of the

law to obtain health insurance through their parents’ plan.

5. Free coverage for comprehensive preventive services for millions

of women starting in August.

6. 86 million Americans, including 32 million seniors in Medicare,

have already received free preventive services.

7. 5.3 million seniors have already saved $3.7 billion on their

prescription drugs.

8. Since the health care law was enacted in March 2010, 4.2 million

private sector jobs have been created – many of them in the

health care industry.

9. The Small Business Health Care Tax Credit has already been used

by 360,000 small businesses to help insure 2 million workers.

$1.1 billion in rebates from health insurance companies this

summer will benefit nearly 13 million Americans.

10. The health care law reduces the deficit by $124 billion over the

next 10 years and over $1 trillion over the following decade.

TOP TEN FACTS ABOUT OBAMACARE

CCC.ORG/OBAMACARE

Media Needs to Do Their Job

In the Preamble to its Code of Ethics, the Society of Professional Journalism declares:

One doctor warns the encroachment of health and medical marketing threatens journalistic integrity.(ABC News Photo Illustration)
... public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy ... Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty.

We should strive to be independent from the agendas and timetables of journals, advocates, and industry and government agencies. We should nourish and encourage original and analytical reporting that provides audiences/readers with context.

Although the writer is talking about writing medical articles, these ethics should apply to all journalists. At least the reputable ones. I am not nearly optimistic enough to hope that one day Perez Hilton will write articles eligible for the Pulitzer Prize, but is it too much to ask to get some factual reporting without the bias from supposedly legitimate journalists.

Since I have already mentioned the waste of human DNA, let's look at Mr Hilton's journlaistic contributions. Lately he reported Kate Jackson near death from a self inflicted gunshot wound. Did a fat little fairy give him his facts or was he just spinning the wheel and using what lie came up? Granted, he is the bottom of the barrell, but even legitimate news seems to be a higher class of lies and misinformation.

I have always believed that news is to educate the public based on facts. Now I feel like the media decides the facts and reports based on opinions the haved already formed. Take the recent case of the so called "balloon boy." The media decided it was a hoax on day 1 long before law enforcement. Now it may turn out that it was all for show, but consider what if it isn't. This kid is being hounded, the dad lost his reality show and the parents face criminal charges. All based on stories written before any real facts emerged. The media outlets are more interested in scooping each other rather than reporting the truth. Maybe it is an after effect of the Susan Smith debacle? They certainly bought her bullshit in the beginning didn't they?

I just think it is a sad state of affairs when you have to fact check the news story you just read. It is time we demand the FACTS and not the writer's opinion or the version of the story that is more sensational. We need to stop reading the bullshit until there is a journlaist who is willing to give us the unvarnished facts, the truth and nothing but the truth.

School Nurses

What the hell has happened to school nurses? When I was a kid, school nurses were concerned about the students they saw and did whatever they could to alleviate the suffering of those students. Now their job seems to be to say what they can to get the kid back to class. The whole attitude has changed. The assumption from the beginning now is that the kids are faking and it is up to the kids to prove there really is something wrong.

What alot of parents don't know is that not all school nurses are actually nurses! I have filled in at our local school district a few times. What I learned is that out of the 4 schools only 1 has an actual nurse! The other 3 has a nurse's aide. If there is an emergency, the nurse leaves the other school and comes to check out the problem. They may be close, but 10 mins is a long time if you have an arterial bleed or diabetic crises! When I questioned the safety of this, I was told that alot of school districts do this now to save money! I am not sure that I want the budget balanced by cutting back on my kids healthcare while they are at school!

Just a few examples of issues I have personally had:

• My daughter broke her arm a couple weeks ago. I filled out the necessary forms for my daughter to have Ibuprofen at school. She was on Vicodin at home, but I did not want to have to send Vicodin to school. I wrote out the doctors instructions. Tylenol or Vicodin then in 2 hrs Ibuprofen and in 2hrs Tylenol/Vicodin, etc. Having worked in a doctor's office I knew this was common for severenpain or high fever. The first day she went to the nurse at 9am (like I told her) and when the nurse found out she had Vicodin at 7am, she refused to give her the Ibuprofen. She would not give it unless it had been at least 4 hrs. I was irate. So I called the doctor and they faxed orders for her to have 1/2 a Vicodin 4 times a day. This was the 1 week after the injury, mind you. My mother, who is also a nurse, drove the Vicodin to the school with the doctor's order, but they wouldn't let her administer it because she was not the parent. After phone calls and a faxed note from me it was 12:30pm. She tried to refuse to give it because my note said 12pm. My mom had a fit and she got her meds. I kept my daughter home for a week after she reinjured her arm because I did not trust that she would get her meds without an argument. She went back this week and when she went to get her Vicodin (its now been 2 1/2 weeks) the nurse refused her again because she felt that she should be weaning off it by now! She has a doctors order to have it for the first 4 weeks but she overruled the doctor?
• My nephew was injured on the playground at last recess. (1st grade) He was taken to the nurse's office and was given an ice pack and made to sit there until school was over. The nurse was going to send him home on the bus, but he was still crying, so after over 1 1/2 hrs his mother was called. He had fractured and dislocated his elbow and was taken to emergency surgery that night!
• My youngest daughter has asthma. She told her teacher she was having trouble breathing and was sent to the nurse's office. She used her inhaler then was sent home on the bus. She was so bad by the time she got home we had to go to the ER. Her oxygen level was 88%! She needed 2 breathing treatments to be able to breathe normally again.
• My middle daughter suffers from seizures. She had a seizure in class but it was not obvious so no one noticed til she was staggering down the hall and was not coherent. The nurse got her a lunch tray and told her she needed to eat. One look at her medical profile and she would have known she had a seizure disorder, but she just told her to eat and went back to her desk. After an hr when my daughter still wasn't 'right', they finally called me. Every year since I send a form to her teachers describing what her seizures look like, what to do, etc. I do not trust the nurse to recognize a seizure when she sees one.

I could go on and on. I have talked to parents who have had kids sent home on the bus, with no call from the school nurse, with broken bones, blood sugars way high/low, and with fevers of 103. Why have a nurse that does nothing for the students? If the school insists on using aides in place of actual nurses, then these people need some kind of training and need to be required to read the medical profiles we have to fill out every year. Basically, if there is no fever, excessive bleeding or vomit when they can send the kids home, they tell them to lie down for 20 mins and send them back to class.

I am sure that there are some school nurses out there that care about their students and do a wonderful job, but they are not in our school district that is for sure! So parents beware! You send your kids to school thinking that if something goes wrong there is adequate medical care to handle the situation. But the nurse you have may not be a nurse at all! Educate yourself and ask your local school district if you actually have a nurse or an untrained aide!

Paparazzi

These days it is not unusual to see hordes of photographers outside celebrity homes or surrounding a stars vehicle as they try to leave a restaurant, store, hairdresser, etc. But when is enough going to be enough? Princess Diana was killed while fleeing paparazzi and that was not enough. Brittney Spears has flipped out, in no small part thanks to the constant pressure from the paparazzi, and that was not enough. We have watched stars feud, flash their vejayjays, crash and flip out and still it is not enough. Now Madonna has been injured after a photographer jumped from the bushes, startling her horse. Mercifully she suffered only minor injuries, bur she could have been another Christopher Reeves. If we do not start curbing our morbid fascination with everything a celebrity does, someone else is going to die. A star, a photographer, or some unlucky sap who just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I think this new wave of 'anything goes because stars have no right to privacy' started with the Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson sex tape. A tape stolen from their home, that the courts ruled they could not block its distribution, has been seen by millions all over the world. I, personally, have not seen this video because I totally disagree with the court's decision. So I refused to watch it even though it is in a thousand places on the net for free. Millions of us have done what they did and videotaped themselves during intimate moments. Imagine how you would feel to have it plastered all over the net where anyone, from your mother to your childhood Sunday school teacher, could not only view, but comment or criticize it?

That case seemed to open the door to more intrusive behavior by the media. Suddenly. there seemed to be less of a boundary. Since then that line has become more and more blurred to the point there really is no line anymore. It seems anything goes in the name of freedom of the press(yea right) and entertainment. The more humiliating, compromising, or controversial the better. If you have the misfortune to be even somewhat famous, you have no right to privacy of any kind.

And who is to to blame for this debacle? We are. We the American public. If we did not lust after every last piece of a celebrity's soul, there would be no market for this trash. If we didn't buy this claptrap, the paparazzi would be out of business. To that I would say 'good riddance.' Because this can only end badly. For us and the stars. For the celebrities it will mean that so many talented people will either walk away and decide it is not worth it or just not do it to begin with. And that will be our loss. Or like I mentioned earlier, someone will end up losing their life to this craziness. We have already become so jaded and so blase in our response to this rubbish, we have stopped noticing the effects it has on our children. Let's face it kiss emulate their heroes and when their heroes are barely legal drug addicted, alcoholic floozies who are lucky if they can find their way home most nights yet seem to have little or no consequences, what kind of behavior do we expect from them. By not censoring what they see and by not talking to them about it, we essentially condone it.

By continuing to buy the magazines and watch the shows that use the photos and video obtained by these vultures, we are supporting an industry that we are contributing to the demise of our own morality. Everyone has a right to some privacy and respect. As human beings we need to have things we keep just for ourselves. Imagine for a moment how having your private life beamed all over the globe would affect you. Some stars, like Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher on twitter, are willing to share pieces of their lives. That's great but when they don't wish to share and the paparazzi get that story buy any means necessary, a line is crossed. The only way to get back across that line depends on us and us alone. If we do. we may get back a little bit of the dignity we have lost as a culture. If we don't, then we can only blame ourselves when it all, inevitability, goes so horribly wrong.

Religion

I want to begin by saying I am not an atheist, Satanist or anything else that does not believe in God. I absolutely do. I consider myself to be a Gnostic Christian. (You can look that up for yourself) I also do not believe that religious people are evil, at least not all of them. I have a friend who is a minister that I find to be honest, sincere and nonjudgmental, as well as a good friend. As a matter of fact, I find her to be the kind of minister (and person) that all religious leaders should aspire to be like. Never, no matter the differences in belief our ideology, has she ever judged me, belittled me or declared me to be wrong in some way.

Religion is defined as an organized approach to human spirituality which usually encompasses a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural or transcendent quality, that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power or truth.

Nowhere in this definition does it declare one group more right or wrong than another. Nor does declare one group to be so superior that they are righteous in judging others outside of their faith. Where does it say that just because you believe one way that you have the right to; judge people, judge their actions, or judge what they believe? I must have missed that declaration. My only conclusion is that this right must be self-imposed and self-assumed.

I do not have a problem with religion, or God. But I have issues with the kind of people that think they have the right to decide for everyone else. They are not all in church but it seems to be where I find a lot of them these days. We live in a country of religious freedom, so we are supposed to be able to choose for ourselves. So why do we degrade, snub and gossip about those who believe differently? A prime example is the Muslim faith. We do not understand their faith or we disagree with it, so we call them all terrorists. There are some political issues tied up with this as well, but how many emails have you gotten that indicate Muslims are all terrorists in disguise?

• 
  A few examples:
  We were invited to attend church by an acquaintance. We attended for a few weeks and the people seemed very nice and welcoming. While in a conversation with the acquaintance I learned that one of their beliefs was that women could only speak through men on church matters or in any committee in the church. Personally I found this offensive. Did I snub this person or berate her for attending a church that believed such things? No, I exercised my right to freedom pf religion and DID NOT GO BACK! What a bold concept this has become these days. It seems if something offends us anymore we feel the need to publicize or litigate it when exercising our rights is so much simpler. But too many people feel like they have some right to judge someone else’s beliefs.
• 
  My children have been guests at another church many times. The big issue arose when it came to gay rights. We have always tried to teach our kids to judge others by their character, not their color, culture or preferences. But for some reason our beliefs and teachings are ignored. My kids have now been told repeatedly about parts not fitting and your moms wrong and the bible says… I could go on, but I will spare you here. I thought the bible also said, “Judge not lest ye be judged.” When did we stop living by the golden rule anyway?
• 
  The most egregious example I can think of is the church from KS that feels that they have the right to picket soldier’s funerals and torture the families because of their beliefs. Their beliefs disagree with military policies and believe it is God’s will whenever a soldier dies. They are certainly entitled to believe whatever they like. But what gives them the right to try to force those beliefs on others and torment already suffering families? Why is it not enough for them to just to believe that and not join the military? Why can they not accept that others choose not to believe as they do?

As I said in the beginning I do believe in God. I believe that I do not have to be in church whenever the doors are open for God to hear me. I am entitled to my beliefs and do not feel like anyone else has the right to harass me to go to their church or tell my family that I am going to hell because I don’t. I understand that some of the things I believe in, e.g. reincarnation, may not be everyone’s cup of tea and I accept that. Why is that so difficult for others to do? My theory is simple: be the best you can be, be good to each other, then shut up and go home.

Take it or leave it.