Breaking Bad . . . on Barbie

Aaron Paul, a star on the TV show Breaking Bad is protesting the fact that two Breaking Bad action figures (Walter White and Jesse Pinkman) have been pulled off the shelves of Toys R Us and then he gets the “ass of the month” award for suggesting that Barbie toys somehow “pose more harm” than the two drug dealing murderers in the Breaking Bad show.

I would hazard a guess that most kids who play with Barbie and Ken are not likely to become felons. On the other hand, neither are kids who play with breaking Bad characters likely to develop drug habits or kill their playmates. I would also guess that most kids who are raised by violent, abusive parents who live in and around the drug culture probably WILL develop those behaviors. I may be out of line saying it but at least half of the parents in the world seem to be incapable of handling the job of raising responsible, honest children.

The entertainment industry caters to adult tastes (the adults, not the kids, are the ones with the money to buy what they are selling). Sexually explicit’ and ‘graphically violent’ are definitely adult tastes and they are profitable. That’s NOT the tragedy!

It’s almost Halloween and every TV station and movie theater will  be showing movies that feature violence and a fair amount of sex. We all watched these graphically gory movies as kids (at least I did) and the vast majority of us have not been ‘corrupted’ by them. Why? Because most of us also had parents who did not confuse movies and reality. We had rules and, if we were lucky enough to have good parenting  we also had consequences (sometimes painful consequences) for unacceptable behavior. The consequences are what we remember most.

The tragedy is that there are kids who have never known consequences for unacceptable behavior and will not understand the consequences until the consequences are doled out by the police and the justice system.

I remember and no doubt will always remember one day when I was about 5-years old I sat down in the living room in front of the TV to watch a wrestling show that already was showing on the TV. It was exciting to see these guys roughing each other up and throwing each other around (it was like my Saturday morning cartoons with real people) but then my excitement turned to stomach-clenching fear when one of the wrestlers took off his cowboy boot and began hitting his opponent (I remember his name was Pat Patterson) in the head. I was shaking and too traumatized to even turn away from the tableau on the TV. I had never seen someone having his face turned into a bloody pulp before. I was just a kid and didn’t realize that no one was really getting hurt, at least not as badly as they appeared to be hurt. But I didn’t want to watch wrestling on TV for many years after that.

My point in sharing this little bit of biographical information is to emphasize the fact that the younger you are the more impressionable you are and at a young age, depending on many different factors in your young life, you will either try to emulate what you see on the screen or you will be repulsed by it. Parents who act early to suppress bad behavior will be most successful. The way the world is now, a parent that doesn’t have a child’s behavior under control by the age of 10 has, very likely, already lost the battle. (I know this from experience.)

Breaking Bad is just a TV show and the Breaking Bad action figures, which are the actual subject of this post, are toys that will harm no one who is not already on the wrong course.

Toys R Us is a business and every business in America should be allowed to sell or not sell any LEGAL product or commodity without undue political (or media) influence. If people are unhappy with your business choices they will go somewhere else, all on their own, without petitions being signed and delivered by annoying people like Susan Schrivjer, the Florida mom who started the petition to save the world from two plastic action figures.

Airlines, Close the Gates! Ebola is Coming!

It’s becoming more and more obvious that The American Health System in general is not prepared to safely treat someone with Ebola. If there was a good supply of this mystery drug that cured the first Ebola patient allowed back in the United States it would be a different story but there isn’t and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) is apparently playing a guessing game when it comes to Ebola virus containment. There needs to be a lot more research done in that area. In the meantime we are all at risk!

More distressing than the Ebola patients that we know about are the ones we cannot identify. THAT will, eventually, unless serious and immediate changes are made, be the start of an epidemic that could easily ravage America and Americans.

Right now, according to news reports, about 150 people a day are being allowed into this country from areas of the world where there is NOW an Ebola epidemic, based only on their body temperature when they get on and/or off a plane. That could be stopped in a “New York Minute” by President Obama — if he wasn’t (in this citizen’s opinion) such an incompetent fool.

Since the President acts like he either doesn’t fully understand the risk or doesn’t care, the airline industry and the FAA need to step up to the plate.

The airline companies themseves can cancel all flights from Ebola epidemic areas, to not do so is criminally negligent. Major International airports can refuse to allow these flights to land. They are risking their employees lives and risking their reputations by ignoring an obvious autonomous action that, if ignored, could and will start an uncontrollable spread of the Ebola virus. They don’t have to wait until the president makes a statement or signs a paper. If the FAA tries to block that from happening they will be committing virtual agency suicide. A sixth grader could easily figure out that the safest course of action is stopping international flights (and cruises) from these countries, until the CDC has more correct answers and workable solutions, that is that safest course of action.

We as individuals can fight most of the problems caused by the Obama Administration, problems like crime caused by our shattered economy and by our lack of border security. For other problems they are causing the country we can go after the Administration legally (and also by voting many of Obama’s lap dogs out of office in three weeks) but the spread of a disease is almost completely out of our individual hands.

Remember, Election day is Tuesday, November 4!

Huckabee in La-La-Land

Mike Huckabee has threatened to “Leave the Republican Party” if the GOP does not actively, openly and loudly oppose gay marriage.

It wouldn’t be a big loss for the GOP if Huckabee leaves and takes his few thousand homophobic followers with him. In fact it would be a plus for the GOP to be rid of someone who is so blind to America’s problems that he is willing to desert the party that is America’s best hope over a non-issue like Gay Marriage.

Hey Mike, how about pushing the GOP to take meaningful positions on stuff like the threat of radical Islam, American terrorists, the potential Ebola crisis, the disgraceful National debt, America’s ever weakening military might, the growing distrust of our allies (if we have any left after 6 years of Obama), the government’s rejection of the Free Market (the very system that once made us the most powerful nation on earth), the massive influx of illegal aliens that is being ignored by this administration when it is not being encouraged by this administration, or the government’s refusal to take advantage of our natural oil and gas resources to free us from dependence on foreign energy, Or maybe you could urge the GOP to do something simpler like getting Marine Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi freed from the Ciudad, Mexico jail where he’s been rotting away for the past four months for no real reason.

No Mike, gay marriage will not destroy America but people like you will unless you get your heads out of the sand and focus on real problems.

The social issues and religious mandates you push don’t belong on any national agenda. All the Christian values like worship, respect, humility, honesty, morality, generosity, forgiveness, and all the other Christ-like virtues are absolutely wonderful for personal and spiritual growth and personal relationships but our country is dealing with brutal enemies, deadly disease and poor leadership; things that we can’t pray away. You are a politician, you should know better.

The Supreme Court: ‘It IS what WE say It IS!’

As Christians tear their hair out over the latest Supreme Court decisions that legalized same-sex marriage in five states and effectively reversed lower court rulings in six others, very few citizens seem to challenge the Supreme Court’s power to bend and twist the U.S. Constitution until it fits the world view of those 9 senior citizens in black robes who appear to care not a whit about individual freedoms. We should be ‘in their faces’ but as it stands, we have to accept their decisions and sit in awe of their power.

What an ‘awesome’ power it is! Supreme court decisions are final. Neither the Congress or the president have veto power over Supreme Court decisions.

So we have 9 super beings, 9 demigods right here in our midst with the power to control our lives, for the rest of their lives, from their seats of power. The problem is, the Supreme Court, originally intended to decide Constitutional issues, was given virtually unlimited power by Article III of the Constitution (http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii). Unlimited power to rule on every aspect of our lives.

U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 2, Paragraph 1:
“The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;–to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;–to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;–to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;–to controversies between two or more states;–between a state and citizens of another state;–between citizens of different states;–between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.”

What’s more, if these given powers do not specifically apply to a given case, the court has (or is at least unchallenged in assuming) the power to “interpret” their Constitutional authority so that it does.

If there is an inherent flaw in the Constitution, this is it! It dismisses the concept that the United States is a Constitutional Republic, i.e., A form of government in which power is explicitly vested in the people, who in turn exercise their power through elected representatives. Through elected representatives!

Supreme Court Justices are NOT our “elected representatives.” They were put in power by our “elected representatives” but that power is subject to political deals; a seat on the Supreme Court is figuratively ‘bought and paid for” by powerful political operatives and once a justice is sworn in, he or she is effectively beyond the “power that was explicitly vested in the people”. Justices are effectively, ABOVE the Constitution. The Constitution says what the Justices say it says and it means what they say it means.

Is there any one person, or any 9, who should have that much control over American life?

This is not to say that the Supreme Court is not an essential department of government, my point is that it sits as the most powerful force in the United States (which will, hopefully, again someday become the most powerful country in the world) and it sits with virtually no controls over it.

There is no reason or logic that implies that the Supreme Court should have anything to say about our personal lives, i.e. who we marry or who we hire or do not hire in our businesses or even how we educate our children. Most Supreme Court Justices are where they are because of political deals and political contacts, not because of their devotion to the American way of life or to the U.S. Constitution.

Speaking of ‘who we marry’, it is interesting to note the fact that there is NO MENTION of marriage in the Constitution! Shouldn’t that automatically exempt the purely social institution of marriage from Supreme Court’s jurisdiction? This important technicality, it seems, is being ignored. The Supreme Court, as I see it, acting well outside the bounds of it’s charter, has for decades inundated us with marriage laws as well as other laws that effect society, without the explicit power to do so.

I say:

1) Lets find a way to return the power over marriage not to the states or to the people but give the baby with the dirty diapers back to the church. They gave birth to him and should have custody. Marriage is a relationship between two people; always has been and should be. No one gave the Congress, or the Federal courts the explicit power to decide who those two people are. The Supreme Court assumed that power . . . and we said nothing!

2) Let’s also find a way to reign in the general power of those nine old folks in black robes and live in fear of them until we do.

3) While we are tackling these two tasks; tasks clearly worthy of “The Impossible Mission Force” (or at least “Charlies Angels”,  let’s also find a way to restore State Sovereignty in America and bring America back to where it is supposed to be. The 50 sovereign states have, over the years, been vandalized. Their power of self-rule has been diminished to the point where they can make few decisions without the forced advise and consent of the Federal Government. This was permitted by the Supreme Court and, we can only assume that it accurately reflects the thinking of those nine black-robed demigods.