School Buses And Lemons

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Americans gasped Sunday as they watched reports, from CNN and other sources, of an American-born man, who gunned down 49 people early Sunday at a gay nightclub in Orlando, after pledging himself to ISIS.

Subject: Lemon | Date: 02/13/2005 | Photographer: André Karwath |This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.
Subject: School Bus | Date: 12/07/2013 | Photographer: Echtner |This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This blog is being posted four days after the fact, simply because I've had trouble writing the thing.  I had a whole thing planned regarding the fact that school buses and lemons are different colors, yet they're both same color as well.

One's a very bright sunny color, while the other offers a darker richer hue, but they have equal claim to the label "yellow."

I was going to use it as an analogy for Americans by pointing out we're all different from one another, but we're all Americans.  We may be liberal, conservative, gay, lesbian, bi, straight, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, agnostic, atheist, other, or any combination thereof, but we're all Americans.

I was going to point out that hundreds of Orlando's citizens dropped what they were doing and lined up for blocks to donate blood.  Based on their compassion, I was going to make the observation that there are more good people than bad people in the world.  I'd planned to finish by stating that we're all brothers & sisters under one flag.

I couldn't write the piece though.  Try as I might, I can't put any kind of a hopeful spin on the slaughter of innocent people.  WE'RE KILLING EACH OTHER FOR BEING DIFFERENT!!!

Searching For The Good

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During a recent GOP debate Senator Marco Rubio stated, "When I'm president of the United States we are getting rid of Obamacare..."

During a Feb. 7 interview on ABC's "This Week," host George Stephanopoulos asked Trump whether he "would authorize torture." Trump responded: "I would absolutely authorize something beyond waterboarding."

Subject: Manny Pacquiao during the opening ceremony of the NCAA Season 87 at the Araneta Coliseum on July 2, 2011 | Date: 07/02/11 |
Photographer: Inboundpass | This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. |

Manny Pacquiao, the eight time world boxing champion, recently said. “Do you see animals mating with the same sex? Animals are better because they can distinguish male from female. If men mate with men and women mate with women they are worse than animals.”

It seems like people are not only more hateful & cruel, but they're more open about it.  One candidate is advocate the torture of suspects.  Another is broadcasting the fact that he wants to take health care away from 17 million Americans. A sports star is publicly quoting the Bible verse Leviticus 20:13, which says that gays should be put to death.

It would be easy to think of this as a mean world.  Yet, while the are mean selfish shallow people in it, a closer look will often reveal a world of kindness, compassion, and generosity.

Real estate moguls, Jordan Menashe, and his father, Barry Menashe, donated part of the second floor of a building they own to be used as a homeless shelter in downtown Portland.

Instead of buying a boat, Marty Burbank, an attorney and Navy veteran, has made a pledge to 26 kindergarten students to fund each student's tuition for two years at community college and two years at a California state school, at an estimated price tag of $1,000,000.

Rich people aren't the only ones making the world a better place either.  62.8 million Americans volunteered 7.9 billion hours of their time last year.  On a personal note, my physical disability makes me dependent on the goodness of truly wonderful people every day.

It's easy to focus on the evil in the world.  We see it, we're shocked by it, and it makes an indelible mark on our psyches.  The good IS out there though, we simply need to pay attention enough to see it.

Why The Kim Davis Case Isn't About Religion

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Kim Davis, the Clerk of Kentucky's Rowan County, was jailed last week for defying a court’s order to comply with the law by refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. As she spent the holiday weekend behind bars, her supporters claimed Davis' incarceration was an example of religious persecution.

POPPYCOCK!

The First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

That means the government can't dictate what church we go to (if we indeed go to a church), who/what we call God, how we pray, or what religious symbols we display on our property and person. The Amendment was never intended to give citizens carte blanche to pick and choose which laws we'll follow based on our religious beliefs.

No matter what religion Americans belong to, we can't:

• smoke peyote,
• marry more than one person at a time,
• sacrifice children and/or virgins,
• or avoid doing our job.

Think of it this way.  Mormons are opposed to drinking alcohol.  However, if a Mormon got a job waiting tables, they would still have to serve the drinks ordered by the patrons.  On a personal level, they wouldn't have condone drinking, or drink themselves.  They'd simply have to perform the duties they're payed to perform.

It's the same with Kim Davis.  No court in the land could order Davis to approve of gay marriage, or attend a gay wedding.  Yet, they can compel her to perform the duties she's legally payed to perform.

Kim Davis was released from jail today. The release order, issued by Judge Bunning, directs Davis not to, “interfere in any way, directly or indirectly, with the efforts of her deputy clerks to issue marriage licenses to all legally eligible couples.”  Whether, or not, she stays out of jail is COMPLETELY up to her.
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We're Not Stupid!... Are We?

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Right now, almost every blogger, vlogger (video blogger), and columnist is addressing the Supreme Court's virtual legalization of same-sex-marriage. Don't get me wrong, I'm tickled pink (no pun intended) that institutionalized bigotry has been dealt a crippling blow. However, given the number of opinions, buzzing across the internet, on the topic, there's nothing of any intelligent significance I can add to the conversation.

Thus, I'd rather address something which has been bugging me lately.  It's becoming increasingly obvious that corporate America thinks the buying public is made up of idiots.

This attitude has always been present in advertising to some degree.  In the old west, crowds were amazed when snake oil salesmen miraculously cured the cripple among them; never mind that no one had ever met the poor soul before the medicine man hit town.

Subject: Water | Date: Unknown | Photographer: Walter J. Pilsak |This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

The mid-twentieth century saw doctors endorsing brands of cigarettes and fictionalized housewives looking forward to washing dishes in order to soften their hands.  Yet, advertisers were able to somewhat deny they thought of consumers as moronic sheep.

Today, it seems like they've dropped all such pretenses, and are happy to blatantly treat us like drooling idiots.

One of the most annoyingly obvious offenders is Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring Water.  Their commercial states their bottled water is, "made by nature, not by man."

Ditditdotditditit... NEWS FLASH, this just in, all water, yes, all water is made by nature.

Crystal Geyser means that their water is taken directly from a stream, rather than from a chemically treated reservoirs.  Yet, the slogan conjures up mental pictures of lab coat clad scientists creating water in test tubes for the competition.  IT'S JUST NOT HAPPENING!

True, some bottled water companies have been known to bottle common tap water, which can contain liquefied chlorine, fluorosilicic acid, aluminum sulphate, calcium hydroxide, and  sodium silicofluoride.  That being said, the water itself was made by nature covalently bonding two hydrogen atoms to a single oxygen atom.  That's what water is.

Companies churn out mindless slogans, like the aforementioned promise of natural water, because they make money.  These slogans make money for the simple reason that we don't think about them.  We sit, with Coca-Cola in hand, stare at that thar TV box, and gobble up whatever comes out.

I'm probably one of the guiltiest consumers I know.  There's no telling how many times I've been tempted by the latest snack chip or fast food offering, only to be disappointed by mediocre junk.

Bottom line, if we want advertisers to start treating us like intelligent consumers, we have refuse to buy products from companies that treat us like idiots.  We have to raise the bar by thinking critically.
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