Student Bullied By Teacher For Wearing Pro-Romney T-Shirt

Did you hear about this story out of Pennsylvania? A high school math teacher ordered a 16-year-old student to leave the classroom or remove her clothing when she walked into class wearing a “Romney\Ryan” t-shirt. The teacher told her that the school was a Democratic school and Republican t-shirts weren’t allowed there. The teacher, who is black, said it would be like her wearing a KKK shirt.

The student — bless her stoic , seemingly Republican heart — stood her ground and refused to leave or take off the shirt. The teachers was removed from the classroom after the girl’s parents complained. But in a strange twist of loyalty and logic, some other students at the school held a rally for the TEACHER, saying that she had a First Amendment right to tell the student to leave her classroom.

What about the student’s right to free speech?

Perhaps I should mention that at this particular school — Charles Carroll High School — you’d be hard-pressed to find even one American flag, and the Pledge of Allegiance is NEVER recited.

The latest news is that the teacher is now receiving anonymous death threats, and the student is afraid to return to school because of all the taunting she has been getting from other students.
What is it about presidential elections that bring out the worst in people?

Redistribution of Wealth Starts With A Bus Pass

     Yesterday, I got my first taste of what it would be like with Obama in office another four unbearably long years. My eldest daughter is in college, and in the process of making a tuition payment, I discovered that she was being charged all kinds of silly fees. If you've ever been through Escrow, you know what I'm talking about.

     Anyhow, she was being charged a $27 Transportation Fee. Huh? We just bought her a car this summer so that she would be able to get to and from school on her own. We 're paying for her car insurance, too -- and we even threw in a AAA card for roadside assistance. The girl is completely dialed in to get to and from school on her own.

     So I called the college and discovered that the "Transportation Fee" was to help offset the high cost of bus passes for all the other students who had to take the bus. As the traffic czar told me, "Bus passes are about $340 a year, and most of our students can't afford that. So this helps bring the cost down."

     I explained to him that my daughter had her own car and wouldn't ever need to take the bus, and that I wanted the $27 fee waived. Call me heartless (or a right-winger, some might say) but I don't think we should have to pay for the cost of other students' bus fare. That's THEIR parents' expense, not mine.

     So I suggested that perhaps some of that collective $27 per student go toward helping to offset my daughter's gas costs getting to and from school. That seems fair, doesn't it?

     Complete silence on the other end of the phone. -->

Say Good-Bye To Father\Daughter Dances

The politically correct, ACLU police are out in full force again – this time in Cranston, Rhode Island, where one solitary single mother was able to shut down a long-standing tradition of Father\Daughter dances because she wasn’t able to participate in them.

I am a single mother and here’s what I have to say to that: Are you kidding me? If you're not a father, why would you want to go to a Father\Daughter dance, anyway? More to the point: Let these dads and daughters have a little bonding time, for goodness sake! Most fathers don't get to spend much time with their daughters as it is.

 

If you’re a single mom, you made the choice somewhere along the way to go it alone. I realize there are many reasons why women become single moms, but just because your child isn’t living with her father doesn’t mean that other young girls shouldn’t be able to enjoy a night out with their dads.

 

Single moms have ample opportunity for one-on-one time with their sons and daughters like, I don’t know . . . EVERY DAY! So I don’t understand why this one single mom would begrudge so many men from spending ONE NIGHT, one-on-one with their little girls.

 

It’s a rite of passage that shouldn’t be missed.

 

When I was in 7^th Grade, I went to my first Father\Daughter dance. I remember it very well. Why? Because my father wasn't there. He was serving a tour of duty in Vietnam, and my mother didn’t want me to feel left out, so she asked my dad’s best friend, Mr. Maybee, to take me to the dance. Mr. Maybee had three sons, so he was more than happy to surround himself with girls for a change. It wasn’t awkward or weird, either. (Pedaphilia wasn’t even in the dictionary way back then!) I vividly recall that I had fun with Mr. Maybee. He bought me a corsage, we ate a spaghetti dinner and talked about how much I missed my dad.

 

Now wouldn't my experience have been a better solution to this problem in Rhode Island? This one solitary single mother could have asked a close and trusted male in her life to do the honors of escorting her daughter to the dance.

 

Not only would lifelong memories have been made on that dance floor for all the dads and daughters in attendance. But also, that rebel-rousing single mom would have enjoyed a nice break from single parenthood for a few hours.

 

It sounds like she desperately needs it.

I like Honey Boo-Boo!

     When I was a sweet, young thing, I used to watch Shirley Temple Theater religiously every Saturday afternoon. It was my great escape. While all the other kids in the neighborhood were outside biking and skating and playing Barbies on their lawn, I was hunkered down inside our TV room mesmerized by this adorable little singing/dancing sensation named Shirley Temple. She had big, curly hair, cavernous dimples and a gigantic personality that just sucked me in.

     Shirley’s all grown up now, and so am I. But I have been newly sucked-in, for lack of a better description, by a 6-year-old named Alana Holler. Most people know her by her TV name, “Honey Boo-Boo.” Watching Alana on TV is like watching Shirley Temple all over again, with a little bit of trailer park thrown in. Alana hails from McIntyre, Georgia, and she loves competing in beauty pageants. She was introduced to the world through TLC’s highly controversial show, “Toddlers & Tiaras,” and she is such a stand-out character – I mean, this little girl is a nut! — she now has her own show on TLC called, "Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo."

     Now, I’m not a fan of child beauty pageants for the same reasons you probably aren’t, either. But Honey Boo-Boo is something else. Despite how some people might feel about her dysfunctional family and her beauty-pageant hobby, she is an extraordinary child – much like Shirley Temple was — with a personality too big to be contained in that 6-year-old body, and a precociousness that is beyond reason. Her mother, June, says she was born that way.

     It would be easy to cast judgment on Honey Boo-Boo and her clan. Many people have, as they are off the radar in the family arena. Her morbidly obese single mother is into extreme couponing, hoards hundreds of rolls of toilet paper and has been rumored to serve road kill for dinner. But despite the family's preference for spoiled meat, we really have no right to judge them. I’m a single mom, too, and I know how difficult it can be to be a one-man operation. Most single parents do the best they can against impossible odds, sometimes.

     I look at Honey-Boo-Boo and see a happy, joyous little girl with a gigantic appetite for life and one of the most engaging personalities I have ever seen in a child that age. Say what you want about her "redneck" family, but her controversial mother must be doing something right to have created such an exceptional child.  I see love there.  Lots of crazy love in that family.

     Bottom line: Honey Boo-Boo makes me laugh. And that’s something this single mom could do more of.

2016: Obama's America

          How many times have you been to a movie where the entire audience stands up and applauds while the credits roll?

          I just witnessed this amazing show of patriotism this weekend at the movie, “2016: Obama’s America.”  And I am reading about similar reactions erupting in theaters all over this country.  One woman, in Colorado, I believe, stood up and started singing “God Bless America!”  proudly and unselfconsciously.

          Now that’s the kind of RAP music I can tolerate!  (RAP, in this instance, being an acronym for Random Acts of Patriotism.)

          Anyhow, if you haven’t seen the movie, you MUST GO!  Bring your spouse, your teens, blindfold your liberal friends and drag them in there – or tell them you’ll pay for their ticket.  You know how much they like free stuff.

          This movie is a cinematic wake-up call. A frightening documentary about the man the majority of us (not me!) elected to the highest office in this country four years ago, not really knowing who Obama is or where he came from.  Hawaii? Indonesia? Kenya? Where exactly was he born, again?  

It’s amazing that after four years under this man’s leadership, we still don’t know any more about our own President than we did when he was promising to transform America back in 2007.

          Well, director DineshD’Souza cracks that nut wide open.  

          I took my 18-year-old to see the movie.  An attempt at indoctrination? Hell, yes!  I’m her parent, her college professor isn't.  It’s my right, not his.  She went in to the movie leaning left, and she came out hightailing it toward the right.  In her words, “Mom, that really scared me. Our country is in trouble.”

          From the mouths of babes.

FOOTNOTE:  I found this interesting quote online:  "When somebody goes to Yahoo!'s movie site and types in a film's name, typically hundreds of web search results come up yet when one searches for "2016: Obama's America" not one search result is returned," said "2016" executive producer John Sullivan. "The website for '2016: Obama's America' is generating nearly a million page views per day so it's not as though the information traffic is not out there. We look forward to Yahoo! updating its search capability so that viewers can easily find out information about ours and other popular movies."

                   

                   

Chik-fil-A Ruffles Feathers

          The mercury hit 99 degrees in this hot town around dinnertime yesterday, but that didn’t stop chicken lovers from flocking in droves to the Chik-fil-A in my town. I was on my way to get dinner elsewhere, and things got a little slow in the right lane. 

     As I got closer, I saw why:  Scores of cars were snaking around the restaurant and through the drive-thru.  I was impressed that my community was taking a strong stand against the suppression of free speech.  I didn’t know we had it in us!

I got out and started talking to people, and based on my very informal survey, most people were there to support “traditional marriage.”  One guy wearing a stars-and-stripes  T-shirt said he was there to support “Free speech.” 

And another very vocal man – who came out of the restaurant with three bulging bags holding $30 worth of chicken and fixin’s for his family  --  had a few choice words for the mayors of Chicago and Boston for saying that Chik-fil-A would not be welcome to set up business in their towns.  He couldn’t believe the government would step in and try to interfere with private business like that.

Two kind-hearted young men were passing out water bottles to the drivers waiting in the long line.  They were youth ministers from a local church who had bought cases of water with their own money so that they could thank people for coming out to support traditional marriage, they said.

I am BLOWN AWAY by the activist turnout in my town.  And it gives me great hope and optimism for the upcoming presidentialelections.

Yes, we made a very strong statement with our support of Chik-fil-A yesterday.  But the place where we need to really turn out in record numbers, and speak out very loudly and clearly, is at the polls in November. 

It looks like there may be very long lines there, too, so you may want to bring a bag lunch with you on election day.  May I suggest a Chik-fil-A sandwich?

ENCOURAGE YOUR TEENS TO VOTE!

My oldest daughter, who just finished her freshman year in college, wants to be a nurse.  Not sure where that calling came from, since her mother has always been weak-kneed at the sight of blood.  But I love that she wants to make her living as a healer and nurturer. She will be a natural at it, too, as she has always been balm for my spirit. 

While I think she has chosen the perfect profession at a time when the world needs more healing, I worry about her, too.  CBS News reports that half of recent college graduates can't find full-time jobs.  What must the parents of these graduates be thinking right now? I would imagine they feel cheated out of a rite of passage:  The right for them to pass on self-sufficiency to their children.

And do these grads who can’t find jobs feel hoodwinked? Think about it.  From the time our children are old enough to read a book, we impress upon them the importance of learning and getting educated.  “Without a good education, it will be hard for you to find a good job someday.”  Haven’t we all recited some variation of this mantra through the years? 

Now, record numbers of young adults are moving back in with their parents, crippled by grim job prospects and insurmountable student-loan debt. There's even a name for them:  Boomerang kids. In fact, the Census Bureau reports the number of shared households increased 11.4 percent to 22 million, between 2007 and 2010. 

What kind of America are we passing on to our children – the new generation of dependents?  The last four years of an ineffective presidency -- more focused on dragging down the country with a stratospheric deficit than trying to create jobs -- has placed every parent in the uncomfortable position of having to tell our children the truth:  “It doesn’t matter how hard you work in school to get good grades, Sweetie, you’re pretty much screwed once you graduate.”

So, as my 18-year-old transitions into adulthood and takes a giant leap of faith into her vastly uncertain future, I am hovering over her as a helicopter mom one last time to encourage her to do something that will greatly improve her job prospects one day:  

           “Honey, you need to register to vote.”