Liberty and Justice for All!

My heartfelt thanks to all of those men and women who risked their lives and died for our freedoms. The same thanks goes out to those currently serving or who have served.

On this day, we should not only remember those who paid the price of their service. We should also remember to make sure that those who risk their lives for us are taken care of in the field and when they come home. We should protect them with sound diplomacy and never use them as pawns for political gains or personal profit. Our troops are a national treasure and should be treated as such.

I have tickets to the Rush Concert.

I have tickets to the 1st Hornets Playoff Game.

*sigh*

Why couldn’t they have scheduled the 1st playoff game for Sunday?

Update: They swapped the Houston Rush date with the New Orleans one. So i get to see both this weekend. Yay! This has been a very good week. I’ll share more on that later

Update 2: According to the Rush press release, they will be donating $100,000 to rebuilding efforts in New Orleans. That is really cool of them.

Update 3: The game and the concert… all I can say is WOW what a weekend.

Saturday night I attended the V to the Tenth event at the New Orleans Arena with my wife. I found it to be a very enjoyable experience and found out that while I always try to see life from the eyes of someone else, there is still no way for me to really know what it must be like to live as a woman in a society that still contains many examples of sexism and misogyny.

This quote from the V-men section states it clearly.

It became clear to me (as it already was to Eve) that violence against women was not merely a female issue; it was a human dilemma twisting the lives and consciences of men as well; men whose voices needed to be heard in order for the dialogue that began ten years ago with the founding of V-Day to be complete.

Amen.

I was also very impressed that they compared the treatment of New Orleans by our administration to the treatment of women by abusive men.

If there was any negative about the night it was in the planning of the New Orleans arena in handling the bathroom situation. Seeing as there was a disproportionate amount of women to men at this event, one would have thought that they would have taken some of the men’s rooms and clearly marked them as ok for women to enter so that they could have additional facilities just in case. Unfortunately, I did not see this happen and while I was using  the men’s room, some women came in and announced “woman coming in and I am not looking at your….”. Now, had I done the exact opposite an entered a women’s room like that, I would have been hauled off to jail. I guess that thought didn’t come to the women who attended. However, I can’t blame them… when you gotta go you gotta go. The New Orleans Arena should have taken appropriate steps to provide adequate facilities to the women while making sure that men also had privacy.

There is also the issue that they only had shirts up to XL (even on their online store). Kinda silly.

But at the end of a day it was a good event and I was glad to have gone with my wife to share the experience with her.

Well, not really. However, they just cut their 5-7 show with Garey and Anthony and I for one am very dissapointed. I may not agree with the hosts all the time, but the show was very entertaining and the hosts very fair and it is a shame that they have been taken off the air. If you would like to voice your displeasure as I will, contact Dick Lewis and Mike Kramer and let them know.

DickLewis@clearchannel.com

MikeKramer@clearchannel.com

I am running for the Orleans Parish Democratic Executive Committee (OPDEC) in District C and for the Democratic Party State Central Committee (DSCC) in House District 86.

I am fed up with the actions of some in my party. We need a change at the local and statewide level if we are going to stop the bleeding and stop losing seats to Republicans. We need to remove the traitors, like Karen Carter, from their leadership positions and work to set up an infrastructure so all Democrats have the support they need when they run for office in Louisiana.

The website still has many updates that need to be added. However, if you live in either of those districts or if you just want to help a Democrat make a positive change in the party, please help me and others like me out. We need a change and it needs to happen now. And it wont happen if we elect people who are currently entrenched in the political process.

I received an email the other day. It went as follows:   

I am mailing mine today and hope if you guys only send one card out it will go to this address.

Yes, Christmas cards. This is coming early  so that you can get ready to include an important address to your list.  Wanna have some fun this CHRISTMAS?   Send the ACLU a  CHRISTMAS CARD this year. As they are working so very hard to get rid of the CHRISTMAS part of this holiday,  we should all send them a nice CHRISTIAN card to brighten up their dark, sad little world. Make sure it says “Merry Christmas” on it.  Here’s the address, just don’t be rude or crude. (It’s not the Christian Way , you know.)  

 ACLU
125 Broad Street  18th Floor 
 New York, NY 10004  

Two tons of Christmas cards would freeze their operations because they wouldn’t know if any were regular mail containing contributions. So spend 41 cents and tell the ACLU to leave Christmas alone. Also tell them that there is no such thing as a “Holiday  Tree”. . . It’s always been called a CHRISTMAS TREE!   And pass this on to your email lists. We really want to communicate with the ACLU! They really DESERVE us!!  For those of you who aren’t aware of them, the ACLU, (the American Civil Liberties Union) is the one suing the U.S. Government to  take God, Christmas or anything Christian, away from.  They represent  the atheists and others in this war.   Help put CHRIST back in Christmas! 

My  response was:

The ACLU is not trying to eliminate Christmas. The ACLU is working to make sure that we have a government that is representitive of all people and not just “the majority”. Government should celebrate all or it should celebrate none. It is really that simple. Our “Pledge” states “with liberty and justice for all”. Not for some or for most, but for all.Is the ACLU trying to prevent you from erecting an X-mas tree on your own property? No.Is the ACLU trying to prevent you from celebrating X-mas with  your friends and families? No.The ACLU is just trying to prevent individuals from using government to promote their religion over other religions. Instead of being insulted when the ACLU fights to keep people from erecting religious symbols in government buildings, people should be insulted when politicians tarnish religion by using God for political gains.  And by the way, the ”Christmas Tree” was not always called a “Christmas Tree”. It did not start off as a symbol of Christianity. It is a pagan symbol adopted by the church in an attempt to convert more pagans into the fold.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_tree#Roots

And for those who falsely believe that the use of “X” is an attempt to “take Christ out of Christmas”:

http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/xmasabbr.asp

The holiday season is the season for giving and the season for sharing. It is the season for spending time with friends, family and loved ones and reflecting on the year that was and looking forward to the year that will be.Instead of coming up with schemes on how we can derail an organization that stands up for our civil liberties, we should instead be coming up with ways that we can celebrate the holiday season and share the gifts of prosperity that many of us do have with those who are less fortunate than us.

It is unfortunate that people have to take the holiday season and be so spiteful and angry when the season is supposed to be about happiness and giving. After getting that letter I went to the bank near my work to deposit some funds. They happened to have cookies and apple cider for their customers. I had some and I also wished the woman behind the table a happy holidays. She, in a very terse manner, wished me a Merry Christmas (as if I was supposed to wish her that instead). I have also heard other people say that they are going to make it a point to say “Merry Christmas” because the holiday season has become too politically correct. Now, is it really in the spirit of the season to tell someone something in a spiteful way? I don’t think so. It is a shame that the new grinches of the season seem to be those who don’t want to share their “season” with others.

Personally, I wish that everyone had a very happy holiday season and I wish everyone a happy and prosperous new year!