my mom says it's payback

As we were leaving H.'s school today he turned to his very tall and somewhat bigger teacher and said "hey you look like a big whale." I was completely mortified, he didn't understand what the problem was as he was seriously and quite literally thinking that she was in fact close to a whale's size and she was NOT happy. The perfect ending to an already draining day.

This just in...

Here’s a fun game. I am going to take a recent article about our lovely state and the new bill being pushed through the ranks of the morally incorrupt, highly educated, and outstanding accurate elected officials of Arizona. The basic premise of this bill is to halt or marginally disrupt the teaching of certain undesirable histories of white influences over groups such as Blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians. The game is this: try to guess the parts I have written and those that have been reported by Jonathan Cooper of the Associated Press.

PHOENIX – Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a bill targeting a school district's ethnic studies program, hours after a report by United Nations human rights experts condemned the measure.

State schools chief Tom Horne, who has pushed the bill for years, said he believes the Tucson school district's Mexican-American studies program teaches Latino students that they are oppressed by white people.

Public schools should not be encouraging students to resent a particular race, he said. "It's just like the old South, and it's long past time that we prohibited it," Horne said.

In addition, Horne continued that if specific cultures are educated the subtle manners in which Whites oppress such groups, those who are marginalized might find manners to halt such activities.

“Once Native Americans determined we were giving clans blankets that had been infected with small pox,” Horne offered, “it became much more difficult to kill off groups and steal desired, and required, resources...such as land for farming and building Wal-Marts.”

Brewer's signature on the bill Tuesday comes less than a month after she signed the nation's toughest crackdown on illegal immigration — a move that ignited international backlash amid charges the measure would encourage racial profiling of Hispanics. The governor has said profiling will not be tolerated. Furthermore, the governor promised that Whites who ride mountain bikes on the weekend will be questioned as well, “in case they could be citizens of Canada here to take advantage of the amazing educational system Arizona offers, in addition to a balanced, just, and near perfect health-care system.”

The measure signed Tuesday prohibits classes that advocate ethnic solidarity, that are designed primarily for students of a particular race or that promote resentment toward a certain ethnic group.

No report yet as to whether any classes with all white students will be halted.

The Tucson Unified School District program offers specialized courses in African-American, Mexican-American and Native-American studies that focus on history and literature and include information about the influence of a particular ethnic group.

For example, in the Mexican-American Studies program, an American history course explores the role of Hispanics in the Vietnam War, and a literature course emphasizes Latino authors.

Horne, a Republican running for attorney general, said the program promotes "ethnic chauvinism" and racial resentment toward whites while segregating students by race. He's been trying to restrict it ever since he learned that Hispanic civil rights activist Dolores Huerta told students in 2006 that "Republicans hate Latinos."

“My biggest issue with the idea is that it enables students of other cultures to become interested in learning,” Horne reported on Fox news. “We don’t want more students from ethic groups taking an interest in learning.”

“That’s how we got Obama!,” Rush Limbaugh retorted during an interview with the republican on his popular, yet completely uneducated show.

“Me likey food lots,” Limbaugh summarized.

Boldface liars and district officials said the program doesn't promote resentment (though we all know those feelings are absolutely justified), and they believe it would comply with the new law.

The measure doesn't prohibit classes that teach about the history of a particular ethnic group, as long as the course is open to all students and doesn't promote ethnic solidarity or resentment. “Again,” Horne reiterated, “we don’t want groups sticking together. Unless they are White, God-fearing, Republicans.”

Horne slammed his racist fist on a podium, “That’s the way Jesus wants it. Hispanics are even trying to take his name.”

About 1,500 students at six high schools are enrolled in the Tucson district's program. Elementary and middle school students also are exposed to the ethnic studies curriculum. The district is 56 percent Hispanic, with nearly 31,000 Latino students.

Sean Arce, director of the district's Mexican-American Studies program, said last month that students perform better in school if they see in the curriculum people who look like them.

Bullshit.

"It's a highly engaging program that we have, and it's unfortunate that the state Legislature would go so far as to censor these classes," he said.

“Censorship is absolutely reasonable,” Horne said.

“Unless you're me that is,” Limbaugh said while spilling mayo from a sandwich on his shirt.

Six UN human rights experts released a statement earlier Tuesday saying all people have the right to learn about their own cultural and linguistic heritage, they said.

Brewer spokesman Paul Senseman didn't directly address the UN criticism, but said Brewer supports the bill's goal.

"The governor believes ... public school students should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people," Senseman said.

Nonetheless, this bill certainly proves why they could, and maybe even should.

Sunday night

So it’s Mother’s Day. I think it was a good day for my wife (obviously a mother), my mother-in-law, and my mother. And to continue on that thought, I hope every mother had a wonderful day and were reminded why being a mother is such a sacred, special position in life.

Since this is the beginning of this blog and I am new at this type of writing, I wanted the first post to be more light-hearted. Furthermore, I would like to point out that many of the entries could come off as a downer. Certainly, many lovely things occur in my life…but unfortunately, I often feel the need to express the negative circumstances, situations, and happenings. I like to think this is simply therapeutic and letting items that anger me out aids my attitude in the long run. Again, at least I hope so.

So on and on we will go, where this blog will take us is a mystery. But the journey will be interesting and ideally, valid.

Happy Mother’s Day and have a great week.

B.

So here it goes...

So, Ben asked me to set up a blog to document our life with all it's ups and downs. I just revamped an old one I haven't written anything on in forever. So here it goes...Ben is the "professional" writer so we will leave most of the updating to him and I'll handle the "technical" side...hop on and enjoy our life....we do...most of the time! :)