Worried About The IRS Scandal--Ask Your Angel For Some Perspective

by Larry Peterson

 I am one of those people who tries his best to stay informed about what is going around me. I admit, what I pick up is more or less in outline form and not "in depth" as there is just too much stuff. I have been reading  and listening to the reports about Benghazi, the IRS, the DOJ targeting the AP, the trials of the Butcher of Philadelphia, Kermit Gosnell, and the modern day Lizzy Borden aka Jody Arias. But every once in a while you have to jam on the brakes, screech to a halt, stand up, look around, breathe in deeply and realize you are driving yourself to the edges of lunacy by staying 'over-informed'. Sometimes you get lucky, as I did, and something forces you to instinctively jam on those brakes. For me, my rescuer is Joey, my Guardian Angel. I know that once again he was there for me.

 I had saved an insert from Saturday's newspaper and placed it on my desk. The title that intrigued me was "Don't Let The Ick Make You Sick". I thought I would read it later in the day and, as I do so many times, I put it down, placed some other papers over it and forgot it. You know, out of sight out of mind. So Wednesday morning, at 5:30 a.m. I sit at my computer, turn it on, and  a bunch of papers somehow falls  from the snack table to my left which I use as a small desk on my left. I reach down to pick the mess of papers up and the one on top is the one from Saturday, the one with the ICK story. I swear, I did not touch those papers. They just fell off that little table and I know it was Joey who did it in his quest to save me from myself.

I picked it up and began to read this incredible article about the germs that are lurking 'everywhere' waiting to get us. That is when the insane laughter started to build. It started with a "heh-heh". They actually had a count of the number of bacteria on each item per square inch and the count was to the single digit. Did you know that your dish sponge has 775,460,560  bacteria per square inch, that there are 228,854 bacteria on your kitchen faucet handle and 17, 000 bacteria on your TV remote. Just like that the laughter exploded  because all I could do was visualize the poor slob who had to count all of those bacteria down to the very last one. Can you imagine doing that all day long. What if you were up to 546,657,324 and the phone rang and you lost count. Holy crap--you would have to start all over. If it was a government job you would get lots of overtime so that would be okay. A research lab in the private sector may not let you work more than 30 hours a week so that would be tough.

All I know is I owe Joey big time. Yes siree, Joey knows that no matter what is going on, somehow, someway, laughing keeps things in perspective. It snaps you back to reality. Thanks for the slap in the head Joey. Love you.

 P.S. My wife thinks I am weird. I don't understand that. I did apologize to her for waking and scaring her at dawn.

The Hijacking of Childhood Innocence

I have always believed that one of the most beautiful things we have in our lives is that magnificent intangible we call "childhood innocence". I even have a picture of a brother and sister, holding hands and walking to kindergarten together. It is on my masthead. The caption reads, "INNOCENCE". And God knows, inside these little people beats the purest hearts of all. The Catholic Church even teaches that a child does not even attain the age of reason until the age of seven. It is a beautiful thing.

The other day two seven year old classmates pointed pencils at each other at the Driver Elementary School in Virginia. They made funky little shooting sounds with their mouths as boys will do when they use their developing imaginations. Horror of Horrors--they were immediately suspended for two days for violating the Suffolk Public School's weapons policy. They were lucky--it could have been ten days. Bethane Bradshaw, a school division spokeswoman, said, "We consider it intimidating and threatening. It does not have a place in the classroom."

I do not get it. How did it ever come about where so many school administrators and teachers have taken it upon themselves to "know what is best" for our kids. When did they start telling us what to feed our kids, how much they should weigh and what they should THINK. Who the hell do they think they are? And what is it that they all gleefully hide behind that gives them validation for their actions---ZERO TOLERANCE. Yesiree, good old ZERO TOLERANCE, the greatest oxymoron ever created.

Amazingly, it is embraced by those wanting to promote their own agenda and it follows that many of them have gone into the field of education. Why? Because that field is the most fertile ground to plant their little packets of "agenda seeds". God help us. We are allowing them to use our children as the fertilizer. The thing of it is, whatever sprouts from those seeds will not be the beautiful flower they had imagined. It will probably be a neurotic adult who has blossomed from a frightened, insecure child and who is afraid of making any common sense decisions.

It seems to me that Spokesperson Bradshaw and other puffed up elitists like her are popping up all over the American educational system. These are the ones that need to be suspended indefinitely, not innocent seven-year olds. They have no right to be allowed to traumatize little children by telling them that they are being "bad" because they are innocently using their imaginations. The main weapon they are using to frighten our young is POWER. They will say that they are simply following guidelines that are in the student handbook or it is school-board policy or it is the principal's decision. They will say it is their job. What they will not do is take responsibility or stand up for the little victims being attacked. They are also gutless. In the hands of people like Ms. Bradshaw that weapon of power is far more damaging than  pencils being pointed at each other by two second graders.