Bligbi » Texas

Here yesterday, gone today

Karen — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:44:49 +0000

Houston got a surprise yesterday. It snowed. I thought I was imagining it at first. Then I expected it to disappear as quickly as it came down, but it didn’t. By 9PM everything in our area had a fine layer of snow on it.

Our daughter had a blast running around making snowballs:

With instructions:

And help of course:

All in all, it was pretty fun. Here are some photos from the entire region.

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Why is Cynthia Dunbar still on the SBOE?

Karen — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:16:42 +0000

She is, first of all, a bloody idiot who stands by her statements about Obama being a terrorist who’s going to declare martial law within the first six months of his administration.

Second of all, She has written a book where in she refers to public education as a “tool of perversion” that is unconstitutional and tyrannical because they are no longer propaganda mills for Christianity.

This is getting ridiculous, even for Texas. This woman and her cohorts on the board need to go. The state of public education is bad enough here in Texas as it is. We do not need this bunch of idiots making it worse.

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Evolution vs. Creationism, the Texas version

Karen — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:10:01 +0000

It looks like Texas is planning to enter the “debate” over the teaching of evolution. After fighting for nearly three years about how to teach children to read, the Texas Board of Education has decided to take on the science curriculum this summer.

One of the goals of the board is to undermine the teaching of evolution by making it a requirement to teach the “strengths and weaknesses” evolution. Vice Chairman David Bradley of Beaumont calls this “hogwash”, but goes on to say that “evolution is not a fact. Evolution is a theory and, as such, cannot be proven. Student need to be able to jump to their own conclusions” (source).

And what better way to have them “jump” to the conclusion that magic man did it than by forcing teachers to bluntly lie about evolution?

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Note to Linguistic Fascists

Karen — Tue, 06 May 2008 00:38:15 +0000

If you’re going to demand that people speak English, you should make it a priority to learn how to spell English.

via: Immigration Chronicles: Perhaps spell check is in order …

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Houston wins! Pollutes more air than LA!

Karen — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:41:16 +0000

Since moving to Houston from El Paso about six or seven years ago I swear a month hasn’t went by without me spending a few days with some moderate to severe congestion. It’s so bad that I like to say I’m allergic to Houston.

So it’s with great displeasure that I announce that Houston, Texas has taken first place for releasing 18.625 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere barely beating out Los Angeles (another place I’m allergic to) which took 2nd place with 18.595 million tons.

As you may be aware both of these cities are obsessed with pubic “morality” in that they’ve declared war on smokers and other domestic sources of air pollutants (aka: things that we can pretend are worse than the actually worse things the government is involved in).

Both earned their medals by allowing their moneymakers to run wild with Los Angeles paving the entire area and Houston saying “what industrial pollution?!?” while really cranking up the “leave no ground unpaved” industry.

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First patriotism, now God soaked patriotism?

Karen — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:56:45 +0000

Our daughter just started school this year and it’s been wonderful to see her slowly get past her bashfulness. Getting her to talk, even to say if something hurt was like pulling teeth with pliers made out of play dough.

Getting her talk to even family members was about impossible and strangers speaking to her was cause to practically climb me or her father.

Now there are days when I could duct tape her mouth shut. She chatters and chatters until I’m ready to pull my hair out by the roots.

During her chattering today she mentioned a song they play over the intercom at school. She only remembered one verse from it and it was “the men who died”. In fact, that’s what she called – the men who died song. There’s only one song that I can think of that has that line in it and it’s “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood.

I know the school makes them recite the hacked pledge of allegiance and I am not happy about that, with or without the God reference. This song though is just too much. I want to go down and scream my bloody head off about it, but there’s my daughter to consider.

She can’t stand conflict to such a degree that a slap fest between two of the cats is enough to send her into a hysterical crying fit.

Christians defending their “right” to force their beliefs upon children who’ve commited the crime of attending a publicly funded school are somewhat worse than old cats smacking each other in the head.

They also have no problem targeting children. I recall from my own childhood the times when children were may to pay for what their parents believed or disbelieved. I recall children being allowed to bully other children whose parents didn’t subscribe to the dominant brand of god while the faculty pretended they couldn’t actually do anything about it.

I don’t want my daughter to go through that, especially since she’s just coming out of her shell, but damnit, I don’t want her taught that god shit at school either.

It’s a frustrating situation and I don’t know what to do. I can complain, but patriotism a state requirement. It seems to me all I’ll really do is put a big fucking target on my daughter’s back - in kindergarten. That’s just great, eh?

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Pious fraud caught up in sex scandal

Karen — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 22:31:40 +0000

For the last couple of weeks the local media has been somewhat in a tizzy about a scandal at the district attorney’s office.

Having lived in Texas for about a decade or so now, I blew it off because there might as well be wall to wall coverage on the surprise finding that grass is green because sleazy officials are pretty standard around these parts.

What did this particular official do? In addition to sending sexually explicit videos and racist “jokes” from computers owned by the county, he also used them to send love letters to his girlfriend, one of his underlings.

Well, guess who it is and what he did. His name is Chuck Rosenthal and he defended the right of Texas to arrest gay men for the “crime” of sodomy all the way to Supreme Court where he argued:

“I think that this Court having determined that there are certain kinds of conduct that it will accept and certain kinds of conduct it will not accept may draw the line at the bedroom door of the heterosexual married couple because of the interest that this Court has that this Nation has and certainly that the State of Texas has for the preservation of marriage, families and the procreation of children,” Rosenthal told the justices.

“Even if you infer that various States acting through their legislative process have repealed sodomy laws, there is no protected right to engage in extrasexual – extramarital sexual relations, again, that can trace their roots to history or the traditions of this nation.

According to Chuck’s own logic – the state of Texas should arrest his ass for adultery after removing him from office as there is no protected right to have an affair.

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Voter fraud in Texas

Karen — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 17:51:29 +0000

It appears Texas does have a problem with voter fraud. Check out the following video for actual footage of fraudulent voting (via Hell’s Handmaiden):

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To Pledge or not to Pledge, that is the question

Karen — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 00:18:12 +0000

Did you know that Texas has its own pledge? One which it has apparently corrupted with that non-denominational god named God? A part of me just wants to scream my bloody head off. It’s not just the god thing. It’s the whole idea of mandatory pledges. I can see requesting older children, namely teenagers to participate as they should be able to understand what they’re pledging.

Younger children shouldn’t even be asked. Sure it can be cute, but they don’t know what they’re saying. They’re just repeating what they’ve been told not what they actually think. The concepts involved are beyond them.

Speaking strictly for mine, a pledge is what she’ll say she’ll do as long as one of us is within ear or eyesight. For example, she pledges that she will not chase the cats with the duster and she doesn’t – at least not for about an hour after she’s caught chasing the cats with the duster.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation ~~under God~~ indivisible, with justice and liberty for all.

How many young children can even begin to grasp what’s being said here? And that Texas pledge? Could someone please demote this state? Get a gander at this silliness:

“Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible.”

Nearly a quarter of children in Texas live below the poverty line. Nearly a quarter of all Texans are without health care. Texas actually passed a law that booted 184,361 children out of the CHIP program and made applying for enrollment a hassle by cutting the term of enrollment from 12 months to six months. And it has the frigging audacity to insist that these same children pledge allegiance to it?

And as I sit here and stew about that, I’m completely confounded about what to do with my child and the pledges. She’s pretty rambunctious at home, but school is another thing. Even though she enjoys it, she’s pretty quiet and reserved and I clearly remember the response of Christian children towards other kids when it got around that they weren’t the “right” kind of Christian, especially those who didn’t say that damned pledge while the alleged adults pretended to be helpless. A kid of an atheist who doesn’t like mandatory pledges, without or without a religious statement, in a state that seems pretty damned convinced it is Heaven and that super patriotism is its birthright? It makes my chest clinch just thinking about it.

And of course, there’s the whole “we’re the real victims” whines that must be taken seriously lest one be accused of being a mean ole bigot who’s out to nail shut the doors of their pretty little churches. Christians in these parts have a right to bedevil the dickens out of everyone and anyone who doesn’t agree hates them.

Did I mention wanting to scream my bloody head off? I so need to get out of the south. I swear it’s going to drive me bloody insane if I don’t.

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Lucy’s coming to Houston

Karen — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:41:50 +0000

The state department has approved a request to bring Lucy to the United States and her first stop is the Museum of Natural Science here in Houston. She’ll be on display from August 31st of this year until April of next year.

I am really looking forward to this. I think it’s a toss up on how the locals are going to react. I fully expect at least one church about 15 to 20 minutes north to put on a display of some sort as they have a reputation for book burning. There’s also a veteran’s group in this area that likes to go around protesting at libraries, movies and such.

I doubt they’ll try to damage, destroy or steal her and would be honestly surprised if they did, but I’d be also be surprised if no one expressed the opinion that apocalypse is just around the corner.

As to the rest of the tour, there doesn’t seem to be any definite dates as of now but Ethiopian officials listed Washington, New York, Denver and Chicago as planned stops in the six year tour with a possible six additions to be announced later on.