Michael Vick's Dogfighting was No Accident

There has been way too much discussion on this subject already, but I really want to weigh in on something that I feel people are missing completely as they argue whether Vick should get to play again or not.

Has he paid his debt to society? Yes, by the very definition of our justice system, he has. Is he remorseful? I believe that he is, but only Michael and God know what is in his heart. These issues don't really warrant debate because there is no where else to go with such a discussion.



What bothers me is that this whole thing has broken down into a black/white - good/bad mess. People either seem to be a Vick fan or hate him completely. That in itself causes me no concern, but an indirect result of this "tastes great/less filling" type of battle is that many people in favor of Vick are comparing him and his situation to other NFL players like Leonard Little and Donte Stallworth. These analogies are being thrown around carelessly without thought just to help win the argument.

The problem is that this is like comparing apples to a rhinoceros. Leonard Little hit a car and killed a woman while driving impaired. Stallworth, also impaired, hit and killed a man walking. True, these accidents were awful and with a little common sense could have been avoided, but the key word here is accident.

The many incidents Michael Vick was involved in were not accidents. This man took pleasure in forcing living creatures to partake in vicious and painful fights and he did so for years. When these animals did not perform Vick personally killed them, not mercifully, but in tortuous manners like drowning, strangling and electrocution.

Along with the dogfighting there was gambling and drugs and lies to his coaches, teammates and fans. Vick failed a lie detector test while incarcerated and then tested positive for drugs while out on bail.

Now, every person has the ability to change. I firmly believe this. Argue if you'd like that Michael Vick should be allowed to play NFL football once again - but stop making dangerous comparisons that have no bearing on the facts aside from distorting them.

Here's the deal - I'm OK with Vick playing again, but I'm not going to say he deserves to because it was his job. There are multitudes of professions which do not accept felons back into their ranks. School teachers, government workers etc.. Like I often say - deserves has nothing to do with it! People laid off in this economic down time don't feel like they deserve it; I don't feel like I deserved to become disabled and lose my job. But, we have to live with it and most of us smile and make the most of the situation without complaining about what we are owed.

Blue Skies Are For Everyone

this poem sort of needs an introduction.

One of my bestest friends Aaron, just got back from a mission trip to Peru. They built a house, well actually a shanty, for a homeless family. They also took gifts and supplies to an orphanage where they stayed and bonded with the children for a little over a week. Aaron is a great guy anyway but you can just tell this experience has changed his life.

He showed us these pictures of him and a little girl he met standing alone watching a pick up soccer game in an area where it's quite common for people to just abandon their children. She wasn't part of the orphanage and she didn't speak English so Aaron's only connection with her was a game of catch with an old ball.

The poem of course is just my interpretation of something that happened a world away and though I fear it's not, I hope that the reality is much better.



Blue Skies Are For Everyone

She won't speak of the night when she sleeps alone
on the stones with dreams she doesn't understand

She just wants you to throw her the ball
so maybe she can catch a piece of who you are

She finds it in your smile as you find in hers
things you have in excess are things she's never seen

But for that one frozen moment in the journey
you are connected by the ball that hangs between

And of all you want to give her before you go
tears will remind you there is nothing that you can

She's not thinking of tonight when she'll sleep alone
on the stony ground where the shivers keep warm

She runs off to dream of things you've seen
while you wonder just who's life was changed

And later in the day the clouds part for the Sun
Gently reminding: God made blue skies for everyone

No Hope for Babies...

A good friend of mine once asked me why I would vote for a president based on his stance on abortion. He told me that he didn't agree with abortion but he'd never base his vote on it as an issue because no president ever had much impact in that area. He asked me what had anyone I'd ever voted for ever done to stop abortions.

To me it was obvious that my friend was just trying to justify his vote in his own mind; I answered him anyway. I cannot vote for a leader, of the country I was born to, who believes it should be legal to kill children. Period. To me that is an easy mark to hold a candidate to. I'm not the political expert that most Americans claim to be... so my vote goes with my judge of character, then the political maneuvering is left to the elected.

This week President Obama proudly signed bill after bill in a public demonstration of his intent to keep his campaign promises. He closed Gitmo and pushed his stimulus plan farther down the throats of defeated Republicans. More power to him for all that; I want so bad to like this man - this millennium's JFK and our best hope to dig us out of this mess of greed and war and terror.

On Friday of this week, Obama quietly signed an executive order that struck down a ban, dubbed the "Mexico City policy". This clears the way for tax money to be used internationally to fund abortions and abortion counseling. I suppose it's not evil enough to kill our own babies, now American taxpayers have no choice but to foot the bill for this atrocity in nations all around the world.

How many kids will die before ever seeing daylight because of our new "Hope"? Well, some of these young victims actually will see daylight right before their heads are snipped off. That's right, I know that nobody wants to hear it, but partial birth abortions are on their way back in fashion. This administration is adamant about clearing out any and all restrictions on abortions.

Obama seems to be trying very hard not to get his hand caught in the Planned Parenthood cookie jar, but it's in there. This deplorable organization is a heavy Obama backer and a heavy influence on his abortion stance. He was able to bob and weave around this stance during an election where the focus was squarely on our decimated economy.

I hope that I'm wrong. I hope that a man, who believes that children are a disposable resource, can still manage to be a good president in all the other areas that matter. I hope that each and every person, who got caught up in this sweeping hype of change and recovery, is right about the grass being greener on the other side. They may be right about one thing... the grass should be millions of dollars greener at the National Mall.

Sacrificing Our Pawns

Let us not forget...





Troops in Iraq - Total 173,685, including 162,000 from the US, 5,500 from the UK, 1,200 from South Korea and 4,985 from all other nations

3,742 US Soldiers Killed, 27,767 Seriously Wounded (total excludes psychological injuries)

30% of US troops develop serious mental health problems within 3 to 4 months of returning home

Statistics from September, 2007

I was watching the intense grilling of General Petraeus. Meaty jowled politicians rattled off rhetorical jab after rhetorical jab at the other party, poorly disguising the blows as inquisition.

I couldn't seem to get out of my head the image of 19 year olds, fighting for their lives and our freedom, in a hot and hostile desert. Kids dying, in a region that for the most part resents their presence, while these stuffed suits sit back in D.C. using them as statistical leverage one way or the other to fuel their own agenda.

I don't even pretend to take a side, left or right, elephant or a$$. But good grief if these soldiers - heroes - are going to be "over seas" then let's quit positioning for the next election and give them the tools and numbers they need to finish the job. If not then bring them home. These aren't ceramic pawns in some twisted game of Battle Chess, they are people - Fathers, Mothers, Sisters, Brothers, Sons and Daughters.

Just A Little Bit Longer

Pharmaceutical companies must be striving to burn.
A good friend of mine that I work with told me a story the
other day that really got to me. Her father has been struggling with lung cancer for years. He has been on an experimental drug that has been working. The cost was over 1600 dollars every 3 months - out of pocket.

Now the maker of the drug has decided that it will not cooperate with the man's insurance company. The insurance company won't compromise at all. He is left with cancer, held at bay by this drug that he is not allowed to take anymore unless he pays for it all without the help of insurance. Basically he was good enough to be a guinea pig, but is not good enough to have their medicine after he helped prove that it works.

What really gets me is that they told him that he could qualify for free medicine if he didn't have a house, a checking account or a vehicle. WTF! If he'd been a bum all his life instead of providing for his family and being responsible he'd be good enough for some charity?



Icing on the cake: My friend told me she picked up some literature to help her father decide what to do next. In it they found a quote from one of the drug company's officials speaking on how they could charge so much for pills that cost them nothing to make... "People will pay anything to live just a Little bit longer."

My friends this is how the rich get rich and then richer. But you can't take it with you - what goes around comes around and when it does...

this company can reap it!

Drug Companies Get Healthy, but at Whose Expense?

The Truth About Drug Companies

Breaking Our Backs

Society here in the United States is broken. The gap between social classes continues to extend as the price of everything we need to survive rises and many people are perilously close to paying more to get to work than they are actually being paid.

Just look at these headlines (click them to read the stories): Big Oil's biggest quarter ever: $51.5B in all, Jobless rate climbs as 51,000 jobs vanish, U.S. Recession Is on Verge of Making History. Everyday we digest such troubling news while millions of Americans face agonizing decisions like whether to buy gas or food - paying bills is out of the question for many.


Yet government officials still give us the same line: "I think we have avoided a recession," White House Budget Director Jim Nussle said in an interview on CNBC. What is that statement based on? Probably the fact that people like Nussle can still drive wherever they please, eat whatever they please and buy whatever they please due to their inflated salaries and earmarks.

The US government is a corrupt, self-serving entity whose only service to its people is to manipulate them into believing they have just enough freedom to keep them profitable.

Don't tell me that the price of gas should have gone up years ago, don't tell me that this inflation is supply and demand, don't tell me we are not in a recession and please don't tell me that you are doing everything you can until minimum wage is raised to match; so that the common man benefits from the justified inflation of his services.



A government who asks its people to sacrifice while it profits flirts dangerously with revolution. Those elected now would do well to remember that this nation was born in the hearts of those who would not live under tyranny.

The technology to create automobiles, that do not operate with fossil fuels, has existed for three decades. We've put men on the moon, we've split the atom, we've cloned animals... Yet we can't build an electric car? Why? Here's the deal - we can't because our government does not want us to. It wouldn't be profitable.