Moewes.com

I’m a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight:

• If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re “exotic, different.”
• If you grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, you’re a quintessential American story.

• If your name is Barack, you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
• If you name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you’re a maverick.

• If you graduate from Harvard Law School, you are unstable.
• If you attend 5 different colleges before graduating, you’re well grounded.

• If you spend 3 years as a community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.
• If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.

• If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.
• If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian.

• If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
• If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system, while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re very responsible.

• If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America’s.
• If you’re husband is nicknamed “First Dude”, with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

In recent years there has been a lot of hub-bub about Somali-Muslim cab drivers refusing to transport passengers from the MSP/STP airport that are carrying alcohol or are suspected on being inebriated, based on religious beliefs.

On September 10th, 9 of these cabbies appealed their licence revocation and the court agreed with the MAC and upheld the rule of suspension if the cabbies refused to serve people based on their beliefs.

I find it ironic that when it comes to pharmacists refusing to fill birth control and the morning after pill, they seem to get to exercise their religious beliefs (here and here).

01. Do you have the guts to answer this and post it?
we’ll see
02. Would you do meth if it was legalized?
No. Seems like a stupid drug.
03. Abortion: for or against?
I’m neither for nor against abortion. I am however against the government telling women what they can and cannot do. I’m also opposed to the government forcing women to have c-sections when they don’t want them (or need them) Details
04. Would our country fall with a woman president?
Can our country fall any more? I don’t think the gender of the president would (or should) make any different. Other countries have had female heads of state, doesn’t seem to have destroyed them.
05. Do you support the death penalty?
No.
06. Do you wish marijuana would be legalized already?
Honestly I don’t care. I do think we have wasted a lot of money and time trying to stop something that doesn’t seem to be all that much worse than alcohol. Plus, if it were legalized, we could tax it (make those stoners pay for something).
07. Are you for or against premarital sex?
To steal another person’s answer, why are they combined together. Sex and marriage aren’t inherently tied together.
08. Do you believe in God?
I think there is something, but I don’t know what. I don’t think a belief in g(G)od is a pre-requisite for being a good and kind person .
09. Do you think same sex marriage should be legalized?
Yes.
10. Do you think it’s wrong that so many illegal Hispanics are moving to the USA?
No. But I don’t think laws and economics and morality can be grouped together. It’s illegal based on the laws we have, but wrong is a moral judgement.
11. A 12 year old girl has a baby… should she keep it?
If she is capable of caring for it with the support of her family, yes.
12. Should the alcohol age be lowered to 18?
I don’t know.
13. Should the war in Iraq be called off?
I don’t think we can walk away from what we have started. But I don’t think we can or should do it ourselves.
14. Assisted suicide is illegal… do you agree?
No. But I think that there need to be standards and practices in place make sure it is a last resort and is in the interest of the patient .
15. Do you believe in spanking your children?
I’m not sure. I know a lot of people who’s parents spanked them (including myself) and I don’t think it harmed them. We learn from pain and discomfort and it may have a place.
16. Would you burn an American flag for a million dollars?
I’d do a lot of things for a million dollars.
17. A mother is declared innocent after murdering her 5 children in a temporary insanity case… do you agree?
An alter mind can make you do a lot of things you wouldn’t normally do. Being declared innocent would still require being treated. Plus if it was temporary, she’d probably feel the guilt and remorse more than someone who was permanently mentally deranged (and probably wouldn’t realize what they had done).
18. Are you afraid others will judge you for reading some of your answers?
Probably. But do I care.

Man Walking Down the Side of a Building (which is art, btw) | Minneapolis Metblogs

Ok, once again I am amazed at what is considered art… I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… huh!!!

You would think that with all the information available on the internet there would be a simple and easy place to go to find out about what is happening around town, but it seems like I always find out about stuff either after the fact, or to late to make plans to attend. Festivals, concerts, art fairs, gallery opening and community events all seem to come and go and not register until they are over.

And to make things even more infuriating, many of the events that have websites, don’t offer any kind of newsletter to sign up for to stay up to date for when it comes around next year.

After reading a recent post over at Wise Bread, it occurred to me that we tend to complain a lot, but not comment. If we tell our friends, our family and our colleagues about a bad experience we may help them to avoid it in the future, but where does that get us? I think that as consumer we have decided that we don’t deserve what we are paying for, at least when it comes to dining. Have a bad experience at a drive through, we just just chalk it and move on. What we should do it let the restaurant know. Most chain places have websites and you can submit a comment to them with as little effort as posting your complaint. After a recent mishap at a local golden arches, I sent a comment to their corporate website, and within days received a phone call from the local franchise owner to apologize and a free meal for our whole family.

If the food you order in a restaurant isn’t right, send it back. Have it re-made. But they’ll spit in my food!! First of all, if you are in a place where you really think they would do that, you shouldn’t be there in the first place and second there was probably spit in there to begin with if the place is that bad. Best bet is to ask for the manager (not the server) and ask them to take it back. If you aren’t satisfied after that, ask for the general manager or the owner, or if it is a chain, go to the corporate/franchise level and file your comment.

But remember, don’t just comment on bad experiences. If you have a really great experience let them know that too.

Zooomr is in the process of moving their operations to their new Japan data center and as part of the move, they failed to transfer all the photos off their old servers to their new servers. This means that for me and all the other Zooomrs who use their photos in the blog postings, that our images are missing until they get things straightened out.

The new Hard Rock Cafe New York will officially open at its new location at 1501 Broadway upon the smashing of more than 100 Gibson guitars, branding the moment as the World’s Largest Guitar Smash. The historic guitar smash and opening of the Times Square cafe will kick off a month-long celebration, which will include rockin’ concerts and special events, as well as a grand opening party, featuring a live performance by super group Velvet Revolver. The grand opening celebration will benefit Peace Games, a non-profit organization dedicated to ending the trend of violence in the U.S. by teaching children to become peacemakers in their schools and communities.

http://www.hardrock.com/corporate/press/content.aspx?id=129

I ran across this on the web and in the recent isse of Guitar World and I was appalled. While smashing 100 guitars may sound like fun, it seems to me to be a waste and a shame. At a time when musicians are swpet out of their homes in New Orleans and all over the Gulf Coast, and schools cutting back on music programs it seems a terrible shameful waste to destroy instruments.

Not only that, but as a benefit to aid anti-violence programs, it seems that smashing guitar isn’t the right message to send.

Sorry to bother people with my tirade, and I am sure that some people will say “Yeah… smashing good”, but I had to express my opinion with someone.