Tuesdays

Tuesdays are my busiest days of the week. I’ve started going back to painting class Tuesday mornings. I was taking a class in oil and pastels, but the lady who taught that class ‘retired’. So I had no class to go to for a while.

Recently, they started a watercolor class that I’ve been going to for a couple of weeks. Here’s a couple I started last week. I think I need to add something- any ideas?

I’ve always loved art. Wether it’s making my own, or enjoying someone elses. Painting, photography, writing, music, sculpture, dance, etc. It’s all good. 🙂

Watercolor painting is very different than oil painting. It seems harder to me because you can’t easily correct a mistake (or maybe I just haven’t learned how yet). It seems easier to me in that it’s a lot ‘looser’. You can just paint a lot faster, or at least it seems that way to me.

my latest- it’s not finished yet either

After paint class, I like to go to the movies if there’s anything interesting showing. The theatre has specials on Tuesdays. It’s only $5 for the movie and they have a $5 popcorn + drink special. If I go any other day it’s about $20!

Last week I went to see Just Mercy. Wow! I thought this was a great movie. Not one with special effects or tricks, but high drama and a very compelling story. It’s about a black lawyer (Bryan Stevenson) who graduates from Harvard and goes down to Alabama to work with death row inmates.

The film concentrates on his work with Jimmy D (Walter McMillian)- a black man who was wrongly convicted of killing a white woman in 1986. You might think that people would be glad to have justice served. Nope. It really upset me to watch this film and see how wrong I was (am). It amazes me how corrupt our system (still) is- and not just for black people, tho I am absolutely positive that poor blacks get treated a lot worse than rich whites (or rich anybody).

All of the actors did a great job. Jamie Foxx and Micheal B. Jordan played the 2 main characters, they did a fantastic portrayal. I was raging and crying right along with them. I highly recommend this movie. It’s based on a true story. I’m sure there are many similar stories going on today. We still have a long way to go to achieve our ideals of a free country with liberty and justice for all. A long way. This film is a wake-up call, if enough people will see it and take it seriously.

After the movie got me all riled up, I went to my Tuesday night meet up of the Campaign for Liberty. We meet every Tuesday at the Wayside Pub. I haven’t been going much lately. Mostly because it’s so depressing to me. We get together and talk about all the crazy shit that’s happening around the USA and the world. The concentration has been on what an individual can do to remove themselves from the mess. Some people are seriously committed to that.

I prefer to concentrate on fixing the actual problems. Sadly, I still don’t find any solutions at those meetings. I don’t see any way to fix anything all by myself. It takes numbers and the general populace just isn’t interested in anything but having “their guy” win- regardless of how that will harm the situation in the long run. The meeting is just a social event for me now. I don’t make it a priority anymore, but I do still like to go. At least there I can talk to other people who understand my concerns. I wish more people would, but I understand how it’s so much easier to ignore it all. I just wish I could do that myself.

Highway Robbery

The Institute for Justice wins another important case! Do you know who commits the worst crimes in America today? The government!

Yes, that is the truth. The government steals more each year now than ALL the criminals put together. No, I’m not making that up. It’s a fact.

In just this one case, they flat out STOLE over $53,000! Money that was destined for charity. Money they broke the ‘law’ to take (not that following their own rules has ever been a priority).

Read the story below. I hope it pisses you off as much as it does me (I doubt it will, this sort of thing REALLY pisses me off!).

Muskogee, Okla.—This afternoon, Muskogee, Oklahoma, District Attorney Orvil Loge indicated that his office was officially dropping all charges against Eh Wah, a Burmese refugee he had charged with possession of drug proceeds. He also indicated that he would drop the civil forfeiture and immediately return the money Muskogee law enforcement officials took from a group…

Source: Victory: Muskogee DA Drops Forfeiture Case Against Christian Orphanage, Church, and Band – Institute for Justice

Let's Talk Justice

To follow up on yesterdays post, can anybody justify this situation?

I would really like to hear from people. Please give me your reasons for why you think women should be treated as worth less than men are.

Why are they still denied a full education in so much of the world? Why are they still considered as property of some man in so many places? Why are they still not allowed to make basic decisions about their own lives in so many cultures?

I’m especially interested to hear from people with Muslim influences. Just because it seems to me that the Muslims are the worst offenders at this point in time. If you don’t think they are, can you please explain why you don’t think so, who’s worse?

I would also love to hear from people of all religions as to how they reconcile their ideas of justice and basic fairness with a god who supposedly says they should treat some people with less respect than others.

If you do worship a god who you think says that kind of thing, WHY do you continue to worship it?

Just thinking it’s past time we (the entire world) start to discuss this situation and CHANGE it. I think first we need to get to the bottom of the reasons people claim it needs to be this way in the first place.

I don’t think it’s justified, at all. For any reason.

Now, who’s up for a good argument??? 🙂

Women Rallied Behind Beautiful, Wartless Witches

Women of the Early 1900s Rallied Behind Beautiful, Wartless Witches | History | Smithsonian.

Check out these cool Halloween cards. I thought the history mentioned in the article was pretty interesting.

It’s hard for me to imagine how different life must have been for women in the past. Of course, for most women in the world things are still very different than they are here in the USA (not that we’re perfect yet).

Women in many countries around the world are still treated like second class citizens. They’re still denied the opportunities and options that men have, simply because of their gender.

As an American, growing up as an American girl, I can hardly imagine what it must be like. How does a girl from somewhere like Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, or even India or Africa or South America manage enjoy life, or even to get through it all without the options we have here?

I imagine they must only be able to bear it when they don’t know about any other options. Maybe they just don’t think they can live any other way. I don’t really know. It amazes (and disgusts and infuriates) me that in this day and age we STILL have not managed to create a society where women can live their lives as THEY choose.

It’s hard for me to imagine how I would be able to stand a life like that. That I would not have any choices. I wouldn’t be able to go to school. I wouldn’t be able to LEARN about so many things. I wouldn’t be able to decide what kind of work I would like to do. To choose who I would want to marry or IF I would want to marry at all. To be able to choose when I want to have sex, or with who, or IF I want to have sex at all. To be able to choose to have children, or not to have any.

SO many choices taken away from me, just because I happen to be female. What must that be like?

I read a book- Infidel- by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It really opened my eyes. I have to say I admire her strength and courage to do what she did. She grew up in Somalia, was raised a Muslim, and then grew disillusioned with the life she had. She moved to the Netherlands as a refugee, eventually became a member of Parliament there. Her story is really encouraging. I hope more people (especially young girls) will read it and take hope.

I can see from the Smithsonian article (and even from my own life), that we have made some progress in the USA.

I remember when I was young and I chose to work at sea. I had to fight so hard for every job I ever got. It was ALWAYS a struggle to get hired. Yes, just because I was a woman. No one wanted to have a woman on board. 🙁

Now, (30-40 years later), it is not nearly as much as a problem (tho, yes, it IS still a problem). I see more and more women working at sea. I even see other women in positions of authority. They are no longer delegated to the stewards department, they can work at other jobs and be more than just cooks and room stewards!

I happen to be the only woman on board this ship, (1 out of 178) but on my last one there were women working as geologists, mud engineers, fluid engineers, etc. I’ve seen quite a few other women DPOs lately and even a couple of other captains. 🙂

I hope to see more women from other countries able to take advantage of all the opportunities the world offers. I was very encouraged to hear about the Italian livestock carrier who had female master and chief mates.

Hopefully sometime soon women from all over the world will have the same rights and opportunities that men have always had. It would be wonderful if everyone everywhere had the chance to live their lives the way THEY choose to.

These people are animals…REALLY???

An EXCELLENT post from the Culture Monk! Hopefully he is starting a conversation that we all really ought to be having. I completely agree with his comments about the news media (mainstream news media) and I am SO glad we now have the internet to help us learn the truth about what’s going on in the world and to bypass the lies the psychopaths in power wish us to believe.
I have been promoting the libertarian outlook for a long time. I think they deserve at LEAST the opportunity to have their views known in the public forum. The mainstream news media does all it can to discredit their views and label any politician who espouses them as a ‘nutjob’!
Who’s nuts” Someone who believes in freedom and liberty. or someone who prefers to use FORCE on every issue?

How Do Innocent People Find Justice In America?

How Do Innocent People Find Justice In America? : Personal Liberty™.

They don’t! Unless you have a LOT of money for a GOOD lawyer, you are better off taking the plea bargain. You will be found guilty by a jury (unless that jury knows their rights to nullify bad laws and keeps their mouths SHUT about it so the judge doesn’t disqualify them)! I know this from personal experience. Yes, (woooo, scary music), I am a “criminal”. I hope that doesn’t chase off too many of you 🙂 I was convicted of DWI back in 1982, the jury insisted over the pure physical impossibility of my breathalyzer results that they were indeed correct and NO police officer would EVER tamper with the evidence or LIE. In fact, the officers involved did BOTH.

Since the invention of cell phone cameras and the internet, more people are coming to the realization that the cops DO in fact LIE and tamper with the evidence. They do that quite often. So, knowing these FACTS, how can anyone trust the “justice system” in the good ol’ USA???

I think they have a good idea with these “affiliate newspapers”. To help “vindicate the innocent”. We definitely need something to stop the rise of the police state we are becoming. We actually have a pretty good one started around S Texas. It’s called the Texas Free Press. I think they publish it in the Corpus Christi area. My local Campaign for Liberty meetup group was helping to distribute it around the Brazoria County area but I think we’ve stopped lately due to lack of advertising interest. Too bad 🙁

We need to get creative and find ways to take back our freedom. We are never going to win this war against us if we can’t do that. We are totally out financed and out gunned (literally). We need to win the war of ideas! Newspapers are still a great way to get the word out. Too bad all the mainstream media that most people read are all owned by the big money and so they are NOT doing their job! We need newspapers for the PEOPLE, NOT corporate owned shills!