Dr. Ben Carson is a source of inspiration for millions. Hear why as Trifecta looks at the virtue of education, in addition to the spirit crushing waste of the welfare state
Showing posts with label Parenting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Parenting. Show all posts
Saturday, May 4, 2013
PJTV Trifecta - Gifted Mind - The Wisdom of Dr. Benjamin Carson
Dr. Ben Carson is a source of inspiration for millions. Hear why as Trifecta looks at the virtue of education, in addition to the spirit crushing waste of the welfare state
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Austin Hill - Egregious Government And Walmart The Fall Guy
What happens when a local police department and a state child protective services agency overreact and abuse their authority?In one such case, Walmart ended-up being sued.
The story began in 2008. Lisa and Anthony Demaree of Peoria, Arizona (a suburb of Phoenix) visited a vacation destination that’s popular among Arizonans – San Diego – and took their three young daughters with them. When they returned home, they brought photos of their then 5, 4, and 1 ½ year old girls to a nearby Walmart store to obtain prints.
It all seemed pretty innocent productive. But some of the Walmart employees who saw some of the “bath tub photos” of the three little girls believed that they were seeing child pornography, so they contacted the local police.
Officers at the Peoria Police Department were concerned about child pornography, as well, so they contacted the Arizona Department of Child Protective Services. And shortly thereafter, Mr. and Mrs. Demaree had their three daughters taken away from them for over a month.
"Some of the photos are bathtime photos," Lisa Demaree told ABC News at the time, "but there are a few after the bath. Three of the girls are naked, lying on a towel with their arms around each other, and we thought it was so cute."
After several weeks of the children being in state custody, and after several weeks of court appearances and appeals, a county superior court judge ruled that none of the photographs of the Demaree’s daughters were “pornographic.” Similarly, a medical exam revealed no signs of sexual abuse. Thus, the girls were returned to their parents.
It seems like a happy resolution to a family’s worst nightmare. Yet the damage is still real, as the couple's names went in to a central registry of sex offenders, and, as Ms. Demartee told ABC News, “we've missed a year of our children's lives as far as memories go.”
In 2009, the couple sued the city of Peoria and the State Attorney General's office for defamation. They also sued Walmart because, according to their lawsuit, Walmart had failed to disclose to their customers that they had an “unsuitable prints” policy wherein if store employees discovered objectionable material coming from their customers, they would be compelled to report the incident to law enforcement authorities.
A federal judge has already sided with Walmart in the matter, but now the Demaree’s have appealed their case to a higher court and an outcome is pending. And while the damages to the Demaree family are tragic, here’s another fact: the damages to Walmart are tragic, too.
The idea that Walmart would have an “unsuitable prints” policy is quite reasonable. The company itself could be legally liable for handling illegal materials, were they not to hand-off suspicious items of this sort to law enforcement authorities.
The failure here lies with those who wield the force of law. The store employees may have over-reacted, sure. But the superior court judge’s decision also tells us that both police department personnel, and child protective services agents, were a bit too eager to take children away from their parents.
The Demaree’s damages are no doubt real and tangible. But unfortunately, Americans all too often assume the absolute worst about private businesses, while giving a “pass” to government agencies, even in the face of egregious behavior.
Austin Hill
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Doug Giles - Christian Parents Should Have Their Kids Play with Toy Guns
According to CBS, St. Louis, Pastor Rodney Francis, of the Washington Tabernacle Baptist Church, wants to keep kiddos away from guns, so this summer his church is planning a “toy gun buy back” program. How quaint. I kid you not: A. Toy. Gun. Buy. Back. Sounds like he’s setting up the next generation to be victimized slaves to bad people and policies.Yep, Reverend Rodney “feels” he needs to do “everything (he) can to not allow our kids to get exposed to (guns) too early.” Aww ... ain’t that sweet? Hey, maybe he could also hand out during that event some “kick me in the butt” signs for everyone’s back.
As a Christian I have a real problem with Pastor Francis vilifying the very tool that helped cudgel off tyrannical oppressors and afforded him the highly prized (and perishable) religious liberty he now enjoys on American soil.
That’s right, Rodney. Our founders, many of them serious Christian men, many of them ministers, took up muskets and turned the despotic Red Coats’ coats a deeper shade of crimson simply because of their life strangling religious oppression and ridiculous taxations.
All of this “anti-gun” bullcrap coming from deluded Christians sounds dreamy and all but it isn’t rooted in reality or the scripture.
Sure, we’re not to shoot someone who de-friends us on Facebook because we like Toby Mac, or makes fun of our bad comb over, or who hammers us with a nasty tweet because of our fish stickered Twitter wallpaper. Indeed, the majority of altercations we Christians go through for our faith we should simply let slide and pray for those who use and abuse us.
However, when an individual or group physically attacks me, my family, my friends or my nation for no other reason than they are no good, greedy, lazy, envious and jacked-up evil tools that hate God and Country, then it behooves me, my brethren, by all that is holy, just and good, to protect my person and the innocent around me. Call me crazy, but I believe that’s what shepherds are supposed to do: i.e. protect sheep.
Check this out naysayers: In Luke 22:36-38 Christ told His disciples that they, in light of His departure, should get a deadly weapon — namely a sword.
Yep, sweet Jesus told them — didn’t ask or mildly suggest — but commanded His buddies to sell their coat and buy a sword. Thus saith the Lord: Make a sacrifice to obtain lethal protection.
The sword that Christ told His compadres to purchase was not a QVC decorative Claymore to hang on their walls to commemorate the good times they had when Yeshua was around. The original word used for sword in this text was a large knife used for killing animals and cutting flesh. It was particularly fashioned for short, deadly thrusts in hand-to-hand combat.
Jesus didn’t tell them to carry a whistle, a shofar horn, or a bag of sand to blow in bad guys’ eyes, but a dagger-like sword — a vicious, nasty and deadly weapon not used for cutting vegetables, spreading butter or splitting a bagel, but for violently tapping a lung or heart in case of an attack.
Now, in a 21st century WWJD context, what do you think He thinks about His followers defending themselves with deadly force, huh, Mr. Francis?
Look, our first parents, Adam and Eve, sucked and caused this sinful mess we’re fielding because they didn’t proactively deal with evil (the serpent). If we take our cue from Christ in raising our kids, then our children will grow up to be slayers of serpents. They will not be a pacifist in the face of evil. They will not roll over and wet themselves when they’re confronted by evil. They will not play the wimp when faced with difficult situations.
I know it’s hard for some of us to square Christ with confronting evil – given all the androgynous, soft- focused paintings of Jesus that we’ve had jammed into our psyches for the last few centuries. However, if, if, we take the scripture straight, the man of peace is painted as an eschatological warrior who has great joy in giving the devil hell.
No matter how hard the softies try to make Christ out to be the benign, bearded lady raconteur, the exegetical fact remains: if you take the holy text in its entirety, He does not fit into the Left’s effete mold of holy tofu for horrible tools.
Therefore, mom and dad, I say, in contrast to Rev. Rodney, to have your kid get use to confronting nonsense – first and foremost in themselves. Gear them up to be a fighter and defender of that which is good. Let them play with toy weapons (if you can find any). They’re not going to turn into a terrorist. It’s not going to warp their wheel. Your kid has to learn that they are growing up in difficult times that demand that they be able to deal with “snakes.” Yes, your kid needs to learn not only to be nice, but also to be strong, sacrificial and courageous.
Finally, and humbly of course, I think if Pastor Francis truly wants to make a difference in our SNAFU’ed society he should forego the toy gun buy back and instead host a “Crappy Parent Buy Back” initiative because therein lies the real conundrum.
Doug Giles
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Doug Giles - Dads: If You Don’t Want Your Daughter to Date Charlie Sheen, Lil Wayne, Beavis or Butthead, Read This
Here are my 10 Commandments for my daughter’s potential boyfriends.
Please facebook, email and tweet this list and my accompanying new video to dads who do not want their daughters to ever date or marry Lil Wayne, Charlie Sheen, Beavis or Butthead.
Commandment I. Thou shall understand that your presence doesn't make me happy. And know this: I've got a PI doing a background check on you at this moment.Parents, if you’d like an awesome full-color, punk-scaring poster of my 10 Commandments for Your Daughter’s Potential Boyfriends to grace your entryway, man cave or office, click here. Be afraid, scrubs. Be afraid.
Commandment II. Thou had better have a life. I have worked my butt off providing a good life for my daughter; therefore, you better have one, Spanky.
Commandment III. Thou shall not touch my daughter. If you do, I'll smash your hands and your mommy will have to help you gel your Justin Bieber haircut.
Commandment IV. Thou shall look me in the eye and shake my hand like a man. And turn off your damn cell phone.
Commandment V. Thou shall understand that you are a boy talking to a man. Do not gush around me or attempt to read me an entry from your journal. I'm not Oprah. I am a Neanderthal.
Commandment VI. Thou shall know that our family is old school. Do not even think about approaching me with liberal, hippie, agnostic, atheistic, anti-American or tree-humping bull crap.
Commandment VII. Thou shall know that I like cool and expensive gifts. You'd be shrewd to approach me like the three wise men did Baby Jesus, namely with gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Commandment VIII. Thou shall understand that if you're dumb enough to tell me a dirty joke, I'm comfortable enough with kicking your ass.
Commandment IX. Thou shall keep your word. If you say you're going to do something, then I expect you to do it.
Commandment X. Thou shall memorize commandments I - IX. Yep, your best bet, home slice, is to both memorize and practice these commandments because I am Dad Almighty!
Doug Giles
Thursday, February 16, 2012
PJTV Trifecta - Tough Love or Bad Dad? Father Shoots Daughter's Laptop and Posts Video on Web
Tommy Jordan, a North Carolina dad, shot his daughter's laptop and posted the video on the internet. Millions of people have watched the video, some with approbation and others with disgust. Should parents publicly humiliate their children? Do pistols and hollow tip bullets have a role in the modern parenting? Find out.
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Sunday, October 16, 2011
Doug Giles - Parents Obsessed with Texting + Ignored Kids = Hell to Pay
What eclipsed that miserable moment (sorta) and caused me grief this week was watching a young mom at Starbucks ignoring her beautiful, little one-year-old girl while said moron giggled and texted for 30 plus minutes.
Yep, with her head buried in the phone, nose two inches off the cancer screen, mommy dearest didn’t have a clue what her kid was doing as she crawled around on a high traffic, grime-laden cement floor between the feet of strangers who held 16- ounce cups of 180 degree liquid above the kid’s tender flesh as they high stepped over her.
Hey, parents, here’s a freebie from Dr. Doug: Why not put the cell phone and gadgets down for awhile when your babies are around and pay attention to them, all right, jackass? There’ll be plenty of time later in life to ignore them—like in college, when they pierce their nipples and become whiny liberal drips, but now, when they are very young, is not the time.
FYI to Y-O-U, mom … dad: You’ve got one shot at raising that baby, and if you want to make certain your spawn doesn’t:
1. Recite hate poems about you at Barnes & Noble’s open mic night regarding how they’d like to stab you in your sleep for ignoring them for the last sixteen years.… then you might wanna give junior some TLC while he’s a T-O-T. You dig?
2. Show up high as a kite at a NYC Flea Party Rally, bitching and moaning about hard work and shouting up Che Guevara’s weltanschauung as they roast a fatty …
As I watched this neglect go down at Starbucks, I kept thinking that this daft dame could have cooed and cuddled with her little bambina and had 1,800 seconds of parental bliss that lovely morning.
The Starbucks I visited was on beautiful Miami Beach. Mom could have pointed out to baby the seagulls, the palm trees, the gorgeous skies, the warm sun, the six-foot three-inch trannie with a five o’clock shadow, the rats rummaging through the trash eating discarded ham and cheese paninis, and the ubiquitous metrosexuals with over-tweaked eyebrows who use seven words to order their special cup of Joe. It could’ve been both a bonding and educational familial exchange in one warm whack. But no. The bird had to text.
Here’s a challenge for the parental units: If you think I’m full of crap in regard to the ramifications of blowing your kids off as you obsess with texts and/or social media then let’s do an experiment: For the next 13 years abandon the developmental stages of that genetic concoction of yours, and we’ll see how they turn out as you snub them for Twitter. Are you ready? Okay. On your mark. Get set. Go, Slingblade!
Oh and by the way, conservatives and evangelicals … you, too, can be dilatory dillweeds as this sin knows no party or religious affiliation. I know stacks of family values blowhards out there yapping about the importance of family who haven’t talked to their own family in the last few weeks. Hey, dork, save your house first … then talk to us about ours. I know way too many ministers who strode forth to save the world and lost their kids in the process. Didn’t the apostle Paul say something to the effect that if you can’t govern your own house then you need to shut the hell up?
And finally, if my exhortation to selfless and sacrificial love for your kids versus your gadgets has failed to convince you to change your behavior toward your toddlers, perhaps a selfish plea will. Soon, parents, in the not too distant future, you will return to the dependent state from whence you came, and I’m a guessin’ that the child you ignored while he or she was in diapers will more than likely return the favor when you are sporting Depends.
For the greatest book ever written on raising righteous and rowdy kids, click here.
Doug Giles
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Sunday, August 7, 2011
Doug Giles - Parents: Hone Your Kid's BS Detector!
My goal has always been for my girls to own the twain. My wife and I have pushed our now twentysomething daughters to academic excellence; we insist that they strain their brains so they won’t sound like Matt Damon when they open their mouths.
That being said, as much as I want my little rays of sunshine to have high GPAs (not that a jiffy GPA means squat anymore given the bogus bunk being taught in school) I want them to have an equal or higher level of street smarts: what some would call a sixth sense, an otherness, a discerning spirit, a fourth dimension, or what I call a well-honed and greased BS Detector (BSD)—y’know, something that’ll make ‘em cough “bullcrap” when they hear terms like “Super Congress.”
Street smarts will give our kids the shrewdness to see through the veil of crap most guys, governments, gimmicks, gadgets, gurus and evil girlfriends live behind.
Bad dates, scum sucking politicians, marketing leeches, PR mooks, agents, corporate America, late night infomercials, televangelists, used car salesmen, and mechanics all love the gullible dolt who has a weak dung detector. Therefore, parents, one of the most important things you can ever do for your offspring is to help them become shrewd and skeptical young ‘uns who cannot be bamboozled by people, places, and politicians that seek to do them harm.
So what is BS?
You can call it bull smack, or the nicer sounding Latin term “stercore tauri,” or simply bull, horse hockey, bollocks, gobbledygook, or truthiness. Whatever you want to call it, BS can be defined as: “Communications where reality and truthfulness aren’t nearly as vital as the ability to manipulate the audience to get it to do whatever one wants done.”
As your children plow through life in paranormal times they’re going to be hit with a tsunami of sewage. As parents we must make certain our charges can deftly navigate the crap-laden rapids of our culture and come out of this thing smelling like roses.
To keep it simple, tell your children that their BS detector is essentially, as one comedian said, that little voice inside their heads telling them to listen to the little voice inside their heads. It’s an internal salvific alarm alerting them to the fact that they’re in the process of being screwed, glued and tattooed. It will be to their own detriment if they ignore this in-house salvo. If they hone and listen to it when it screams, they’ll be the wiser, safer and richer for it.
Everybody has a BSD. Obviously, some folks have better ones than others. No matter where your kids currently are in their abilities to spot BS in all of its varied forms, if they will apply the following three simple principles I guarantee their dates with morons, their purchases of stuff they don’t need, and their gullibility in regard to a politician’s propaganda will diminish, and they’ll take on a shrewd, life-saving edge:
1. Become a skeptic. Our English word “skeptic” comes from the Greek word skopos, which means someone who scopes things out. Whether it’s a car or a polygamist cult or a current politician, train your kids to look under the hood a little bit more, would ‘cha pops? An easy exercise to increase their righteous doubts is to have them stand in front of a mirror with their arms crossed and one eyebrow raised, look down their nose and say, “Yeah, right,” in a sarcastic tone. Have them do this about 100 times every morning before they’re off to school. Yes, parents, it is your job to make your kids healthily suspicious before they date it, buy it or vote for it.
2. Trust your Gut. God has hardwired us so that when we are in danger, or when we’re getting scammed, or when we’re about to say, “Yes, coffee sounds great!” to an axe murderer that our body, mind and spirit freak out. Our “gut” will check us, and the little voice inside our head will start calling us unflattering names in an attempt to get our attention before we get raked over the coals. Remember, your gut check/BSD is your friend.
3. Hang out with mature, sharp and successful people and allow them to speak into your life. I know for young people it’s not sexy to hang out with people other than their peers; however, if you’re honest, young person, most of your friends are idiots with very weak BSDs, correct?
And a final note to you, young person: If your parents, grandparents, pastors or whoever are successful and have enriched, happy lives, sidle up to them because they can sharpen your BSD; they have expertise, experience, honesty, and a spiritual maturity that you can roll into your profit if you surround yourself with them … and if you listen.
Yes, young blood, you can become wise beyond your years and by osmosis have a highly-attuned BSD which will set you up for safety and security by simply adhering to the counsel of mature, righteous adults. Yep, older folks who have been there and done that bring many things to the table that your goofy BFF cannot provide. Don’t blow these people off. Matter of fact, the more you surround yourself with wise counselors the more life is going to kiss you on the mouth rather than kick you in the butt.
Doug Giles
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