Palin blasts press reports on Johnston job
Posted: 09:28 AM ET

(CNN) – Levi Johnston, the father of Sarah Palin's grandchild Tripp and fiance of daughter Bristol, quit his job earlier this week after reports that his lack of a high school diploma made him ineligible for the apprentice position he'd held since fall.

Johnston's father Keith told the Anchorage Daily News that his son felt the move was "the best thing to do to kind of calm the waters, so to speak," and that his son's missing educational qualification was "just something that slipped through the cracks."

"You guys are watching him so tightly," Johnston told the paper. "He's being treated different than an average 18-year-old kid. He has to do everything by the book now."

Palin herself called the report a "a political potshot taken at me," that could "destroy a young man's opportunity for work."

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No, Palin, his inability to complete High School has destroyed his opportunity for work. Also that whole "I can't keep my cock out of your daughter" has also had quite an effect. Don't blame us, princess.

about all of the children without parents. Or about teh children with parents who have 20 other children. Either way, there are a TON of children out there who are not properly cared for because their parents "respected the order of creation". Did you ever think that maybe homosexuality was God's way of curbing the population and giving some of those displaced children homes? The bible was written how freaking long ago? Are you telling me that God is so ridiculously stubborn and just plain STUPID that he won't change the rules a little bit to suit the world his children have created?

Stop being dumb.

Maybe he chose to say no to gayness because he was afraid we wouldn't procreate fast enough to reach our full potential and now that he sees our population is actually working against that end that he's decided that it's okay to be gay now so we can fix the damn mess we made.

Oh yeah. He's omnipotent and all that...well as long as we still have free will, he still has to account for the choices we make and those choices may alter his grand design so maybe he has to change his mind on a few things.

And yet again, I will mention all the crazy shit in the bible that christians choose not to follow: being stoned for wearing blended thread clothing (cotton/polyster anyone?) or being unable to approach the alter of god with a defect in your sight. Reread Leviticus and tell me that you follow that whole thing. I'll be waiting for your apology.

But when it all comes down, I don't care what you believe. I surely don't know what the truth is any more than anyone else does. All I ask is that you respect everyone else's right to choose their own path...especially if you're already a hypocrite.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/12/23/pope.speech/index.htmlcnnSTCText?iref=werecommend

On the other hand, hooray for the Pope saying that life on other planets is cool. He said that saying life on other planets is impossible is limiting Gods creative power. Score one for the pope!

Anyone who knows me knows I've half heartedly tried losing weight before but never really made it past 20lbs because really I just didn't care enough. I both curse and thank my dad for that =) I thank him because he made me believe my weight didn't determine my beauty...which is true. However, it also took away the only motivation I would have had to get in shape. Oh well.

Now I have motivation and I've already put the proverbial wheels in motion. I joined the Y on Sunday and yesterday I got a hold of my work building's personal trainer who controls access to the gym downstairs. It's $150 for forever access which is a steal compared to the $42/mo I'll be paying at the Y. I also went to craigslist and found myself a workout buddy. In addition to him, I have Bruce who likes swimming at the Y so we can go together as well.

I joined LiveStrong's Daliy Plate a while ago. It tracks your food intake as well as exercise and let me tell you, they have EVERY food or exercise you could ever think of. They even have things like sitting, singing, carrying a child, etc on the exercise list with the amount of calories burned per time period. And of course they have a (free) iPhone app that links up with the website so that's awesome too. My workout buddy joined it too so we'll be tracking each other's habits.

Luckily stress from this past weekend rendered me completely unable to eat anything. That gave my stomach enough time to shrink to the size of a pea so even if I get an appetite, I can't eat much. I also went to the store and bought plenty of healthy food for me to eat, including my favorite "diet" thing ever: generic chocolate royale slimfast....yummm.

I don't like to say I'm dieting because I don't believe in diets. Diets are gimmicks to make you lose weight fast and usually don't teach you a damn thing and set you up to gain it all back. There are good ones out there, but the one I like is called the f'ing Food Pyramid. I'm just going to eat what I need to eat whenever I'm hungry. I'm going to eat a lot of healthy foods and not worry about carbs or anything silly like that. I lose weight really easily (suprising, I know, but it's true) by just changing my diet. Now that I'm down 50lbs from where I started a while ago, I am adding exercise and I expect that the combination of diet change and exercise is going to be pretty freaking effective. As long as my friends and my workout buddy keep me motivated I'll be golden.

If you have similar goals this year, join me on LiveStrong.com's Daily Plate (I'm watsonea4) and we can help each other stay on track!

...according to the all knowing internet troll.

(Basically this is a site for funny graphs. This particular graph was "types of 911 calls I've taken tonight" and it was something like my phone 10%, wrong number 15%, crank calls 5%, actual emergencies 1%, drunken idiots 69%. A lot of people felt this wasn't funny enough to be posted. I'm commenting on that)

I'm pretty sure "Becca" was being facetious. I cracked up when I read this all. For god's sake, dude; it's just "albeit". I'm sorry I knew how to spell it. I'm sorry I'm educated. I'm sorry I grew up with parents who used large words and therefore taught me large words. I'm sorry my vocabulary isn't limited to obscenities and some adjectives.

Actually, I lied. I'm not sorry. You are.

A while ago I joined Kiva.org. Kiva is an organization that allows regular people to make small loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries. You can make loans as small as $25 or as large as you want. You also get to choose the person you want to loan to so if you have a special place in your heart for farmers or a certain country, you can choose based on that. Since they are actual loans, you do get your money back a little at a time. When the loan is fully repaid (usually within 6-12mos) you can withdraw it back to your bank account, donate it to Kiva (for operational expenses) or loan it out to someone else. I recently became co-captain of the Kiva Indiana team so if you do decide to join and you're in Indiana, let me know and I'll invite you to the group.

When this whole "OMFG Obama's a socialist because he said 'spread the wealth around'" business came up, I was immediately reminded of Kiva. I was reminded that I have very little to be passing out to strangers but I do because it's the right thing to do as a human being. I was reminded that most of the lenders on Kiva aren't wealthy. They are people who have families, work for a living and instead of buying another shirt or more toys, they choose to lend money to those who were not fortunate enough to be born in the US with all the opportunities we enjoy...opportunities we take for granted.

Many Americans, I would venture to say most Americans, are hesitant to give their money to someone else. They feel defensive when someone wants them to give their hard earned dollars away to a stranger. "Why should I work so hard day after day just to have some of my money 'spread' to someone else who didn't earn it? After all, I have a family and I may not be able to afford toys for my children at Christmas." I'll tell you where those people have gone wrong; somewhere along the line in their lives, the American people stopped comparing themselves to those less fortunate and started comparing themselves to those more fortunate. By American standards, someone like me is middle class. By worldly standards, someone like me is wealthy. So you won't be able to spend money on your kids for Christmas...don't think about the rich people who will be the ones living out the Lexus commercial story where they walk outside on Christmas morning to see a brand new car with a giant red bow on top. Think about the children who will never know what a holiday like Christmas is like. They will never wake up one day, have a big breakfast, sit around the living room with their family and open presents. They may never have a single big meal in their lives and it's not their fault. They were born in a country or into a class system that will never allow them to rise above. They can't just try really hard in school, get a scholarship to Harvard and become the President because they worked hard because that is just not an opportunity they will ever be given. There isn't a school they can excel in. There aren't colleges or scholarships. Their story is completely different from the story of an underprivileged child in the US and that is why they need our help. That is why we need to spread our wealth, because regardless of how close you are to losing your lifestyle, they never had one.

I went through, and am still going through, a period where I am continuously in the negative. A little while ago I couldn't make my car payments, I couldn't pay rent on time and never had money to go to the grocery. I could have been in the depths of despair over it, but I couldn't help but think of the people who never owned a car, never had a proper home and beg for grains of rice. How can I possibly see my life as so bad when I really do have it so good?

Even if you never go to Kiva, never donate money, never loan money or still believe socialist ideas are bad, I would implore you to take one single thing from this: put your life into the right perspective. Instead of counting our blessings, we often count our shortcomings and I can guarantee that when you count your shortcomings, you will always be disappointed but when you count your blessings, you will always be satisfied. The next time you're down about something you don't have, remind yourself that you really do have it good and it's because you happened to be born in the right place at the right time. There always will be someone somewhere else in the world who is a lot worse off than you are and there will always be someone somewhere in the world who is better off than you. You make the choice of which one you compare yourself to. You choose to be disappointed or grateful.

I also ask you to not be completely like me. Desire for something bigger and better drives improvement. I simply ask you to use this perspective when you are evaluating your feelings on your current situation. By all means, be jealous. Be driven to get just a step higher. Be motivated to do one better than you did before. But at the same time, be thankful that you have what you have and never forget that you are blessed.

Clarifications (because I know some people may take things the wrong way):

"remind yourself that you really do have it good and it's because you happened to be born in the right place at the right time" – yes, I know you probably have what you have because you work hard, did well in school or whatever the case may be but chances are you were able to do those things because you were born in the right place at the right time. If you went back to your birth and you were born in a garbage pile in Cambodia instead, your life would be a whole other story, regardless of how hard you worked.

Socialism – I believe that socialism is a great idea…in theory. I'm not naïve enough to think that it's an idea that could actually be implemented in a society as large as the US…or even on a city level. However, I think that socialist ideas can be applied to our government. When Obama said "spread the wealth around" and spoke of taxing the wealthy more than the middle class and sending that money to the "lower ranks", I thought it was a great idea. Everyone in my office was up in arms about it but the fact remains that at the end of the day, the rich will still be rich; the difference is the poor won't be as poor. But I don't believe in handing out money. If the wealthy were taxed extra in order to help the poor and middle class, I think the money should go to EDUCATION, healthcare, daycare and "starter" jobs for the poor. It should go to teach people to fish. I don't believe in welfare; I think it only promotes laziness and delinquency and I think it should be abolished. The intentions were good, but it's a bad execution. Again, my opinions on socialism are my opinions. Many will still think it's not fair to take someone's hard earned money to fund someone else, but I will always think it isn't fair to allow the rich to get richer as the poor get poorer. We must agree to disagree.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/LearnToBudget/are-you-rich-heres-how-to-tell.aspx
 

Article Title: Are you rich? Here's how to tell

Subtitle: To be counted among the rich, does it take income of $250,000 a year? $500,000? $750,000? That depends on where and how you live.

Opening paragraph: If your household income is $250,000, other people might consider you rich, even if it feels as if you're just getting by.

WHAT THE F***?!

How does where you live and HOW you live change whether you are rich or not? If you make $250,000/yr and you're just getting by it's because you SPEND TOO MUCH. That doesn't change the fact that you make PLENTY of f***ing money. Oh, I'm sorry you live in a $500,000 home and your mortgage is $4,000/mo. You picked the damn house. You're still rich, you just chose to have bigger bills. F you. The fact that you make enough to even have those things as options proves you're rich. If I buy a house worth 3 times my annual salary, buy a $40,000 car and have 12 kids, I'm not poor, I'm stupid. So are you.

I'm pretty ticked off because the school systems (here at least) have murdered Halloween. The kids are no longer allowed to dress up or bring anything to their "Fall Party" that has witches, skeletons, jack-o-lanterns, cats, bats or anything else distinguishable as "Halloween" related. Everything has to be "fall" related like leaves...and leaves.

Halloween is my FAVORITE holiday, bar none. The entire month of October is like Christmas to me. I love the spooky air, the leaves changing color, the crisp breeze and anything that will send a chill up my spine. I have 3 large tubs of Halloween crap and usually my house is unrecognizable below the dark decor. I also usually leave it up until around February because I love how it looks. If my friends didn't complain I'd leave it up all year round.

With all of my enthusiasm for Halloween (that has existed since early childhood) I have never once considered devil worshipping (and if anyone were going to be influenced into evil by Halloween, it probably would be me.) That is really what everyone is all up in arms about. They think celebrating Halloween is going to make their kids practice witchcraft, sacrifice babies and have sex with the Devil himself. The meaning of Halloween has been so bastardized that people have no idea that they are the only ones bringing witchcraft and devil worshipping into the holiday.

With some help from the History Channel, here is a concise history of Halloween:

Halloween's origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

By A.D. 43, Romans had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of "bobbing" for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

By the 800s, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints' Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day) and the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. Even later, in A.D. 1000, the church would make November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. Together, the three celebrations, the eve of All Saints', All Saints', and All Souls', were called Hallowmas.

As European immigrants came to America, they brought their varied Halloween customs with them. Because of the rigid Protestant belief systems that characterized early New England, celebration of Halloween in colonial times was extremely limited there.

It was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies. As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups, as well as the American Indians, meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included "play parties," public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other's fortunes, dance, and sing. Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the nineteenth century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing Ireland's potato famine of 1846, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally. Taking from Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today's "trick-or-treat" tradition. Young women believed that, on Halloween, they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings, or mirrors.

In the late 1800s, there was a move in America to mold Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers, than about ghosts, pranks, and witchcraft.

At the turn of the century, Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties focused on games, foods of the season, and festive costumes. Parents were encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to take anything "frightening" or "grotesque" out of Halloween celebrations. Because of their efforts, Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the twentieth century.

By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular, but community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide parties as the featured entertainment. Despite the best efforts of many schools and communities, vandalism began to plague Halloween celebrations in many communities during this time. By the 1950s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism and Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young. Due to the high numbers of young children during the fifties baby boom, parties moved from town civic centers into the classroom or home, where they could be more easily accommodated. Between 1920 and 1950, the centuries-old practice of trick-or-treating was also revived. Trick-or-treating was a relatively inexpensive way for an entire community to share the Halloween celebration. In theory, families could also prevent tricks being played on them by providing the neighborhood children with small treats. A new American tradition was born, and it has continued to grow. Today, Americans spend an estimated $6.9 billion annually on Halloween, making it the country's second largest commercial holiday.

The American tradition of "trick-or-treating" probably dates back to the early All Souls' Day parades in England. During the festivities, poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called "soul cakes" in return for their promise to pray for the family's dead relatives.

The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits. The practice, which was referred to as "going a-souling" was eventually taken up by children who would visit the houses in their neighborhood and be given ale, food, and money.

The tradition of dressing in costume for Halloween has both European and Celtic roots. Hundreds of years ago, winter was an uncertain and frightening time. Food supplies often ran low and, for the many people afraid of the dark, the short days of winter were full of constant worry. On Halloween, when it was believed that ghosts came back to the earthly world, people thought that they would encounter ghosts if they left their homes. To avoid being recognized by these ghosts, people would wear masks when they left their homes after dark so that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits. On Halloween, to keep ghosts away from their houses, people would place bowls of food outside their homes to appease the ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter.

You can clearly see there is no mention of Halloween representing witchcraft or devil worshipping. While the roots of Halloween are from Celtic tradition and much superstition, it also is directly related to the Christian holiday of All Saints' Day and now has little to do with either. Halloween is, for the most part, a completely secular holiday. Some Pagans and Celts still celebrate Samhain, but it is still a holiday dedicated not to any supernatural being, but in fact to nature itself and the harvest season; certainly not anything sinister.

For me, and most who celebrate Halloween as enthusiastically as I do, the holiday is about the mystery of death and the scary side of what may be. It's a time to celebrate fear and challenge it to a duel, often hoping to lose. I know that some people don't like scary movies or even anything about Halloween, but I think we all deserve the chance to decide for ourselves. Kids should be able to have a Halloween party where they can color cats, bats, pumpkins and skeletons and parade around town dressed as ghouls, goblins, princesses and movie characters. Parents should take care of explaining the holiday in the terms they prefer, while the school simply lets them have fun and doesn't try to form their ideas of what the holiday means.

I understand wanting to appease as many people as possible by trying to not offend everyone, but I think there comes a time when it's not their job to jump through hoops to not offend the parents, but the parents job to stop being so easily offended. Take responsibility for your children! If you do your job properly, no amount of Halloween decor or costume parades is going to turn your child into a devil worshipper. I would never deprive my child of celebrating Christmas with the other children even though I don't believe in the Christian aspect of the holiday. And I will never deprive my child of the joy of opening presents under the tree even though I despise commercialism for distorting a holiday that is supposed to be about peace, love and family.

I can't help but believe that this whole lot of crap about Halloween being bad is just parents not wanting to take responsibility for raising their children. Whenever a child does something wrong it's always the school system, rap/heavy metal music or video games; never the lack of proper parenting. Instead of manning up and taking responsibility, they want to just eliminate anything that could possibly lead their children astray; but the fact is, and will remain, that there will always be temptation to do wrong, regardless of holiday celebrations or off color entertainment. The best thing, and really the only thing, you can do to shield your child from the ills of the world, is to teach them how to shield themselves with truth, reason and compassion.

Dear ignorant pricks like the ones in the video above:

I am writing on behalf of Americans everywhere asking you to please not even leave the house on Nov 4. If you can't spend 10mins on the internet learning the FACTS about the candidates, you shouldn't even vote at all.

I love this country. I love that I can believe one thing and my neighbor can believe the exact opposite and that's ok. What I do not love is when people squander their freedom by not making informed decisions. If you can tell me why you disagree with me using facts, I respect you. If you can only use hearsay and preconceived notions, I lose all respect for you and your viewpoint is completely invalidated.

This election is very important. We're struggling as a country in every category and it is the civic duty of each and every American to research the issues at hand and choose the candidate who they feel will best represent their views on how to run the country. There is NO reason someone should be ill-informed in 2008. Each candidate's website has a section where they list their positions on issues in black and white. Read it!

When candidates give conflicting information, look it up! Sites like FactCheck.org are completely non-partisan and analyze each candidate's speeches. They spell out for you what was said, the facts behind the issue and whether or not the statement in question is true, false or misleading and they explain in plain English.

Your vote is important and though I may completely disagree with your viewpoint, if you make it for the right reasons, then I have no reason to be upset about it. I'll say it plain and clear: If Obama loses this election because the people who voted for McCain did so because they genuinely researched the issues and felt McCain would benefit America the most, I won't be happy about it but at least I know the process worked as intended. If Obama loses this race because people voted using fear and hatred instead of facts, I will lose all hope for the future of this once great nation.

Remember, there's no one in that booth but you. Don't let peer pressure kidnap your voice. Vote the way your heart tells you to vote and if need be, don't tell anyone. Of course, you may be in a group of friends all supporting one person and all secretly wanting to support the other guy but too afraid to say anything. If you're too afraid, just don't say anything. If you can't bring yourself to vote outside your normal party or for someone you can't trust or if you honestly can't decide one way or the other, just leave it blank.

Thanks,

Democracy