"The Weekly (C)Wrap-Up - Been Such A Long Time"

I used to write a post every Friday called the Weekly (C)Wrap-Up and I would add some cutesy title behind it highlighting the biggest story that caught my attention during the week then I would decide which person that made the (C)Wrap-Up was the worst person of the week, but when I stopped writing about 2 years ago I also stopped watching the news and reading the blogs and basically said fuck it all! So I am really lacking about what's really going on in the world and I apologize for that. I have forgiven myself and I hope you guys can forgive me and we can try to get this thing started again! This post every week was my signature piece and I really missed writing it and I want to get back to writing it but I have to get back into the daily bump and grind and so far I haven't had the stomach for it however, I did watch a bit of the Anthony trial if that counts? Again I haven't been as vigilant as I used to be so bear with me as I try to make some order out of all the chaos!

I put that space shuttle pic in there cause its cool and it is historic because it is the last one at least funded by my tax dollars and now I will never get to ride in it! Remember the space program started back in 1962 almost 50 years and what has it really produced?!

But lets get it poppin'!


NOT GUILTY!!

Okay so she got away with murder same with OJ and just like OJ she is going to say or do something that is going to put her back in jail or worse Karma's pimp hand is going to come down real hard on her ass! However, she as with OJ was judged by a jury of her peers and was acquitted! She went through the legal system just like you or me and got off! I know everyone is mad and disappointed but like with the OJ trial as with this one we have to put the blame where it belongs...The jury of course! No just joking. The blame sits clearly with the prosecution...From the LA Times :

If the demonstrators outside the courthouse were angry about the verdict, they should have blamed the prosecution, because its approach was probably responsible for Anthony's acquittal.

First, prosecutors overcharged the case. What they knew is that Caylee's mother didn't report the child missing for a month, and that when she did, she told lies. By the time the body was found, it was too badly decomposed to provide clear evidence of the cause of death. Yet prosecutors chose to bring a charge of first-degree murder and ask for the death penalty. Why did they take this route? They tried to gain a tactical advantage, and it backfired. More!

While we are talking court and justice lets talk about the Supremes, no not Diana and 'nem but the other Supremes in the robes that make the laws. Now there were two significant rulings out there a couple of weeks ago that I just have to chime in about! First off the violent video games and since it was about a California ruling lets go to the LA Times:

Supreme Court strikes down California video game law

Banning the sale of violent games to minors is a violation of free speech, justices say in a victory for the entertainment industry.

• 

June 28, 2011|By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau

The Supreme Court ended its term with a vigorous defense of free speech, striking down a California law that banned sales of violent video games to minors and effectively shielding the entertainment industry from any government effort to limit violent content.

"Like books, plays and movies, video games communicate ideas," said Justice Antonin Scalia in his majority opinion Monday. And he said there was "no tradition in this country of specially restricting children's access to depictions of violence. … Grimm's Fairy Tales, for example, are grim indeed." More!

Okay here is the deal; First I will give the obligatory nod to free speech and blah blah blah. Yes the games should be protected no matter how gory and bloody they are you have the right not to buy them just as much as the game makers have the right to make and sell them. What I think is being glossed over is the fact that it is also a big nod for good old fashioned parenting. It is not the governments job nor should it be even more added to my tax burden to raise your bad ass kids! If you do not want them to play these games start paying more attention to what they are buying and or renting and playing in your house. Yes some of those games are terrible, I was watching the Daily Show and Jon Stewart was showing a video of some girl being ripped in half but you as parents can put a stop to that. Monitor your kids purchases and do not buy any game without doing some homework of your own. Remember those violent ass cartoons we used to watch? Tom and Jerry and the ultimate Bugs Bunny, Wile Coyote, Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck (the black duck) and Yosemite Sam! I swear I heard him cuss a couple of times! So another even more accessible avenue where parents should be more vigilant is TV. Lets look at some stats:

What about TV and aggressive or violent behavior?
Literally thousands of studies since the 1950s have asked whether there is a link between exposure to media violence and violent behavior. All but 18 have answered, "Yes." The evidence from the research is overwhelming. According to the AAP, "Extensive research evidence indicates that media violence can contribute to aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, nightmares, and fear of being harmed." [14] Watching violent shows is also linked with having less empathy toward others [14a].

• An average American child will see 200,000 violent acts and 16,000 murders on TV by age 18 [15].
• Two-thirds of all programming contains violence [16].
• Programs designed for children more often contain violence than adult TV [17].
• Most violent acts go unpunished on TV and are often accompanied by humor. The consequences of human suffering and loss are rarely depicted.
• Many shows glamorize violence. TV often promotes violent acts as a fun and effective way to get what you want, without consequences [18].
• Even in G-rated, animated movies and DVDs, violence is common—often as a way for the good characters to solve their problems. Every single U.S. animated feature film produced between 1937 and 1999 contained violence, and the amount of violence with intent to injure has increased over the years [19].
• Even "good guys" beating up "bad guys" gives a message that violence is normal and okay. Many children will try to be like their "good guy" heroes in their play.
• Children imitate the violence they see on TV. Children under age eight cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy, making them more vulnerable to learning from and adopting as reality the violence they see on TV [20].
• Repeated exposure to TV violence makes children less sensitive toward its effects on victims and the human suffering it causes.
• A University of Michigan researcher demonstrated that watching violent media can affect willingness to help others in need [20a]. Read about the study here: Comfortably Numb: Desensitizing Effects of Violent Media on Helping Others.
• Viewing TV violence reduces inhibitions and leads to more aggressive behavior.
• Watching television violence can have long-term effects:
• A 15-year-long study by University of Michigan researchers found that the link between childhood TV-violence viewing and aggressive and violent behavior persists into adulthood [21].
• A 17-year-long study found that teenaged boys who grew up watching more TV each day are more likely to commit acts of violence than those who watched less [22].
• Even having the TV on in the home is linked to more aggressive behavior in 3-year-olds. This was regardless of the type of programming and regardless of whether the child was actually watching the TV [23]. [Source]
  

Now that is just TV we are not even talking about movies! If you are really concerned whether or not your raising a psychopath start with television. Okay lets move on to the Wal-Mart ruling. From Time:

Protesters hold signs in front of the Supreme Court over Dukes v. Wal-Mart

Stores Inc. on March 29, 2011

Larry Downing / Reuters

The Supreme Court's decision to throw out a sex-discrimination suit by a large group of female Walmart employees may seem like a mere procedural decision on class-action rules. But it is a much bigger deal: it significantly shifts power from workers to big employers.

The ruling on Monday in Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. puts a halt to a class action that could ultimately have included as many as 1.5 million current and former female employees of Walmart. It also weakens Rule 23, the federal procedural regulation that allows plaintiffs to join together to file class actions.

The court ruled on two issues in the case: back-pay rules and class-action standards. The Justices were unanimous in ruling that the women were not eligible for back pay, but split 5-4 — along the court's now predictable conservative-liberal lines — on the more far-reaching class-action question. The 5-4 ruling against the employees was at odds with two lower federal courts, which had approved of the class action.

The Walmart women had put forward a classic case of sex discrimination. They noted that women fill 70% of the hourly jobs at the company but make up only 33% of the managers. They also introduced evidence of serious mistreatment, like their contention that senior managers often refer to female associates as "little Janie Qs." For its part, Walmart denied that it discriminates against its female employees. More!

To add to women's woes I noticed this from one of my favorite blogspots Crooks & Liars:

July 08, 2011 04:00 PM

Pew Analysis Finds Despite Recovery, Women Are Losing Jobs While Men Are Finding Them

By Susie Madrak
So it's not your imagination: Women are losing jobs and men are finding them. Thank God we're back to the Godly order of things, right?
The sluggish recovery from the Great Recession has been better for men than for women. From the end of the recession in June 2009 through May 2011, men gained 768,000 jobs and lowered their unemployment rate by 1.1 percentage points to 9.5%.1 Women, by contrast, lost 218,000 jobs during the same period, and their unemployment rate increased by 0.2 percentage points to 8.5%, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. More!

And the hits just keep on coming ladies! Now I didn't know much about Betty Ford for a long time other than her name being on that clinic in California back in the day. I just thought she was being a presidents wife and doing something good for the nation by opening up clinics for alcoholics. I learned that she herself had struggles with Alcohol and prescription drugs. From USA Today:

Ford helped pioneer addiction treatment

Alcoholism was declared a disease by the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association in 1955.

"The fact that Betty Ford lent her name to the center had a profound effect on the treatment of alcoholism," said Dr. James West, a medical director at the Betty Ford Center from its opening until his April 2007 retirement.

"When she made it clear that she was the head of this place and a recovering person herself, that had a very profound effect on the whole system throughout the country."

Ford embraced the 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous program while being treated at the Long Beach Naval Hospital's Alcohol and Drug Rehabilitation Service in 1978.

The Navy pioneered alcohol and drug treatment when it discovered its sailors were abusing drugs during the Vietnam War. More!

RIP BETTY and Thanks!

Okay lets move on. I gotta blog about this guy in Michigan because it also relates to all the abuse and bad luck the ladies have been having here recently. So this guy goes on a rampage and starts hunting old girlfriends and baby mommas then the coward kills himself. From the Detroit Free Press:

GRAND RAPIDS -- Before he, in the words of Grand Rapids Police Chief Kevin Belk, "went out hunting down ex-girlfriends" Thursday and became a mass murderer, 34-year-old Roderick S. Dantzler had a long history of temper, violence and assaults on women.

His mother kicked him out of the house at 18 for serial abuse and got a court-issued restraining order to keep him out. In 1997, he went into a violent rage against his 17-year-old girlfriend, then five months pregnant with his child.

Yet Victoria Dantzler appeard not to have lost hope. When he was sentenced to prison for firing five shots at a stranger a few years later, she asked the judge for leniency, calling him "affectionate and free-hearted ... never quick to start a fight."

Thursday afternoon, she had to call Grand Rapids police and tell them her son told her that he had killed another former girlfriend. Within hours, authorities realized Dantzler had killed six more people, including another ex-girlfriend and his own 12-year-old daughter. In a rampage and police chase that rocketed around the city before ending in a hostage-taking and Dantzler's eventual suicide, he shot two more people, including another ex-girlfriend. She survived. More!

I love this quote from his momma 5 years after she had put him out cause he scared her about him being "affectionate and free-hearted ... never quick to start a fight." Yeah maybe not quick to start a fight but quick to kill someone! I also have a problem with guys like this that end up shooting themselves! If you a killer I expect you to go out like Scarface guns blazing but that's just my bullshit. Ahhh so much stuff so little time!

I don't know about you but I am so glad they are ending this space shuttle program. All that money and they have really nothing to show for it! By now I expected them to have colonies on the moon and us doing interstellar space flight. All that money WE spent in taxes and NONE of US will ever get to travel in the Space Shuttle! Good riddance! Personally I think the whole thing has been a big hoax since the very beginning. We supposedly went to the moon 6 times between 1969 and 1972 however, scientists say it will take another 15 years to get back. With all the advances in technology since then? Not too mention no stars in the pictures! Where are all the thousands of stars that should be in the pics from the moon?! Okay so that is more of my BS (belief systems) too!

And we have not even gotten to all the stuff our government has been doing while we were all engrossed in the Casey Anthony trial but thinking about radiation belts and the like has worn me down...Next weeks (C)Wrap-Up will be much better I promise!

Mars! Red Roooocks!