16.7.09

Making Mommy Proud

In my attempt to make my mommy proud, I decided that I would put some more holes in my face this weekend. I repierced my nose and pierced my tragus (no picture yet) and my lip.

I also took Katie to get her nose.

Like my mom always taught me..."Every age has a stage" and "This too shall pass." So sit tight mom I'll take the lip out soon :)


Bye Bye Tara

On Monday night, Tara, Lindsey and I headed over to Gabbi's for some din din and a little goodbye party for Tara because she is LAME and moving to Texas.

15.7.09

Happy Birthday Daddy <3

My dad's birthday was great. He worked all day, brought me lunch and bought me the entire SC Pink sweats collection from Victoria's Secret and then had dinner with us and played with Scout at the park! I'm sure the only part he liked was playing with Scout. LOL

I got my dad the greatest birthday gift ever...one he will never forget :) too bad I didnt get a great picture of it.


















Came across this Op-ed...ENJOY

Nearly all my professors are Democrats. Isn't that a problem?

After I posed that question, two faculty railed against me. That's a sure sign that universities should address the lack of ideological diversity.

When I began examining the political affiliation of faculty at the University of Oregon, the lone conservative professor I spoke with cautioned that I would "make a lot of people unhappy."

Though I mostly brushed off his warning – assuming that academia would be interested in such discourse – I was careful to frame my research for a column for the school newspaper diplomatically.

The University of Oregon (UO), where I study journalism, invested millions annually in a diversity program that explicitly included "political affiliation" as a component. Yet, out of the 111 registered Oregon voters in the departments of journalism, law, political science, economics, and sociology, there were only two registered Republicans.

A number of conservative students told me they felt Republican ideas were frequently caricatured and rarely presented fairly. Did the dearth of conservative professors on campus and apparent marginalization of ideas on the right belie the university's commitment to providing a marketplace of ideas?

In my column, published in the campus newspaper The Oregon Daily Emerald June 1, I suggested that such a disparity hurt UO. I argued that the lifeblood of higher education was subjecting students to diverse viewpoints and the university needed to work on attracting more conservative professors.

I also suggested that students working on right-leaning ideas may have difficulty finding faculty mentors. I couldn't imagine, for instance, that journalism that supported the Iraq war or gun rights would be met with much enthusiasm.

What I didn't realize is that journalism that examined the dominance of liberal ideas on campus would be addressed with hostility.

A professor who confronted me declared that he was "personally offended" by my column. He railed that his political viewpoints never affected his teaching and suggested that if I wanted a faculty with Republicans I should have attended a university in the South. "If you like conservatism you can certainly attend the University of Texas and you can walk past the statue of Jefferson Davis everyday on your way to class," he wrote in an e-mail.

I was shocked by such a comment, which seemed an attempt to link Republicans with racist orthodoxy. When I wrote back expressing my offense, he neither apologized nor clarified his remarks.

Instead, he reiterated them on the record. Was such a brazen expression of partisanship representative of the faculty as a whole? I decided to speak with him in person in the hope of finding common ground.

He was eager to chat, and after five minutes our dialogue bloomed into a lively discussion. As we hammered away at the issue, one of his colleagues with whom he shared an office grew visibly agitated. Then, while I was in mid-sentence, she exploded.

"You think you're so [expletive] cute with your little column," she told me. "I read your piece and all you want is attention. You're just like Bill O'Reilly. You just want to get up on your [expletive] soapbox and have people look at you."

From the disgust with which she attacked me, you would have thought I had advocated Nazism. She quickly grew so emotional that she had to leave the room. But before she departed, she stood over me and screamed.

"You understand that my column was basically a prophesy," I shot back. I had suggested right-leaning ideas weren't welcome on campus and in response the faculty had tied my viewpoints to racism and addressed me with profanity-laced insults.

What's so remarkable is that I hadn't actually advocated Republican ideas or conservative ideas. In fact, I'm not a conservative, nor a Republican. I simply believe in the concept of diversity – a primarily liberal idea – and think that we suffer when we don't include ideas we find unappealing.

After my article on political diversity was published, I received numerous e-mails from students at other schools who spoke of similar experiences. As a result of my research and personal experience, I can now say without reservation that the lack of ideological diversity on college campuses is a dangerous threat to free and open discourse in academia. Sadly, there are few perfect solutions.

One proposal considered by universities is endowing a chair of conservative thought to lure a high-profile conservative scholar to campus. However, this has the potential to exacerbate partisan tensions by sanctioning an explicitly ideological position.

A more draconian option is to enact a political litmus test and mandate that Republicans fill a certain number of positions, but doing so would exclude many qualified professors and be unfairly discriminatory.

The fact is that political diversity, like many diversity efforts, is something that cannot be created through edict, but only by a concerted effort on the behalf of those in power. While hiring on the basis of party affiliation isn't the answer to reducing political discrimination, denying that political beliefs influence pedagogy is simply naive.

Faculties in ideological departments should examine the body of work of a candidate to see if it fills a shortcoming. In a department of journalism or political science, a professor with a right-leaning perspective would not only provide a balance in curriculum, but a potential mentor to conservative students who feel isolated in their beliefs. At left-leaning universities, such professors should be aggressively pursued.

Above all, deans, provosts, and professors must not allow their aversion to conservative ideas to manifest so contemptuously.

Political disagreement is crucial to vibrant discourse, but not in the form of caricatures, slights, or mockery.

Students should never come under personal attack from faculty members for straying from the party line. The fact that they do shows how easily political partisanship can corrupt the elements of higher education that should be valued the most.

Dan Lawton is a freelance journalist and journalism student at the University of Oregon.

Divorce Agreement

American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists
and Obama supporters, et al:

We have stuck together since the late 1950's, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course.
Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way..

Here is a model separation agreement:

Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure
our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can
effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.

We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns
and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.
You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore andRosie O'Donnell (You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them).

We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies,Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens. We'll keep the hot
Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood ..

You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us.. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are
under assault, we'll help provide them security.

We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values.. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N.. but we will no longer be paying the bill.

We'll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.

You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a ;
right. We'll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem.. I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute Imagine, I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya orWe Are the World.

We'll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot. Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag.

Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you Answer which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.

Sincerely,
John J. Wall
Law Student and an American

P.S. Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin Sheehan, Barbara Streisand, &
Jane Fonda with you.

P. S. S. And we won't have to press 1 for English.

7.7.09

I love the 4th of July


So this post is a bit late, but hey, better late than never!

On July 3rd, Jesi, Scout and I walked over to Fred Kelly stadium to watch their annual fireworks show. Scout was really excited on our walk over there but as soon as they started going off she decided she didnt like them, which was weird because she sees them all the time at Disneyland.

She is the cutest lil' muffin in the whole world. She kept asking if Tinkerbell was going to fly and then at the end when she didnt show up (because we werent at Disneyland) she said, "well, I guess she's not comin." I love her :)

I dont have pictures from the 4th of July but it was a great day! I love my country and I love celebrating its independence. I was the only person I saw my age wearing red, white & blue. So what if I am lame. In the morning I went over to the Trowbridges to layout a little and have some BBQ. I love going over there! Its like home away from home! Then I headed over to Jesi's friends BBQ where we played in the pool. Jesi, Scout and I headed to Rock Harbor at 5:00 to attend a prayer service for our country. We prayed for our leaders, our service men and women and the future generations. It was awesome!

After church I went to another BBQ for a bit. Then picked up my friend Nick and went to his house to swim and watch fireworks. It was amazing! He lives on the top of a hill so we could see the fireworks everywhere, from the pool!!! It was great!

Happy Birthday America and Thank You to The Men and Women Who Serve Our Beautiful Country!