Samantha Pierce

Today I am thankful for/that: The hot water bottle. Helping hands, big and little. Warm sunshine. Backyard picnics. Modern medicine. Freedom. What are you thankful for?

Put out by Arizona's law regarding suspected illegal immigrants? Take it out on a high school girls' basketball team in Illinois! Highland Park basketball team trip to Arizona scrapped What do a bunch of teenage girls from Illinois playing basketball have to do with this law? Seriously? If some district official wants to take a stand on what's going on in another state use your own life and your own time. Go ahead and inconvenience yourself to do it if you want. Don't go messing with the lives of a bunch of kids to spread your political message. It's funny that Assistant Superintendent Suzan Hebson, who seems to be responsible for this decision, is claiming "safety concerns." Isn't that one of the reasons why Arizona passed the law in the first place? All the drug violence, kidnappings and so on along the boarder were getting a bit much for them so they decided to take some steps. Presumably this district official felt that Arizona was safe enough befo...

I've fallen off the wagon a bit in the past few weeks but hopefully I'm back on for a while. So today I am thankful for/that: I remembered to be thankful. Modern medicine. Seriously, how did people live before antibiotics and the various over the counter medicines we use when we get sick? How many of us wouldn't be here if it weren't for the innovations of modern medicine? I shudder to think of it. "Here mom, let me help." Even if the help is more trouble than it's worth it's the thought that counts. Sunshine. Flowers. Friends. Endurance. Patience. Second chances. Laughter. What are you thankful for?

Today I am thankful for/that: The unstoppable forward march of spring. Hope. This too shall pass. Helping hands. The IRS isn't after me, not yet anyway. Those who wish to be stumbling blocks will get trampled. What are you thankful for?

I've been reading up on the Tennessee woman who adopted a child from Russian and then after a few months sent him back. I'm having a hard time understand why anyone would think that this was acceptable behavior. Fury as U.S. woman adopts Russian boy, 7, then sends him back alone with note saying: 'I don't want him anymore' Tenn. Mom Sends Adopted Son Back To Russia Adoption Freeze Urged After Boy, 7, Returned With Letter Torry Hansen, 33 claims, in the letter that she sent with the boy and through her mother in the media, that the child has mental health issues that she was not made aware of and was not prepared to deal with. News flash lady, and anyone else who thinks they can return-to-sender a child, the same thing is true of biological children. Despite an unrealistic wish for perfect children no one under any circumstances is guaranteed a perfect worry free problem free child. When biological parents do something like this it is called abandonment. When you ado...

Today I am thankful for/that: The perfect sacrifice. Redemption. Sunshine. Birds singing. What are you thankful for?

If you're looking for something to smile about watch this.

Today I am thankful for/that: Sunshine. Flowers blooming in the garden. Helping hands. Competent allies. Incompetent unfriendlies. A firm foundation. What are you thankful for?

Today I am thankful for/that: Salt. Light. Life. What are you thankful for?

Yes I said cotton balls. Apparently dropping cotton balls outside of an establishment known to be frequented by black people is a hate crime. And here I thought it was at worst littering. Arrests Made In Mizzou Cotton Ball Incident: 2 Students Suspended After Their Arrest Two students have been arrested in connection with the incident where cotton balls were left overnight outside the Gaines/Oldham Black Culture Center on the campus of the University of Missouri-Columbia. Very early Friday morning, someone threw cotton balls outside the Culture Center. The offensive act sparked a town hall meeting on the Campus Monday night. At the meeting, students discussed what to do in response to the racist display. Police investigated the incident as a hate crime. What to do about cotton balls on the sidewalk? Trample them into oblivion or pick them up! All that drama over cotton balls . I'm trying to imagine a mind fragile enough to be offended by cotton balls on the sidewalk. I don't h...

It should have been an obvious outcome of the combination of unforgiving government attempts at population control, cultures that value men above women, and advancements in medical technology that allow sex identification and the termination of the unwanted in utero. Gendercide The worldwide war on baby girls: Technology, declining fertility and ancient prejudice are combining to unbalance societies According to the article the normal ratio of births is 103 to 106 boys for every 100 girls. But in some areas there have been reported ratios as high as 275 boys for every 100 girls. I find this imbalance appalling not for the sake of all of the men who will be unable to find wives but for all of the girls who had to die and the mothers who had to kill their daughters to produce the imbalance. Not even the education and advancement of women seems to stop the trend of terminating baby girls. The stakes only get higher when you're only going to have one or two children in a culture that s...

Today I am thankful for/that: Hubby has joined the battle with the Hydra (aka the laundry). My little helpers actually do help on occasion. Bird song. Sunshine. Flowers. What are you thankful for?

Apparently some website called The Root (the root of what I wonder) has delusions about being the arbiter of blackness or something. The folks at the website have put up a list of people they wish they could remove from black history because they are "embarrassing". Okay whatever. Now some folk are trying to say that it was just a joke, tongue in cheek silliness. Yeah it's silly alright. Too late to try putting that toothpaste back in the tube now people. You've already put the foolishness out there. I'm not going to link to the list but I will link to two posts discussing it. First at Booker Rising, TheRoot.com Releases "Black Folks We’d Like To Remove From Black History" List: Bookerista Response and second Althouse, Black Folks We'd Like To Remove From Black History . I found the contrasting tones of the comments on the two posts very interesting. In any case, this stunt doesn't make me very interested in visiting The Root any time soon.

Today I am thankful for/that: Hubby is home for the snow day. Hot chocolate with marshmallows. Playing in the snow. Central heating. We still have power. This thankful list swiped from a facebook friend, "Bathtubs filled with hot water. Good teachers. The military...and steak." Friends who remind me what things are really important. What are you thankful for?

Via Booker Rising . [Insert evil chuckling here.] People do listen when you keep trying to portray them as racists. They're just not coming to the conclusions that you want them to about your claims.

The bible says that there is nothing new under the sun. Now ain't that the truth. Virginia lawmaker Bob Marshall seems to be channeling Jesus' disciples from a couple thousand years ago and not in a good way. " The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children." "In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There's a special punishment Christians would suggest." Marshall has since tried to back away from and clarify his statement. But where have I heard that kind of thinking before, that disability must be the result of someone's sin? Ah here we are, 1As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2And his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" 3Jesus answered, "It was ...

For those of you who have more snow than you know what to do with here's an idea . Those Daleks have got more lives than a Time Lord's cat. As one commenter at the site says, "PRECIPITATE! PRECIPITATE!"

I dislike appeals to scientific consensus preferring to peruse the research that current scientific opinion is based on for myself. Having said that, in light of Lancet finally getting around to retracting Andrew Wakefield's 1998 study that claimed that vaccines were linked to autism, Popular Mechanics is taking a look at some studies that have claimed a link between vaccines and autism. The Truth About 9 Anti-Vaccine Studies Now that the infamous 1998 Lancet study implicating vaccines for causing autism has been retracted, does the anti-vaccination movement have any scientific legs left to stand on? Here, we investigate the scientific merit of some of the other lightning-rod studies from over the last decade that anti-vaccination advocates say back up their claims.

Today I am thankful for/that: Hot steamy showers. Little voices gleefully shouting, "Daddy! Daddy!" and "Mommy! Mommy!" That yellow blob in the sky. I'm pretty sure it's the sun. Modern medicine. We'd be so miserable without it. Central heating. What are you thankful for?

The news has hit the main stream media that part of the proposed revisions destined to be in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) include incorporating the current category of Aspeger's Syndrome, along with Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) and a few others, into the larger Autism Spectrum Disorder category. All in all I think this is a good move that will result in more accurate diagnosis and better access to services for individuals who currently have autism related diagnoses but not the label autism. While I haven't yet come across objections to doing away with some of the other diagnostic labels such as PDD and PDD-NOS there seems to be some criticism of the changes with respect to Asperger's Syndrome. The one criticism that I find most irritating is the complaint that this change will "taint" Asperger individuals with the label of autism. The complaint rears it...