You know if could see if people we fighting for food, water, medicine, etc. like some people do in different parts of the world where resources are limited.  But in the land of plenty where we have the luxury to throw out food because we don’t like it or get rid of clothes because they are out of style I don’t understand how someone pepper spraying a group of people to get an Xbox 360, scuffle with someone over a discounted cellphone, step on someone to get an item, or hold someone up at gunpoint for the items that person just purchased.  I just don’t get it, maybe it’s because there is nothing that my family and I want (key word want because at the end of the day these are all luxury items people are fighting over) that would make me do bodily harm to another living soul, and also possibly end up in jail.  The reality is that people are going to extreme measure to put a gift under the Christmas tree that the person receiving the gift won’t give a damn about by next Christmas if not sooner.   Now granted the woman who pepper sprayed the adults and children in Wal-Mart turned herself in but there is a bigger issue that is getting over looked which is, that woman is either solely or partly in charge of developing the moral compass of the child(s) that the Xbox was bought for.  How is this child(s) suppose to learn how to act and react in society when they are being influenced daily by someone who’s mindset is take what you want at any cost. 

            Look I love watching my kids open their gifts on Christmas Day, I enjoy watching them do their happy dance when they get the gift they really wanted but I have also taken the time to put certain aspects of Christmas shopping in perspective. One: I raise my children to understand that their Christmas list is just that a list, not a guarantee.   Two: I don’t allow myself to spend more than our budget will allow, Three: when I go out shopping I take the attitude of if I don’t get it, I don’t get it because whatever it is the stores will have a shelf full by mid-January.  In the end my children aren’t going to look back on their childhood and remember the sweatshirt or video game that they got for Christmas what they are going to remember is the time we spent together as a family on Christmas day

I was appalled as well incensed to read about the “personhood” amendment or Initiative 26 that will be voted on in Mississippi next week.  If passed it would change the language of the their state constitution to read that a person will be comprised of “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or functional equivalent thereof”.  Initiative 26 concerns me for several reasons one it’s verbiage is vague and broad, which will no doubt lead to misinterpretations if passed (Which I by the way I hope is not), and therefore lead to it being abused. Two it is a misguided attempt by people, who are extremists in their thinking, to decide what is best for someone else and feel that the have the ordained right to do so.  Three it completely negates the rights a woman to make decisions about her body not the state’s body but her body.  As offended and infuriated as I am I’m really not too surprised that the state of Mississippi would allow an amendment like this to be potentially added to their constitution considering they were one of the states leading the “abstinence only” charge and we see how well that turned out teenagers everywhere have stopped having sex because they wear purity rings and signed a piece of paper (wink, wink)

I believe this initiative is utterly repugnant on another level as well.   In my opinion Mississippi is tied with Alabama when it comes to backward thinking about race relations so it fascinates me that they want to pass a amendment that regards everyone as a person at fertility but then upon their birth go through painstaking efforts to treat them as less than person and take away their value due to their ethnicity or multi-racial heritage.

  I am a firm believer that when people try to in act policies such as initiative 26 they are not doing it because it’s what’s best for society.  They are doing it for purely selfish reasons; they have allowed their ego to manifest itself into a god complex that allows them to feel superior and which gives them the justification they need to impose their belief structure onto others.  People like this never see the big picture because they are too fixated on parts that support their agenda.  They don’t see how they are taking away the choice and voice of women.  They don’t see the thousand of children who age out of the foster case system every year, because no one wanted them or no one could keep them, they chose not to see the growing number of grandparents who are raising grandchildren.   All they chose to see is their own self-serving agenda.