“People who don’t know English well enough to pass a written test won’t be able to get a driver’s license in Kentucky under a new policy that goes into effect June 1.”
–Lexington Herald Leader – Kentucky.com

It’s about damn time…seriously. If you can’t read/speak English, then you don’t need to be on our roads, where all of our signs are in ENGLISH.

If you can’t read English and run up on an electric flashing sign telling you that a bridge is out, there is a detour or anything else- how are you suppose to read it?

The opposition is saying that this violates the federal Civil Rights Act; however, this is America and we speak English; it’s not a Civil Rights issue but a safety issue.

While I do believe in equality, I also believe that you should learn and speak the language of the country you call home.

I think this is a way to push illegal aliens out of the country and I am all for it. Everyone in the world has a RIGHT to become an American; as long as you do it the legal way. Hoping across the boarder is NOT the legal way.

I think they should take this a step farther and when someone comes in to renew their license and can’t speak English, they should be given the written test again, in English, and if they don’t pass…they lose their license. I would expect the same if I went to France or Mexico. I would not move to another country, illegally, and then expect that country to change and cater to my every need because I’m too lazy to learn their customs and language.

This brings me to another thing that truly pissed me off.

We were shopping around Wal-Mart yesterday and they have piñatas in the shape of stars and Uncle Sam’s Hat and they are Red, White and Blue…piñatas for the 4th of July…

Does anyone see the problem with that statement….4th of July PINATAS.

~~~~ShArky~~~~
www.sharkysworld.com

UPDATE: It took KY Governor Steve Beshear less than a day to force the Kentucky State Police to reverse the decision about only providing the written drivers test in English.

What a shame.

“Because the Neumanns believe in faith, in God healing rather than the medical doctors. If you have enough faith, the Lord can do anything.”

Leilani Neumann allowed her 11-year-old daughter to die of untreated diabetes because she prayed for God to heal her instead of taking her to the doctor. (Google the story for full details).

This woman is on trial for second-degree reckless homicide and faces up to 25 years in prison.

“I just felt that, you know, my faith was being tested. I never went through an experience like that before in my life and I just thought, man, this is the ultimate test.” This freak job even went on to say that her husband briefly considered getting their daughter to a doctor- “I said, ‘No, the Lord’s going to heal her.’ I believed that God was going to just restore our daughter.”

I believe in the right of every person to worship and believe how they want but this is taking it too far. This sorry excuse for a mother should NOT be facing a second-degree reckless homicide charge; she should be facing a murder charge. She should not be facing a 25 year sentence; she should be facing torture.

Directly based on her ignorance, she caused her daughter to die a painful, pointless death.

How long will Americans, with common sense, tolerate murder, greed, dishonesty, sexual abuse and other crimes in the name of God?

It’s pathetic that so many Americans are brainwashed to this point. The point of watching their daughter die as they “pray” to a mythical character. Evolution has been proven and there is additional evidence almost DAILY to back up the exact science of who we are and how we got here.

Praying is a weak excuse for doing nothing.

Religion (and the lack of) is the freedom of all people but that belief should NEVER affect another person. You are free to believe and worship how YOU see fit but you cross the line when your religion directly affects someone else.

Is this ladies defense truly going to be – God didn’t come through for me? If that is the case, I could go out and shoot someone right between the eyes and then get off clean because their faith must not have been strong enough.

~~~~ShArky~~~~
www.sharkysworld.com

Picked up RELAPSE last night and I would give it an 8 out of 10.

The rhyming skill is still there and still amazing but a lot of the content is the same stuff from his early CDs.

Every song flows great and there isn’t a “bad” song on the disk. My favorites are “Same Song & Dance”, “Beautiful” and, of course, the singles – “Crack A Bottle” and “We Made You”.

Like I said though, the entire CD is great. I’m also glad he went back to the “old days” of CD’s and put the lyrics in the insert. When you start following along and really discover they rhyming techniques, it literally blows your mind.

No doubt….the greatest rapper (lyric wise) to ever live.

~~~~ShArky~~~~
www.sharkysworld.com

PS. – I didn’t mention his name once, so if you don’t know who I’m talking about…you’re not hip like the kids today.

I had a mini-disaster with my hard drive over the weekend. I cleared both the desktop and laptop over to our external hard drive in order to back everything up to DVD so I would have two backups incase of a disk failure or something.

I got the new pictures of Evan burned and then the external hard drive started beeping and crashed and now will not come back on.

This means that I have lost probably about 3 months worth of pictures of Jackie, movies, music and pictures; however, I didn’t lose everything and I don’t think I lost anything of Evan thanks to my other backups and the DVD I got burnt, so it could have been worse but it still sucks that this is the 2nd external hard drive to crash in less than 2 years.

What the fuck are you suppose to do to back shit up these days? Shit!!

There is a bit of good that came out of the hard drive crashing, I think I’m learning to live more in the moment and less in the “past” through pictures.

Sure, I lose some pictures but most of them weren’t that great (I don’t delete any pictures). I had posted the “good ones” and was able to resave those. I have a habit of taking 300 pictures at a time and then I cut them down to the good ones so I don’t think it was that big of a deal. The truth is, I never really looked at them and what I wanted to post had already been posted.

On to other stuff…

I have already gotten shit for my last post about “depression”. If you can look at the world today and NOT be depressed, then you are a better person than I am.

The weight loss is getting back on track, Evan is doing GREAT with potty training, my wife and son are as awesome as ever and Eminem’s new CD comes out tomorrow…

Life can’t get much better than it is right now.

~~~~ShArky~~~~
HMFIC
www.sharkysworld.com

I think I’m getting hit with a little depression and it’s, well, depressing.

I don’t want to post something that my family, friends and readers take as a “sign” that I’m going to do something stupid because that isn’t it at all; my thoughts are just changing…it happens in life.

I use to think that people who committed suicide were weak people but I’m slowly seeing the mind set they may have been in. Society pushes you into a corner and then ridicules you for not being able to get out.

By growing up “low class”, I never really fully understood how the world worked and it’s a shame that it’s taking me so long for it to hit me. I remember that when I was young, my mom would take me to the doctor, pay for it with a Medical Card, when we were hungry, we would get groceries with food stamps and the first of the month was always like Christmas because we got $196 from the government. We never really worried about rent being due because it was either paid for or didn’t really cost much to begin with.

Now, I’m starting to see the other end of the situation and it’s truly enough to break a person, it’s enough to cause a grown man to break down and it’s enough to put thoughts in your head that would have never been there before.

Don’t take that as a sign that I’m going to kill myself or do anything stupid like that but saying that I’m not facing depression would be a flat out lie.

Maybe being an only child, usually getting what I wanted added to the situation and maybe I’m over-reacting to the mini issues that I face but doesn’t a man get crushed by 1,000 10lb. weights dropped slowly on him just the same as a man who gets 10,000 lbs. dropped on him at once? It’s just slower and more painful.

I have the greatest wife and son in the world and we work daily to provide a decent life for our family but then you realize that society doesn’t give a fuck about that…or about you.

Let’s go through the list of stuff that is currently on my mind –

1. I have a training coming up in Washington, DC and my employer (the Commonwealth of Kentucky) will not pay for anything up front. They will reimburse me but I have to come up with $1700 up front to pay for everything and then wait a few months to get it back from the state? Does this even make sense to anyone? So, my supervisor and I went to make a “travel loan” from our credit union and it was denied and they don’t allow co-signers on those types of loans, even though I have all of the paperwork to show that either the Commonwealth of Kentucky or the Federal EPA will repay the bank back…doesn’t matter.

2. I drive a 1995 Nissan Sentra (13 years old) that constantly needs “fix’n”. I had thought of having my mother-in-law co-sign for a loan to get a newer car. I make decent money and could afford to repay it back, no problem but that probably won’t work either. I can’t make the loan myself because I still owe medical bills and a student loan that I haven’t missed a payment on over the last 3 years or so.

3. My wife has made 3 loans from the same bank (her mom as a co-signer) and she has paid all of them back, repaying the last one now and never missed ONE payment, yet if she tried to get a loan at that bank without a co-signer, they would deny it. She has proven she can repay the loan because the has done it several times before.

4. Our son will probably not get to go to preschool because he doesn’t have a learning disability and we aren’t “poor” enough.

5. Daily, I watch these “poor” people and illegal Mexicans drive better cars than me, have more money then me, their kids get better/earlier educations than mine while I pay for it ALL with my tax money.

6. Our neighbor’s dog shits on our lawn daily, tears our trash to pieces and has our 2 year old scared to go outside in his own yard and play. I’ve called the landlord, police, zoning commissioner and dog catcher and no one gives a fuck; however if I break the fucking dogs neck, I would probably be arrested

7. We didn’t get any type of help as far as welfare, food stamps, medical card or KCHIP (Kentucky’s Children Health Insurance Program) because we “made too much money” yet we work from pay check to pay check and always on the verge of being homeless. Our child was allergic to everything and had to have special formula that costed us about $25.00 every few days…still no help. I’m a believer that if you can’t afford children, don’t have them but, with that said, I could afford our child if I wasn’t so fucking busy paying for all of the poor peoples children. When I see a girl in Wal-Mart with four kids, paying with food stamps…how could it NOT piss me off?

8. Then you can add all of the financial issues. In the Commonwealth of Kentucky Regulations, state employees are (by law) required to get a 5% raise per year, which hasn’t happened in about the last 5 years. Our “legislators” meet and vote to knock it down to 1% or nothing and then they vote to raise our health insurance premiums by 10% and there is nothing we can do about it. Time Warner Cable and the Lawrenceburg Water Company have a monopoly and continue to raise our bills and there is nothing we can do it about.

Now, most of you are probably saying – “that’s life, get over it.” That isn’t “life” though. This nation is ran by OUR tax money yet we continue to take a back sit and continue to get fucked without fighting back.

So, when you get pushed to the edge, you have two choices – fight a losing battle or give up and I’m starting to see that sometimes, giving up isn’t a sign of weakness but a sign of honesty.

If something happened to me and I die today, my wife and child would be taken care of. They would get several life insurance policies and when that money ran out, their income would be in the “lower class” section and she would get all the help needed.

I’ve always been a fighter, an instigator and I’m not going to change now, which is why I created OneSociety.Ning.Com and I truly feel that it’s time we fight back. I’m tired of taking a back seat to everyone else in this world, it’s time to stand up and make changes.

Anarchy? Maybe.

I don’t believe America has ever been a “democracy” nor will it ever be.

When taxes are forced away from me in order to pay for someone else, when an Athiest is forced to acknowledge GOD to survive or show allegiance, when illegal immigrants can knowingly break the law yet our “police” do nothing about it or when any group of people are denied service based on their beliefs, race, sex or any other characteristic and our government allows it….then you can not claim to be a democracy. You can not claim to be the “land of the free”.

I’m not talking about killing anyone, hurting anyone or causing any type of damage like that. I’m talking about coming out from behind closed doors and making ourselves and our beliefs known. I’m talking about expression our voices, opinions and fighting with everything we have to force changes.

It’s a shame that our society is set up to push you to the very edge to either jump off, beg someone to push you or start fighting for your life with total disregard of others.

~~~~ShArky~~~~
HMFIC
www.sharkysworld.com

I feel like pissing some folks off today…why not, I was pissed off last night, so why not share my feelings about a certain situation and if you get pissed off, I’m not really in the mood to care right now.

Last night, there was a parents forum for kids that are preschool age. This forum was to explain how preschool works and what to expect, well we can expect that Evan will probably never get to go to preschool.

The guy who gave the presentation was great. He was extremely nice, spent about 30 minutes after the meeting talking to Jackie and I directly and seemed like a really great person to be working with as far as Evan’s education.

The pissed off part comes from the state regulations that the presenter had nothing to do with, he was just the messenger…the message is what pissed me off.

Here is the deal, with new laws and regulations dealing with preschool, there is basically three ways of getting in –

1. Your child has a learning disability
2. You are poor
3. They offer you a spot and you pay $180

Let me break these three sections down.

** Your child has a learning disability **

Now, we are not talking about disabled children, we are just talking about kids who may be a little behind, have problems with speech or show signs that they may have learning issues.

I don’t think Evan will fall into this category because based on all the research we’ve done, he is basically already doing stuff that a “gifted” 4 year old can do and he is only 2.5 years old. The only problem he has is with other kids his age; he’s never been around any. He stays with his nana while we work and has never really had much interactive with other kids his age.

It’s sad that you hope your child has a learning disability just so he can go to school and be equal to the poor kids.

** You are poor **

They determine you to be “poor” if your child qualifies for the free/reduce lunch program which means…well, you are poor. If you get welfare, WIC, KCHIP, food stamps or anything like that, then you are poor.

The state says that poor kids are “at risk”, my question was…why? What makes one child more “at risk” then another child because their parents make $10,000 a year more?? I didn’t really get an answer to that; and here is why.

“At risk” means that if you are considered poor, then you probably aren’t teaching your child much to begin with. The state assumes that if you are too lazy to get up and work then you are probably too lazy to be teaching your child, therefore, they are at risk.

Evan won’t get in based on that because we make too much money. We are struggling, living from pay check to pay check but we make too much money.

This is like the situation when we applied for welfare, food stamps and all that wonderful stuff. If we weren’t married and I didn’t live in the home; Jackie and Evan would be set for the next 18 years.

We were basically “punished” for getting married, working every day and trying to do what responsible adults do. Sine we are trying, we get NO help at all but if we give up and quit – we are paid for!!!

If we quit our jobs, Evan would have PAID health insurance, preschool, lunch, day care and we would be given a welfare check and food stamps.

Does it really pay to even try? No wonder our welfare system is so overloaded.

** They offer you a spot for $180 per month **

We can make cuts in order to pay the tuition and allow Evan to go to preschool, there is NO problem there; however, we don’t really even have that choice. The kids that can and are willing to pay are pushed to the very last and if there is any spots open, then a select few will be offered those.

That basically means- if you know someone…your child gets in.

The thing that really got me and pushed me over the edge was this (and I am paraphrasing) – “We can provide all of this to your child thanks to your tax dollars.”

So, I’m working my ass off, paying my taxes and school taxes so that I can pay for the poor kids to get ahead of my child??

I hate to say this but my dad leaving may have been the best thing he could have ever done for me. I’m slowly realizing that by Jackie and I getting married, working our ass off and being responsible adults, we have actually hurt Evan in the long run. Thanks to use trying to be a strong family for our child, we have put extra problems on him and pushed him to the very bottom of the list.

~~~~ShArky~~~~
HMFIC
www.sharkysworld.com