| This Is A Man's World by Lavarr Smith |
Matador and the Bull: Look Away
~~Hmmmmmm...Afghanistan worsens. Iraq has no WMDs.~~
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—Look away, says the matador: immigration, O.J. Simpson, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Michael Vick, and the Barry Bonds indictment.
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~~Enough time passes, thousands of soldiers died; many were maimed, and some returned undiagnosed/misdiagnosed with PTSD and Brain Trauma Injuries (BTIs); soldiers continue to die; Iraqi citizens die by the thousands, instability, political disharmony, billions of dollars spent—Halliburton benefited and some other crooked outfits.~~
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—Look away, says the matador: the invasion freed thousands and thousands of Iraqis. Look, things are getting better; don't be unpatriotic. The world is much better. We'll all be much better.
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~~Recalls after recalls, toys dipped in lead, ingested toys with date rape drugs, gifts and trips for company heads, poisoned seafood, poisoned pet foods, what could be next? NAFTA cost American jobs, and NAAEC/NAALC weren't much better—defenders defend banking deregulation and laissez faire economics; heartsick homeowners lose their homes and get evicted. Welfare reform left single mothers in poverty; about 36 million Americans live in poverty; they have no health care, no child care—drum roll, please...who actually perpetrated welfare fraud?~~
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—Look away, says the matador: NAFTA is good for Americans. More foreign deals are in the works that will work out much better. These problems will be fixed with the new presidency. They’ll fix health care, they say, for everybody.
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~~Child molesters have rights—in Georgia, there’s now a big fight. Bleeding hearts and photo ops move the topic to a national discussion. Recidivism rates and medical consensus dictate that there’s no cure for child molesters, but some folks are not listening. Lawyers and law-makers push rights for law-abiding predators—they should live near our children is what they seem to be saying. Do they mean that our children should be the ones uprooted so that predators won't have the inconvenience of finding new dwellings? And so what if we stay silent, or do little, or do nothing? The best of parents can only hope their children are not the next to be sought after and preyed upon by predators and a system that protects them.~~
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—Look away, says the matador: we lock up repeat offenders.
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~~I never knew my father; the family said he beat my mother. I'm a good man, a good father, and a good provider—thank goodness for the woman who taught me better. She’s a survivor, and she's my dear mother.~~
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—Look away, says the matador: sons of abusive males turn out to be abusive.
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It doesn't matter if you like me; that's a moot subject to me—my son deserves better, and it starts with me.
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Lavarr Smith
Drawing by A.A.
November 25, 2007
Distractions by Pam Ely
~~That Fathers’ Rights lawyer pushed the agenda (tonight) on a popular cable news; he told a bunch of fables. Our courts, he said, are tilted toward women, and that’s supposedly why they keep getting alimony. Yet women lead the pack in poverty. They amount to about sixty-seven percent of the poverty stricken. After divorce, it’s been proven that women do worse than their ex-partners, when they’re left to care for their children with feminized paychecks.~~
“In Utah, divorce and its financial stresses account for 75 percent to 80 percent of the people on welfare rolls.”
–Utah's Unique Take on How to Strengthen Marriages by Katharine Biele in The Christian Science Monitor 9/21/98
~~Predators, PAS lawyers, PAS psychologists, PAS judges, and the like cause children to be molested and remolested. Batterers have rights after they beat up the children’s mother. Children are forced to stay with unfit fathers. Mothers without money struggle to fight a system stacked against them with judges advocating family values as a religion. Lobbyists push agendas that benefit child abusers, batterers, manipulators--oh, what a deafening silence. And the only voices being heard are lawyers lying via the media. I’m a survivor of a batterer, who beat me for many years. The court failed me and my daughter and many others throughout the years. They gave me a protective order, but gave him a court order that guaranteed my abuser would have access to me and my daughter.~~
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—Look away, says the matador: court officials protect women and children as much as they possibly can.
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“Single mothers are nine times more likely to live in deep poverty than the married family, with incomes less than half of the official poverty line."
–David J. Eggebeen and Daniel T. Lichter, "Race, Family Structure, and Changing Poverty Among American Children," American Sociological Review 56 (December 1991), 807. Cited on page 31 of The Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher
~~According to federal statistics, 22% of divorced female retirees live in poverty vs. 18% of widows and 20% of women who never married. ... Poorly constructed divorce settlements and short-term thinking -- trying to hang onto a dream home that took two incomes to support, for instance -- can cripple women’s finances. ... Too often, they give up a portion of their ex-husband's pension or other retirement savings, such as a 401(k) plan, in exchange for the house or other immediately accessible assets. It's a choice that can cost them a secure retirement. ...According to the Social Security Administration, the average retired woman receives just $8,376 a year in Social Security benefits. Many divorced women earn much less.~~
COVER STORY: Golden years bleak for divorcees
Many retire into poverty, but it doesn't have to be that way
Sandra Block
08/08/2000
USA Today
“No-fault divorce” not only made many divorced women worse off, it may also have made many married women worse off."... "Under fault-based divorce, the husband who wanted a divorce had to negotiate with the wife; under no-fault the wife who wants the children has to negotiate with the husband. In both cases, the party with negotiating power is likely to receive a settlement more in line with his or her preferences."
—Allen Parkman, "No-fault Divorce and the Family: The New Negative-Sum Game," The Family in America, February 1993, p. 4. Cited in Brian Willats, Breaking Up is Easy To Do, available from Michigan Family Forum.
"Many women have either delayed marriage, or have married, but continued working to maintain their economic status should the marriage end. Elizabeth Peters found that living in a no-fault divorce state increased the likelihood that a married woman would be working outside the home, many against their greater desire to spend more time at home with their families."
—Brian Willats, Breaking Up is Easy To Do, available from Michigan Family Forum, citing H. Elizabeth Peters, "Marriage and Divorce: Informational Constraints and Private Contracting," American Economic Review, June 1986, p. 449. Cited in Allen Parkman, "No-fault Divorce and the Family: The New Negative-Sum Game," The Family in America, February 1993, p. 4.
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—Look away, says the matador: court officials protect women and children as much as they possibly can.
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~~A Saudi woman is gang raped; the government set to impose 200 lashes and jail—all part of some twisted punishment. U.S. government stays silent, but sanctions Myanmar for monks suffering injustice. Yet women in all parts of the world suffer injustice on a daily basis; genital mutilation is still a common practice; men rape underage female virgins, believing they can cure them of HIV and AIDS. Bulimia and anorexia—young girls in America have eating disorders; the condition is most often never seriously dealt with. It's difficult for young women and girls, tuning in, when skinny is preferred on television and in glamorous magazines. Worldwide, children live in poverty; The U.N. Security Council ignores Darfur.~~
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—Look away, says the matador: we meet in summits yearly and "talk" about these dreadful problems.
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Lavarr is right; he’s a good man. But the rest of this is all distractions.
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This is a man's world, but it wouldn't be nothing without a woman or a girl
—James Brown
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______________________________
Pam Ely
November 25, 2007
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