Southern Snow Days: Get Off My Ice

I swear, I am going to slap the fire out of someone if I hear this one more time:

You Southerners don't know how to drive on ice.

Uh, like you do? The operative words are drive (something you Yankees need to learn to do without one hand on the horn & a finger in the air) & ice (something no one can drive on anyway, so don't give me that all High-&-Mighty crap).

In GA we don't waste the taxpayer dollars on snow plows & salt trucks because we rarely have need of them. And on those rare occasions, e.g. this weekend, when we do get snow or ice, it is a Southern Holiday. The tradition is that we close down everything, sit in our warm homes, drink hot-chocolate (kids & Baptists) or spirited beverages (everyone else) & spend time with our families, or dream about those with whom we wish we were fortunate enough to be snowed-in.

Don't mess with our tradition.

You must not have read that section in the Southerner's Handbook you were given when you crossed the Mason-Dixon Line. If you didn't read it, get out your copy & give it another shot.

And if you don't like our tradition, get in your car & you make that attempt to drive on ice. We rather enjoy watching your "superior skills" slipin'-&-slidin' all over the roads, before you go down the embankment & slam into other Yankees doing the same thing you're doing --- showing your arse. The TV cameras will love you for it.

BTW, snow is easy. Ice is another matter. Yankees can't drive on ice either. The only difference is that our Yankee Brethren spend tax dollars on those plows & trucks --- I suppose they need that sort of equipment. Our feeling is that if you're gonna spend money on tractors & big trucks, it had better be used for either: 1) growing a food crop; or 2) needs to be in a large arena in competition with similar vehicles.

So leave our Holidays alone. If you'll slow down a bit, stop talking so danged fast & listen a little, you may just find out that you enjoy what the South has to offer.

I feel much better getting that off my chest.

Homosexuality Should be a Crime?

The debate over the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell has descended into a new low that I really believed we would never again see in our nation: A call to make homosexuality a crime.

Uganda is currently having that very discussion. The Ugandan bill under consideration there would make homosexual activities a crime of life imprisionment. But in America, we no longer believe such actions are criminal.

Until now.

Family Research Council's senior policy advocate, Peter Sprigg, participated in an interview with Chris Matthew's last week & said that no gays should be allowed to serve in the military. None. They can't serve. It should be a matter of policy that gays be barred from military service.

Then Sprigg said something so outlandish, so disturbing, that I almost couldn't believe he said it, until I remembered we are talking about James Dobson's Family Research Council. Sprigg said that the US should criminalize homosexual activity.

Being gay should be a crime, according to the Family Research Council.

And Bryan Fischer, of the American Family Association, agreed, saying being gay costs money due to public health problems.

Question, Mr. Fischer: do not straight people give us a cost to public health too?

This is the problem with theocrats: they want to control every aspect of life of all people by putting their religious values onto everyone. We already fought this problem in Europe & in the New World. We decided in Colonial America that theocracy was a violation of basic liberty. We enshrined that principle of the Separation of Church & State in the First Amendment. Now, we see theocrats wanting to re-establish a Most Favored Status for one religion and impose it onto everyone.

Scary.