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Throat Punch Thursday

Mom Claims that she is TOO POOR to Be HEALTHY and I Call Bullshit

by Deborah Cruz 2014/10/09

Yesterday, I stumbled across the above photo with the caption

“ I’m too poor to be healthy! “

“If I was well off, I’d be able to buy fresh food and afford a gym membership!”

It was something I saw and immediately found hard to digest. Don’t get me wrong, I KNOW that fresh food is expensive; obscenely so. We do live in a world where it is hard and expensive to be healthy because we live in a world where everything is supersized and instant gratification is expected at all times. People are busy and there is no time. No money. See, how I did that? There ARE a million excuses as to why our lives are not as we would like them to be. This caused quite a stir on my Facebook timeline.

As someone who had active eating disorders for 8 years and who is now overweight I can tell you a few things

1) Even if you have all the money in the world and all the fresh food and gym memberships, if you don’t use them they don’t work. Believe me, middle class suburbanites all over the world can attest to this. Am I right?

2) Even if you are the “ideal” weight that does not secure that your life will be “ideal”. That’s a myth. I know. I had the ideal weight and body size and I still “needed” to lose “just 5 more pounds”. If you don’t fix your perception of yourself, you can’t be happy because no matter what you look like, you will still be unhappy on the inside. Being skinny is not a magic happy solution.

3) You have to be accountable for and to yourself in order to change yourself. Blaming others for your situation is giving up. I firmly believe that where there is a will, there is always a way. You only have to be willing to look for it and work at it.

4) The real reason most people are overweight, myself included, is simple; lack of movement, an abundance of unhealthy choices and not knowing correct portion sizes (who could blame them. We live in a world of indulgence and excess.)

** Also, I am completely aware that there are people with health and medical issues that make losing weight even harder than normal or even impossible but most of us are fat, if we are honest with ourselves, because of life choices we make. I made the choice to starve myself for 8 years. My metabolism is shot dead but it’s not impossible. I just need to work harder at it than most but most days, I still choose to eat the pizza or drink the Latte because I want it. I sit on my ass all day at a desk working. This is why I am overweight. I can’t blame anyone or anything. No one shoved the food in my mouth. No one forced me to not prioritize working out. Only I can do that and it doesn’t cost anything to walk.

So, I did my research and I found the real story behind the salacious title ( we all know how online publications like to do that) unfortunately, she really is full of shit, as I originally thought. Here is the story from the Daily Mail UK..

An obese mother-of-two who lives on benefits says she needs more of taxpayers’ money to overhaul her unhealthy lifestyle.

Christina Briggs, 26, from Wigan, says she hates being 25 stone (350 pounds for you Americans) but she can’t do anything about it because she can only afford junk food. Meanwhile, exercise is out of the question because she doesn’t have the funds to join a gym.

The single mother told Closer Magazine: ‘It’s not easy being overweight and on benefits. If I was well off, I’d be able to buy fresh food and afford a gym membership.

‘I tried swimming but it cost £22 a month and it meant I had to cut back on my favourite pizza and Chinese takeaways.’

Unemployed Christina gets £20,000 in benefits a year and lives in a council house with her two children by different fathers, Helena, 10, and Robert, two.

She left school as a teenager after falling pregnant with her daughter following a one night stand.

The family feast everyday on takeaways, chocolate and crisps as Christina says they can’t afford low fat foods. As a result, the mother is currently a dress size 26.

She has been warned by her GP that her health is in danger because of her size – medical complications relating to obesity include heart disease and diabetes. Christina is desperate not to leave her two children without a mother and doesn’t want her size to take her to an early grave.

But she insists ‘it’s not my fault – healthy food is too expensive’.

She feels her only hope is for the government to give her more money so she can afford to buy fruit and vegetables and join a gym.

She also believes she should be paid to lose weight as that would give her the motivation to fight the flab.

She told the magazine:

‘I need more benefits to eat healthily and exercise. It would be good if the government offered a cash incentive for me to lose weight. I’d like to get £1 for every pound I lose, or healthy food vouchers.

‘If the price of healthy food was lowered that would help, too. I need help, but I need it from the government.’

She added that she can’t get a job to gain more money because she’s needed at home to care for her children, especially as her daughter has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and issues with her kidneys.

She explained:

‘There’s no way I could get a job. I don’t feel bad about the taxpayer funding my life and my child’s medical problems, because I don’t treat myself or buy anything excessive. I just get enough money to live on – the taxpayers should help fund my diet.’

There you have it, all in her own words. It’s Thursday and this entire situation needs a throat punch. She KNOWS that she needs to exercise and eat more healthy. She knows that much. BUT she is making excuses and blaming others. Does she need more nutrition education? Yes! Does the cost of healthy food need to be more affordable? Hell yes to all of that! But are all of her life problems because the government is not funding her weight loss program? HELL NO!

You can’t tell me with cabinets filled with junk and refusing to give up on her favorite Chinese take-out that her current weight situation is not entirely of her own doing. Choices my friends. Buy in season veggies and fruits. Shop sales. Walk. Move. Buy frozen or canned fruits and veggies, they beat a bag of chips any day.
Here are some links to help you eat healthy on a budget:

Real Food on a Food Stamp Budget

Eating Healthy on a Budget

Good and Cheap Eat well on $4 a day

Get Healthy on A budget

Ways to Stay Healthy on a Budget

Free Online Workouts

What do you think?

Is she too poor to be healthy?

2014/10/09 2 comments

Throat Punch Thursday

Zara Designs Holocaust Fashion for Kids & Sees Nothing Wrong with It

by Deborah Cruz 2014/08/28

written by Deborah Cruz

Throat Punch Thursday is back just for International Clothing designer ZARA from Spain. They are selling a “sheriff” shirt with stripes and a star of David that very closely resembles the shirts worn in concentration caps in Nazi Germany. Talk about low rent behavior.

Look, the world is a cesspool of shit right now. Isis is beheading Christians, African-Americans are being shot dead in the street like animals, mental illness is the silent killer like cancer of the brain chemicals and anti-Semitism is alive and well. See, I learned a very important lesson as a child, those who do not know history are destined to repeat it. Well, not trying to be captain obvious but haven’t we all been here before?

The ZARA shirt is just a reminder of what a group of assholes we can be when we try or just don’t give a shit about other people at all. I’m not going to go on a rant about what a rotten state the world is in because truth be told it’s probably always been in various states of shit depending on who you are and what your perspective is.

The reason this ZARA shirt is so offensive to me is that aside from being blatantly anti-Semitic it lets adults dress unsuspecting children in a sick and offensive garment that is reminiscent of one of the darkest days in history and then send them out into the world like a big Fuck You to the entire Jewish population. Maybe someone thought this was funny but I think it’s sad, hurtful and dangerous. What’s next, swastika print on Bermuda shorts? What are we teaching our children? Isn’t the world messed up enough without reopening old wounds?

Global warming, racism, bigotry, anti-Semitism, the objectification of women, the never ending misunderstanding and stigmatization of mental illness, gun Control, the economy, the hungry homeless on our own doorsteps and just a general lack of empathy and compassion in the world are just a few things going so wrong right now that have all happened before. Were we not paying attention the first 100 times these things have happened?

I’m a pragmatist, I know that the world will never be a perfect place. I don’t believe in unicorns and Utopia. I know that not everyone will always be accepting or tolerant of others. But wouldn’t it be nice if for a change, the assholes were in the minority instead of the majority. My eyes have begun to twitch from the news lately.

Today , I read about a male pediatric nurse who molested the 2-month old preemie baby boy who he was fostering and then video taped and took photos of the whole thing. It went on for weeks. In one video, the authorities said that they could audibly hear the baby crying. What makes a person able to stomach doing something like that to a newborn, or anyone for that matter?

What are your thoughts on this “Sheriff” shirt by Zara?

2014/08/28 2 comments

immigration, mexican, children, sanctuary, drug cartel, Mexico, Nazi, Europe

Latina News Throat Punch Thursday

U.S. Immigration Policy has Obama Refusing Sanctuary and Sending Children to be Slaughtered

by Deborah Cruz 2014/07/08

written by Deborah Cruz

Immigration laws are very important to me. I am a Mexican-American Latina, first generation born in the United States. If my dad had not left all of his family and everything he knew behind, my story could be different. Immigration laws could mean life or death for me. I could have been one of the children at the border begging for sanctuary. I could have been one of the mothers begging for mercy for my child’s life, willing to give them up and do anything to save their life.

You see Central America is nothing like North America. The only thing they share in common is the “America”. Living in the United States compared to living in a third world country is the difference between living in a mansion in the country and living on the streets in the middle of a war zone. If you have never been to Central America, or been and never actually ventured outside of your touristy/ trendy hotel paradise, you have no idea of what the rest of the country looks like. It is very different than what you are seeing. Those kids at the airport or on the street who jump on your taxi trying to sell you chicles or wash your windshield, they are not doing this for some extra cash…this is survival. This is how they eat. It may be mildly annoying to you to be asked but it is humiliating to them to beg for your scraps but they do it to avoid doing something worse like being drug mules.

Recently, a group of 22 migrants, mostly women and children from Honduras and Guatemala, were taken into custody after crossing the Rio Grande near McAllen on June 18. The gangs that control much of the area’s human smuggling often tell women and children that they will be permitted to stay upon turning themselves in.
The United States is preparing to send 45,000 children back to Central American countries controlled by drug cartels that routinely torture, rape and kill children who refuse to work for them. So routinely, so often are children menaced that their families sent them away, alone, across thousands of miles on just the slimmest of hopes that they might be safe. U.S. law doesn’t allow them sanctuary.

These children have walked through some of the most hostile, hot, barren, dangerous country in the world with no one to care for them. Poor families scraped together all their money by doing God knows what and paid thousands of dollars because they are terrified of what might happen to their children if they stay in their home country and then entrusted those children to criminals ( Coyotes) praying they might arrive in America and be safe.

I have been to Mexico, not Cabos San Lucas, Alcapulco or Puerto Vallarta, but nearer to Mexico City; the state of Michoacan in Western Mexico. Never heard of it? Well, it is the front line for the drug cartel in Mexico, its overlords are the Knight’s Templar drug cartel. I won’t get into too many specifics because it’s dangerous to speak of these things but I will say this, I know what these children are running from. I’ve heard the stories. I know why these parents are sacrificing themselves and separation from the most precious thing in their life; they are doing it out of pure selfless love for their children. They are risking life and limb to get their children to the United States because the alternative is death. They are risking all of this under some false pretense that the people of the U.S. are compassionate and kind. They are mistaken. Our borders are more important than their children.

This is not the first time that the United States has closed its borders to refugees in need. In 1939, a German trans-Atlantic liner carrying 938 Jewish refugees was refused entrance into our country and forced to return to a soon to be Nazi overrun Europe. We didn’t care then and we don’t care now. Our lack of compassion may have lead directly to death for some of those passengers.

And now President Obama is promising the American people to send these children back to Central America. We live in an America that demands he do so because our right to close our borders and keep the “dirty, job stealing Mexicans” out is more important to us than granting sanctuary to small children whose lives will surely be in peril if they return. The people demanding that the borders be shut are probably some of the same people who are buying the drugs that are putting these children’s lives at risk.

We’ve heard their stories now. Stories of children who are publicly stripped naked and gang raped by drug syndicates to scare their parents. Stories of children maimed in order to convince their father to sell his property or join their cartel. Stories of children murdered to prove a point. By sending these children back, we are sending the message that we think these children are as disposable as the cartel thinks they are. I implore you, as human beings, to consider that this is about more than our borders. It is about children whose lives are at risk and I don’t mean by first world standards. These children have nothing and by turning them away, be assured we are sending them to be slaughtered like animals in the street.

So you tell me, is it safe to send these children back? Doesn’t sanctuary for children at risk of being murdered trump closing our borders and immigration reform?

photo

2014/07/08 4 comments

Health Throat Punch Thursday

Adam Richman Calls Woman C U Next Thursday & tells her to Kill Herself over #Thinspiration

by Deborah Cruz 2014/07/03

written by Deborah Cruz

Adam Richman best known for hosting the gluttonous show Man vs. Food on the Travel Channel, in which he traveled the country overeating as a hobby recently, used the hashtag #thinspiration to accompany an Instagram photo of himself showing the 60 pounds that he has lost. As someone who knows exactly what that hashtag means, it’s obvious to me that he made a mistake in his choice of hashtags, probably out of sheer ignorance but what followed was certainly intentional.

In case you are wondering, the hashtag #thinspiration is used in pro-ana and pro bulimic sites and groups to cheer one another along on their quest for thinness, essentially their journey to self destruction. So, using the hashtag #thinspiration as a non ED sufferer, you are essentially like a bystander watching someone about to jump off the roof and instead of calling the fire department, chanting, “JUMP!JUMP!JUMP!” The hashtag is offensive and when used callously, I can see where some people might get offended, especially those who suffer from eating disorders. I am 17 years in recovery, I can see both sides.

Critics of his use of the hashtag started immediately informing him of his mistake but I’m assuming he felt like it was a personal attack. I get it, he’s worked to lose all the weight he gained from binging on his show. Some people would consider that an eating disorder. But instead of apologizing for the faux pas, Adam Richman retaliated by calling several of the commenters “c*nts” and suggesting that they grab a razor and draw a bath adding that he doubted anyone would miss them and that is where a simple mistake became a deliberate act of assholery. That wouldn’t have been my first choice as a public figure to respond with but hey, what do I know?

He later apologized, I am sure at the urging of his publicist. It was really more of a “sorry, not sorry” apology and by that point, Adam Richman had already done the damage. Quite frankly, his comments after the fact have ruined him for me.

As someone with food issues, him misusing the hashtag #thinspiration would not have offended me to the point of nastily calling him out. I would have kindly educated him as to what it means and represents so that he would not accidentally use it again. But once he started throwing around slurs and telling people to kill themselves, I have to agree with the general consensus that he is, in fact, a little too obnoxious for my taste.

Maybe he and Paula Dean can start your own network for television celebrities who have verbal diarrhea and a knack for offending the public. They could even call it CUNTV. Look, I’ve always been a fan of Adam Richman and his witty banter on his shows but his reaction to this situation went too far.Some times you just have to accept that you stepped in it and apologize.He took a mistake and made it shit storm. They say there is no bad publicity but I think after this, Adam Richman would agree, there is.

What do you think of Adam Richman and his behavior?

2014/07/03 1 comment

Lacey Spears, Garnett Spears, Munchausen by proxy, poisoning, sodium, child killer

Throat Punch Thursday

Lacey Spears is No “Mommy Blogger” Murderer

by Deborah Cruz 2014/06/18

written by Deborah Cruz

The news is reporting that a 26-year-old upstate New York mom, Lacey Spears, has been arrested and pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter in the death of her son, Garnett.

Garnett, Lacey Spears’ 5-year-old son died in January and hospital workers found toxic levels of sodium in his blood. The accusation is that Lacey was intentionally giving her little boy high amounts of salt, even when he was hospitalized. Garnett had been hospitalized many times throughout his young life. Spears took Garnett to the hospital on January 17, 2014 and then on January 19^th and allegedly administered sodium directly into a stomach tube. An investigation also revealed that Lacey Spears had searched the Internet to study what effects large amounts of salt would have on the body of a child and allegedly asked an acquaintance to discard of an IV bag that had salt residue in it.

On January 20^th, Garnett was alert. On January 23^rd, he died and Lacey Spears posted to social media, “Garnett the great journeyed onward today at 10:20 a.m.,”

The media is crying Munchausen by Proxy syndrome, claiming that this “mommy blogger” ( though she only ever wrote 2 posts) slowly poisoned her child out of her own sick desire to be needed as his caregiver, to get sympathy from others and to gain traffic for her blog ( yeah, the blog with 2 posts). This could be true. Everyone is also suspicious of her need to report everything on social media. Alert the presses, a new mom is posting about everything her child does on social media in 2014.

This alone does not a murderer Lacey Spears make.

Hello, it’s 2014, most moms are reporting every poop their child takes on social media. It has become second nature and if documenting her son’s struggles on social media is a crime, well, let’s just say, she’s not the only one guilty. We all KNOW people who’ve snapped an ER photo and uploaded to Instagram or reported on their child’s sickness on FB, Twitter or their blog. Is it in poor taste? Hell yeah. Does it deduce murder? I’m not sure.

Me, I don’t know her. Maybe she killed her little boy on purpose or maybe she was desperate and sick and accidentally killed him. What I do know is that her son is dead. What I also know is that Lacey Spears was not a mommy blogger. I am offended that the media keeps calling her one because they are only doing it to sensationalize the whole thing. As if the case is not sick enough already ( a little boy is dead, people) but let’s make it even more despicable by alluding to the fact that his mom was always online and solely for the attention; that she was exploiting her child and his illness for traffic and sympathy. Maybe she was or maybe she was looking for support. I don’t know. I do know that, as a mom who blogs herself, I have turned to the Internet for support many times. This is my tribe. When I miscarried, the Internet was able to support me in a way that the people in my real life could not because I was like an open wound and too fragile to face family and friends in person. The Internet can be a one-sided conversation and sometimes that is just what is needed. The Internet has helped me feel not alone when I was parenting toddlers alone for 2 solid years/5 days of the week because a down economy forced my husband to work and live in another state. The Internet has been my community for 5 years, my blog, Facebook and Twitter are our meeting places. My blog community is my safe place. It offends me that the media is trying to make the entire thing out to be a seedy group of deviant parents who neglect their children and use the Internet as a place to validate their own bad behavior.

Maybe she really was just a worried mother, he was her baby, maybe she made poor choices and went too far. Maybe she was young, single and alone and didn’t know what to tell her son when he asked where his dad was. Maybe his dad was a tool who didn’t want to be a daddy. Maybe a lie to soften the blow on the heart of a small child was the best she could do or maybe she was plain crazy and so afraid of losing the only person she knew truly belonged to her that she did poison him to keep him dependent on her. Maybe it went further than she had intended? I don’t know and I am assuming most of you don’t either but people are calling her names, remarking on her son’s long hair, her short hair, and the story she told her son about who his father was.

What we know is a sweet, innocent little boy is dead and ,whether killed accidentally or on purpose, if she did indeed poison him his mother has to live the rest of her life knowing she had something to do with that. If she did kill him on purpose, she is a monster. The more I have read about the case, she seems to be prone to lying and somewhat delusional. She needs mental help. I’m praying it was all an accident, but I fear it wasn’t.

The one thing I know for sure is that a little boy died and lived in a very painful way and that breaks my heart but that is all I truly know about this case and my heart doesn’t want to believe that a mom could intentionally kill her only child, especially in such a long, drawn out and painful way. Rest in peace, sweet Garnett.

This whole Lacey Spears situation deserves a giant throat punch.

2014/06/18 3 comments

Slender man, Morgan Geyser,Anissa Weier, Wisconsin, stabbing, Internet, meme

Throat Punch Thursday

Two 12-year-olds tried to Commit Murder & Claim Slender Man Made Them Do it

by Deborah Cruz 2014/06/03

written by Deborah Cruz

Have you heard of SlenderMan?

Me neither but apparently he’s pretty big on the Internet. Two 12-year-old girls, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, from Waukesha, Wisconsin plotted since December, lured and almost carried out the vicious stabbing and murder of a classmate the day after her birthday just to see if they could earn entrance into the mythical realm of the Slender Man. The assailants read about Slender Man online and wanted to join the cult of the Slender Man. To gain entrance, you must kill someone.

The girls invited the victim to their home for a sleepover and then lured her into a nearby park under the guise of a game of hide-and-seek, as children do. All of the people involved in this scenario are 12-year-old children, mind you. Once they had the victim alone in the woods, one held her down as the other stabbed her 19 times, very nearly fatally injuring her.

As a mother, as a human being, I am afraid for this world. I am afraid for my children. I am afraid for all of us that there are children out there who are not only so easily swayed and influenced but have the fortitude and deviousness to carry something like this out. I walk around in a state of fear because I love my children so much and the world has gone mad. I want to encase them in a bubble and shield them from all the crazies of the world; the Morgan Geysers and Anissa Weiers, the Elliot Rodgers and the Adam Lanzas but then I think about the mothers of these children, the murderers.

These mothers who have to live with the loss of their children. Who have to suffer the humiliation and sadness of knowing what their child did to the world. The guilt of living with the what ifs. How do you separate the love for your child, your baby, from the hatred of the crime they have committed? I don’t think any of us could just stop loving our children, no matter how heinous their behavior was. A parent’s love is unconditional and never ending, in my experience. How do they go on, once their child has forsaken humanity in such a vial way?

Then again, maybe these girls are just evil enough to be using all of this as a bullshit reason. Maybe they don’t believe in Slender Man? Maybe they are not as young and impressionable as we might think and would kill for a meme? Maybe they tried and failed and now they are saying and doing whatever it takes to get out of trouble. Either way, three girls lives have been changed forever. The course of their existence is altered. Three sets of parents have to learn to live with what has been done and we all have to face, once again, that no matter how we might try, we cannot truly protect our children from the evils of this world.

What do you think should happen to these girls? Do you believe Slender Man made them do it?

2014/06/03 3 comments

school stabbings, Alex Hribal, WTF America, Throat Punch Thursday, Unsafe America

Parenting Throat Punch Thursday

Throat Punch Thursday ~ WTF America?

by Deborah Cruz 2014/04/10

written by Deborah Cruz

School stabbings. School shootings. School bombings. Children molested by trusted adult. Nanny murders children. Mom drives minivan full of children into ocean. Terrorists bomb the Boston marathon. Teenagers knock out unsuspecting adults for “fun”. Teens lure an unpopular teen out to some deserted place and kill him because they are bored. Kids cyber bullying kids to the point of suicide. Young girls get gang raped and videotaped while others watch. WTF America? Does anyone else feel like the world has become the unsafest place in the universe? The world used to feel safer; more innocent. Less cynical. It seems that lately no one is safe, anywhere. Unfortunately, as people are no,t as of ye,t living on Mars, this is all we’ve got.

When I was a child, we played outside until the streetlights came on. We rode our bikes up and down the block with no supervision. We walked to school with a group of friends. Our parents trusted our friends’ parents and people were kinder to one another. There was a modicum of respect for human life. It wasn’t perfect, we had serial killers and we were cautious. Sure, there were assholes. There always are but for the most part, when you let your kids out of the house to go to school or left them with a babysitter, you weren’t afraid that it was the last time you’d ever see them.

The other day, I saw a video from 1987. It was a group of 18-year-old guys in Orlando at a convenience store with their camera asking strangers questions. Actual strangers interacting with one another, no smart ass comments, no knock out game, no bullying, no bullshit..just simple human communication. There was no real point to this video. It was just a rare snippet into an innocuous moment in history before every moment was documented. It made me nostalgic for those days before whatever this is happened. If you tried that same thing now, you would be ignored or worse, assaulted.

There were no school stabbings. You used your words.

When I was a teenager, back in the 80’s, high school boys would call high school girls that they didn’t even know because they had seen them in the hallways or a friend told a friend about so and so, actual human interaction. Yes, boys would actually cold call girls on a landline telephone. Start a fucking conversation and try to impress her, maybe even ask for a date. Hell, some guys would even pull up after school and offer you a ride home. If the girl liked him, more often than not, girls would take the ride or at the very least give him her phone number. Sounds crazy, right? Sounds like something that would give me a heart attack if my daughters did that today. Back then, either there was not so much danger or we just didn’t know about it because there was no social media and Internet. I miss those days. I miss my ignorant bliss in a time when people knew what consequences were.

I am sad that my girls live in a world where they will never fully know trust in another human being. They will never not be exposed and bombarded by social media. I am sad that they might never know the butterflies that you get when a boy who likes you walks over to you and makes adorably awkward conversation because now it’s all text and social media and there is nothing “adorably awkward” about a teen boy’s penis in a sext or finding out your hotness rating on some website. The world has become to in-your-face for my liking. It’s abrasive and feels unsafe to me.

Yesterday morning, Alex Hribal, a 16-year-old at a Pennsylvania High School went on a stabbing and slashing spree for no apparent reason. At 7:15 in the morning, he ran through the hallways slashing and stabbing anyone he could get; 22 people in 5 minutes. His attorney says that he is “confused, scared and depressed”. Yeah, well, guess what? Who gives a shit what he is. His time for fucking counseling is over. The only ones who have a right to be confused, scared and depressed are his vicitms…the American people that this asshole has made feel, once again, unsafe in their own homes.

I am so sick of the Alex Hribal, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Adam Lanza and James Holmes of the world. So they were a little weird and misunderstood. So fucking what? We’ve all been an outcast at some point or another. We’ve all felt alone but that doesn’t give you the right to take it out on innocent people. They say he might have a mental illness. Get therapy. Take your meds. Talk to your parents. Change your life but don’t take other people’s children with you because you’re having a fucking bad day! Many of us have mental illness but most of us don’t go batshit crazy and try to kill everyone in sight.

We live in a world where every single morning when I drop my little girls off at school and watch them walk toward the school hand-in-hand, I get a knot in my stomach and pray (literally PRAY) that this is not the last time that I see them. How twisted is that?

Something has got to change. We can’t unring the technology bell that has gotten us to this point. We can’t make people like people but we can raise our children in a world where they are not taught that if everything is not going their way they can just go crazy and kill people. It’s a fucking temper tantrum. It’s a poor pitiful me pity party of epic proportions. We hover and coddle and then we turn our children loose into the teen years with no social skills and an expectation of instant gratification. They don’t know consequences and they feel like the world owes them a pound of flesh because everything’s not going their way and they exact their punishment. We are raising a generation of narcissistic assholes who are so detached from human emotion that they can walk into a school and stab 22 people, shoot 26 elementary aged children, bomb an entire marathon of unsuspecting onlookers, shoot up a theater with families and not give a shit because all they care about it how they “feel”.

We have to change this. I can’t bear to hear about one more school stabbing or shooting. It starts with us, the parents. We need to teach our children that there are consequences to their actions. We need to teach them that life is not always about getting what you want or how you “feel”. Sometimes life sucks but we make changes, we talk it out, we get help, we fight for ourselves and we move on.

We teach them that these bad days don’t last forever. We quit raising kids who think the world revolves around them; who think that if they fail it’s the end of the world. We teach them to learn to get over rejection and work harder to be better. We teach them to respect human life. We teach them tenacity and self-confidence. We let them know that we are there for them and that we love them unconditionally and we pray that’s enough.

What are your thoughts on the school stabbings?

photo Trang Nguyen

2014/04/10 1 comment

euthanize the babysitter, Kevin Vincente, Mickey, pitbull, euthanize, euthanization, Phoenix

Throat Punch Thursday

Preschooler Mauled by Pitbull so Let’s Euthanize the Babysitter

by Deborah Cruz 2014/03/19

written by Deborah Cruz

I don’t really expect anyone to euthanize the babysitter but, let’s be honest, if anyone is responsible for 4-year-old, Kevin Vincente being mauled by his neighbor’s pitbull, Mickey, maybe we should place blame where it belongs…at the feet of the negligent adult whose care he was in. The poor kid has been mauled beyond recognition and there is a Facebook campaign to save the dog from being euthanized. Too bad no one fought that hard for the preschooler to be in the care of an attentive adult. Even if you want to save the dog, people need to realize there is a much bigger issue at hand; a child being neglected and in turn could have been killed.

Little Kevin Vincente was being babysat by an “adult” woman who somehow lost sight of a 4-year-old long enough for him to walk next door ( there were no fences) approach the neighbor’s chained pitbull and pick up the dog’s bone, at which point he was mauled. This poor little kid. I am sure he is traumatized. But the question remains, what the fuck was the babysitter doing that was more important than actually watching the kid? This wasn’t a slip off of a chair, he had to actually leave the house and it took time for this to take place.

Next, there was apparently an eyewitness, the girlfriend of the son of the babysitter ( yes, I know confusing). Okay, I don’t know about you but if I am “eyewitness” to a baby about to get his face chewed off by a dog, I am running as fast as I can to save the child. My priority is not to file a petition to have the dog euthanized after the child has been mauled. It’s as bad as those assholes who watch someone die in a wreck or a fire because they were too busy documenting it on Instagram to actually give a shit about anyone.

By my count, we have two negligent adults now involved and neither is the owner of the pitbull Mickey. In our house, our dog is like family, but Lola and everyone else knows that the two-legged children trump the 4-legged ones. It was established from the very start that if our dog ever snipped at the children or bit them, the dog would have to go; whether it be to another home or that farm “in the sky” we would never tolerate an animal that hurt our children. Of course, we wouldn’t allow our children to put themselves in dangerous situations either. We would never allow our children to take a bone away from our puppy. She’s still too young to know any better and it is our responsibility as parents and pet owners to take care of these little people and animals who depend on us.

All that being said, the dog was in his own yard. Minding his own damn business. Chained up. This poor unsuspecting preschooler picked up the bone because he didn’t know any better. And anyone whose ever had a dog knows that if you approach a dog with a bone in his mouth or take it away, you are going to piss that dog off. Dogs are territorial about their shit, especially their food. It’s a natural instinct. It has nothing to do with Mickey being a pitbull and everything to do with little Kevin Vincente being in the care of the world’s most negligent babysitter and definitely in the wrong place at the wrong time.

People are divided; euthanize the dog or save the dog. What about the kid? Is anyone worried about this kid? What everyone is failing to remember is that there is now a terrified little boy who will be living next door to his attacker. There is a little boy who will be permanently disfigured and scarred for life. If the dog is not euthanized, this little boy will have to face his biggest fear just going into his own backyard. He will be a prisoner of his own home.

It is a tragedy but I think the dog needs to be euthanized or removed from the area. Unfortunately, we cannot euthanize the truly responsible party in all of this; the terrible babysitter who neglected to keep the child safe in the first place. As a parent, I can understand wanting the responsible party to pay every time you look into the sweet disfigured face of your son. If it were my child, I want the dog euthanized. In this case, responsibility is being deflected to the dog, he’s the scapegoat, but I think we all know who is to blame for this tragedy and she doesn’t have four legs. Lucky for that bitch, we don’t euthanize assholes.

Who do you think is to blame in all of this? Would you euthanize the dog? Would you euthanize the babysitter or the “eyewitness’ who did nothing to stop it?

Where are the advocates for Kevin Vincente?

2014/03/19 0 comment

James Taranto, Whoopi Goldberg, date rape, rape, shitfaced

Throat Punch Thursday Women's Issues

Ladies, If You Don’t Want to Get Raped then Stop Getting Shit faced!

by Deborah Cruz 2014/02/13

written by Deborah Cruz

Did you know that date rape is just a figment of womens’ imaginations? Apparently, the Wall Street Journal’s, James Taranto, is still fighting the good fight in the “war on men”. Taranto feels that the world is on a rampage to criminalize male sexuality. And it seems that Mr. Taranto has found an unlikely ally in Whoopi Goldberg.

James Taranto wrote an article earlier this week titled Drunkenness and Doublestandards in which he compared rape to a drunk driving collision.

What is called the problem of “sexual assault” on campus is in large part a problem of reckless alcohol consumption, by men and women alike. (Based on our reporting, the same is true in the military, at least in the enlisted and company-grade officer ranks.)

Which points to a limitation of the drunk-driving analogy. If two drunk drivers are in a collision, one doesn’t determine fault on the basis of demographic details such as each driver’s sex. But when two drunken college students “collide,” the male one is almost always presumed to be at fault. His diminished capacity owing to alcohol is not a mitigating factor, but her diminished capacity is an aggravating factor for him.

Whoopi Goldberg apparently agrees because her response to the article was,

“if you don’t want this kind of attention, don’t get poop-faced. Do not get poop-faced. Do not become so drunk you don’t know what is happening.”

Way to go Whoopi! Nothing like placing the blame on the victims of date rape on national television. That’s a classy move. What’s next? Will she be standing shoulder to shoulder with Woody Allen as they cast disparaging remarks and throw stones at Dylan Farrow for being too damn milk drunk at age 7?

Look, I’ve read Mr. Taranto’s articles and this man is ridiculous to think that the men of the world need protection from the women. It’s a man’s world. It always has been. The vaginas are just living it. We have to fight tooth and nail just to be considered equal and we are still fighting to keep politicians out of our reproductive business. He quotes state troopers to support his theory,

“For the most part, they’re boys who had too much to drink and have done something stupid. When we show up to question them, you can see the terror in their eyes.”

As if that’s an excuse. They are filled with terror because they have been caught, not because they are sorry that they forced themselves on a woman in an act of rape. I wonder if the terror in their eyes looks anything like the terror in their victim’s eyes that were too drunk to fight off their rapist’s advances. Because, hey Whoopi, even when men and women are stone cold sober, pushing a man off you is a difficult task. Most men are stronger than most women, that is a fucking fact.

Taranto even goes so far to support a theory that suggests that bystanders should take culpability and intervene in all potential rape situations by “spilling a drink on the guy, turning on a light turning off the music or grabbing the perpetrator in a conga line to divert his attention.” Of course, if anyone sees a rape in process they should try to stop it but he makes it seem like college men are toddlers who need to be protected from themselves by others. No, I don’t think so. Having a dick doesn’t make you disabled.

What the Fuck? So obviously, according to Taranto, men rape because no one stops them and women drink. According to Whoopi Goldberg, if a woman doesn’t want to get raped she should just not drink so damn much. So, is it only rape if the victim can pass a breathalyzer test? Why not just take a bat to the assholes head if you catch him trying to force himself on a woman, any woman…”shit faced” or not.

Hey, Whoopi, we don’t blame victims for being raped. It doesn’t matter if she was shit faced, she needed a second haircut to wear her skirt, her lips were red and her tits were being served up like Sunday dinner. Will she attract negative attention? Probably. Does she deserve to be raped? NO!

Should women and men control their alcohol consumption? Yes. Reckless alcohol consumption can land you in compromising situations. You might wake up wondering what the hell you did the night before. You might be remorseful. But there is a universal rule that we all know and accept, men need expressed consent to have sexual intercourse with women. If no consent is given, it’s sexual assault. If a woman says, No, I don’t want to, I don’t fell like it, I have a headache, take me home or is not coherent or capable enough to say “yeah baby, let’s do it”, then do not pass go. Get up, go to the bathroom and take care of yourself or go home but do not put your penis in the vagina or you may face rape charges. Men know this. This is not new information.

Whoopi and Mr. Taranto you keep fighting the good fight to stand up against the “war on men”. Me, I’ll be over here standing up for all the shitfaced victims that you don’t think are really victims. I’ll be fighting in the real war, the war on women.

Rape is rape, assholes!

2014/02/13 6 comments

Marlise Munoz, erick Munoz, Texas, brain dead, mom kept alive to gestate fetus

Throat Punch Thursday

Marlise Munoz, Medically Dead Mom, Used as Incubator for Abnormally Developing Fetus

by Deborah Cruz 2014/01/23

written by Deborah Cruz

Legally and medically dead pregnant woman, Marlise Munoz, is being kept alive against her obvious state of deadness and her family’s wishes in order to incubate a fetus that is so deformed that ultrasound can’t even determine whether it’s a girl or boy. Erick Munoz and is son have lost their wife and mother and all the family wants to do is give her a proper burial; to say goodbye but the hospital will not allow them to do so.

Tragically on November 26, 2013, a trained paramedic, Erick Munoz, came home and found his 14-week pregnant wife, Marlise Munoz, unconscious on the floor. She is brain dead from a suspected embolism. She has been like this since that day when her husband found her. The John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas where she is being held is keeping her on life support despite the protests of her husband and family. She is essentially being used to incubate a fetus that is ‘distinctly abnormal’ after being deprived of oxygen for an unknown period of time before she was found.

Mr. Munoz and the hospital are locked in a court battle about whether to retain life support. Marlise, also a trained paramedic, was very specific with her husband that she did not want extreme measures to keep her alive in a case where she was brain dead. There is no quality of life left. The hospital has decided that Mrs. Munoz should be kept “alive” to give the baby a chance at life completely ignoring the wishes of her, her husband and common sense. The baby is essentially being incubated in a brain dead and deteriorating dead body. The result is that the fetus is not gestating normally.

“Even at this early stage, the lower extremities are deformed to the extent that the gender cannot be determined. The fetus suffers from hydrocephalus. It also appears that there are further abnormalities, including a possible heart problem that cannot be specifically determined due to the immobile nature of Mrs. Munoz’s deceased body. She is legally and medically dead.” However, officials at John Peter Smith Hospital refuse to publicly pronounce Marlise Munoz dead.

This is anguishing for Mr. Munoz, Marlise’s family and their son to go through, not to mention, it’s incredibly unfair to the baby they are keeping alive that is so severely messed up. No one wins in this situation; everybody loses. Last week, Munoz’s husband asked a court to force the hospital to take her off the respirator, ventilator and other machines, saying her wishes shouldn’t be disregarded just because she is pregnant. His goal is to have the hospital disconnect the machines so that her family can take her body and give her a proper burial.

Marlise Munoz and her family

The case has raised questions about end-of-life care and whether a pregnant woman who is considered legally and medically dead should be kept on life support for the sake of a fetus. This is no surprise to me, what they are doing to this woman. The world looks at women as things, possessions, they dehumanize us in their minds so that they can treat us as badly as they do. Women all over the world have their reproductive rights restricted and determined by men; the half of the population who have not actually ever experienced what it feels like to be a woman, to be pregnant and give birth.

If this story was about a woman who was found brain dead at 33 weeks and was kept “alive” to gestate a perfectly normal fetus until week 35. I could understand the hospital’s stance but in this case, the fetus was only 14-weeks at the time of the mother’s death. It was not viable. This situation is the stuff horror movies are made of. A husband has lost his wife, a child has lost his mother, a family has lost it’s daughter and now they are keeping her alive like Frankenstein to gestate a child who will probably not survive outside the womb and even if it does, will face severe obstacles in life. Putting the family in the position to lose another member, to relive another loss. The only humane thing to do is to let this woman and her fetus die together; to end their pain. Give the family some closure and let them move through their grief of such a monumental loss.

Do you think the hospital should keep Marlise Munoz alive or let her and her child die?

2014/01/23 5 comments

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Throat Punch Thursday

“ I’m too poor to be healthy! “

Christina Briggs, 26, from Wigan, says she hates being 25 stone (350 pounds for you Americans) but she can’t do anything about it because she can only afford junk food. Meanwhile, exercise is out of the question because she doesn’t have the funds to join a gym.

‘I tried swimming but it cost £22 a month and it meant I had to cut back on my favourite pizza and Chinese takeaways.’

The family feast everyday on takeaways, chocolate and crisps as Christina says they can’t afford low fat foods. As a result, the mother is currently a dress size 26.

She feels her only hope is for the government to give her more money so she can afford to buy fruit and vegetables and join a gym.

She also believes she should be paid to lose weight as that would give her the motivation to fight the flab.

She told the magazine:

‘I need more benefits to eat healthily and exercise. It would be good if the government offered a cash incentive for me to lose weight. I’d like to get £1 for every pound I lose, or healthy food vouchers.

‘There’s no way I could get a job. I don’t feel bad about the taxpayer funding my life and my child’s medical problems, because I don’t treat myself or buy anything excessive. I just get enough money to live on – the taxpayers should help fund my diet.’

Is she too poor to be healthy?

What are your thoughts on this “Sheriff” shirt by Zara?

So you tell me, is it safe to send these children back? Doesn’t sanctuary for children at risk of being murdered trump closing our borders and immigration reform?

What do you think of Adam Richman and his behavior?

On January 20th, Garnett was alert. On January 23rd, he died and Lacey Spears posted to social media, “Garnett the great journeyed onward today at 10:20 a.m.,”

This alone does not a murderer Lacey Spears make.

This whole Lacey Spears situation deserves a giant throat punch.

Have you heard of SlenderMan?

What do you think should happen to these girls? Do you believe Slender Man made them do it?

There were no school stabbings. You used your words.

What are your thoughts on the school stabbings?

Where are the advocates for Kevin Vincente?

Rape is rape, assholes!

Marlise Munoz and her family

Do you think the hospital should keep Marlise Munoz alive or let her and her child die?

On January 20^th, Garnett was alert. On January 23^rd, he died and Lacey Spears posted to social media, “Garnett the great journeyed onward today at 10:20 a.m.,”