Fathers Day and Real Dad’s

Fathers Day is here again and all I can think of is my own Dad that passed away in 2003. My Dad was a good man, an honest man, a hardworking man that happened to have seven kids. He was Irish and the television was broken so I’m not giving any excuses for a large family.

Dad loved his family and he showed it as best he could and the only way that he knew how. He never bought expensive toys for himself. No golf clubs, no motorcycles, no fancy clothes or shoes. Matter of fact he used to go to a shoe repair shop to get his heals and souls replaced. This was a Dad that dropped his paycheck in Mom’s hand and he hadn’t signed his own name on it in over thirty years. Mom signed, cashed, and paid the families bills. What the family needed he provided the means. Mom handled the details of how to get it done with the money they had.

I recall the good times more so than my older siblings and to me he just wasn’t the man that made and enforced the rules of a large family but he was also my friend. My Dad was not the same Dad that my sisters knew. Dad loved his daughters but he never understood how the female mind worked so he stepped aside and let Mom handle the alien species of the household. He wasn’t the same Dad that my older brothers knew either. With each one of his seven children he had only his own personal way of dealing with his children. He wasn’t a Doctor Phil Dad but he gave it his best shot. Where he may have failed in some of his children’s eyes he succeeded in others. Seven children are seven very different people. Each one of his children had a very different relationship with him. Some of us took to heart what he was all about and some of us chucked the bird at him for being over protective and concerned when Mom was crying.

We all grew up, we all survived Dad at his worst and Dad at his best. What I love to remember most is that he loved all his children no matter our faults and failures. We were and are all his babies and that is what a true Dad is all about.

Dad became frail after Mom died. He ventured back up north from Florida. When he started to decline we took care of Grampa Jack as best we could. When Alzheimer’s took over his mind I know that he and I were still a team. Till his last day on this Earth he still looked at me as a friend, someone he could be comfortable with and a calm place to be in a storm of confusion. He didn’t know my name but I knew his. That is all that mattered.

Being the baby boy it was he and I that bonded the most. I will never have a friend that will accept me no matter my faults like my Dad did and frankly I never want to replace the friendship that my Father and I had. Jack O’Keefe was my best friend and he was also my Dad. I loved him as a friend and also as my Dad. I can only hope that I can be half the man he was as a father.

Happy Fathers Day Dad!

I love you Dad and miss you my friend,

Matthew

Invasion of Families by the State

This is a personal issue that I think should be played out here. My girls are my world and my family is my world but when you insert one child with a serious mental health issue into the equation and ask the state for help it can turn your life up side down. Anything your child says is a weapon for the state social services to use against you and you are guilty till proven innocent no matter what you do. That is the case in our lives today.

Would you see a problem with a sixteen year old that is reasonably stable watching her little sisters for an hour or so till Mom gets home from work? Apparently, the Department of Mental Health in Mass A Two Sticks has a problem with that. They filed parental neglect charges along with more idiotic accusations from the mouth of just on child. Missing one phsyc appointment is neglect too! Not accepting as realistic as a parent of that child stating two days later that she took enough of her mental health medication that could have killed a cow is serious neglect because you did not take her to the Emergency room two days after the fact is a viable charge. The laundry list goes on. I apparently pick up a six pack and drink and drive with my four little ones in the car. NOT! This is what society has become when the state has a voice in raising the child. She can state any fact and we are guilty. We are dirty and we are criminals in the eyes of the state till proven innocent accordigng to the words from a child on more mind altering drugs than Timmothy Leary would have ever dreamed about being available.

A good friend of mine slapped me upside the head the other day and told me to get a lawyer. My wife and I don't really need one because we have done nothing wrong. We are lucky that we have nothing to hide. Having a child that is diagnosed Bi-Polar is a rough road to travel and it comes with some serious dilemas if you ask the state for help. From that point on they own you and you live under a microscope as parents. Any accusation from the troubled child triggers by law an investigation by other state services and you are guilty till proven innocent. Yup, toss out the Constitution and insert social services rules and state regulations.

There is no abuse of any kind here in this case, and yet I fully back social services in cases where children are truly abused. They don't make enough money in my opinion for the job that they have to do. Given our situation, if the sixteen year old does not like the decicions of her parents then she can say what ever she wants to make our lives hell. We get investigated because we refuse to allow a sixteen year old to date someone that is twenty three? That is how the system works if your kid is part of DMH in Mass! Tantrums gone extreme with teeth.

I do have a problem with them telling me that they will be in our lives for the next three months and visiting every single week till the investigation ends. Last time I checked this wasn't France and you are in prison till you pay the fine. This is what Mass A Two Sticks is like if you dare to beg the Department of Mental Health for help with a troubled teen. The troubled teen becomes the overlord of the family and you are the prisoner of the system forever. No matter how good of a parent you are they make you feel dirty and wondering what you ever did wrong. Guilty till proven innocent is all that it is.

I've pondered this for a while and I am fighting back fire with fire. If the state wants to come after me based on the laws of the land then those same laws work for me as well. I'm not going to let the railroad of state agencies rule my life or my other childrens lives. I have to fight for my family and if the one is lost to the state agencies and the laws they have to live by then so be it. There are still four sister in the family that are my daughters that need a voice of reason from a father that has done his best to date.

If you find yourself in this same situation and you have nothing to hide then I seriously beg you to contact your state representative or anyone that will listen in your state government. Do not let them tell you that you have no rights. Nobody can suspend the Constitution of our country and that is a fact.

Fight for what is right and you will never be wrong. Fight for your kids and you are a true parent. Even if one is over the edge you have to take a stand.

I'm planting my feet square and solid and I have contacted my State Representative and the Governors office. I will not be railroaded by them. Not going to happen in this lifetime!

Round one: State Representative is in our corner

Papamoka

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Imus Gone but not Forgotten

Don Imus screwed up and he became the target of everything that is racism in America. He was an easy target. He was a nationally syndicated talk radio giant amongst a field of diverse opinions politically.

One man lead this charge to stone Imus without considering if the people he offended with his comments would or could forgive Don Imus. The Reverend Al Sharpton beat this horse to death and ended the livelihood of Don Imus and his family.

But, big old hairy butt, the Reverend Sharpton now speaks out of the other side of his face in saying that this was never about Don Imus but about the abuse of our nation’s airwaves. Come again with the comments demanding Don Imus being fired Reverend Sharpton?

The outstanding athletes of the Rutgers young womans basketball team have forgiven Don Imus. If they can find it in their hearts to forgive him then the issue should be closed as the good Lord tells us. Then again Al Sharpton still has a week or two worth of stones to toss at Don Imus and needs this event to carry on. Publicity for Al Sharpton is the game he plays and he can have it. People can see that the emperor is naked!

Don Imus is a wealthy man by ordinary standards and I hope and pray that he and his wife will be able to continue the Kids with Cancer ranch activities. Being a private charity I would hope that people will still donate to the fun that kids enjoy and labor at for a stay at the Imus ranch. This isn’t a venture for self promotion but an outreach to bring children hope. I would love to see the Imus people submit a list just with the number of kids that have benefited from the good work that Imus and his family do for sick kids. Then let’s compare it to what Al Sharpton has for a list. No comparison is needed. Imus wins out across the board. MSNBC who canned the I-Man has this little piece on the Imus family personal charity...

By DEBORAH BAKER
Associated Press
(Picture Courtesy of MSNBC)
Updated: 4:42 p.m. PT April 14, 2007

RIBERA, N.M. - Don Imus's banishment from the public airwaves also deprives him of a critical platform to raise money for the sprawling Imus Ranch, where children with cancer and other illnesses get a taste of the cowboy life.

Before he was fired last week for calling the Rutgers University women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos," Imus pointed to the northern New Mexico ranch to make his case that he is "a good person who said a bad thing."

With Imus out of a job, some wonder whether the pipeline to charity money will eventually dry up.

Snip

General Motors Corp. said Friday it would continue donating Chevrolet Suburbans for the ranch.
The Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey provides the doctors, nurses and "child life specialists" who attend every ranch session.

"While there is no excuse for these comments, we cannot overlook all of the good he has done for families of Bergen County and across the nation," the medical center said in a statement.

The nearly 4,000-acre ranch, at the foot of a mesa about 50 miles from Santa Fe, features a re-creation of the main street of a 19th-century Western town, a swimming pool, an indoor horse-riding arena, an outdoor rodeo arena, and barns.

Kids between 10 and 17 who have cancer or serious blood disorders, or who have lost siblings to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, spend seven days at the ranch in the summer, when Imus would broadcast from a studio there at no cost to their families. – MSNBC

Racism in America has to be addressed and I will never waiver on that fact. Pointing the finger and stoning someone out of existence is not the answer. Pointing the finger and asking someone to change is the answer. CBS Radio and MSNBC caved in to the hype and lost the message and their messenger at the same time. Corporate cowardice once more rears its ugly head. Then again, so have the many celebrities, news reporters and government servant friends of Don Imus chosen to shun him and distance themselves from him rather than defend his pleas for forgiveness.

America needs to focus on Americans and not on issues that will forever divide us if the messengers that are the supposed standard bearers speak for all of us. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson do not speak for all of America. African Americans need to think that they are Americans first and heritage comes second. Nobody else in this nation is Irish American, Polish American, German American, Mexican American, Brazilian American, and the list goes on.



Be an American and be what you can be as an American. Saying that you are an African American is a proud thing to claim but it is a cop out. You are either an American or not and that is just one solution to ending the racism in our nation. I am an American! That is a statement that I would prefer to defend at any cost to my own personal well being. “I am an American!” Say it with pride and you are an American.

The only one holding any of us back as Americans and no matter what race or creed is ourselves.
If Don Imus has lost his voice in defense of his own personal ignorance in our nation then we all need to talk about racism amongst ourselves in order to wipe it out. It is within each and every single one of us to take the steps needed to end the idiocy that is racism and racist comments. We need to look within our own hearts and minds and toss out the stereotype mentality of our fathers, father. America is populated by so many cultures and so very diverse of people that we need to focus on the big picture that is our children’s future. We all need to take turns stirring the great melting pot that is America and be willing to be a part of the bounty that is the greatest experiment mankind has ever known. We all need to recognize that being an American is bigger intellectually and spiritually than where our ancestors came from. We can do this and be a better people and be the beacon of hope that our nation is known for around the world.

Papamoka

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Mayor of Boston Solves Crime and Murder Wave

Boston’s Mayor Tom Menino has brilliantly solved the violent crime wave in his great city in one week’s time by simply pointing out who is truly to blame for all the murders of the children and people of Bean town. Not that this is the great game of Clue and the Butler did it in the kitchen with a hammer. It’s far more complex than that.

The good Mayor put many hours, okay he gave it a few minutes, and he is pointing the finger at the Mafioso, gangbangers and ruthless hit men in the Boston media for it. They are the ones responsible for killing the kids and innocent bystanders in Boston. Reporters by day and yet ruthless murdering Bastid’s by night. Yup, the press is responsible for the endless murderous crime wave in his city.

Think again Mr. Mayor! Are you just NUTSO?

Grieving mothers and fathers should be outraged! Rather than offering even a political bandage to the hemorrhaging of the people suffering under his trust he points the finger at the press for reporting the crimes? And that is common sense from this political hack? How?

You have to not love a politician that knows he is selling the people a bag of goods that even he can not honestly want to buy. I couldn’t write this kind of fiction from the Mayors mouth if I wanted too! The Boston Herald and Laurel J. Sweet have this to say about it…

Menino chides naysayers: Violence ‘not out of control’
By Laurel J. Sweet
Monday, April 2, 2007 - Updated: 01:38 PM EST

Despite a murder rate 60 percent higher than last year’s body count and bloodshed that continued to escalate with a shooting last night, Mayor Thomas M. Menino defiantly denied yesterday that Boston is in crisis, instead blaming the media for negative headlines.

“A lot of people want to believe it’s out of control. It’s not out of control,” Menino assured a packed house at Greater Love Tabernacle in the heart of Dorchester’s shooting gallery, where he was welcomed by thunderous applause.
“This city works. The problem is you’re always seeing headlines about the bad news. I wish we had a good news newspaper. The Good News of Boston. The bad guys don’t control this city, they only control the headlines.”

The Rev. William E. Dickerson II’s Palm Sunday pulpit became Menino’s bully pulpit to blame the media for alarming Bostonians, even as word spread in whispers through the congregation that 18-year-old Dwayne Graham of Hyde Park, repeatedly shot Friday at 3:45 p.m. on board an MBTA bus, had succumbed to his trauma. A man was later shot on Angell Street just outside Franklin Park Sunday night, and is expected to survive.

Graham’s slaying pushed to 16 the number of murders so far this year, compared to 10 on April 1, 2006. Less than four hours after Graham was shot, a yet-unnamed 27-year-old man was gunned down, also in Dorchester. – The Boston Herald

There was another piece that I wrote over at the Gun Toting Liberal the other day based on the Boston Crime Wave out of Control. That article touched on this Mayors inability to understand that his city is being overrun by violence on every level. The story in The Boston Herald today just backs up my point in the previous post. Is this not the same logic that the Bush people are trying to use on all of America by stating the very same thing on what is really happening in Iraq? Using President Bush’s and Mayor Menino’s logic, people in the press are dangerous folks and are trying to kill us all both in Iraq and in Boston. Is it in their esteemed opinion that the truth is to harsh to be heard by the people most affected by it?

When the people of any given city in America are scared to death to walk the streets at any time during the day or night there is a problem. When your neighborhood is ruled by the local gang then there is a problem. When you long for the respect of the local organized crime families and the respect they had for the cities neighborhoods there is a serious problem. This has become the common story on the local Boston news to hear of stabbings, murders and flagrant crimes that the citizens of the great city of Boston are so terrified of. Law and order is out of control and yet the local police and the Mayor’s office disagree on how to solve it. Budget cuts don’t allow for more cops on the beat and yet they say they have the problem under control.

SNIP

Boston’s security lies in the hands of the people and if they continue to elect a mayor who does not believe that a crime wave is happening, then they will continue to have to bar the doors, make the children sleep in the basement in case a drive by shooting happens, or just simply move out of the city entirely. The protection of any city’s people lies in the hands of the voters. Keep the status quo or dodge the bullets? Make a choice and vote accordingly. – Gun Toting Liberal

I would honestly have to say that this Mayor is not only wearing rose colored glasses but the man must have a serious case of cataracts!

Let’s all have the press cover the beautiful flowers grown in the public gardens by our teens but not show the hearses loading up for all the funerals across the city for their peers. Let’s have the press print heart warming and interesting articles on teenagers learning wood shop skills but not show the hearses loading up the pine caskets built by those same kids that some of them just might be buried in. Yuppa, the press is killing the people of Boston and they are doing it with PC’s loaded with 38 caliber fired words. The deadliest ammo known to mankind. For that matter the press is in fact the deadliest weapon any politician can face.

I salute the reporters that do the job right and Laurel J. Sweet has nothing but the facts in this piece. Apparently, Mayor Menino has some spare fairy dust he wants to sprinkle around that happens to be a by product of bovines out to pasture to mask the crime wave in Boston. If you shovel enough of the Mayors fairy dust it just might cover the hearse of the next child killed in Boston. For shame is on you Mayor Menino, a disgusting self proclaimed and self spoken shame.

Sorry Mayor Menino but you are out of touch!

Papamoka

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