It is about trust

Recently, Hugh Hewitt was named by some bloggers as being one of the people who jumped on the Covington kids unfairly, before a second video appeared, showing the aggressiveness of the Black Hebrew Israelites and the obnoxious in-your-face drumming of Nathan Phillips. I went to Hugh's blog to see what he had said, but could find nothing. Did he delete his comments? If so, that would be very disappointing to me.

Later, I visited our local library and saw his book, BLOG, in the books-for-sale section. and bought it. He wrote it in 2005. He reminds us that blogging is all about earning trust. That is what the Swift Boaters did in destroying John Kerry's candidacy and other bloggers did in destroying Dan Rather's career.

From page XXI of his introduction: ..."The blogosphere is about trust. CNN lost the trust it once had and its fall has been sudden and shattering. FOX News is trusted by millions, so its numbers have shot up, much to the dismay of lefties..."

I know Hugh was on the CNN team during the presidential debates and he regularly appears on the far, far left MSNBC. I guess he has earned their trust.

"Freedom for me. Freedom from me."

Ann Althouse teaches her last class today at the University of Wisconsin. Here is what she had to say about it.

I look forward to never having to require anyone to read something or to force them to listen to me. It's not just about freedom for me. It's about freedom from me.

Wouldn't you love to be one of her students? Well, we all can be, just by reading her blog, which I predict will be even better as she enjoys her freedom!

Are you an interrupter like Tim Kaine?

Apparently there is a lot of talk about Tim Kaine's constant interruption of Mike Pence in the Vice Presidential debate this week. Ann Althouse has some advice for people who interrupt all the time.

My tip for avoiding interruption is: Avoid in-person interaction with boring people. Read. And blog. Blogging is kind of all about taking in the words of others until you feel motivated to interrupt.

Read more here.

Giving in to tyranny

In the early years of this blog I wrote a lot about our experiences being foster parents. I made up fictitious nicknames for the children as I wrote about them here in this blog, but I did post photos of them.

It all started when we discovered that a little boy I nicknamed here in the blog as "Linebacker Dude" was killing one-by-one little kittens in our barn. We told our foster care agency's workers about it, and tried to get him placed at a treatment facility where he would be supervised much more closely than we could here in our family home. An "incident report" was filed, and that brought out the county caseworker to "investigate."

In addition to Linebacker Dude, we were also caring for a severely retarded little girl and a four month old baby. The baby had never smiled. We found out years later the reason: he had a hernia, which was never detected when he was with us, even though we took him to treatment at medical facilities every week. He had also been born with cocaine in his system. Years later Colleen met his adoptive parents, who told us about the emergency surgery the boy had had on his hernia.

When the county caseworker came to our house she interviewed our own children. Later that day my children told me what questions she had asked them. They were grossly misleading questions. As a former child protection social worker myself, I knew that it was completely unethical to ask young children leading questions. When the caseworker left, she made an appointment to come back the next day at 1 p.m., because Colleen had an appointment and could not return to our house until one p.m.

The caseworker showed up at 10 a.m. with a camera. I met her on the front porch and told her that my children had told me the leading questions she had asked, and that I knew that her leading questions were completely inappropriate. I asked her to leave the property and return at one p.m.

When she returned at one p.m., she had obtained an order from a local judge to remove the foster children and also our own children! Flabbergasted, we voluntarily gave up the three foster children, and were allowed to keep our own children.

This event had a terribly traumatizing effect on Colleen. She played the role of the Stockhom Syndrone appeaser to the caseworker, while I would have nothing to do with this monster. Nevertheless, when the foster care agency we were affiliated with found out that I was writing about our experiences with the foster care system, they demanded that I stop, and that I delete all my posts. My inclination was not to comply, but when Colleen realized that the county caseworker would stop at nothing, including threatening to take our own children away, she asked me to comply. Because I saw how traumatized she was, I complied. I don't regret doing what I did for Colleen, but I do regret giving in to tyranny.

The man in this video is telling the truth, folks.

Thanks to Theo Spark for posting Wild Bill's video