By By Lee Weyhrich
Not to sound like a broken record, but gas prices took another six-cent leap this week. The OPEC countries are third world powers, where does all that fuel money go anyway?
Meanwhile Social Security is still on the chopping block and John McCain is now backing George Bush. A year ago, McCain was Bush's biggest critic on most policies. Now he's is best buddy.
As our current and future elderly are being left out in the cold it is nice to know that other countries are taking care of their elderly. The Mexico City government has donated an 18th century building to serve as a retirement home for aging prostitutes.
The state of American Social Security has gotten so bad that we can barely take care of people who have done legitimate work their whole lives. Mexico is giving free healthcare and retirement benefits to prostitutes. And then, every day, hundreds of Mexican nationals skip the border to come into this country.
"Other people pay taxes and can retire with a pension," said one prostitute. "We are exploited by society then thrown away when we get old.".
They don't pay taxes in their country and they get benefits. Every few years our country either cuts healthcare benefits or Social Security benefits to people who have worked for the better part of a century and dutifully sent their checks to the Internal Revenue Service each month.
If it is not our old people losing their rights to live comfortably it is our young people losing their rights to behave like children.
A five-year-old girl was arrested in St. Petersburg, Fla. for pitching a tantrum. According to the Associated Press the kindergartner was arrested, cuffed and put in the back of a police car after an "outburst at school."
According to sources the children where counting jelly beans as part of a math project when "the girl began acting silly." Her teacher took away her jellybeans and the girl lashed out and hit the teacher.
Moments later the girl was arrested on charges of battery. She probably couldn't spell battery and at five years old she was being threatened with jail for it.
The school's policy is to suspend students for 10 days for fighting, but a spokesman for the district said that even that punishment did not apply to kindergartners and that arresting a little girl for a tantrum was ridiculous.
If she had been caught with a weapon there's no telling what they would have done to her.
Speaking of weapons, every few years the anti-gun people crawl out of their caves and raise a stink about tighter gun controls.
Countries that have already adopted tighter gun control laws have actually seen a rise in violent crimes. The nation of South Africa tightened its gun laws so much that it now takes over a year just to get qualified to own one. Since that time officials in capital city Johannesburg have got an average of 60 shooting calls a day. It seems only people with registered guns had to give them up and people with illegal guns have had a field day ever since.
In fact crime has gotten so bad that many people have taken a step back in time with their self-defense choices.
Many stores have completely sold out of spears, spear guns, swords, battleaxes and other medieval weaponry. Experts say crossbows have become the No. 1 self-defense weapon among law abiding citizens in that country.
They also say that although a crossbow does not have a rapid fire rate it is silent, has no ballistic markings on the projectile, and can more easily go off in an accident.
Our elderly are going hungry, but Mexico is basically condoning and promoting prostitution, children in Florida are being arrested for tantrums and South Africans are going Medieval because their country has basically outlawed guns.
Thank goodness we live in Alabama where prostitution is illegal, kids can be kids and guns will probably never be outlawed and our crime rates are low.
Lee Weyhrich is the Managing Editor of the Atmore Advance. His column appears weekly.