"The Tantrum Method" - by WriteWoman of Shoreview

The Tantrum Method: 'I screamed and stomped my feet until my poor mother lost her temper.'
by WriteWoman of Shoreview
Pioneer Press Bulletin Board
Posted: 04/07/2012 12:01:00 AM CDT
Updated: 04/07/2012 09:10:11 PM CDT

"A Cautionary Tale.

"Several weeks ago, I confessed to an episode with Ex-Lax that falls in the category of, I hate to say it, stealing! That wasn't the main point of the story, but it was the bottom line! Worse, I received no 'physical discomfort' for my bad behavior!

"Today I thought I would reveal another awful childhood indiscretion (one of the big ones you don't easily forget), which I still remember 60-plus years later.

"I was very, very angry at my mother for not letting me do something, or maybe for stopping me from doing what I shouldn't, or some other infraction of the 'house rules' (that part, I've forgotten), and I decided a tantrum would get me my way. I screamed and stomped my feet until my poor mother lost her temper (she was slow to get angry) and told me that if I didn't stop all the racket, she would throw a glass of cold water on me!

"Ewwww...she wouldn't...would she? I mean, she was very, very angry with my behavior...so I thought better of all the screaming and foot stomping in the kitchen and ran to her bedroom and jumped on her bed! Ha! Safe! She wouldn't want to get her bed all soaked, I was sure of that. I might have been right...had I not screamed that out at the top of my lungs!

"Oh, yes, she marched (I'm quite sure it was marching) into her bedroom with THE BIG GLASS of cold water and threw it all over me! Dumbfounded...I was just dumbfounded! (I don't think I knew that word at the time.)

"I ... never made a challenge like that again - ever!

"Moral: NEVER taunt an angry mother!"

"Calling Radicalism by Its Name" - NY Times

Calling Radicalism by Its Name
------------
New York Times Editorial
Published: April 3, 2012

President Obama’s fruitless three-year search for compromise with the Republicans ended in a thunderclap of a speech on Tuesday, as he denounced the party and its presidential candidates for cruelty and extremism. He accused his opponents of imposing on the country a “radical vision” that “is antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity.”

Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential front-runner, has embraced a House budget plan that is little more than “thinly veiled social Darwinism,” the president said, a “Trojan horse” disguised as deficit reduction that would hurt middle- and lower-income Americans.

“By gutting the very things we need to grow an economy that’s built to last — education and training, research and development, our infrastructure — it is a prescription for decline,” he said, speaking to a group of Associated Press editors and reporters in Washington.

Mr. Obama has, in recent months, urged Republicans to put aside their destructive agenda. But, in this speech, he finally conceded that the party has demonstrated no interest in the values of compromise and realism. Even Ronald Reagan, who raised taxes in multiple budget deals, “could not get through a Republican primary today,” Mr. Obama said. While Democrats have repeatedly shown a willingness to cut entitlements and have agreed to trillions in domestic spending cuts, he said, Republicans won’t agree to any tax increases and, in fact, want to shower the rich with even more tax cuts.

The speech was the first time that Mr. Obama linked Mr. Romney, by name, to his party’s dishonest budget and discredited trickle-down policies. As Mr. Obama pointed out, Mr. Romney described as “marvelous” a budget that would drastically cut student financial aid, medical research, Head Start classrooms and environmental protections. Mr. Obama further ridiculed the budget’s deficit-cutting goal as “laughable” because it refuses to acknowledge the need for new revenues.

The speech was immediately attacked by the House speaker, John Boehner, for failing to deal with the debt crisis, but Mr. Obama pointed out how hollow that charge has become. “That argument might have a shred of credibility were it not for their proposal to also spend $4.6 trillion over the next decade on lower tax rates,” he said. The math is, in fact, quite simple: cutting both taxes and the deficit can mean only more sacrifice from the middle class and the poor, ending the promise of Medicare and Medicaid. Over the long term, the deficit can be brought down through a combination of cuts and new revenues; doing so immediately, as Mr. Romney and his party want to do, would reverse the fragile recovery.

Mr. Obama provided a powerful signal on Tuesday that he intends to make this election about the Republican Party’s failure to confront, what he called, “the defining issue of our time”: restoring a sense of economic security while giving everyone a fair shot, rather than enabling only a shrinking number of people to do exceedingly well. His remarks promise a tough-minded campaign that will call extremism and dishonesty by name.