LikeTheDew.com

I live in a big city. Plenty of shopping options. Access to anything we need. Access to internet shopping if I’m feeling too poorly to drag around through hot parking lots (it’s a health thing, not part of this story). I usually choose small stores before big box or supermarkets because it’s just easier than having to walk eighty miles (even if it is indoors and air-conditioned) to pick up toilet paper. I don’t shop for entertainment, but I like being entertained when I shop. I enjoy personal service. I like seeing, sometimes buying, the unique or interesting items from hither ...

Does the direction our society is headed bother you? No, not so much the political direction as the social direction! While we'll admit up front that no country is perfect and pure, we feel that the United States of the last 50-100 years was a more reasonable and uplifting society than the direction it is taking today. Many reasons abound for this turn to the more harsh nature of society. Some blame the fast pace of life, communicated so quickly these days. Others maintain life started to be more complicated when two adults in a household began holding jobs, with less time ...

The August 30 issue of Time magazine asks the question, “Is America Islamophobic?” Since receiving the magazine, I have thought intensely about the question and sadly I would answer, “Yes”. In answering yes, I feel the need to explain why. It seems that there is a significant percentage of Muslims who have been and are being radicalized. I believe that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful, but we don’t have much exposure to them. They are scattered over America, but I have never met one. Yet the truth is that many are radical. Islam is the only world religion that preaches ...

How healthy is Georgia? Not very. According to recent reports Georgia finishes near the bottom of state-by-state rankings of overall health. Georgia ranked 43rd in 2009 for overall health performance, dropping from 41st in 2008, according to “America’s Health Rankings,” a joint effort of United Health Foundation, the American Public Health Association and Partnership for Prevention. The rankings are based on health determinants and health outcomes. Determinants refer to behaviors, community and environmental factors, public and health policies, and clinical care factors that influence future health outcomes of the population in a state.  Georgia ranked 47th in determinants. Outcomes traditionally have been measured using mortality measures ...

The easiest way to write an article is to castigate your opponents and avoid their arguments. The easiest method to deal with political differences is to deride opposition arguments as ill-informed, stupid, unsubstantiated opinions, and illogical. The easiest path to frame your opponents in a bad light is to pick out the inconsistencies in their position and highlight them. When you consider that the majority of elections, including Presidential ones, are decided in the 52% to 48% range, it is not a stretch to say that the country is, primarily, divided into two significant political ideologies. However, the composition of ...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is rarely subtle but there was an important subtext to his recent comments about the Mosque scheduled for construction in lower Manhattan on Fox & Friends. Gingrich said the following: “You know, Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There's no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center." The false parallel hidden in plain sight is between ‘Nazi’ and ‘Japanese.’ Gingrich was a history professor ...

What with the succession of economic crises over the past couple of years - collapses in subprime mortgage lending, investment banking, and the stock market; the Madoff Ponzi scheme fraud; the Big Fat Greek Economic Implosion, et alia - you may be asking yourself, “Just how bad are things, anyway, Steve-O? And how much worse can they get?” My patented Quick ’n’ Dirty Answer is: Things are pretty bad... but they can get a whole hell of a lot worse. So far, they have not. There was an old adage that defined a “recession” as an economic slowdown in which ...

Here I go. I finally have to express a deep feeling that I have had for some time. To begin, I want to make it clear that I am not a Republican, Democrat, Independent, Libertarian, Tea Party-er, Right wing Christian, Liberal, nor do I bear any label except for being a thoughtful caring American. I am a well educated, intelligent senior citizen who has experienced life under many different philosophies, presidents and administrations. I am not a bigot, a racist, a homophobe. My stand on abortion is balanced; for birth control—no; for health, physical or emotional—yes. I am not afraid ...

The poetically inclined amongst the Tea Party have suggested a slight updating to Emma Lazarus moving poem affixed to the Statue of Liberty. We here at the Dew are pleased to be the first to bring you this stirring, patriotic tome with notes from the original, outdated verse. The New Colossus (what a weird name, let’s beef it up. The Incredible Hulk sounds more American) Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, (are these the same Greeks asking for handouts! You bet it ain’t him. How about we change this to André the Giant.) With conquering limbs astride from land to land; (Who body ...

"As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances." President Obama Damn! There’s that inconvenient First Amendment thing cropping up again as American citizens attempt to exercise their Constitutional right to build a mosque on privately held ground two blocks from “Ground Zero.” Of course the fact that 9/11 was masterminded by al Qaeda and not all Muslims is lost ...

How often do you wonder? Not wondered about anything in particular, just wondered? I often wonder. I wondered about the lightening flash that blasted me out of bed this morning. I wondered about the thunder that followed the lightening. I know that the lightening and thunder are heavenly boxcars banging together, my Daddy told me so. I have been taught the physical science explanations that describe these events, but still, I wonder. Do you ever wonder why you wonder? I sometimes wonder why people say the things they say or do the things they do. I wonder why I do the ...

“I would sooner be honestly damned than hypocritically immortalized”- Davy Crockett. With his political career destroyed due to his open support of the Cherokee, he departed Washington, D.C. and traveled west to Texas. Nunna daul IsunyiI - “The Trail Where They Cried” -  is now commonly known as the “Trail Of Tears.” This dark chapter of our nation’s past is too seldom spoken of beyond the tourist’s shops and souvenir stands that line the path of sorrow. The events of those years extinguished, forever, the bright flame of the Cherokee Nation (and countless of their brethren) and it is to our ...

2010 will go down in history as the Annus Horribilis of the American Dream. Fortunately, the poor are not too adversely affected, and what difference would it make anyway? I mean, how much worse off can they be? Let me assure you, the homeless don't worry about foreclosure. The unemployed aren't sweating the choice between the Bentley and the Maybach. They help Trickle Down not one whit. Some people will always make bad choices. Birth parents, for instance. Who's fault is it if Bill Gates or Warren Buffett could have been your Daddy, but you ...