Dear Mongoose,
I've had all I can stand on this government shutdown of everything and we need to get back to work. There aint gonna be no kind of vaccine for months maybe a year. at what point do we start our lives again. Dear Twisted Sister, For some reason, immediately after reading your letter a Twisted Sister song popped into my head; ‘We’re not gonna take it, no we ain’t gonna take it!’. That song has been popping into my head on a regular basis lately given the circumstances and I suspect you’ve reached the point a growing number of Kentuckians and Americans have reached, you’re tired of sitting at home, tired of being told what you can and can’t do, tired of relying on the government for handouts and tired of teaching your kids this new way of doing math that is five times harder to do than the way you learned to do it. However this is very encouraging to me. See, this country is supposed to be the land of the FREE and the home of the BRAVE! There is still, thankfully, a large number of Americans that do not want handouts, we want to provide for our own families by the sweat of our brow, the best way we can, and as independently as we can. We want to be able to make our own personal decision as to what we are willing to risk to do so, not let someone in Frankfort or Washington tell us they know better. What I find fascinating is the same group that hollers, “my body, my choice”, also hollers, “you can’t be doing that” and all I want to do is get a haircut and earn an honest living. I’m not going to sit here and belittle those that are genuinely concerned or those that go down the hoax road or conspiracy path but I will tell you this: Life is a series of continuous choices, each and every one has positive and negative repercussions. You, as a functioning adult must continually decide if the reward is worth the risk when faced with these choices, the hope is you’ve been taught to critically analyze each individual situation and make an informed decision. Sadly a growing number of people haven’t been taught this skill and an even bigger number haven’t been honing this skill and simply do whatever the President, Governor, Mayor, news anchor, or Edmonson Voice opinion column writer tells them to do without even thinking about whether it is the best thing for them as an individual to do. --MG
0 Comments
Dear Mongoose,
I enjoy your advice column and while I don't always agree, I know what I'm getting when I read your responses and appreciate that. What is your thought on the way Governor Beshear is handling the virus pandemic? Dear Won't You Be My Neighbor, When the virus (I call her ol' Corona) made her way into the Bluegrass, there was obviously some action that needed to be taken. Ol' Uncle Andy, Dandy Andy, Andy Besheep-herder, or whatever you want to call him, took action and started shutting things down. At first, I thought that was smart and watched his sermons--I mean, conferences, every day. Then, as his popularity grew, so did the long arm of his governmental overreach. His hour-plus long conferences became 5 minutes of useful information, and one hour of "YOU. CAN'T. THINK. FOR. YOURSELVES. PLEASE FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS ON THE SCREEN. I AM HERE TO SAVE YOU." He comes from a platform of big government, small people, and he's certainly shining in the spotlight now. Corona is serious and we all need to be exercising safe practices. The Good Lord gave everyone a certain amount of common sense--some more than others. If you want to lick toilet seats for laughs, well then, Corona's waiting to be your next best friend. I personally don't need anybody (especially someone in office) telling me how to wash my hands or--for the love of Heaven--ensuring me that we're gonna get through this together, as if I'm in preschool getting ready to step on the bus for a field trip to Mammoth Cave. Our economy is wrecked, 30 million people are on unemployment, churches and schools--all shut down. Vaccine or not, at some point we have to get back to our lives, and I think we're way past that point--and while that may not be normal as we know it--we have to rely on the aforementioned common sense to help us get back to work, back to church, back to school, and back to life. I for one am tired of everyone getting excited about watching Mr. Roger's Neighborhood every day at 4PM. --MG Mongoose,
My son and his wife have a three year old daughter and she's the cutest thing we've ever seen, unfortunately, she's a holy terror. They keep a phone stuck in her face all the time playing some cartoon and she simply will not mind. We are not allowed to punish her if she disobeys when we keep her and it's put a strain on our relationship. She simply does whatever she wants, when she wants because that's how she "expresses herself." As a grandparent, when do I put my foot down, or do I? Dear Spoiler Alert, I remember thinking to myself as a younger man, “if my kid ever acts like that I’m going to knock the taste out of their mouth”, then I had kids... I’m not saying they’ve never been disciplined because trust me, I’ve used all the tools—belts, switches, backhands and all sorts of tough love, but even then I’m sure there are times others say the same things in their heads that I did. The fact I try is more than most these days. Did you know that the Apple company, best known for computing and communication, is also the largest babysitting company in the world? I credit their success in the babysitting business to the fact mom & dad are too busy with a phone in their face to actually raise a kid so they shove an iPad in the kid’s face to babysit. What a perfect business plan, perpetual demand and consumer training beginning with newborns. The truth is, you could try to step in and let them know their kid is a wild hyena but it’s probably a waste of breath. It sounds like you disciplined your child and that's why you're now noticing so much--remind your son of this. Also, maybe if you text them they’ll at least ‘hear’ you. Dear Mongoose,
I run a small business here in the county and I try to shop local as much as I can. Also, living in Edmonson County I know everybody and they know me. I have a couple friends that run businesses here but honestly, some of the places in Bowling Green and Leitchfield do better at it than they do and offer better prices. Am I supposed to pay higher prices or get less of a product simply because they expect me to buy from them? Dear Locally Owned and Broke, Capitalism is one of my favorite things to talk about, not the letters but the economic system. The beauty of it, in theory at least, is ithat it rewards those that work the hardest while motivating all to work harder-- meanwhile making goods and services more affordable across the board. Capitalism tries to make everyone winners unlike socialism that tries to bring everyone down to the loser’s level. I try my best to support local businesses as often as I can to a certain degree. I don’t mind paying for convenience but I assign the amount I’m willing to pay for the convenience within myself. Humility and appreciation go hand in hand, if a business, local or not, appreciates my patronage, I will reward them by continuing to patron them. If I stop doing business because I’m not being appreciated others will most likely follow suit. Said business will either learn humility and change or run off all the customers and cease to exist. “So Mongoose you’re saying teach them a lesson and don’t do business?”, No, I’m saying let capitalism work. Decide for yourself how much more you’re willing to pay, how much less service you’re willing to receive, how much you are willing to be belittled and make your own decisions. Once a business decides it’s owed your business, we as consumers lose the advantages, addressed in the first paragraph, capitalism has afforded us. On a side note, “shop local” does benefit the community, no question there, but think of this, the big chains stores also benefit the community by employing a larger number of community members and offering goods cheaper due to volume buying etc.. As much as I hate The Walmarts and don’t shop there, they are the largest employer in the U.S. and looking at “The People of Walmart” website is pretty dang funny. Dear MOngoose,
My sister and her family live really close to me here in EC and our families used to gather all the time. Over the past few years, she's started hoarding stuff and her house has become a disaster. We miss hanging out with her family but it's awful going over there because of the horrible mess and we stopped visiting. Do we say something? Dear Madame De Clutter, When they say house guests are like fish maybe this is what they were referring to, nothing personal against your sister. According to the show “Hoarders”, it’s not just bad cleaning habits that cause this type of behavior, it’s somewhat of a mental disorder or compensation for a void somewhere within the psyche of that person. I would approach it no different than if your sister were on drugs or addicted to buying scratch offs at the Hot Spot. Let her know you love her and miss her and bring in the professionals if that doesn’t work. I’m talking about the mental pros, not clean-up pros—that comes later. Mental illness is a real thing, I often wonder if the larger percentage of the population suffering is due to increased awareness or society has become so toxic more are affected. Whatever the answer might be, I'm convinced Facebook has something to do with it. Dear Mongoose,
I just turned 18, am I going to get drafted? Dear Birthday Person, Contrary to what you’ve seen on the internet, a draft does not currently exist in the United States at this time. In order for the draft to be reconstituted, it would have to be passed by Congress. Thankfully, our military is comprised of all volunteers, I shudder to think of what might happen if we had to drag 18-25 year-olds kicking and screaming from their parent’s basements crying for a safe space. My advice to you is quit playing Fortnite, stay off Twitter & FakeBook, and get your news from www.edmonsonvoice.com. Mr/Mrs. Mongoose,
I try my best to stay out of politics as much as possible but after our last Governal or Governmental, however you say it election I feel like I need to become a little more involved. It seemed like every time I turned the TV on the other guy was saying Matt Blevin hated teachers and Blevin was saying the other guy was a communist. Does Blevin hate teachers and is the governor we have now a communist? Because if both are true neither one of them deserve to be governor. Dear, I Believe the Words You’re Looking for are Gubernatorial and Bevin, Edgar Allan Poe once said, “Believe nothing you hear and only one half of what you see”, the scary thing is he said it way before the internet and TV. When you’re talking politics, don’t believe ANYTHING you hear/see the one guy say about the other. Let me give you my opinion on Blevin, I mean Bevin and his teacher hating. Bevin, from what I could gather, was completely missing the tact gene, add that into the fact that he grew up a Yankee and its easy to see why it would look as though he hated teachers after hearing him address the “pension apocalypse”. I personally think his intentions were good, the pension situation had to be dealt with at some point and was destined to run out of money (and still is) in its current state. With this pension mess--well, if you have more money going out than you have coming in you will run out of money—its that simple. To make a long story short neither side was willing to compromise in a way that suited the opposite side and that with the lack of tact, demonstrated in comments made by Blevin, led folks to believe he hates teachers. Which, hey, he might actually hate teachers, I wasn’t all too fond of them in school myself. Is Beshear a commie? Short answer; he’s a Democrat. The Democrat platform continues to veer left as is evident in front running Presidential candidates such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. The further left you lean on the political spectrum the closer you get to being designated an actual communist meaning; according to Karl Marx includes all property being publicly owned and the elimination of private poverty. Beshear is not a communist, he’s just a democrat who is pro-abortion, pro-union, pro-gambling, pro-marijuana, pro-gay rights, pro-taxes. Dear Mongoose,
My wife and I have been married for 7 years and are in our late 20s....yes, we got married early, but we're very happy. We have no children (yet) and reserve the right to keep the reason for that to ourselves. But, people all the time ask us "when are you guys going to have a baby?" or "what are you waiting for?" At first it didn't bother us but now it's just rude and annoying. How do we tell people to knock it off without knocking off their heads? Dear Married Without Children, Seven years of marriage, that’s like 30 years in today’s time compared to 50 years ago, congratulations! I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I recommend dealing with certain situations with a little humor. I have a few comebacks you might try: The first one would be "That's not of your stinkin' business, you rude, nosey, piece of..." or, you could go the lighter side: “We are waiting to have children till we get enough Kroger Plus points to pay for diapers, we only need about 1,370,000 more” “We had a couple kids a few years ago but they kept crying, I think they were defective so we sent them back” “My wife/husband has very strong genes, have you seen him/her? I don’t want a kid that looks like that!” “We were going to have kids until we saw how yours turned out, scared us to death” You get the idea. -MG |
Send your email to Mongoose: You can keep it confidential and he won't share your name or email.
opinion@edmonsonvoice.com About
|