The Father's Day tweet that I think we all deserve to read today.

Happy #FathersDay @BarackObama. Our daughters may be older and taller now, but they’ll always be your little girls. We love you. pic.twitter.com/SGZMmXaQ3a

— Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) June 18, 2017

Here was Obama's response.

Of all that I've done in my life, I'm most proud to be Sasha and Malia's dad. To all those lucky enough to be a dad, Happy Father's Day! https://t.co/ya1YAJignC

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 18, 2017

I don't know about all of you but there are times when I feel numb after reading and writing about Donald Trump, his presidency, and the various investigations being conducted around them both.

And it is at times like these that I think back to a simpler time, when a man we could all admire was the leader of this country.

It just gives me hope, that if we were smart enough to elect someone like him twice, that we will be that smart yet again, hopefully the very next time we get the opportunity.

Happy Father's Day Mr. Obama.

And thank you.

Openly atheist lawmaker asked to deliver the opening prayer for the Arizona House of Representatives. Does something awesome instead.

Courtesy of the Phoenix Times:

 An atheist state lawmaker tasked with delivering the opening prayer for this afternoon's session of the House of Representatives asked that people not bow their heads. 

Democratic Representative Juan Mendez, of Tempe, instead spoke about his "secular humanist tradition" and even quoted author Carl Sagan. 

"Most prayers in this room begin with a request to bow your heads," Mendez said. "I would like to ask that you not bow your heads. I would like to ask that you take a moment to look around the room at all of the men and women here, in this moment, sharing together this extraordinary experience of being alive and of dedicating ourselves to working toward improving the lives of the people in our state." 

As you can imagine -- especially now, with Arizona's legislature being controlled by religion-heavy Republicans -- this is probably the first time that an invocation at the legislature took that direction. 

"This is a room in which there are many challenging debates, many moments of tension, of ideological division, of frustration," Mendez said. "But this is also a room where, as my secular humanist tradition stresses, by the very fact of being human, we have much more in common than we have differences. We share the same spectrum of potential for care, for compassion, for fear, for joy, for love. Mendez continued, "Carl Sagan once wrote, 'For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.'"

You know ANYONE who quotes Carl Sagan in lieu of a prayer is my kind of guy.

We started the day with that courageous young lady schooling Wolf Blitzer about assuming a person's religious faith, and now we have this guy!  I have to say I have rarely been more proud to be an Atheist. 

Clearly we are becoming far more comfortable with ourselves in this country, and with more and more young people eschewing the trappings of religion, I think our time is finally here.

Hell you know you have arrived when even the Pope is willing to accept that you are good people.

Personally I see a day when we follow the lead of the gay community and start openly identifying ourselves as nonreligious and demonstrating to the close minded that we are just as ethical, and moral as anybody who identities themselves as religious. In fact, to be honest, we are even more so since we are not bullied into morality through threats of eternal damnation but rather choose our morality through careful examination of the world around us and decide to be good people with our eyes and our minds wide open.

The "Singing Science Teacher" Beth Vernon, and good friend of the IM community, among finalists to be inducted into the "National Teacher Hall of Fame."

Courtesy of The Examiner:

When Beth Vernon pulled back the blue cloth draped on a large sign in the center of the Brittany Hill Middle School gymnasium, she was expecting to see something connected to the recently passed bond issue. 

Instead, she saw a picture of herself with the words “National Teacher Hall of Fame” in big letters. 

“I am shocked and amazed,” said the Brittany Hill science teacher. “I am blown away by all the praise that has landed on me.” 

Vernon found out during a surprise assembly Tuesday that she is among the five nominees to be inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame. One of the other nominees is also from the Kansas City area - Darryl Johnson, a language arts teacher at Smithville High School. Only three teachers, including Vernon and Johnson, from Missouri have gained membership into the National teachers Hall of Fame. 

“I was ecstatic when I found out she was a finalist,” said Dallas Truex, principal at Brittany Hill. “It is her creativity that makes her stand out. She understands how the brain works and understands adolescents. She uses that information in her classroom.”

Some of my long time visitors may remember when I first wrote about Beth back in January of last year. If that does not jog your memory perhaps this video of her singing will do the trick.

Since then she has been a frequent visitor to this blog and we have kept in email contact intermittently.

This is what she wrote to me about her nomination: 

We are five representing five million teachers. I want to speak up for my fellow teachers and students around the country…and use this moment to shine a light for our profession. I would ask you what you want me to tell "Arne" next month when I meet him and his circle--but I think I already know….and it is what I wrote about in my essay #5: What are the two biggest problems in education and what are you doing about them? 

I identified the problems as "Standardized Testing has unintended consequences" and "At a time when teachers need the most time and space to learn how to be better, they have the least time and the most burdens". My whole essay was based on the brand new neuroscience of learning. 

Beth Vernon is EXACTLY the kind of articulate, engaged, and creative teacher that we need more of in our public school classrooms.  And I am proud to number her among my friends.

Way to go Beth!

For the women who don't consider themselves feminists.

A a man, raised by a single mother, and single parent to a headstrong young woman, I found this incredibly moving.

Well THIS should send you to bed with a smile on your face. President Obama, a Man of the People.

Good night my friends.

Oh, and if early voting has arrived in your state, PLEASE VOTE NOW!

Namaste

Proud Parent Time.

This last post of the day will be a little self indulgent, so pardon me if it is not what you usually expect here at IM.

This morning my daughter left the house at around 8:30 to get to her job downtown. We were kind of goofing around as she left and I was giving her a hard time for leaving her laundry blocking the laundry room door and then acting surprised that I did it for her. (She KNOWS I cannot stand to see dirty laundry cluttering up my house.)

About ten or twelve minutes after she left my phone rings. I see by the caller ID that it is her and I answer.

"Hello, did you forget something?

There is a pause. "Hi Dad." Her voice sounds a little shaky to me.

"Hi?" Another pause. This starts to worry me so I decide to speak first.

"Honey? Something wrong?"

"I just saw a car flip over on the highway."

"What?" And then I go straight into parent mode. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I am just standing on the side of the road with two pregnant women and I think one of them is going into labor."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Yeah there were two pregnant women in the truck that flipped over and I am standing with them until the ambulance gets here."

"On the highway?" The word "ambulance" kick-starts my pre-programmed parental responses again and so I ask "Are you sure YOU are alright?"

"Oh yeah everybody's fine."

"Okay can you tell me EXACTLY what happened?"

"Well, I was driving down the New Seward highway and somebody in the lane to my left suddenly slammed on their brakes, and the truck behind them could not stop in time and careened off onto a snow berm and flipped over on its roof."

"Is anybody hurt?"

"No, no everybody's fine. I pulled the two women out of the truck window, and the driver, a guy, got out on his own."

"Wait, what? YOU pulled the women out of the truck?" In my mind I am envisioning my five foot four daughter dashing across lanes of oncoming traffic to pry two pregnant women out of an upside down truck, and my stress level starts to rise.

"Yeah, don't worry it wasn't on fire or anything." (Well great, THAT possibility had not even occurred to me yet!)

"What the hell. Didn't anybody else stop to help?"

"Just one other person stopped. What is wrong with people that they can drive off and leave a truck upside down in the snow? I wasn't sure if anybody else called so I called 911. Only the lady on the other end kept telling me to calm down. I thought I was calm, so I asked her 'don't I sound calm?' Apparently I didn't."

"Well honey, the 911 operator would probably be an expert on whether you were calm or not, so I would take her word for it. Are you feeling better now? Or is your heart racing a mile a minute?"

"Yep, it's still racing, but I don't feel upset.  Just pissed off that nobody else stopped to help."

"So the only people to stop were you and one other person?"

"Yes, this other woman stopped too. There were dozens of cars that saw this happen but they just drove away."

"But not you."

"No, not me. And I know you wouldn't have driven away either, would you?"

"No, of course I wouldn't."

"Well there you go then. You did not raise me to drive away from people in need either."

"No I didn't."

"Okay Dad, I have to go now. The ambulance is pulling up and I need to talk to them, and then I need to get to work. Bye, I love you."

"I love you t....." Right about then the line went dead.

As I write this she is still at work, and will be until late tonight, so I have not had the chance to find out anymore details, or to see how the rest of her day went. But I will later.

You know when you are looking at that mischievous little girl, and she is looking back at you with those big beautiful eyes, you cannot help but wonder what kind of a person she will grow up to be.

Today I got that answer. And I could not have hoped for a better one.

Daddy's proud of you sweetheart.

But of course you already know that. Don't you?

Kind of makes you wish that ALL kids were raised by lesbians. Or is that just me?

Zach Wahls, a 19-year-old University of Iowa student spoke about the strength of his family during a public forum on House Joint Resolution 6 in the Iowa House of Representatives. Wahls has two mothers, and came to oppose House Joint Resolution 6 which would end civil unions in Iowa. 

I believe I posted this video back in February of this year, but somebody sent it to me the other day and I just felt it was something well worth sharing again. I'm sorry to report that the Iowa ban on same sex marriage did pass despite Zach's impassioned plea. However regardless of the outcome, this young man's defense of his parents, and their parenting abilities, is still worth celebrating

And by the way I am only kidding about lesbian parents being preferable. ANY loving combination of genders can raise a great kid like this if they just take parenting seriously.

Take me for instance. According to my mother I was raised by wolves, and look how great I turned out!

The United States ranks "Below Average" for social justice. Yeah I cannot say that surprises me after witnessing the police response to the OWS protesters.

From Media Caffeine:

Compared to the rest of the world, the United States ranks surprisingly low when it comes to “social justice” metrics. 

Those watching or participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement would only disagree with the surprise-aspect of the graphic. They’re aware of the problems facing Americans today. 

Still, it’s amazing to see some of the countries ranked better than the US on these metrics. 

What happened to “the Land of the Free”?

Here is the graphic.  So now you can all feel as badly as I do.

If the graphic will not enlarge for you when you click it, just click the link at the top.

I can tell you one thing, country's do not improve by constantly referring to themselves as "the greatest nation on earth." If we want to truly be the best, we have to be honest with ourselves and stop bullshitting our people about how the world perceives us.

The repeal of DADT by the numbers.

I know its small but just give it a click to enlarge it.

I have to say that seeing it laid out like this makes me very proud of my country.  Very proud indeed.

Of course not EVERYBODY shares my pride.

Courtesy of Pink News:

A Catholic woman from Massachusetts says she is so disgusted by gay people that she fears leaving her house.

You know the TRULY sad thing is that this woman, Stacy Trasancos, has quite a lot in common with gay Americans. You see it is fear of running into homophobic people like her that makes many of our homosexual brothers and sisters too afraid to leave the closet.

President Obama's 60 Minutes interview: "We don't trot out this stuff as trophies."

I found this to be an extremely interesting interview by Steve Kroft.

There is no grandstanding by our President, no swagger, and no attempt to paint himself as being super cool or lacking self doubt. Throughout the interview he comes off as honest, proud of those who made this mission possible, and humble concerning the part that he played in achieving something that his predecessor simply could not make happen.

This President has done, and continues to do, something I feared might never be possible again.  He has made me proud of my country.  Not because of any simple minded blind allegiance to a piece of colored cloth, or because I fear being called unpatriotic, but because now this President is working hard to EARN our confidence in him and our faith in this country.

Is he perfect? 

Oh hell no!

But is he such a huge step up from our LAST President that he seems to have single-handedly resurrected pride in our nation?  Oh hell yes!

(H/T to the Huffington Post.)