Warning to Single and Dating People

Just recently, while in the process of writing a book, I have learned what all is a matter of public knowledge and some of the things that is public knowledge can be very helpful in making dating a lot safer.  There is some very helpful information that is available for the asking.  Information that could help prevent you from making some of the mistakes that I have.  I want to discuss those mistakes, and then I want to discuss how easily they could have been avoided without ever doing a background check (which can cost a lot of money), but just by doing a little research that requires just a minimum fraction of your time. 

A few years ago, I dated and subsequently lived with a guy by the name of John Courson.  His mother was in my Sunday school class and she told the class about her son that was in prison for 2 years and that he needed pen pals.  When I asked what he was in prison for, she said that it was a big misunderstanding.  Well, I believed her whole line without ever questioning another soul or without ever just trying to do some research of my own.  Had I done just a little research on my computer, in the comfort of my own home, without ever leaving the comfort of my desk, I would have found out he had been arrested:

·         5 times for driving without a license

o    Which would have come in handy when I was letting him drive my car

·         2 times for DUI

o   Which would have made me extremely cautious, since he is known to drive without a license and now I know that he will drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol?

·         4 times for pawning stolen items

o   Which would have given me a heads up that he would eventually steal from me if given the chance … and he did?

·         4 times for giving false information

o   Which means he will tell you those bold lies if it meant he would get anywhere with you.

·         Once for Theft

·         2 times for Check Fraud

o   Which would have given me another heads up that he will encourage me to write bad checks and surely have a false excuse about how the money will be in there when the check gets ready to clear.

o   By the way, I was later arrested because I believed such lies for 2 counts of check fraud.

·         One count of Non-payment of child support

o   Let me just tell you, if the man isn’t going to pay his child support, you can already guess where you are on his little totem pole of priorities.

·         And finally, he has been arrested 14 times for probation violation.

o   This one really says a lot about a person

§  He has no regard for law enforcement or authority figure

·         Which your next question should be how far back does this go

§  He doesn’t play by the rules

§  He is exempt from society’s guidelines

These arrests tell you a lot about someone.  First of all, all these arrests happened at different times and I can assure you it is very clear that none of them were a misunderstanding.  The law knew full well what they were doing in those cases as well as all the others that they are faced with on a daily basis.   This is the type of person that is out there preying on single working women.  He wants someone that will support him because he sure isn’t going to work for anything he has.  Why should he work when all he has to do is steal it from someone else who worked for it. 

Another man out there preying on single working women is another guy I dated and very shortly thereafter started living with, James Sheffield.  When I met him, he told me that he had been previously married one time and that he had a child by that marriage.  Again, if I had just done a little typing on my trusty computer keyboard, I would have found out:

·         He had been married and divorced 3 times

o   What would be the harm in telling me that he was married and divorced 3 times?  He told me about the one time, did he only tell me about that one because he had a son by that one?

·         He had been arrested 3 times for family violence

o   Why would I want to be with someone that is known to be abusive in the past?

·         He had was under a permanent restraining order from these woman and from the one child.

o   So the abuse was so severe that a judge granted these women a permanent restraining order.  That isn’t an easy thing to get on someone.  He have to prove that they are abusive and possibly likely to return to do it again.

·         And again, arrested once for not paying child support. 

o   If he doesn’t respect his own child enough to send the child support, how much do you think he is going to allow you to spend on your child(ren)?

All this is information that had I took the time to look it up, could have saved me a lot of heartache, lot of money, and in the last case, my possessions.  The one that was abusive in the past, turned out to be abusive with me and took me for about $7,000 out of a savings account that I had.  The one with all the arrests, he was arrested several more times while we were together.  He introduced me to Cocaine and because of that, I started a spiral downward that wouldn’t end for 14 months.  In the end, where I had no criminal record before meeting him, I now have a felony record; where I was able to provide a 3 bedroom house for me and my boys to live, I lost all of that and the furniture in it; as for money, I could not begin to tell you what I lost in monetary value with him.  No, I do not blame him for my addiction that was my doing.  I didn’t have to partake of what he was offering.  That is my whole point, with just a little research, I could have avoided these men and you can too with just a few clicks of the computer.  All you need to is get some very basic answers from them:  their name; what city did they go to school in; where did they grow up; and just for kicks, ask them if there is anything in their background.  You may find that he/ she gives false information also.  If you want to know how to do this kind of research, send me a message, I will be more than happy to show you the sites that you can utilize to find this information.

Prayer ... Technology ... Mental Illness?

I saw this picture of Honey Boo Boo and Shirley Temple on Facebook the other day and it got me to thinking about the same thing that every year a new story will bring my thought to … what has happened to our young people.  Our young people is the next generation to rule this country and at the moment I have some serious concerns about whether or not they are up for the task. 

June 25, 1962  Prayer was removed from the public school systems.  I have heard some say that this is what has caused the fall of our youth today.  I have heard it said that if prayer wasn’t removed from the schools, we wouldn’t have mass murders or killings that we have today. 

I don’t think so.  On September 15, 1960, a guy by the name of Paul Harold Orgeron, 49 years old, went to  Poe Elementary School to enroll his son in the 2^nd grade.  When the school officials told him he could not do that due to not having the proper documentation to do so, he bombed the school killing himself, his son, and 6 others.  So, if the theory of having prayer in school diverts such tragedies as Columbine and the Bat Man Movie Theater, I’m here to say it doesn’t. 

In the 1970’s computers became affordable for the home, but most people like me didn’t get one until the 1990’s.  I have heard that computers is where we went wrong. 

           

I don’t think so.  Facebook wasn’t discovered until February 2004 and in my opinion, this has been a major contributor to some of the crimes that we are seeing today.  Yes, I have a Facebook and would probably have withdrawals if it was removed from my access … but in my opinion, Facebook brought a whole new game to the crimes that were already being perpetrated.  When you got bullied at school, it was only those one or two students doing it … today, when a child is bullied at school, the bullying is posted on Facebook and all the bullies friends pitch in and then even the ones that the victim thought were their friends pitches in to keep from being bullied themselves.  When the teens of today want to commit a crime, they can’t do it without posting their crime on Facebook for all to see.  Thank God, because that is how most of them are caught; but still, has technology really helped us or not?

President Obama has been termed the first "high tech" President due to his being able to keep his Blackberry and internet service for personal use.  This was a serious concern for the President.  This is the type of society that we have fallen to lately.  Even the President wasn’t able to go a 4 year term without being able to use his Blackberry and Internet.  Today, in law enforcement, they have a new charge that they can place on suspects, it is code:  16-13-32.3(A) Use of Communications to Facilitate a Crime and this charge is a felony.  Put in simple words, this is the use of a cell phone to tell your drug dealer you’re on your way and how much you want.  Technology has made crime so easy and thankfully, this is one area that the police officers have just as much advantage to catch the perpetrators.  So, when it comes to technology, I wouldn’t even say that it is the cause of the crime, I would just say that it makes the crimes worse in a lot of ways.

I think what it all comes down to is this.  No matter what age we live in, we are going to have to live among the mentally ill.  The guy that bombed the Poe Elementary School in 1960 was already a con, I’m not really sure what all his crimes were, but just the fact that he was a con tells you he wasn’t all there in the head to begin with.  The boys who shot up Columbine High School, even their mothers spoke of their depression signals leading up to the shooting.  Of course we have the Bat Man Movie Shooters parents speaking out now saying that he is sick … well, honestly that is no surprise.  I’m not even a doctor and I could have gave them that same assessment.  My question to those parents would be what did you do to find him help?  I know we don’t have a lot of help out there for the mentally ill, but I do believe, that if you keep knocking on the doors, eventually someone is going to open it and want to take a look just out of pure curiosity of the illness.  Prayer was not the answer and technology was not the problem; our problem is that for one reason or the other, we seem to have more mentally ill people today than we have in years past.  Or, in years past we were better capable of helping these people.  It is this area that we need to do more research and work in to find out what is going on and what needs to be done to stop it.

Racism

The nation is in a big turmoil over the issue of racism lately due to the case in Missouri where a white officer shot a black male that was a suspect in robbery (unknown to the officer at the time), but when approached by this officer in his cruiser, started tussling with the officer inside his car trying to get the officer's gun.  I don't know why we have to go back to a day and age that we have worked so hard to overcome.  I have to wonder who is sitting on the sidelines and waiting for the next big story to break that involves two different races.  Why does the race issue have to be brought up at all?  The other day here in Atlanta, Georgia we had a case where 2 officers were shot by 2 suspects that were attempting to flee a home invasion.  The officers were African-american as pictured below and the suspects were also African-american.  Why is that not brought up by the NAACP?

Is it really the fact that all were a African-american that is the reason that it isn't an issue?  Are you kidding?

What about the case in Cleveland where a 12 year old boy was shot by an officer after waving a what looked like a real gun around in a play park, but the gun turned out to be a toy gun with the orange tip gone.  Yes, it was an African-american boy and yes, it was a white officer; but you look at the guns below and tell me if you can tell the difference and how long are you going to take to decide the difference?


If you take more than a couple seconds to decide which one of these you are dealing with, you may be the one in the hospital hoping to live.  It will be your family that will be yelling foul and wondering why nothing more can be done to the culprits.

We need to protect our officers at all cost because without law and order, we will really be going back to a day and age that we don't want.  I assure you, racism is nothing compared to the day and age you are trying to take us back to.  You will only wish you can call racism if we go back the day when there was no law and order and when if someone thought you had done something wrong, you got hung or shot for it ...  no trial, no jury, no attorneys ... just vigilante justice.  Do we really want to go back to that time period?

Yes, it is very sad when we lose loved ones to officers that over react, but honestly, if they treated every case with caution, they will get killed.  There won't be anyone protesting that they were killed by a suspect that was out to hurt them and even if there was, there won't be any amount of protests that will bring these officers back to us.  We all make mistakes and it is sad when mistakes lead to the loss of lives, but if we go back to day and age when we just shot and killed the one we thought had wronged us, we will all suffer for it.  Please, while you sit on that side line ready to stand up and protest when the next big story hits the wire, at the same time, be ready to look at the situation from an objective point of view and give an honest assessment of the situation and think what you would have done in the same situation.

Supreme Court Ruling Taking Away First Amendment Right

A couple weeks ago, the Supreme Court was listening to a case that the ruling could affect how we post things on the social media sites out there. It started over a man in 2010 that posted comments on Facebook about wanting to kill his estrange wife, he was convicted of making threats to harm another and served 4 years in prison. The Supreme Court is to rule on what exactly constitutes a threat and what isn't. In my view point, it is slowly but for surely taking away, or at least diminishing our 1st amendment right to freedom of speech.


I personally have reported things that I have seen on Facebook; honestly, I don't think it is my job to sit here and read something on Facebook and determine if the threat or act is real or not. I think my only duty is to report to the officials and let them do the investigating. If there is nothing to it, then there is nothing to it and life moves on. But if there is something to the allegations, then I think I have done my civic duty. I have no regrets regardless of the laws findings.


However, with that being said, I have to seriously wonder about some people and the subjects they tend to use to write songs about and I am almost sure Facebook posts about. Just listen to the song and read the lyrics as she sings. I haven't listened to their other songs on YouTube, but trust me when I say there are plenty more. She isn't exactly making a threat at a certain person, but there are signs there that she needs some really good counseling ... or something.   Song About Serial Killers

One Very Dysfunctional Family

Around the second week in December 2009, I first heard the name Susan Powell on the news.  They were talking about how she was last seen on December 6^th at her home by her husband, Josh Powell, before he went on a camping trip with his boys … a camping trip in the dead of winter in Utah.  The camping trip was the first red flag for me.  No one takes a 2 and 4 year old camping in the dead of winter with snow on the ground.  As the weeks tarry and they kept looking for Susan, I became more and more engrossed in this story.  I couldn’t figure out why the police weren’t asking the same questions that I would be asking; week after week same thing no Susan. 

Then we find out that Susan’s Father-in-law, Stephen Powell was in love with Susan.  When his home was searched, they found several articles of evidence to this fact and many pornographic pictures and for that reason he is serving time in prison in Washington for voyeurism.  So, not only does this poor woman have a psychotic husband, but apparently the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. 

On February 15, 2012, when a social worker brought Josh Powell his sons for a supervised visit, he locks the supervisor out of the home and he chopped the boys in the neck and head and then blew the house up with him and the boys still in it.  I to this day wonder what made the authorities think he didn’t have anything to do with his wife’s disappearance and why on earth they would allow him to see his kids at all.  NO ONE takes their young kids camping in the dead of winter while there is snow on the ground. 

I don’t know why this story bothered me so much … and if truth be told, it still bothers me today.  Although all the bad that could be done has been done and just when you think there isn’t another chapter to add to the book, something else happens.  On Monday, October 13, 2014, Josh Powell’s younger brother committed suicide by jumping from a parking structure to his death because he was denied the insurance benefits on the death of Susan, Josh, and their two sons.  Seriously?  I mean after all the other stuff that has happened in this family, he not only wants to collect on the benefits from it, but he commits suicide when his wishes are denied.  What is wrong with this family?  IF it were my family, do I do believe I wouldn’t want any ties to the family.  I would be doing everything in my power to prove that I am not as bad as all the others before me.  There is still another Powell out there believe it or not.  Her name is Jennifer Powell and she is Josh’s sister.  As a matter of fact, the morning before Josh blew him and his kids up in that house, he had sent Jennifer a email suicide note and she tried to alarm the police, but there wasn’t enough time to do so.  I just hope and pray that I don’t hear something about her in the future.  It is time for all this madness to end.  This story just gets worse and worse every time you hear it.  

John Grisham was BOLD to make that statement

OMG, when I listened to this interview with John Grisham the author, I have to say, I was hot.  Grisham states that he doesn’t believe that all the people that are his age, white, and in jail for being a pedophile is actually a pedophile and they don’t deserve the long prison sentences that they are given … why, “because they might have been drunk one night and accidentally went into the website, that happened to a lawyer friend of his.”  Well, I totally disagree.

I don’t think that pedophiles wake up one day and have a flamboyant desire for kids.  I think that they start out small … oh, I don’t know, maybe they are drunk one night and start clicking around on their computer and they like the first thing that pops up, so they go to the next … and the next …a.n.d the next – before you know it, the FBI is at their door because they have gotten reports of a pedophile using that computer. 

Grisham has really put himself in some bad light with this interview and I am sure I am not the only one who will view this interview as harshly.  I for one have been drunk on numerous occasions and I have had a computer up and running when I was drunk, but not one time has it ever occurred to me to look at child porn.  Grisham has to realize that being drunk is not an excuse to do wrong … if it was, then people would be able to use the Temporary Insanity Defense when they were intoxicated or under the influence of other drugs at the time they broke the law.

 Interview With John Grisham

Why Are Some Lessons So Hard To Learn

There is an old saying, “you can lead a mule to water, but you can’t make him drink”, more and more, I am seeing that in our society.  Everyday people tell us things and we should be able to listen and learn from what they are telling us … but then just hours after hearing it, we turn around and do the same thing in hopes of either the same results or same results.  For example, a cop in hot water for shooting an unarmed teen in Ferguson, Mississippi, but didn’t he have an example to go by when he seen how much trouble George Zimmerman got into for shooting Trevon Martin?  These are both very publicized stories and one should have learned from the other, but yet Officer Wilson in Ferguson must have been thinking he was going to get the same results as Zimmerman in Florida.  Zimmerman after a very long trial was acquitted of the charges … but that doesn’t mean that Wilson will be.  When we hear stories in the news, our thoughts should be how would I have handled the situation differently?  Isn’t our goal to better ourselves, well in order to better ourselves, we have to learn the lessons that are taught to us on a daily basis.

The last thing I want to do is have someone get arrested when I know that there is another way to resolve the issues at hand, but last night, even after telling these guys numerous times to take their “conversation” somewhere else, they insisted on continuing it on the hotel premises.  The law was called and only then did they decide to try to take somewhere else … but by then it was too late.  I left it in the officers hands and as a result one of them went to jail.  All these guys had to do was listen to my instructions, but they thought they had a better way of handling it. 

One of my friends on Facebook made a brilliant statement on here post last night and I don’t even think she realizes how brilliant it was.  She said, “I just finished reading through some of my journals from last year and I realized that I am having some of the same struggles that I had at that time, but I am handling them differently now”, that was brilliant.  That is exactly what we all should be striving for.  When we hear a story in the news, our thoughts should go to what we could do differently that those people didn’t do … we shouldn’t aim to do the same thing and hope for a different result.  Aim to do better and be better than those that traveled this road before you.  

ISIS Beheads Another Hostage

Ok, so ISIS has beheaded another hostage ... I have a lot of questions about these videos.

1.)  Is it just me, or do these victims not seem to be seated in the same exact position with the same exact expression their faces.  The videos are taken at a distance.  The only time you seem to get a close up is when the Grim Reaper is talking.  If this was me, I know I am going to die anyways, I would not just be sitting there and letting him get what he wants to say out.  I would be screaming, jumping up and down, or something ... but you can bet he would have a hard time doing the video with my shenanigans.

2.)  Just who are these hostages?  It seems like the only time you hear that there are even people that are missing or that are possible hostages is when another video has been posted.  Exactly how many hostages do they have or do we even know?

Honestly, I have a ton more, but these are enough to chew on for a moment.  The more I hear about ISIS, the more worried I get.  I agree that we need to go in and dismantle and destroy them, but are we even sure we know where all they are?  I would hate for us to rise up against them because we think they are in this particular place and only after attacking them in that place do we realize just how many countries they are actually in and they retaliate on those countries that went in to get them.  If they have a hostage for every country that has spoke out against them, are we really stupid enough to think they are not already in those countries?  Really?  I sure hope we think twice about this.

What's Wrong With Our Justice System?

Lately, we are seeing a lot of people that should be inspirational role models become nothing but criminals:  Ray Rice, Running Back for the Ravens, beat his wife to the point of unconsciousness; Oscar Pistorius, the first Olympic double Amputee to win a medal, killed his girlfriend by shooting her when she got up to go to the restroom that night; Michael Vick, probably one of the greatest Quarter Backs the Falcons ever had, was using his dogs to dog fight and killing the weaker ones … then I look at the ones we convicted and the ones that got off.  These were just 3 of the many.  Then I ask, what is wrong with our justice system?

Has our society really gotten to the point that we value our games more than moral values?  We have high schools that are breaking not only the school rules but also laws in order to build the best teams out there … but what are we teaching our kids?  Isn’t the more valuable lesson to teach going to be to our next generation?  If we teach them that this person or that person shouldn’t be convicted for his crimes because he is so good at what he does, what is he going to take into his adult career with him and in what way should we expect him to treat such crimes?  In what way will this help us to grow past our history and become a better nation?  The generations that we are bringing up are the ones that will one day lead this nation and vote on the political realm to make the laws and amendments, why would we want to affect them in this way?  We owe them more than that.  We owe ourselves more than that. 

The other day, my son and I was discussing Ray Rice and what should be done about his crime (and yes, it was a crime); my son said “they can’t do too much to him because he is too good of a running back to do much to him” … “WHAT”.  I couldn’t believe my ears.  Much less, I couldn’t believe someone I raised honestly believed that this guy shouldn’t be punished.  That is what we are teaching our next generation people.  I have always taught both my boys that I better never hear that they hit their girlfriends or wives because this woman would beat them when I did hear about it.  It is never alright to beat a woman.  My son went on to explain that at the end of the day, the NFL was a big money corporation and they had to keep the money coming in and they couldn’t do that by getting rid of someone as good as Rice.  I feel that we can always give another college student the chance to take his place that won’t beat women … we don’t need wife beaters and people that can’t control their temper as our football players. 

Now, in the Rice situation, I truly believed they done the right thing.  But let’s say for argument sake that they went with my son’s opinion, exactly where should we draw the line at what was “ok” and what was not?  This guy obviously has a temper problem, so when he got upset with his manager or other bosses, would it then be alright for him to beat them?  I mean, he was mad with his fiancé, so he was given permission to beat her … why should any of his other superiors be any different?  After all, they are the ones that write his checks and decided that it was ok to beat his fiancé.  We done exactly what we needed to, we drew the line at the beginning.  If we nip it in the bud, we won’t have any repercussions from it.  My son is still in the belief that he is going to be able to overcome this … I truly hope that the NFL teaches my son a lesson that I will never be able to.   

A Dish Best Served Cold

It has been said:  Revenge is a dish best served cold.  I don’t think I fully understood that phrase until just recently.  As my friends and family can tell you, I am a True Crime addict.  I watch it on TV, I read, and I am even writing my first True Crime book; something I have been seeing a lot of on the shows lately is cold cases that have gotten solved after 10, 15, and even 20 years.  Those are called “Cold Cases” because you just don’t have any “hot” leads any longer and it takes a really good detective with some really good eyes to see what was missed that long ago to solve these cases. 

I love it when they get down to figuring out who done it and this person has changed their lifestyle.  Let’s say they are being accused of killing someone in 1990 and that that murder was the last thing they ever done wrong or against the law … imagine their surprise when the detectives show up at their door to talk to them about a case from way back then.  Here they are in a home, with their wife and kids (all of which came after that bad time period of their life) … and the cops want to talk to you now.  Wow, that just has to be a shock.  You know you did it … you know the evidence is there if they looked hard enough … but you thought you got away with it when they didn’t come see you back then.   Now, they are going to rip your life apart just as you done that person’s back in 1990. 

If I was a friend or family member of that person that was murdered, I would want them to let the suspect run free as long as he can to start this new life.  I want him to be set up and have a cradle that can fall.  I would want to devastate his life the way he devastated my friends or family member.  Of course this would only work if the person tries to turn their life around.  If they don’t, then go ahead and arrest and charge him … but if he shows signs of turning his life around, yes, definitely wait as long as you can.  Let’s face it, people just don’t get life or even the death penalty for murder any more … most of the time, they may only get 10 or 20 years … wouldn’t you want those 10 or 20 years to come at the worst time possible in their life.  I know I would. 

That is just a thought I had today.