On April 9, 2009 I had all of my teeth removed.  It was the biggest mistake I ever made and I will never recover from it.  I will spend the next years of my life, which I hope will not be many, regretting the 50 years I had to take care of my teeth and didn't. 

OK, technically, I didn't have 50 years.  I turned 50 on May 18th and since you don't actually have any control over you teeth, or anything else, until you're at least, say, twelve years old, I can't lament my stupidity for all 50 years.  In my case it would be about 30 years.  My childhood fear of the dentist aside, my real responsibility started when I was 20 and broke my jaw in a car accident.

The accident resulted in several missing and broken teeth, as well as the broken jaw.  I recovered and went on to eat normally.  Eventually.  But I was determined to not ever see a dentist unless I absolutely had to, and I seldom had to.  Oh, a new flipper ever 5 years or so.  I finally saved enough money to have all the broken teeth removed.  But that was it.  I brushed my teeth everyday, but I never had them cleaned.  Just couldn't bring myself to sit in that chair unless I absolutely couldn't avoid it.  A mere toothache?  Huh.  That wasn't enough to get me to a dentist.  No, my jaw had to be swollen before I'd go.

If only I didn't have teeth.  How much easier my life would be.  Never see a dentist again.  Never worry about pain.  Never have to sit in that damn chair.  Ever again.  If only I didn't have teeth.  How much better my life would be. 

So, on April 9, 2009 I finally did it.

I have wished for death every day since.  No matter what anyone tells you, no matter what you read, no matter how much money you have, there is no replacement for real teeth.  Thousands of dollars won't give you the same as what you had.  Food, even if you can chew it, will never taste the same again.

Denture hell. 

Take care of your teeth.  Everything you think you are avoiding by getting dentures would be a cake walk compared to the process of getting and using dentures.  Have that root canal.  Have the gum surgery.  Do the bone grafts.  Chances are that all the things that made your teeth rot are what will cause you to not be able to wear dentures anyway.  So, thousands of dollars later, you'll be sitting there listening to a dentist tell you why your dentures don't fit because you have so little bone, and he can recommend bone grafts or mini implants, or some other thousand dollar procedure that won't work either.

I got my permanent dentures yesterday and was able to eat Chinese food.  The first solid food I've had in 9 months.  Wonton soup and dumplings.  I was lucky I had the $15,000 my implants cost me.  Maybe, with time and practice, I can eat a burger someday. 

I'm a woman who hates women in positions of power.  Yes, I said "hate".  That word has gotten spewed at so many people in the last 20 years or so years that it seems to have lost it's meaning.  I prefer the original meaning that I grew up with.  Extreme dislike.  Yes, I extremely dislike women in positions of power.

Now, you may think "why would a woman hate other women?".  That's a very good question and I'm more than happy to explain it to you.  I hate women in positions of power because of my experiences in the work world where I have been the victim of the women who were placed in positions of power over me and my co-workers.  With only two exceptions in 30 years, every women I have ever worked for has been an incompetent, arrogant, ignorant, thin skinned, ambitious, petty, small minded, insecure, self centered female totally incapable of listening to, understanding, or respecting anyone who she perceives as a threat to her personality personally.   Women are incapable of separating themselves from whatever task they need to accomplish, and the success of anything they do is judged by their perception of how others react towards them.

Have I never worked for an incompetent man?  Sure I have.  But incompetent men tend to be harmless.  Most people, on average, are incompetent.  Man or woman, the vast majority of people are simply average.  Average intelligence.  Average ability.  It's the average people who make the world go 'round.  Without the average, unambitious, lazy slackers, there would be no such thing as achievers.  But that's another rant for another day.

No, I've worked for some pretty stupid men.  But men tend to know when they're stupid and the ones who don't get by because everyone else knows they're stupid so they don't get to do much damage.  They tend to chug along from job to job in a company until they screw up so bad they get fired, or they wise up enough to keep their mouths shut and do as little as possible until they can retire.  There's a place in all companies for the dumb guy who does what he's told.

But women just keep getting promoted no matter how incompetent they are.  I'm working for a company now where our big boss is so incompetent that we've all just taken to ignoring everything she says because nothing she says makes any sense.  I have a technical job where I've gotten emails from this woman demanding we do things that are not technically possible.  After the last one I forwarded it to a guy I work with, who has worked here longer than me, and he laughed.  "Oh, she does that kind of thing all the time."  What do I do, I asked him.  If I answer her email the way I want to, I'll get fired.  I can't do what she wants me to do because it's not POSSIBLE.  SO I'll get fired.  "What do I do?"  I whined at my co-worker.  He said to just ignore it.  She'll go on to some other thing and forget about it.  And that's exactly what happened.  So I dodged that bullet.  Whew.

They just made her a Vice President and now we're all on her latest whim.  Except now she has to power to get it done and it means about 100 lost jobs.  The company wants to save money, but what she wants us to do will actually cost money.  Wonderful.

I would never vote for a woman for dog catcher much less President of the United States.  Until Sarah Plain came along.  Why?  Because like those two women I worked for in the last 30 years, Sarah Palin is the exception.  When McCain first nominated her I cringed.  But then I read up on her, watched her speeches at YouTube,  followed her on the campaign, and the more I read the more I liked her.  There is nothing I don't like about her.

Here I am, an atheist who thinks all religious people are stupid, someone who is pro-abortion and anti-death penalty, who hates women in positions of power, and I love Sarah Palin.  She is smart.  She is a great public speaker who says exactly what she believes in, and even though I may not agree with her I respect her for what she does believe.  And most importantly for me, Sarah Palin loves this country just as much as I do. 

Sarah Palin is the strongest, smartest, most eloquent defender of America that we've seen since Ronald Reagan and she is exactly what this country needs now. 

I hope, with all my heart, that she runs in 2012.  I'd vote for her with pride.

Conservatives have a fatal flaw.  They're too embarrassed by other conservatives so they seem to think that by pointing out the "faults" of other conservatives they're somehow being...what?  More intelligent than the liberals who hate all conservatives no matter what they say or do?

Beats me. 

People say the Republican party needs to adapt to survive.  Yeah.  It needs to get rid of people who think conservatives are an embarrassment.

In a world where there are no such thing as facts, only opinions, what good does it do to even bother to take the time
to voice an opinion that is based on facts when everyone who will read it has their own facts to counter your facts and
tells you the way they read the facts are just as legitimate, or more legitimate, than the way you read them.  So you're
stupid and shut up, you bigoted, homophobic, Islamophobic, bad example, moron.

How does anyone stand it when at best you're called hateful, and at worst even those who agree with you tell you
it's not what you say but how you say it?  As if saying it differently will be understandable or more palatable to
the people who will disagree with what you say and will still hate your guts no matter how you say it?

To Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin, Mike Adams, Ted Nugent, Glenn Beck, Bert Pretlutski, Pamela Gellar,
Greg Guttfeld, and every other writer out there who gets more grief from those who claim to agree with what you say
but just wish you wouldn't say it the way you do:

Thanks, and don't change a thing to satisfy idiots. 

Blog comments seem to follow the same pattern as message boards.  Conservatives pretty much stick to the subject.  Liberals fling hate. 

One thing I've seen lately is this pissing contest between the conservative blogs and liberal blogs about how bad each others comments are.  Both sides use the argument that neither should be held responsible for "anonymous" comments left on their respective blogs.  Well, the conservatives say that more than the liberals so because liberals are more likely to point out the hateful comments on conservative blogs and ignore the hateful comments on their own.  So conservatives have been pointing them out for them.

Two things: 

Liberals don't consider even the most hateful comments on their blogs all that bad because they agree with the sentiments expressed.  If it's true, it can't be considered hateful.  Liberals really do think that way.  There is nothing bad that can be said about George W. Bush or any Republican that any liberal will read and think "ouch, that was low".  They just don't think that way.  BDS is perfectly normal to them and is a valid perspective.  So anything goes when it comes to wishing death on anybody associated with him, or the neocons.  It's a pretty good judge of the average liberal mindset that when the mans dog died some of the Bush haters still couldn't contain their glee.  Forget Dick Chaney's blood clot and Tony Snows cancer.  When you can't even summon up a little compassion for a man when his beloved dog dies, what can you be expected to show compassion for?  Oh, right.  Those poor Muslims who deliberately targeted and attacked a school and shot little kids in the back as they ran for their lives.  They were "oppressed".

Second, blog comments really are not anonymous.  Sure we don't use our real names.  But we become known by the names we do use and they are just as important in this almost make believe world.  My name, nt250, is one I've had for years.  If anyone who used to post at the IMDb message boards happens upon this blog, they will know exactly who I am.   They won't know my real name, but they'll know me.  No, our user names matter.  We are not anonymous. 

Trolls?  Depends on the blog.  I've seen slow ones and busy ones.  Not much any blog can do about trolls. But they all remind me of the message board I spent 6 years posting at..  Those user names are not just names on a screen.  You get to know who is who, and in my experience with blogs so far, the pattern is holding.

" Root Cause"

I chose that name for my blog because when I thought of what to call it those two words just kept popping into my head.  In the years since 9/11, those two words tick me off like no other.  So, since I like to vent and rant, I figured it would be a good name for a blog.

Root cause. 

There is no "root cause" that any moral, thinking, person could possibly come up with for 9/11.  Although many liberals try to.  What is wrong with people who would rather blame our president for 9/11 than blame the true culprits?  What is wrong with these people?  What is wrong with people who would rather blame Russian  "aggression" for Beslan than to blame the true culprits?  What is wrong with these people?

American Imperlialism?  What is wrong with these people?

There is something very wrong with them.  But they don't see it.  What is it with liberals that makes them so incapable of seeing their own hatred when they are so quick to see hate everywhere else they look?

I love my country.  I don't hate my president.  And that makes me a hate mongerer. 

The world has gone crazy.  Lies become truth.  Truths become lies.  It all depends on who is doing the telling.

There is only one truth I know:  People, on average, suck.