A Nashua, NH, mother who forced her 10 year old daughter to stand all night and write in a notebook has been sentenced to 2 – 10 years in prison.

According to newspaper reports, Theresa Bergeron, 37, formerly of Nashua, pleaded guilty to first-degree assault, second-degree assault, reckless conduct, falsifying physical evidence and two counts of endangering the welfare of a minor.

The investigation started when the girl arrived at school limping and with bruises on her feet. She told school officials about the previous day’s punishment by her mother. She had to stand from 3 p.m. to 7 a.m. and write a phrase in a notebook. She was sprayed with water when she moved out of position.

Other punishments included:

–Confinement in a bedroom overnight, its heating duct taped shut in the winter. She had no blankets or clothes and could not access the bathroom.

–A diet of only Cheerios for breakfast and dinner.

–Getting struck with a crutch after eating too slowly.

This is one case of animal cruelty that PETA can leave to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration to investigate.

Seems an employee at a Kentucky Fried Chicken store in Manchester, NH, was cleaning the exhaust hood above a deep-fryer unit when he fell into the fryer. He suffered burns to his arms, chest, and face.

As I have noted here before, PETA is in an on-going battle with KFC to find more humane methods of slaughtering the millions of chickens that end up those hot Friolaters. Mind you, they are not talking about giving up eating meat; they are pressing KFC to “harvest” their product without scalding chickens alive, breaking their beaks and bones, and otherwise abusing live animals.

If you have the stomach for chicken, perhaps you also have the backbone to watch this PETA investigative report about KFC’s operations. Or visit Kentucky Fried Cruelty for more information.

In the meantime, I would caution people about eating at a franchise where they not only practice animal cruelty, but lack the proper safety precautions to protect employees from cruel working conditions.

Here’s the link to the Union Leader story.

More bad news from the pro-child abuse crowd.

A mother in Manchester, NH, gave her 10 year old daughter a black eye and bloody lip for taking presents from a sibling. The mother is being held on $20,000 cash bail pending arraignment in Manchester District Court.

For those of you who think hitting children is OK, this is another instance where the “right” to beat your children turns into abuse and an assault and “endangering a child” charge. You might start off thinking you will never abuse your child, but a spanking leads to a slap, then a punch, then a kick, then a full-blown assault on your child. You will destroy your child and end up a felon.

Don’t spank children.

To read the story from the Union Leader, click here.

Seems we weren’t the only ones disgusted by coach Jim Calhoun’s temper tantrum when Ken Krayeske asked about his $1.6 million salary.

While others in the sports media were gloating about the way Calhoun “man-handled” an activist reporter, the governor of Connecticut essentially told the coach to stuff it.

According to an Associated Press report:

Connecticut basketball coach Jim Calhoun’s tirade at a freelance journalist posing questions about the his $1.6 million salary was an “embarrassing display,” the state’s governor said Tuesday. Gov. M. Jodi Rell said she believes Calhoun regrets the outburst directed at Ken Krayeske, who questioned the veteran coach about his salary after a game Saturday.

“I think if Coach Calhoun had the opportunity right now, he would welcome a do-over and not have that embarrassing display from last week,” Rell said after meeting with local college officials and business leaders.

Rell said Calhoun’s whole tone was embarrassing.

I guess the Governor wasn’t too impressed with all that trash talk from Calhoun about his program dumping $12 million into the state’s coffers.

I have also decided that an “activist reporter” is a journalist who has the balls to ask coaches the questions the locker-room queens are afraid to ask.

Way to go, Krayeske!

So, some freelance reporter, not part of the rump-kissing crew that usually sucks up to UConn’s Jim Calhoun, had the audacity to ask a coach who makes his living showing the mentally disadvantaged how to shoot a ball through a little round hoop, to explain why he should make $1.5 million annually when local, state and federal budgets are in a meltdown.

In brave, Bobby Knight fashion, Calhoun had one of those ” you have a nerve” responses, even though he is a public employee and the public has a right to ask such questions.

Maybe Calhoun’s cancer medicine is affecting his temperament, or maybe he just grew up with a major hair across his ass. But for someone who has so little to show for his millions in salaries and endorsements at UConn (just two NCAAs? How many did Wooden have?), I am not surprised he would be so defensive. He should be defensive.

At least four times Calhoun pounded out the idea that his basketball program contributes $12 million to the university. In fact, if you look at net figures, the program is a big loser. Sure, it generates those revenues, but with Cal’s salaries, the other coaches, travel costs, the opportunity costs of running his gym, the scholarships, the PR programs, etc. etc. That program is costing Connecticut money.

Of course, Huskie slaves in CT deserve the chance to pay for the honor of having such a mediocre program. I listened to one of their games, just a few years ago. They are the worst college basketball fans in the Big East, probably in the U.S. Their team — I stress, THEIR team — was down a few points and they started booing their own college players and their over paid coach.

So, I guess everyone is getting what they deserve.

Connecticut is getting screwed financially and loving it. Calhoun is finally coming out of the Bobby Knight closet to prove what a creep he is. And the basketball media in Storrs shows that the only balls are on the court — certainly they haven’t any between their legs or anywhere else where it might do them some good.

So here’s Calhoun telling a reporter to “shut up — my public salary is none of your business.” It will be fun to replay this when he finally retires.

Enjoy!

What Child Abuse Looks Like

Lazare Adingono, who coached the Cameroon national basketball team in the Olympic qualifying tournament last year, has been arrested on charges of using a belt to beat his 4-year-old son.

The father most recently served as an assistance basketball coach for Canisius College, a Catholic college located outside of Buffalo, NY.

Buffalo Police Department spokesman Michael DeGeorge said Friday that Adingono was arrested on Feb. 10 on a felony charge of second-degree assault and misdemeanor endangering the welfare of a child. The Erie County district attorney’s office is investigating and has yet to determine whether to pursue the case against Adingono, who also is a former Rhode Island player.

The 31-year-old Adingono lives in Buffalo, where he is in his third year as an assistant men’s coach at Canisius College.

The Buffalo News first reported Adingono’s arrest on Friday morning.

The alleged beating took place at Adingono’s home in Buffalo on Jan. 15. He is accused of using a belt to strike his son numerous times, causing pain and swelling to the boy’s back, neck and arm, DeGeorge said.

Guess what parents?

This type of beating is against the law. If he wasn’t dead already, I would make sure my own father, who used this form of physical abuse, spent jail time for his cruelty.

Physical abuse of children is like an addiction — one slap, one hit, quickly escalates into a beating. If you don’t hit your children, maybe they won’t hate you — and maybe you won’t end up in jail.

Hitting is wrong.

For one of the most astounding books on the effects of physical discipline on children (and the hidden reasons why adults physically punish children), I strongly recommend For Your Own Good by Alice Miller. I’ve created a link to the book on Amazon.com. There’s no “sale” here for me — I don’t make a penny. My reward is passing along great advice and insights from Dr. Miller.

It is a sad, difficult issue to think about, at least for me and my dog, Chance. The likelihood of my physical demise gets closer and closer. With another birthday just behind me and my physical condition deteriorating, I need to think about “final wishes.”

The priority for me is Chance, who has been through so much with me and who counts on me for everything. Chance, too, is getting up there in years, although I think he is as smart and handsome as ever, the possibilities of adoption for an older dog, a “mutt” no less, is remote. More to the point, as much as Chance is the center of so much of my thinking, he turns to me for everything. I joke that I am just the “food guy,” but in truth when he is scared or worried or just wants company he comes to me. Even when other people are around, I am the one he counts in to protect him and love him.

Chance is also the one that I turn to for love and kindness. He sleeps with me and sometimes when my demons are too frightening and the pills will not let me rest, I hold onto his paw and stroke his face until I fall asleep.

I also know that no one will care for me if I get seriously ill and take care of Chance, too. They will separate us — me in a hospital or SNF and Chance in a shelter waiting to die alone. I won’t let that happen.

As odd as this sounds Chance and I had this discussion one night, an in as clear a voice as he could say, he told me that if I died he would not want to be left behind. He wants to go with me. He does not want to have his life put in the hands of strangers who will not understand him, who might not revere his soul and heart as I do. He wants us to go quietly into that good night together.

Now I feel it is my duty, when the moment comes — and it could weeks, months, even longer — to have a plan for both of us. I want to die looking into his eyes and for him to see me looking at him with all the love and adoration that one creature can have for another.

I will figure it out. Of all the things I have fucked up in life, this will not be one of them.

– Rake

PS I am not allowing comments to this post. I know the killers and the hunters and the meat eaters are out there ready to slaughter with their hate another kind animal with more soul and heart than they will ever have. I also don’t want to hear from the do-gooders — the people who want to pretend we will all live forever and that none of this is necessary. They are living in a fantasy world. I am living in a real world with a real creature that I love and will care for until my very end.

For many years, white teachers, social workers, and others interested in the Arctic lifestyle have settled in small native villages like Kiana, Alaska. Many of these settlers take in $100,000+ salaries as teachers, but remain adamant that the poor, local customs of the natives were not to be destroyed.

Any effort to bring life from the “Lower 48″ to the villages was considered a contagion and rejected out of hand. With the help of their white masters, the natives’ natural isolation became even more severe.

When my editor, Frank, was there a few years back, it was made clear to him by his white hosts that the local customs and lifestyles were not to be tainted in any way, and that indeed any discussion of such changes would be out of order. This, of course, came from teachers in Kiana who earned more than $200,000 annually and had a private retreat of their own in Maine where they could escape the Arctic hardships, at least for a few months. Additionally, by adopting Native babies, they received lucrative social service and oil payments from the Alaskan government. They did quite well being “purists” while the Natives remained mired in poverty, alcoholism, drug abuse, and domestic violence.

Now that the local economy — always teetering on the edge of collapse — has finally collapsed and Natives are starving, going cold, and “suffering in silence,” they can thank their white helpers who set up barriers, both physical and psychological, to the outside world.

As has often been true in Alaska’s long history, the real pain and hardships there are not natual but man-made by the do-gooders who went there to help the locals.

First thing this morning I read President Obama’s opinion piece in the Washington Post, defending his stimulus bill and attacking opponents as representing the same-old tax-cutting GOP economics of the past.

If that’s really what the President thinks, he is missing the point. It’s not tax cuts versus spending, it’s old-fashioned pork-barrel spending versus a targeted, non-wasteful economic stimulus package that contains both spending and responsible tax cuts.

Obama writes:

This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending — it’s a strategy for America’s long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, health care and education. And it’s a strategy that will be implemented with unprecedented transparency and accountability, so Americans know where their tax dollars are going and how they are being spent.

What’s he’s saying is that his bill is more than a bill to stimulate the economy. It’s a Christmas wish list that includes every patronage toy that Democrats in Congress want to see under their trees. That is not the purpose of this bill — at least that was not its original purpose.

When Obama took office, my comment was that his success as president would be determined by his ability to control his own party’s worst instincts. So far he has shown no ability to control anything. He let Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic House write their own bill and put in it whatever they wanted, and now he refuses to cut the waste they threw into the package. What’s worse, they did so with an arrogance reminiscent of another over-reaching Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. Pelosi, as we know, not only made sure that no Republican would vote for her bill, but rubbed their faces in the dirt as well: “We won!”

Of course, much was made of Obama’s trip to the Hill to talk to GOP leaders. He would have better spent his time in Pelosi’s office reading her the riot act and explaining that building bipartisan support for legislation does not include humiliating the opposition (she can check with Newt on that lesson, too).

So, now, instead of admitting more self-inflicted wounds, Obama is expanding his “strategy” in order to excuse billions in pork. Yeah, the GOP would like to see more tax cuts, but it’s the pork that’s choking this legislative baby.

If it doesn’t survive, Obama and Pelosi deserve the blame, not the GOP.

Here’s a heartening report from CNN that Senators are now going through the stimulus bill line by line. Maybe there’s hope!

If you want to see some of the spending items that fall into “pork” category, here the list from CNN:

• $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient.

• A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film.

• $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.

• $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship).

• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters.

• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters.

• $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees.

• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD’s.

• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.

• $125 million for the Washington sewer system.

• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities.

• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion.

• $75 million for “smoking cessation activities.”

• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.

• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI.

• $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction.

• $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River.

• $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas.

• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into “green” buildings.

• $500 million for state and local fire stations.

• $650 million for wildland fire management on forest service lands.

• $1.2 billion for “youth activities,” including youth summer job programs.

• $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service.

• $412 million for CDC buildings and property.

• $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland.

• $160 million for “paid volunteers” at the Corporation for National and Community Service.

• $5.5 million for “energy efficiency initiatives” at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration.

• $850 million for Amtrak.

• $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint.

• $75 million to construct a “security training” facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies.

• $110 million to the Farm Service Agency to upgrade computer systems.

• $200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations.

In this gruesome example of “physical discipline” turning into a death sentence for a young child, the mother of “Baby Grace” will spend the rest of her life in prison for helping to kill her little girl.

She and her live-in boyfriend were just trying to teach the little girl a lesson, how to behave to please adults.

Please see my pior post, All Physical Discipline of Children Is a Form of Abuse.

Once the adult ego thinks he has the right to control another being, the genie is out of the bottle so to speak. Out of the bottle means out of control. One slap or one spanking leads to a hit, a punch, a slam against the wall. In Baby Grace’s case, she was literally thrown across the floor like garbage.

The other thing I am beginning to notice is how often some gutless woman allows a man to abuse her children. She does this to please him, so that she won’t lose him. No doubt, just as some men are unfit to be fathers, too many women are too selfish to be good mothers and put their safety and sexual needs ahead of the welfare of their children.

Both the men and the mothers deserve to be in jail.

Here’s the link to the story about Baby Grace’s case. May she rest in peace.