Wading In

Foreclosures more than just losing a home By Kelvin Wade | | April 30, 2009 14:06 Last week, according to Realtytrac Inc., Fairfield is among the top 10 highest foreclosure rates in the country. In Fairfield, the American Dream has truly become a nightmare for too many residents. After our mother passed away in 2006, we put the Wade family home on the market. It sold in February 2007. I haven't been by to the old neighborhood in a while but with the bottom falling out of the housing market, I wanted to see what our old home was now worth. So I pulled up a Web site online and typed in the address. We'd purchased the house on Davis Drive back in June of 1976 for $39,000. It was the first house our parents had ever purchased, having lived in Navy housing until that point. When we first visited the house, it was just a wooden frame on a slab of concrete. Most of the subdivision was still nothing but dirt fields filled with jackrabbits. It was a 1,618 square-foot, fou...

For the boneheads who conceived of and approved of flying a jetliner over NYC chased by an F-16 earlier this week, first, a moment of silence for your sheer stupidity, cluelessness and insensitivity. .............. I can only hope the people involved have had vasectomies or their tubes tied so that they don't reproduce. Now, secondly, couldn't you fly that plane over the Atlantic Ocean, take photos and Photoshop it over New York?

US should be above using torture By Kelvin Wade | | April 23, 2009 14:10 In the 1988 movie 'Mississippi Burning,' a fictionalized account of the investigation into the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964, one of the conspirators is kidnapped and bound to a chair in a shack by a torture specialist hired by the FBI. The specialist pulls out a Dixie cup and a razor blade and implies he's going to castrate the suspect if he doesn't talk. The suspect spills the beans. Torture works. Humans have a breaking point. But what happens when a suspect tells everything he/she knows but the torturers want to know more? That's how you end up waterboarding two terrorist suspects 266 times like our government did. And that's how the CIA ends up chasing false leads all over the globe. Gen. Michael Hayden, head of the CIA under President Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney, defended the harsh interrogations the previous administration used, sayin...

Like everyone else, I was blown away watching the YouTube video of Susan Boyle's performance of "I Dreamed a Dream" on Britain's Got Talent. If you're one of the last dozen people in the world who hasn't seen the video, click HERE . But as the hysteria continues, I find myself cringing. What are we saying exactly? Isn't the message, "Wow. I can't believe a fat, ugly, Old Maid in Britain can actually sing!" If Susan Boyle looked like Beyonce' she wouldn't be a YouTube sensation. It's her plumpness, frumpiness and homeliness that help make her voice so exquisite. In fact, we're probably giving her voice higher marks because of her unfortunate visage. Of her appearance on the show, she's told reporters that she looked like "a garage." Susan said she wouldn't have a makeover but it does appear she's been shopping judging by the new photo of her. She still looks like Philip Seymour Hoffman in drag in the photo...

Nothing grass-roots about protests By Kelvin Wade | | April 16, 2009 14:52 As has been pointed out by many, the teabagging protests are an AstroTurf (top down) action instead of grassroots, having been set into motion by right wing groups such as Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity. Don't these protests remind you of the ones several years ago when conservatives took to the streets to protest President Bush and the Republican Congress' outrageous spending, earmarks and exploding deficits? You don't remember that? Oh. That's because it didn't happen. No, there was no discernible national right wing outrage. Fox News and right wing radio didn't arrange a national photo op to cover the GOP's recklessness. So, let me see if I can understand their rallying cry. Tax and spend? Bad. Tax cut and spend? Good. It's convenient how protesters act as though government spending is occurring in a vacuum, as if we're not in the middle of the g...

Parents should police kids' cell phone use By Kelvin Wade | | April 09, 2009 16:34 Have you peeked at your child's cell phone lately? Some people prefer to surreptitiously look and see what their child is up to, while others, like my Cathi, won't hesitate to ask for her granddaughter's cell phone to examine right in front of her. Either way, parents should inspect these devices. When you buy your child a cell phone, before giving it to them, you should read the user guide from cover to cover. Why? Because you need to know how that phone operates. You need to know how to check e-mail, text, take photos, and look at photos and videos. Too many parents give their child a phone and have no idea how it works. I imagine many parents (and teens) would feel it's a violation of privacy to go through a child's cell phone. But parents aren't running a democracy. Parenthood is a benevolent dictatorship and a child's safety should trump their priva...

Injunction a good tool to use against gangs By Kelvin Wade | | April 02, 2009 17:17 Last Friday, Fairfield resident Tyler Giugni was sentenced to 12 years to life in prison for his part in the brutal beating of Joseph Pettaway. In August 2005, Giugni, Stephen Armstrong and Corey Reitmeier dragged Pettaway, who was homeless and sleeping in his car in the Parkway Community Church parking lot, out of his vehicle and viciously beat him, leaving him in a pool of blood. Pettaway was left blind and brain damaged. The other two defendants will be sentenced soon on lesser charges. Reitmeier reportedly made a mocking cell phone video of Pettaway while he lay bleeding. These two predators should receive the maximum sentence for this despicable crime. After reading that Giugni, Reitmeier and Armstrong were in a gang, it irked me that Fairfield hasn't cracked down on gangbangers with gang injunctions. It's an idea that has been bandied about for quite some time. Councilma...