It has been a really negative year for everyone, you can't even turn on the news without seeing more negativity.

Fighting and name calling are becoming par for the course. Our own government is acting more like a class of preschoolers than a leadership body made up of mature adults. Not just one party, but both are playing the "I don't like you so you can't come to my birthday party" game.

I used to joke that maturity was overrated, but a little bit of maturity wouldn't hurt any of us right now. If you have a truth to speak, then by all means speak it but the minute we resort to including personal attacks and name calling we can no longer consider ourselves responsible adults.

One of my favorite parenting experts is a woman named Susan Stiffelman, she calls her parenting approach Passionate Parenting

Through her program I have learned many things, but most of all she has taught me the futility of power struggles. The more you seek to control another person, the more they resist that control, and the faster you lose the control you seek.

Perhaps she should expand her book to explain that that applies to every situation, not just our own children. We can all share our views as loudly and even as aggressively as possible, but if it is important enough to share then it should be our goal to try to get other people to hear and hopefully understand us?

When we shut them out before they even get a chance to hear it, what is the point of saying it at all?

It has been a year since I made the commitment to remain positive no matter what the situation. I picked a bad year to do it, and as hard as I have tried I still have a very long way to go.

Along the way I have had to cut out a lot of activities, going to my much loved locals only site is just one of those things. Not because anyone there has been unkind to me or attacked me in any way, but because the negativity is not only a physical but an emotional drain.

Those who teach positive living say that it takes five positives to counteract a single negative. If so then the cloud of negativity hanging over this country is going to take centuries to conquer.

Those same experts also teach that we should not focus on what we don't have, but what we do have. Instead of focusing on what is going wrong, we are supposed to focus on what is right.

I'm not saying that it is a bad thing to speak your mind or to disagree with what is going on in the government right now. I'm just saying before you complain, see if you can find a way to turn that complaint into positive action.

One thing I have always stressed to my children is that bitching has never solved a single problem. Instead of focusing on the problem, focus first on the lessons we can learn from it and then focus on finding the solution.

My children understand this concept, but so few adults seem to these days. Even my children know that smart people use their brains, the rest resort to calling names.

What are we teaching our children right now?

That is is better to hate than to love?
That it is better to complain that to take action?
That it is okay to call other people names as long as you don't like them?
That anyone who does not agree with you is the enemy?

Children do learn these lessons whether we mean to teach them or not, and it might seem okay to teach them to attack that which they do not like but... there will be times in every child's life when they do not like us.

When those lessons come back to us, they sometimes hurt.

One area of our life affects every other. If we insist we are teaching our children respect but can't offer respect to our neighbor or even our president, then we aren't teaching them respect at all.

We are teaching them to hate, and we really have no right to be surprised when that hate comes back home. Teach them love, and compassion, teach them to speak their truth respectfully, teach them to create not to destroy.

When is rape not a crime?

Apparently when you work for Halliburton it isn't, and 30 U.S. Senators appear to agree.

Seeing something as personal as abuse and sexual assault taken on by Washington is often a disheartening sight, but today I am in full awe of the stupidity of some of our elected officials.

Senator Al Franken (D-MN) did a wonderful job both in bringing this issue before the Senate and in telling a story that is difficult to hear, let alone retell.

In 2005 Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR co-workers in Iraq. After the rape, she was placed under guard and detained in a shipping container for at least twenty-four hours without food, or water and told that she would lose her job if she left Iraq to seek medical attention. That in and of itself would have been horrific enough.

When she returned to the United States she discovered that the employment contract she had signed prevented her from taking the issue to court, the issue could only be heard through private arbitration.

In response Senator Franken proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold government (read that taxpayer dollars) from companies "if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court."

Now, I will admit to a bias when it comes to the subject, but what, pray tell, was Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) thinking when he responded that this bill was "a political attack directed at Halliburton."

Pardon me Mr. Senator, but isn't it your job to at least be at least somewhat educated on the laws of the country you are supposed to represent?

I have read a few articles on the subject but nobody seems to mention what was obvious to me. Rape is a criminal action, as is unlawful detainer. These people broke the law, the actual law Sir, that you are supposed to uphold.

Your concern? Protecting Halliburton from political attacks?

Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to me that when a law is broken, it is supposed to go to court. Rape, believe it or not, is still against the law in this country.

In this case many laws were broken, and the civil rights of Ms. Jones and the other women who were subjected to similar treatment were blatantly violated.

That is why you are there Sir, to protect those civil rights, not the political well-being of a corporation.

I ask again, what were you thinking? Rape is a crime, crime is illegal, the courts are supposed to handle crime, and you are supposed to uphold a persons rights to seek remedy when their civil rights have been trampled upon.

Shame on you.

The amendment passed by a 68-30 vote. All who voted nay being Republicans. Only ten of the Republican Senators were willing to stand up and say a crime is still a crime, even when Halliburton is involved.

Thank you Senator Franken, it is nice to know that someone in Washington still believes in civil rights for rape victims.

Care to see how your Senators voted? Click here

I've always made a point to steer clear of certain topics, and politics is a big one. Yet how do we not see what is going on around us? How do we not see the direction things are headed.?

Sure, we all have our own ideas of what needs to be done, but what good are those ideas when we are only talking to ourselves?

That's right, keep talking because in reality nobody is really listening to you...

They are too busy using their own freedom of speech to allow you to have yours. It doesn't matter which side of the fence you are on, your freedom of speech is only as strong as the freedom you allow those who do not agree with you.

Everybody is so busy talking, but nobody is listening to anyone else, unless they already agreed with them in the first place. Like is seeking out like, and woe to you if you are different.

I've seen it from the conservatives, but I've seen it from liberals too. You are either a right-wing talking-head fear monger or a socialist bleeding-heart obamabot libtard.

Name calling wasn't acceptable in pre-school and it is not acceptable now.

Scientifically speaking, name calling is a psychological tactic employed by people to make themselves feel more powerful, it is not a sign of strength, but of weakness.

It is keeping me awake at night, I will admit it. I see where this is all heading and it isn't pretty. People are being sold hook line and sinker, people are being told what to think and they are thinking it.

Yes, there is a lot of fear mongering going on, but it is only going on because it is working. Instead of going straight to the source, we are trusting others to tell us what is going on, and they aren't telling us the truth.

Why are we being so unrealistic? Why is it that our own political party is allowed the benefit of the doubt but the other party deserves no mercy whatsoever. We are celebrating the failure of the other party without realizing it means the failure of all of us.

Socrates said "I am neither an Athenian nor a Greek, I am a citizen of the world."

Well, I am neither a Republican, nor am I a Democrat, I am a citizen of the United States and of the world.

So, I'm talking to conservatives, I am talking to liberals, I am talking to Democrats, and I am talking to Republicans. I am talking to AMERICANS.

We need to grow up and we need to do it fast.

We are all citizens of this country, and none of us should wish for it to fail, let alone celebrate it.

Yet, that is exactly what I see going on, we are celebrating the failure of our opponents and forgetting that we are supposed to be on the same side!

Aren't we the country that declares, with hand over heart....

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

One nation? Indivisible?

Make no mistake about it, we are now a nation divided. Not by that outside threat that we faced on September 11, but by our own opinions. We don't need terrorists or the threat of communism anymore, we will soon be our own destruction.