into three local Dick’s stores after they stopped selling assault rifles.

Asked for a manager. One appeared immediately. They each accepted my thank-you card and stopped to listen to me. One was very restrained, polite, and all-business. But the other two? My goodness! VERY responsive, friendly, even enthusiastic. They each gushed about the public response they’d seen - ALL positive. Some people had sent in flowers or cookies. Tons of good feedback. At the third encounter, I engaged with the young woman manager. But then a young male colleague came over, and he was downright bubbly with delight at the public reaction. They were clearly having a great day at work that day.

I asked them to pass my thank-you note up the food chain. They all said they would.

Positive reinforcement! It’s a good thing! Also gratifying when you hear in little unscientific “polls” like this - how many others out there who feel the same way you do. It was empowering, for sure!

Hey look, it all comes down to this:

Do we teach our kids that cheating is okay? And is something they should go ahead and jump into for momentary gain?

Or do we teach our kids that cheating is NOT okay, and NOT something you don’t do, because it’s just simply WRONG??? (Whether you profit from it or not?)

Good Grief this is INFURIATING!!!!!

Big-ass developer in the chi-chi parts of L.A., who’s to blame for the “McMansions” and high rises and skyrocketing real estate prices. He hosted dick cheney for dinner and other visits frequently during the bush/cheney era, causing miserable traffic tie-ups all over the place - because of course everything had to grind to a halt so dickie’s entourage could motorcade swiftly through town in style and comfort.

BIG-ASS donor to the CONS.

On edit - btw, Little Miss Princess was on Rick Caruso’s yacht in the Bahamas, spending spring break with his daughter Gianna, who’s also enrolled at USC, when this story broke. Poor little thing had to cut her vacay short to return to LA.

My husband and I have this saying - “...but he/she photographs well.” That’s usually in reference to the nauseating trend mainly in television news and infotainment - where brains or quick wit don’t seem nearly as important as a pretty face. You can be a card-carrying idiot or semi-literate, but MAN-oh-MAN if you look good on camera, You. Are. SET.

In this case, with our little princess here, and others like her, part of the process involved online researchers carefully sifting photos of athletes, and finding just the right photo into which to photoshop the rich kid’s face, correct the color and shading, and then Voila! You have Her Spoiled Highness sitting in the rowboat (as the crew athlete she really isn’t), or posing in the “sport” which the applicant-poseur claims as a specialty.

But hey - isn’t this the new republi-CON way? Cheat to win?

Oh, excuse me - she’s an “influencer” - who “vlogs” on Instagram with more than a million followers about makeup and clothes.

https://www.thecut.com/2019/03/lori-loughlin-daughter-olivia-jade-college-vlogger.html

So let’s give her a medal then, ‘eh? I was pleased to see that one of her “sponsors” has dropped her. I guess if you’re young, cute, slim, rich, and connected, you can busy yourself building your “brand.”

https://www.thecut.com/2019/03/olivia-jade-could-lose-sponcon-deals-amid-college-scandal.html?_gl=1*1bj2lvn*_ga*YW1wLUF2NHVPSDUwZExSS295MVlRWlY0VXRsckl1b0ZlSmVSRUJ5U1J2Tzhud21ma0lfY1pfZENBMDJjLW9GdnVhRzk.

Btw I learned all kinds of things reading through this shit. “Spon-con” - or sponsored content - that allowed her to link up with HP (which has terminated its relationship with her), Sephora, TRESemme hair care products, Marc Jacobs Beauty, Amazon, Dolce & Gabbana and more (?!?!?!!).

Link?

“Game days. Partying. I don’t really care about school.”

What a spoiled snot-nosed brat! Well, princess, if you don’t really care about school, then GET THE FUCK OUT!!! That prized space you’re occupying that you don’t even begin to deserve rightfully belongs to some other kid who takes that level of education seriously, DAMMIT!

GET THE FUCK OUT!!!! So SOMEBODY MORE DESERVING can enroll in that school and take that slot, DAMMIT!

DAMN IT! When I think of how I damn near broke my fucking neck studying to make grades in hopes of getting into a good school - to try to make something of myself. The “game days and partying” I DIDN’T do or go to because I was too busy trying to keep up my grade point average. Too busy studying, reading, writing, working my ass off to keep getting those A’s.

Night after night of all-nighters. Studying and studying and studying some more. All the papers and essays and reports I agonized over. All the notes I made and study guides I put together during exam weeks. Man, I must have filled a hundred spiral notebooks with notes preparing for tests. Color-coding topics and subtopics with a slew of colored markers so I could find any fact at a glance. Good Grief I worked! Nothing was just handed to me on some fancy designer plate. I worked my tail off!

I’m so angry I feel like I could actually catch fire! That spoiled little shit should go wait tables in some cheap dive for a couple of years and try to earn some money to help pay her own way at some institution that may not have a marquee name or glittering rosters of billionaires stuffing their endowment accounts but could still provide her with a respectable higher education. Maybe she’d learn to appreciate the value of an education for which many kids would give everything they owned.

I hope she’s shamed off that campus and fucking EXPELLED. MAN does she ever need to do some learning!

Sorry for the rant. But MAN this one hit me HARD!

Keep thinking!

Social Capitalism.

This is good stuff.

The MESSAGING. We need to master the messaging. Especially going into the next election cycle.