Are the Rich Really This Piggy and Clueless?

Read on Yahoo news today:

Sean "Diddy" Combs complained about the "... too high" price of gas and pleaded for free oil from his "Saudi Arabia brothers and sisters" in a YouTube video posted Wednesday. The hip-hop mogul said he is now flying on commercial airlines instead of in private jets, which Combs said had previously cost him $200,000 and up for a roundtrip between New York and Los Angeles.

"I'm actually flying commercial," Diddy said before walking onto an airplane, sitting in a first-class seat and flashing his boarding pass to the camera. "That's how high gas prices are. I'm at the gate right now. This is really happening, proof gas prices are too high. Tell whoever the next president is we need to bring gas prices down."

Please, someone tell Sean Diddy Combs that he's a spoiled brat jackass. For those individuals, like my two Lost Boys from the Sudan, who make minimum wage and who must borrow great sums to attend college, these astronomical stratospheric gas prices have been nothing but devastating. For them it is not a choice between a first class seat and a private jet, but on prioritizing the necessities in life.

HEAR THIS DIDDY: When a young man without family or country earns around $8/hour, $50 for a tank of gas means he cannot send money to his family in a refugee camp. It means he must choose between clothes and school books, or food in his belly.

GROW UP, DIDDY. And it's not just your kind (self made, but who has turned his back on his past) who shows their ignorance. John McCain, whose hoity toity millionare wife won't reveal her income tax returns, who owns 7 houses, and who remarks that the salary of a rich person starts around $5 million is as out of tune with reality as you are. Did you mean, hopeful Pres Candidate John, that someone who earns $3 or $4 million is not rich? I hope to God that was a slip of the tongue.

Question to John McCain: What class does the poor Lost Boy who earns $15,000 per year and sends half his money to his family in a refugee camp belong to? The abject poor? Would you cut taxes for him as your party has for special oil interests and Wal*Mart, his employer who barely pays him a subsistence wage. Huh? Would you? Sadly, I think not.

For shame you callous, rich, and avaricious people. For shame. You no longer have an idea of how appallingly unfeeling and greedy you sound.

Read this Article for confirmation about this tipsy topsy world: Living Paycheck to Paycheck on $100,000

Today Show, Ideal Weight, Diet, and Poor Body Self-Image

A friend mentioned watching the Today Show where she heard an "expert" say that the ideal weight for a 5' 5" woman was 125 lbs.

Now, my friend is FIT. She likes to bike 30 miles at a clip. She works out at the gym 5 times per week and she is a vegetarian. She looks fabulous, fit, and thin, is 5' 4" tall, and weighs, gasp, hold your breath - 129 lbs.

"I should weigh 125 lbs?" she said incredulously. "BAH! I'm not even as tall as 5'5", and if I lose more weight I'll look scrawny." She is right. She looks fabulous just as she is, and she is generally admired for her wonderful posture, glowing skin, figure, and stylish clothes.

My sister-in-law is a size 6. She is lean and mean. Every morning before work she walks 30 hard and fast minutes on the treadmill. She also walks the dog several times per day. For six years she has been on a diet 24/7/365. Before her daughter's wedding in November, she means to lose a total of 25 lbs so that she will be the same size she was in college.

We are all appalled. Where will she lose the weight? Her self-perception is that her legs are fat, but frankly she looks fabulous. At her son's wedding four years ago, when she weighed 5 lbs. more than she did in high school she looked positively scrawny. Though she looked great in the wedding photos, up close her face looked drawn,dehydrated, and much too thin. How will she look in November when she's lost that 25 lbs? Shouldn't she save face? Literally?

When it comes to our body self-images, where will the madness end?

For myself, I don't want to look like Angelina Jolie - all boobs and lips, and skinny arms and no hips. I rather like being meaty and offering a man (and mankind) something curvy to view.

So let's stop the madness and question those so-called fitness gurus. One told me during a time when I played racquetball 3 times per week, ran 5 times per week, and lifted weights 3 times per week, that my body fat percentage was too high. She was all of 22 years old, I was nearing forty. If you look good, are happy with your weight, exercise, and take care of yourself, why try to measure up to some so-called expert's arbitrary standard of female fitness? Why not try being happy with your physical self?

When I was 24 I weighed 114 lbs. Decades later, I am happy to weigh between 134-148 lbs. At these weights I am a size eight, my BMI is below 25, and my waist is well below 30". Sorry Today Show, your so called expert is contributing to the epidemic of low body self esteem by promoting that unrealistic "ideal" body weight. It does not take into account a woman's age, or her bone structure, or her fitness level. Go back to the drawing boards, Today Show, and come up with a more realistic standard. Oh, I know Americans as a whole are overweight, but let's not add to our self-guilt by measuring us with unrealistic, cookie cutter standards.

Biggest Loser Winner Ali Vincent at 122 lbs. How tall is she? How old is she? How fit is she?

Biggest Loser Kelly Marks at 162 lbs. How tall is she? How old is she? How fit is she?

Kelly doesn't look half bad these day. NBC and your so called fitness experts - shame on you. Your 125 lb. weight target would place Kelly in the Biggest loser-loser category.

Tribute to Randy Pausch

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." Oct. 23, 1960 - July 25, 2008. Click below to see and hear his last lecture.

Thank you for your inspiration, Randy! May your dreams come true in heaven too.