Cable News
Posted: 19 April 2013 Filed under: News, Observations | Tags: Cartoon, MainStream Media, Terrorism 2 Comments »Just had to post this ‘toon after all the lies and misinformation….cable news is giving me gas……
The New South…..Really?
Posted: 10 April 2013 Filed under: Mississippi, Observations, Society | Tags: New South, Racial Bias, Segregation 4 Comments »I live in what th3e media and most pundits want to call “The New South”…..meaning somehow it has changed from the days of segregation and poll taxes………maybe on the surface we could make a case that the South is changing, but at its core it is not much different than 1959……..yes, more blacks are attending traditionally white schools and there are more lawmakers that are black….but what about at the heart of the society?
This will give you an idea of what the “heart” of Dixie is thinking…..
Newser) – We’re now well into 2013—but don’t tell that to the citizens of Rochelle, Ga., who prefer to party like it’s 1949 at racially segregated proms and homecoming dances. Four students at Wilcox County High School are now attempting to fight back against their town’s “embarrassing” tradition by organizing their own integrated prom, reports CBS Atlanta. But not all of their classmates are so open-minded. “I actually put up posters for the integrated prom and we’ve had people ripping them down at the school,” says one of the students.
The high school itself does not organize the dances, so it’s technically legal for students and parents to organize separate black- and white-only proms. The school finally abolished racially segregated courts for the first time at this year’s homecoming, but there were still two dances. A black student, one of the integrated prom organizers, was elected queen, but attended a different dance than her king, and separate photos were taken for the yearbook. “I felt like there had to be a change,” she said. “Because for me to be a black person and the king to be a white person, I felt like, you know why can’t we come together?”
I always tell people that sk me about visiting the South the one thing they need to keep paramount in the their mind…….when crossing intpo the “New South” remember to set your watches back 150 years and all will be alright…….
Education Nation–2013 Edition
Posted: 9 April 2013 Filed under: Education, Government, Observations, Politics, Society | Tags: Educational Debate, Educational Issues, Teachers 16 Comments »Every year for the last4 or 5 I have posted on the whole crap that the media is pushing….the Education Nation……it is a myth perpetrated to confuse and misinform…..the simplest explanation I can give…….the media will hold up a couple of successes but fail to mention the numerous failures of the carter school program….charter schools…..your children are at the mercy of a lottery…..do you know the odds of winning a lottery? Let us say that the odds are better that you will be struck by lightening twice while standing in a parking lot on a clear day…..
By now many have heard about the scandal in Atlanta…..leaders of a school district are being indicted for changing grades of students to get more money from the government…….
Teachers in Atlanta were so used to changing students’ answers on standardized tests that they gathered for “erasure” parties and prepared answer keys on plastic transparencies to make the cheating easier. One teacher told investigators that she feared retaliation if she didn’t participate, saying the district was “run like the mob.” At least 178 teachers and principals — including ex-schools chief Beverly L. Hall — have been implicated in the scandal, which was first brought to light by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Hall was indicted March 29, 2013, on conspiracy and related charges.
Remember a couple of years ago the media was all a twitter (no pun intended) about the job some woman was doing in Washington, DC………she was held above all others because she was doing a fine job (which was a charter school)……
There’s still no conclusive evidence of cheating at a Washington, D.C., school that gained federal accolades—and monetary bonuses—for its high performance on tests. But a USA Today investigation found that student test sheets had unusually high numbers of wrong answers that had been erased and replaced with right ones. Testing experts said the odds that these erasures occurred purely by chance were smaller than the odds of winning the Powerball grand prize in the lottery. (District officials say teachers trained students in testing techniques that may have led to more erasures.) The school’s former “poster boy” principal recently resigned from his position as a superintendent. Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of D.C. schools who touted the school’s success, has resisted answering questions.
And there is Texas….it is always Texas…….
When the Dallas Morning News analyzed test results across Texas, it found hundreds of schools with test scores that had jumped and dropped in suspicious ways. The newspaper identified low-income schools with students at one grade level who struggled with basic skills—and students in the next grade who received nearly perfect scores or outperformed the state’s most elite districts.
One elementary school’s students scored so well that Oprah Winfrey featured it on a special about schools that “defy the odds.” But a teacher said her high-scoring students could barely write their own names, and when the same students went on to middle school, their scores plummeted. The state ultimately decided to investigate at least 700 schools. But for more than 600, the “investigation” consisted of simply asking schools to fill out a survey about their testing procedures. Taking many schools at their word, the state declared that the vast majority were innocent despite further evidence that some schools cleared of wrongdoing had actually cheated.
Can we stop this crap? The charter school is education by bingo machine. we hear the politicians tell the nation just how important education is to the country and then when the smell dissipates they cut funding and some even want to eliminate the education oversight……
Be honest! Education means NOTHING! It is a campaign slogan that gets votes from morons with the IQ of their hat size…….no amount of crap reporting will change the fact the the education in this country is in the toilet and our leaders have control of the flush lever…….
Okay, Pee In The Cup!
Posted: 7 April 2013 Filed under: News, Observations | Tags: Crime & Punishment, Drugs, Medical Issues 3 Comments »As usual, I try to post anything but politics on the weekend……
This is the age of the drug test………it seems that this is the answer to getting good employees….also the answer to whether you qualify for some assistance or not……..and all you have to do is give “The Man” a sample of your urine and they will do their CSI impression and decide what type of person you are and having been…….
There always those people that are looking for ways to pass a pee test even if you have been a bad person and enjoyed yourself a little too much……..one such attempt…….
A man has been arrested after being accused of using a fake penis called the Whizzinator to beat a drug test.
Sydney Levin, 34, was submitting a probation mandated urine sample last week when an officer allegedly saw him using a prosthetic known as the Whizzinator. It is advertised as a “discreet” device that has synthetic “medical grade urine.”
Levin, of Lake St. Louis, Mo., was charged Thursday with possessing a forging instrument. He previously pleaded guilty and was on probation for possession of a controlled substance and felony stealing in 2009.
He pleaded not guilty Monday to the new charge against him after being released from the St. Charles County Jail on Friday, where he posted a $25,000 bond.
Necessity is the mother of invention or so they (whoever they are) say.
The “Whizzinator”? My favorite line in the piece was “medical grade urine”……..okay I did not know there were different grades of urine…….live and learn………..
Thoughts?
Why Does Congress Suck?
Posted: 4 April 2013 Filed under: Government, Observations, Society | Tags: US Congress 8 Comments »A question for the ages…….seers will be contemplating this when the rapture (if you believe in that sort of thing) occurs………personally, I think it is because we elect morons, amateurs and douche bags…….we have not had a statesman in 50 years……but what really makes them suck the “Big One”?
I have heard many theories….the media would have you believe one thing and bloggers another….but just what makes them so impotent?
Now hear is a theory……
Newser) – File this one at the opposite end of the spectrum as “throw the bums out.” Daniel Schuman argues at Slate that we need to give Congress a hefty raise. The workload is way up thanks to slashed staffing levels, while salaries are way down relative to previous decades. What’s more, the work environment is “poisonous,” and lucrative pay awaits in the lobbying industry. No wonder we can’t keep good lawmakers. “We get what we pay for, and there’s no question we are not paying enough to keep the best people on the job,” writes Schuman.
Members of Congress make a base salary of $174,000, which is nothing to sneeze at, but those in office 20 years ago would have made $214,000 in today’s dollars. Singapore provides a model: It has an uber-efficient government in part because it pays top government ministers seven-figure salaries. “If we want our representatives to work for us, we must pay them well enough to stay focused on the people’s business,” writes Schuman. The same applies to their staff. “Right now we aren’t paying for quality work, and it shows.” Click for Schuman’s full column.
What complete crap! The Congress works 3 days a week….and that is on a busy week……..and for every holiday they take a month off……..and then this dipstick thinks they need more money…….what they need is to be paid piece work or pay them for part time employment……personally, I think they are over paid for the work we get out of them……..
Surely, there are some thoughts on this?
Are They Serious In 2016?
Posted: 1 April 2013 Filed under: Elections, Observations, Politics | Tags: 2016 Elections, Conservatives, GOP, Republicans 11 Comments »Does the GOP really want to win the presidency? Will the GOP ‘bring in the clowns’ as they did in 2012? Will we have real issues to decide on in the election? Questions may seem a bit off-beat but take a look at what has happened since the last election.
Days after Mitt’s loss to Obama were heard how the GOP just had to change their ways if they were to ever take back the White House….we have had an autopsy on the party and a whole new way of thinking (a bit of a stretch but they want us to believe it)…….
(Newser) – Republicans were pretty harsh on themselves in their much-discussed autopsy of the 2012 campaign, but did they actually get to the root of their electoral woes or propose decent solutions? “Unfortunately, the answer on both counts is, not really,” the National Review laments. The report concludes that Republicans are out of touch with young people, preach to the choir, and need to reach out to minorities. “There is truth in each of these, which is how they got to be platitudes.”
- The report’s take on outreach is “heavy on committee formation … and tokenism,” the Review complains; its top suggestion, for example, being that minorities take charge of minority outreach. “In reality, selling the Republican party’s appeal is more about the appeal than about the selling. … The heavy lifting is going to require imagination and an appetite for risk.”
- Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast agrees. “Back in the 1980s, the voters kept the Democrats out of power until they were persuaded that the party really had changed,” he notes, and Democrats responded by “jettisoning some longtime shibboleths.” Republicans need to do the same. Their problems with minorities run deep, and many voters believe their chief economic goal is to protect the rich.
- At the Washington Post, Dana Milbank notes that Reince Priebus’ speech skipped right over the report’s recommendations on gay rights and immigration. Priebus “took pains to avoid offending the conservative orthodoxy that is antagonizing segments of the electorate that Republicans need if they are to win.” At one point he said, to use Milbank’s paraphrase, that “All are welcome in the Republican Party—as long as they’re conservative.”
- Erick Erickson at RedState complains that the report’s recommendations to swap primaries in for caucuses and limit debates will benefit monied candidates like Mitt Romney. But the real problem with the report, he argues, is that it fails to realize that “sometimes there is nothing that can be done. Bad election years are bad election years.”
I agree that the GOP has changed nothing. They continue to grasp onto outdated views on today’s complex issues. But could it all be just a rouse?
The GOP does not need to win the national election. Surprise! They are getting everything they want by controlling state governments. Approximately 24 states are controlled by the GOP and 2016 could help that average. They could get just about everything they want by circumventing the Federal government and control society thought the use of states rights. Look at abortion for instance…..it is a legal right as a federal issue but states have found ways of seeing that that right is never used……I look for the same sex marriage thing to be the same…..SCOTUS will most likely vote that it is a states rights issue and kick it back down.
The GOP will continue to play the game with the hope that something or someone will fire up the electorate……but while they are doing that they will be working hard in the states for that is where they will get just about everything they want….
God, I Love Stupid!
Posted: 31 March 2013 Filed under: News, Observations | Tags: Humor, Stupidity 5 Comments »We hear daily of stupid things that people do……..and it is especially humorous when it bites them in the butt…..
(Newser) – Put this on your “don’t-do” list: A Texas woman set a snake on fire in her backyard—and then watched as her house burned to the ground, Yahoo! News reports. “While cleaning up, she saw a snake, threw gasoline on the snake, lit the snake on fire,” said a Bowie County sheriff’s deputy. “The snake went into the brush pile, and the brush pile caught the home on fire.”
The deputy described her recently purchased brick house as a loss, and said the house next door—which she also owns—was 20% damaged, reports CNN. A local fire official said such incidents aren’t as rare as you might imagine: “Yes, it could happen with rabbits and big field mice,” he told Yahoo. “They have been known to catch fire and then take off.” Just why did this woman take such drastic measures? “She just didn’t like snakes, I guess,” he said.
Some days it is just worth reading the news…….
Whose Equality?
Posted: 28 March 2013 Filed under: Civil Rights, History, Observations, Professor's Classroom | Tags: American History, Equality, Historical Events 4 Comments »College of Political Knowledge
Subject: Early American History
From time to time when I am talking with people a subject comes up that puts my brain into overdrive and I just have to post something before it can rest………this was a conversation I was having with a conserv friend and he used the ‘equality’ about 5 times in a sentence………BANG! My mind went to work…….
Let me inject that I am not saying that what we believe about our founding era is wrong just that the thinking may not be the same as it is today or has been portrayed by history books……..I have spent many years studying and researching the founding period a….by read papers and thoughts from those men that we hold in high regard….and in doing so I have found an insight in the thought processes from those days……..
Who does not know those magic words from our founding, “….that all men are created equal……”? Words that we Americans are proud of and hopefully we aspire to live by…….words that have echoed through out our history……but what we the Founders thinking? What can explain the continuation of slavery? Or women not being allowed to vote? What were they thinking?
Well the liberal definition is that people are born equal….legal and political equality but equality of opportunity as well….the conservative definition is more an abstract and unachievable goal…..but where did the Founders fall in this scheme?
Most of the Founders were well schooled and being such would have been exposed to John Locke……..Equality is the driving force of Locke’s political theory because it is the basis for our consensual participation in society, a requisite for the establishment of any state. As such, equality is not just necessary in the establishment of government but is also a requisite in maintaining a safe and stable nation. Locke describes the responsibility of the government (specifically the legislative power) as “the preservation of the society, and of every person in it” (Locke, Treatise, 69), showing his belief that the obligations of the government are to provide safety and protection to all its citizens equally.
But was Locke the driving thought of the day?
Let’s start with the person who put the idea in the minds of average Americans, Thomas Paine, in his mind equality meant just what it sounds like……for men, women, slaves………Paine thought everyone in the society was equal there were no one person or group that was better than the others……Paine wrote about women and they voting, wrote about free all slaves and even wrote about a social security type of fund for retirement……he foresaw all people living as equals in a just society.
But that is about where the Founders departed from the whole equality thing…..at least in my opinion.
Equality is a magical word but what did it mean in the context of our founding documents? Personally, I do not think the the Founders were speaking about ALL men…….their idea was that Americans were equal to citizens of England….that they should have all the rights and privileges of their English brothers…..
I give you the decision written by Taney in the Dred Scott vs Sanford……..Taney — a staunch supporter of slavery and intent on protecting southerners from northern aggression — wrote in the Court’s majority opinion that, because Scott was black, he was not a citizen and therefore had no right to sue. The framers of the Constitution, he wrote, believed that blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it.”
Yes, he was a supporter of slavery but also I believe that he was interpreting what the DoI was stating…..that all white free men were equal to the free men of England and all others were subordinate to that…….I want to believe that the Founders were that forward looking but their writings and papers just does not bear that out…..
Just Another Rant
Posted: 27 March 2013 Filed under: Observations, Society | Tags: Op-Ed, Opinion 6 Comments »Do you ever want to just scream….STOP IT! At the top of your lungs when reading the news?
Do not know about you but there are times when I feel that all my effort is in vain. No matter how hard one works to keep the people/reader informed the more there is resistance to the truth….I realize the “truth” is subjective but facts are facts and NO amount of twisting them will make them accurate to the bright light of scrutiny….and there is my problem. Some people do not want the truth….they do however want their beliefs reinforced to make them feel better about their beliefs……
It seems it is no longer what is good for all the citizens and the country but rather what the individual wants everyone to believe and act……….it is all personal….it seems few can look past their own selfish little priorities to see the larger problems and do not want real solutions just band aids and slogans…..and all is about the issue du jour….there is not much thinking outside of the box…….just regurgitation of sites in the mist…….it is all too frustrating at times…….
Once or twice a year I get thoroughly disgusted with the chatter…..little to none is what is needed……..knowing that I get frustrated every year I try to have a stash of drafts on my blog that I can use when amI just are too disgusted to do any research or reading…….I will be posting those drafts for awhile…..I will check back a couple of times a day and reply to any comments…….please keep reading….I will be back!
Years ago I was bitching about the way people act when they are confronted with facts to combat their arguments……they are despicable…..and my grandfather told me…..”when you teach pigs to sing….you waste your time and piss off the pig”……a brilliant man, my grandfather…..
I will be fine as soon as the swelling goes down……..and will be back attacking stupid as always….but for now a step back……..and a cooling off period is needed…….
I hope everyone understands.
Meanwhile Back In Western Sahara
Posted: 26 March 2013 Filed under: Foreign policy, International Situations, News, Observations, Professor's Classroom | Tags: Morocco, North Africa, Western Sahara, World Affairs 2 Comments »I know not many people will care about Western Sahara……but that does not matter…..why? Because I care………
After I finished my studies in International relations I applied for a job with the UN in Tunisia….I did not get it but I did get an offer from a Spanish newspaper…..which I accepted and that allowed me to travel in North Africa and the Middle East…..the area of my studies…..and while I was working in Morocco I worked on a piece about a disputed area called Western Sahara (I have written about this area in the past….in case one is interested)…….and I got the chance to visit the area and got to know several people within the freedom movement and the people, the Sahrawis…..a great, generous and passionate people. Since Spain pulled out in 1974 the land has been claimed by Mauritania and Morocco, who has possession today….but the freedom movement has continued and the US is siding with Morocco, who has promised limited self rule for the area……
Morocco then fought a war against an indigenous Sahrawi group of fighters, the Frente Polisario, which ended in 1991 when the UN brokered a ceasefire and pledged to hold an independence referendum within six months.
The referendum has still not been held. Morocco retains control of Western Sahara and its lucrative phosphate and fishing resources. The country is now the last United Nations-designated “non-self-governing territory” in Africa, and is home to between 100,000 and 140,000 Moroccan military personnel (despite a total population of just 500,000).
Morocco’s reigning King Muhammad VI has said that “the issue of our Saharan provinces is central” in order “to complete our territorial integrity”.
In April, Amnesty International reported that: “Sahrawis advocating self-determination for the people of Western Sahara remained subject to restrictions on their freedoms of expression, association and assembly, and leading activists continued to face prosecution.”
Despite the danger of documenting unrest - anyone caught filming or taking pictures of protests in Western Sahara faces punishment, and usually the destruction of the camera equipment – Coordination Gdeim Izik say they have video evidence of the attacks on their protests.
In one video seen by this reporter, a 55-year-old woman is savagely beaten and kicked to the floor by two riot policemen; in another, uniformed military personnel beat a young girl so severely she had to be hospitalised, according to her friends. A senior member of the group, Sidi Muhammad Ramadiy, pointed to the screen and said: “This is human rights for Morocco.”
The group’s de facto leader, Lahib Salhi, said: “We live here always under the eyes, and under the clubs of the Moroccans. The world must do what it promised to do when the UN first came: hold the referendum, and give us the chance to live as we wish to live.”
Many Sahrawis in fact blame the international community. “The Moroccans make the claim on our land because they can, because they are strong and because they are supported by France, the United States, and Britain,” said Salhi. “But they know the claim is false. The Mauritanians once claimed Western Sahara for themselves. Where are they now? How much longer will the world permit this injustice?”
What happened to the US and their support for democracy and freedom?
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