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    Entries in Current Affairs (142)

    Monday
    08Mar2010

    Too Stupid to Educate the Kids

    I want to draw your attention to two things that struck me as being symptomatic of where America is headed as far as education is concerned—straight off of a cliff.

    In Kansas City, they want to close half of the public schools. As shocking as that might sound, the combined effects of mismanagement and declining enrollment should have already brought about that eventuality:

    Kansas City was held up as a national example of bold thinking when it tried to integrate its schools by making them better than the suburban districts where many kids were moving. The result was one school with an Olympic-sized swimming pool and another with recording studios.

    Now it’s on the brink of bankruptcy and considering another bold move: closing nearly half its schools to stay afloat.

    Schools officials say the cuts are necessary to keep the district from plowing through what little is left of the $2 billion it received as part of a groundbreaking desegregation case.

    Buffeted for years by declining enrollment, political squabbling and a revolving door of leadership, the district’s fortunes are so bleak that Superintendent John Covington has said diplomas given to many graduates “aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.”

    At one point, the Kansas City school district had 75,000 students; today it has barely 35,000. In other words, people voted with their feet.

    In Detroit, people are not only voting with their feet, they are cringing when they read their E-mail:

    As if Detroit doesn’t have enough problems these days, the president of the city’s school board offered the shocking admission that he can’t pen a coherent sentence.

    Otis Mathis, who oversees the academic future of 90,000 public school students, told the Detroit News that he’s a “horrible writer” after reports surfaced that he sent a Feb. 29 e-mail to the financial manager of Detroit Public Schools that was rife with spelling, punctuation and usage errors.

    “If you saw Sunday’s Free Press that shown Robert Bobb the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, move Mark Twain to Boynton which have three times the number seats then students and was one of the reason’s he gave for closing school to many empty seats,” the e-mail read, according to the paper.

    Mathis, 56, of Detroit, has had difficulties with language as early as fourth grade, when he was placed in special education classes. His college degree was also held up for more than a decade due to repeatedly failing English proficiency exams required for graduation from Wayne State University, the paper reported.

    If you’re going to run things and educate kids, shouldn’t you be able to do math (declining enrollment means you need fewer schools) and write a sentence (huh? what the hell is that about?) or am I simply being ridiculous?

    Lowering our standards does not mean everyone gets to feel better about themselves. All it does is institutionalize marginal incompetence and stupidity. We don’t need that in a great nation. We need tougher standards, better schools, and people who can actually function as adults.

    Saturday
    06Mar2010

    Keep Your Fingers to Yourself

    This poor lady either has the makings of a fabulous lawsuit or the infamy only someone who has no common sense deserves:

    Police say a bear bit off a woman’s fingers at a Wisconsin zoo after she ignored barriers and warning signs to try to feed the animal.

    The Lincoln Park Zoo in Manitowoc closed after the incident Friday morning. Police say the 47-year-old woman lost a thumb and a forefinger, and two other fingers were partially severed.

    The woman’s boyfriend was bitten as he tried to pry the bear’s mouth off her hand, but he didn’t lose any fingers. Her 3-year-old granddaughter wasn’t injured.

    If you ignore barriers, you tend to forfeit the possibility of getting a settlement. I have no doubt in my mind that the woman might still try to sue; common sense means that if someone sets up a barrier to keep you from doing something dangerous, you should probably respect that barrier. And yet, every year, America is the home of a form of social Darwinism that demonstrates that the last words of quite a few of our countrymen is “…watch this!”

    I also think it’s important to point out that our public schools are a terrible failure. Literacy in America seems to be dropping every year. People seem to be getting dumber and dumber every day. If the woman can show that her inability to read contributed to her inability to know that sticking her fingers in front of a hungry bear, she might have a case. I suspect that any lawyer taking her case is going to go after the makers of the hot dogs she might have stuffed in her face (and had on her hands) when she lost her fingers or the makers of the cage that failed to make the cage strong enough or small enough to keep some idiot from sticking their hands through them.

    Tuesday
    02Mar2010

    The Germans Lead the Way on Privacy

    See if you can figure this out, because I certainly can. Despite the threat of terrorism, you have a Western democracy coming down on the side of privacy, rather than panic and fear. Sadly, it’s not the United States.

    Vast amounts of telephone and e-mail data held in Germany must be deleted, the country’s highest court has ruled.

    The constitutional court overturned a 2008 law requiring communications data to be kept for six months.

    The law - designed to combat terrorism and serious crime - required telecoms companies to keep logs of calls, faxes, SMS messages, e-mails and internet use.

    But nearly 35,000 Germans lodged complaints against it, arguing that the law violated their right to privacy.

    Responding to the thousands of formal complaints, Germany’s constitutional court described the law as a “particularly serious infringement of privacy in telecommunications”.

    In contrast, political calculations and a stunning lack of cojones seems to prevail in this country:

    President Obama signed a one-year extension of three sections of the USA Patriot Act on Saturday without any new limits on the measures that many liberal groups and Democrats said were necessary to safeguard American civil liberties.

    The provisions allow the government, with permission from a special court, to obtain roving wiretaps over multiple communication devices, seize suspects’ records without their knowledge, and conduct surveillance of a so-called “lone wolf,” or someone deemed suspicious but without any known ties to an organized terrorist group.

    The Patriot Act drew heavy criticism from Democrats – Obama even once saidit needed to be dialed back – during the Bush administration. But experts suggest that a string of foiled terrorist plots over the past year combined with the Democrats’ falling ratings amid the healthcare debate blunted any move to reform the act, which was passed in the wake of 9/11.

    “We’ve stopped 28 terrorist attacks since 9/11,” says James Carafano, a homeland security expert at The Heritage Foundation. “The Patriot Act has been a big part of that.”

    He says the only disappointment regarding Obama’s extension of the three temporary provisions is that “it was only for one year.” That, he says, may have been done “so they won’t get beat up so much on the left.”

    Well, I wouldn’t use that number 28 so freely. Many of those were pretty half-assed. At least two or three of those involved people who couldn’t even afford adequate footwear, and at least one of those involved a self-described American ninja, I believe.

    I won’t bother to go and dig up all of the things President Obama said against the Patriot Act; I won’t even bother to go see what Glenn Greenwald had to say about it. Shame on the Republican Party for foisting it upon us. We should have kept things the way they were; what better way to tell the men with rags on their head to go pound sand. These colors may not run, but they’ll shit themselves seven shades of brown over the idea of someone thinking there might be a terrorist talking in the open on his cell phone in Grand Forks about going to Tuscaloosa to buy a gallon of paint from a man from Spokane. The Patriot Act only works if the terrorists are abject fools with a talkative streak and no operational security, sir.

    I will just point out that, at one time, you couldn’t get elected dogcatcher in this country without having a position on privacy and on protecting the rights of Americans to be safe from unlawful search and seizure. Now, you can pretty much bet on the fact that millions of Americans will sign away their firstborn and every halfwit databit of their private information just so that there’s no chance whatsoever that they won’t have to think about being attacked by a terrorist.

    Boo! Are you scared, sir? I hope not. Cowboy up.

    Tuesday
    23Feb2010

    I Hope They Don't Fire You, Mr. Tony

    Hannah Storm is on the far left…

    This would be a calamity:

    One of Hannah Storm’s outfitsThe network has suspended the co-host of ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption” for making fun of Storm’s on-air outfit during his radio show, saying it resembled a “sausage casing,” according to the Sporting News Web site.

    Kornheiser apologized to Storm, a former anchor at CBS’ Early Show, the day after making the comments.

    An ESPN spokesman tells the Sporting News he will be suspended “for some time.”

    Kornheiser said Storm was wearing “a horrifying, horrifying outfit.”

    “She looks like she has sausage casing wrapping around her upper body,” he added. “I know she’s very good, and I’m not supposed to be critical of ESPN people, so I won’t … but Hannah Storm … come on now! Stop! What are you doing? … She’s what I would call a Holden Caulfield fantasy at this point.”

    The next day, Kornheiser offered an on-air mea culpa.

    “I apologize, unequivocally … I’m a sarcastic, subversive guy … I’m a troll, look at me. I have no right to insult what anybody looks like or what anybody wears. That, I think, should go without saying,” he said.

    Mr. Tony has been watching too much American Idol. He’s channeling Simon at this point; he’s too good to fire.

    He’s not too good to suspend, however, and I hope he gets some time off. Some broadcasters deserve a break—and I would disagree with Mr. Dan Levy here—Mr. Tony deserves a second chance. I agree with Mr. Tony when he says that, in effect, if you put a live microphone in front of people enough times, they certainly will say something stupid. I’m a blogger. I say something stupid every fourth or fifth post. I wouldn’t survive on network television, even though I am rather handsome and charismatic.

    Hannah Storm is ravishingly beautiful; she won’t have to worry about taking a shot from Mr. Tony. She is beyond his reach, in terms of fashion critiques. She should have made fun of his Sears catalog wardrobe and the whole thing could have been left at that.

    Sunday
    21Feb2010

    Tragedy in Madeira

    “The Yellow Admiral” by Patrick O’Brian

    I have to confess that the only reason why I know about the island of Madeira  [I had a brain fart and called it a Spanish island; it has always been Portugeuse—my bad] is because I have read the entire Patrick O’Brian series of books about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin:

    Rescue workers dug frantically Sunday to free cars and homes buried under heaps of mud in Madeira, after torrential flash floods and mudslides killed at least 42 people on the popular Portuguese island.

    Residents looking for missing loved ones were directed by local authorities to the resort’s international airport, where a makeshift morgue has been set up.

    Social services spokesman Francisco Jardim Ramos said not all the bodies had been identified. The center is equipped with psychiatric, psychological and social counseling services, he said.

    Madeira is ethnically Portuguese, and serves as a stopover for Europeans who are traveling by cruise ship to and from the Caribbean. One hopes that there will be help for the devastated inhabitants and that their misery will end soon.

    Saturday
    20Feb2010

    What's a Superpower to Do?

    The Dalai Lama at the White House

    If you get a chance to meet with the Dalai Lama, you meet with the Dalai Lama. Of course the Chinese aren’t going to like it—that’s why you meet with the Dalai Lama in the first place:

    China summoned the U.S. ambassador on Friday to express its “strong dissatisfaction” over the Dalai Lama’s meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama a day earlier.

    China didn’t disclose what was discussed during the session with Ambassador Jon Huntsman at the Foreign Ministry. But Beijing had warned that a meeting between the president and the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader would damage its ties with Washington.

    “The Chinese side expresses strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition to this meeting,” a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement after Thursday’s meeting at the White House.

    Chinademands the U.S. seriously consider China’s stance, immediately adopt measures to wipe out the adverse impact, [and] stop conniving and supporting anti-China separatist forces.”

    Yes, that’s the language of paranoia and fear. The Chinese know that their grip is slipping, and they don’t know how to tighten it without doing irreparable damage to their relations with the West. When they stop worrying about those relations, that’s when the real trouble will start.

    The Dalai Lama, being a religious figure, doesn’t look like much of a conniver, does he?