Amazing to see how vociferously (even stupidly) they defend their own...

From US magazine:

Miss California Carrie Prejean has Sarah Palin on her side.

The conservative Alaska governor released a statement Wednesday night (as picked up by Fox News) slamming "the liberal onslaught of malicious attacks" against Prejean, 21, who first ignited controversy for coming out against same-sex marriage at last month's Miss USA pageant.

"I can relate, as a liberal target myself," Palin said. "What I find so remarkable is that these politically-motivated attacks fail to show that what Carrie and I believe is also what President Obama and Secretary Clinton believe -- marriage is between a man and a woman."

Continued Palin: "I applaud Donald Trump for standing with Carrie during this time. And I respect Carrie for standing strong and staying true to herself, and for not letting those who disagree with her deny her protection under the nation's First Amendment Rights."

"Our Constitution protects us all -- not just those who agree with the far left," Palin went on.

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Once again, Sarah Palin betrays an astonishing lack of understanding what the First Amendment is all about.

Lesson One: It is NOT about telling the media who they can or cannot criticize.

I strongly doubt that anyone with a legitimate press card acted in any way to deny Carrie Prejean her right to make a absolute fool out of herself. To the contrary, they've been shoving mikes under her nose hoping she'd say something even stupider than the laughable beauty contest political statement. Just because the neocons "Dixie Chicked" Natalie Maines doesn't mean the uberLibs did the same to most recent blonde to spew stupidity in front of a microphone. Many simply exercised their First Amendment rights to ridicule her. And it was soooo easy!

For Veep wannabe Sarah to even suggest the First Amendment played anywhere into this scenario shows remarkable ignorance as to what it's all about. The Donald or anyone else running the pageant could have denied her the right to speak at a function they financed into a mike they paid for. They didn't. If she said something they didn't like, they would have been perfectly within their rights to fire her. The Donald did not. Only when public funds are involved is this even a controversy.

Lesson Two: It is NOT acceptable for a government official to even suggest to a public librarian that certain books ought to be removed from a library. That is totally unacceptable prior restraint, fully subject to the United States Constitution. Even in a little town like Wasilla, Alaska.

Lesson Three: This one was learned by the voters in the last election who resoundingly acknowledged that Sarah Palin is too stupid to be Vice-President. My guess is that far from preventing her run for the Presidency in 2012, Democrats would do what Rush did to Hillary: encourage her to run!

New school religion: narcissism

A letter writer in Thursday's Houston Chronicle, Neil Stovall, commits an error of false logic when he connects the downfall of public schools to the elimination of a school-imposed religious preference. Religion is part of the world geography curriculum in public high schools, particularly when discussing a peoples' cultural exigencies. What I'm not allowed to do is devalue a particular religious belief any more than the facts of a situation such as colonialism allow. In that case, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how religion was used as a political weapon, something our forefathers sought to avoid when they wrote about separating church and state. Christianity has never prevented violence, though there’s plenty of evidence to support the contention that it provokes it. When I teach about compasses, I'm not allowed to point them in a moral direction; my own sense of morality will not permit it.





Schools do teach a form or morality which is rarely discussed. The pervasive self-esteem myth has assumed a religious dimension to the point where we jeopardize our jobs if we do not pass a prescribed number, thus perpetuating the false belief that the primary purpose of school is to promote an unrealistic comfort with mediocrity. Religion, therefore has not left the schools, it has simply morphed into a socialistic devaluing of our culture through the lowering of mass expectations, thereby perpetuation the institution itself rather than the students it purports to serve. Principals have gone from the unyielding upholders of discipline to the pandering liaisons between the school and parents. Just as priests once obfuscated the sacred doctrines as a means of retaining political power through mysticism, modern administrators erect barriers (in the name of security, of course) to prevent parents from having a more direct involvement in schools. The “Pass TAKS” mantra has replaced means to pass it--namely reading—as teaching to the test has replaced the assignment of projects once designed to improve critical thinking skills. After all, if children are actually taught critical thinking skills, it stands to reason they might actually use them to criticize, and the institution cannot allow such subversion from within.

Bainbridge takes on pirates...again

The last time pirates boarded an American vessel at sea, as far as I can tell, was during the early 19th-century when the Barbary pirates based along the Mediterranean coast of Algeria manage to capture the pride of the fledgling American Navy, the Philadelphia and captained by William Bainbridge, after she ran aground in pursuit of a pirate vessel near the Tripolitan harbor in 1803. Rather than concede to the rapscallions this powerful frigate, a daring plan was implemented by a young Lt. Stephan Decatur to set her afire without loss of life. Even the British were impressed. It took Decatur and Bainbridge the better part of a decade to make that part of the Mediterranean safe for commercial shipping.



Two centuries later, Bainbridge is again chasing pirates, only this time as the nameplate of a nuclear-powered frigate. The latest news reports indicate that the crew of the Maersk Alabama, including 20 Americans, overpowered their armed attackers, sending them adrift in a lifeboat though with their unfortunate captain. Perhaps the droning of Navy choppers overhead can convince those would-be extortionists of their untenable position and that handing over Capt. Phillips unharmed would be in their best interests.

War on Terror Cannot be Won

What Bushies and his neocons never seem to understand is that we cannot "win" a war against insurgency any more than police can win a riot. We can only quell and mollify. Certainly we need to eliminate as much of the murderous al-Qaida who actually instigated the terrorism as we can, but in a manner that those most directly affected will accept as right and sensitive to their morality and culture.

We'd have done much better in Afghanistan had we poured money and rebuilding immediately after the initial 2002 invasion coupled with a more direct and stronger hounding of OBL's Taliban in Bora Bora. This was the only time when we likely had them on the ropes, but let them off when we diverted resources by invading Iraq.
We sacrificed our moral high ground at that point. Our high-handedness and failure to study the British examples produced the chaos and increased resentment. The clumsy use of torture (of course we’ve always used it; everybody does, but discreetly and sparingly) and the sanctioning of it gave the antiwar extremists legitimacy.

We created them monster that we later have to defend ourselves from. It’s called “blowback.” It’s also called “come-uppance” by some who would either support us or not oppose us had not President Bush declared “You’re either with us or against us.”

Right now, the Afghan economy is supported almost entirely by the opium trade, but all we do is destroy their fields and tell them not to plant. In the meantime, we're allowing Turkey to plant opium since it is the only source of our analgesics. Perhaps we ought to extend that monopoly to Iraq, thereby both lowering our price for it and providing them with a legitimate means of making a profit. There are not many other cash crops that can be grown in that semiarid environment. It's about being "smart", something sorely lacking in the former administration that was ideologically based.
“If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, we’re going to have a serious problem coming down the road.” - George W. Bush

Boy, was that man smart!

AIG call and stall

When my wife lost her job last year, the income reduction left us perilously close to home foreclose. In a last-ditch attempt to stave it off, I contacted AIG to cash out my Sun America annuity February 27 thus beginning a pattern of call-and-stall which I can only conclude was deliberate and methodical.

The AIG representative did send me the form I requested which I immediately filled out, had notarized and faxed to the number given before noon that Friday. Three hours later I tried calling for confirmation (I had been asked for a PIN which had not been requested before after frantically searching my records for any sign of a PIN, I called another AIG number only to find out that the four-digit PIN was merely the last four numbers of my SSN so I called the original number initiating a the next in a series of 20-30 min. holds). I finally spoke with a representative who said she had no way of knowing if the company received my fax and it might be as long as 48 hours before that could be ascertained. Nearly 48 hours later (that Friday) I found another open half-hour and called to see if they had indeed received my request. They hadn’t.

I took off from work the following Monday, calling again (the extension number I had been given to expedite my call hung up on me three times-I reverted to the original number which resulted in an additional 20-min hold) only to find out I had submitted the wrong form, and that the correct one would be mailed to me. I was also told that it could be downloaded from their site and was given a form number. Possessing reasonably competent Internet skills, I located the AIG site and search engine, entered the form number given only to be told there was no such form available. Using common sense, I located two forms that appeared to request annuity account liquidation, (one called ERISA and the other non-ERISA). Just to be certain, I sacrificed another half-hour to confirm I indeed had the right form and filled out correctly. I recited the information I had written line-by-line to the representative and asked directly if there was anything else I needed to fax. He said that since I had already sent the notarization, the form I was sending would be sufficient to release the funds.

I finally faxed this document at 11 a.m., calling back near 5 (only 10-min. hold this time!) to find out if the fax had been received. Again, the canned response to my increasingly irritable challenge was that it may be as long as 48 hours before they could even ascertain whether the form had been received. I took off that Wednesday, calling ion the morning only to find out that I had not submitted documentation proving the necessity of obtaining these funds. I asked if “Notice of Default” would be sufficient and was told it would. Again, I promptly submitted the required form, calling in the next day to see if it had been received. I was told that it had been received and that to expect another 5-7 working days before the request could be processed.

So nearly three weeks after the initial request and my mortgage default hanging in the balance (Texas law permits foreclosure proceedings to begin only 20 days after notification of default) I can only wait and beg the mortgage company to have patience while AIG holds the money I’ve paid them, taking full advantage of the time value of this insignificant (to them, not me) amount.


March 18, 2:30 pm update:

I received a check for $600 today with the following explanation dated March 13 from Angie Davis, Distributions Team 2:

"We have received your request to surrender your annuity under a hardship qualification. We were unable to process your request asyou (sic) cannot surrender the annuity under a hardship. We have processed a hardship withdrawal for the maximum available."

Can somebody please explain their logic for their NOT releasing the full amount of that annuity ($1631)?

Oprah's school fix not all it's cracked up to be

As so many programs on education have done before this one, Oprah’s show Aug. 7 revealed much, but proposed little of value. All of us who teach are aware of the myriad of problems that mitigate our providing children with the education they need, but a unified approach to dealing with any of these issues is sorely lacking. Now the Gates family wants to throw some money at the issue. Like most previous solutions, this commendable effort will do some good somewhere, but falls short of addressing the overall problem, even when the diagnosis is correct.

As impressive as the Gates’ $51 billion dollar fortune is, it hardly justifies their superficial understanding of the issue.

Hardly surprising, then, that a corporate executive would identify a media-based problem, state plausible causation that removes corporate responsibility, then propose a costly remedy that the government is unlikely to adequately fund.

Like so many theoreticians and talk show hosts seeking audiences, blame was delivered as scattershot in fog, blindly aimed and only occasionally on target. The deplorable District of Columbia model of public school dilapidation was presented by CNN’s indignant Anderson Cooper (Vanderbilt family scion and former host of Whittle Communications’ Channel One). The decaying infrastructure of one of the nation’s best publicly funded school systems (its $12,000 per-pupil expenditure exceeds the national norm by some $4,000), indicate the problem may not be purely financial. As one student put it, “the school looks good on the outside, but the inside it is crumbling.”

The basic problems with education are addressed daily, but sporadically. Those with workable solutions are largely unrecognized and scattered about the country. Those in charge of the educational apparatus are largely the result of academic semi-competence, political manipulations, non-competitive pay, and public apathy. The resulting scholastic bureaucracies tend to encourage uniform mediocrity while discouraging personal initiative.

Only in passing is the educational deficit attributed to an overall lack of reading emphasis in our schools. Most telling was the “Kid Swap” episode in which several students from inner city Chicago’s low income Harper High School traded places with their affluent cohorts at suburban Naperville’s Neuqua Valley High School which “graduates 99 percent of its students” the program gushed, while Harper “graduates just 40 percent of its 1,500 students.” Another example of the common educational tool of comparison and contrast meant to display inequitable results buried something less obvious: “At Neuqua Valley, 78 percent of students meet Illinois' reading standards, 76 percent meet the science standards, and 77 percent meet the math standards. At Harper, 16 percent meet the reading standards, 1.5 percent meet the science standards and just .5 percent meet the math standards.”

That only 76 percent of the students in the $65 million school met Illinois reading standards should be cause for alarm. Houston’s KIPP Academy which has a mostly low-income student body similar to Harper’s boasts a passing rate on the Texas TAKS test of nearly 100%. It would seem that either the TAKS is far easier or KIPP’s adherence to stern measures is incredibly effective.

What we have, instead, is an expensive glossing-over of the true literacy issue. Immerse these richer kids with enough expensive media and entertaining instructors and something is bound to soak in. That “something” however, still leaves us far behind our European cohorts and many of our schoolchildren will likely stand by as we’re exceeded by several rising third-world countries who understand the shortcut to a good education---well, there is none. It’s hard work, something our over-mediated, over-medicated, overindulged, overweight, and over-schooled students cannot be made to understand.

Public schools cannot fix what’s wrong with American students because ultimately, they’re beholden to the driving force in this country, corporate consumerism. Unrealistically high expectations, fueled by a never-ending flood of overly optimistic ads and adult pandering has given us a predictable “product,” the fruits of our “affluenza.”

We get what we pay for, and in the case of education, we suffer because of it. Intrinsic motivation to read and learn cannot be bought; reluctant youngsters must be prodded and pushed, for when the “light” comes on in their heads—usually around 10^th grade—that education is the key to future achievement and collegiate success, they must have enough of the basics to convert that knowledge into critical thinking—something not actively taught in public schools despite protestations to the contrary.

The service industry, for which most of our public school students are groomed, neither need nor desire most of their workers to be able to do much more than show up and follow instructions. Since the tenets of Marxism are only rarely a scholastic discussion, the ugly realities on which it is based must be experienced by the workers before they even discover the need to revolt. By then, the lack of unions and other organizational skills leaves them prey to unscrupulous employers whose knowledge of union-busting and unrest suppression is buttressed by the better-educated private school graduates. Class privilege then becomes the de facto marker of the ever-increasing wage and income gap; immigrant (or outsourced) labor becomes its tool.

When I first heard about the tragic shooting of the Eli Escobar child in northwest Houston in 2003, my first reaction was sympathy for the parents of the child shot, even though the news reports indicated that the child was something less than an ideal citizen.

Later, when I heard the officer’s name, I was shocked: first that this mild-mannered former student of mine was even a policeman, for my impression of him was that he was not of particularly rigid stock, like most policemen I’ve known; second, that anyone could possibly accuse him of intentionally hurting anyone dismayed me even more. This was a gentle giant, a tall, genial student who got along with everyone and never had a malicious word for anyone. I would never advised him of that vocation, for I wouldn’t have adjudged him “harsh” enough, or physically stout in mind or body.

This assessment was confirmed in 2007 when I read about his case in The Houston Chronicle:

The rookie Houston Police Department officer who shot and killed a 14-year-old special education student in one of the decade’s most controversial shootings earned his badge and gun despite flunking a crucial test of firearms handling as well as initial police field training, according to documents recently made public as part of a civil rights lawsuit.

Officer Arthur J. Carbonneau also failed 16 of 30 subjects in his mandatory Texas peace officers’ test, including “use-of-force law,” “use-of-force concepts” and “arrest, search and seizure,” records show.

In field training, records show, he repeatedly got lost trying to find locations he was called to and became so rattled that trainers had to take over his calls. When the 23-year-old rookie was assigned to remedial training because of the problems, he mishandled the subduing of an agitated person — a mistake his instructor said could have cost lives.

Yet, Carbonneau still became a full-fledged officer in December 2002. Eleven months later, he killed Eli Escobar II, 14.

The system let us all down; this was certainly a tragedy that could have been avoided.