Say Anything Blog

Hope and Failure in America’s Schools, Part One

. . .  Three-quarters of the way through the 2009-2010 school year, schools are very much in the news, both in the good news category and the not so good.

Today, from the Good News Department offering hope for the future:

Virginia Senate Votes to Expand Charter Schools: Much to the chagrin of the National Education Association, President Obama recently endorsed the idea of charter schools as a way of improving and reforming education.  The new Republican governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, favors charters as well and now Virginia’s Democratic-controlled Senate is on record as supporting their expansion following approval by the Republican-controlled House of Delegates. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1557)

Got Milk? Breast Milk in the News

. . . Chef’s Cheesey Recipe for Breast Milk:  Chef Angerer is offering a special taste treat for the clientele at Klee Brasserie: cheese made from his wife’s breast milk.

He was surprised that the phone ran off the hook after he blogged about his ticky-tacky gastronomic experiment.  He must have forgotten that Klee Brasserie was situated in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. 

That’s in New York City, for the folks from Oshkosh.

Chef Daniel cites drawbacks for human breast milk, not the tackiness of it all but that it doesn’t curdle well enough to make cheese; he has to add cow milk to his recipe for canape’s of breast-milk cheese with figs and Hungarian pepper. 

It must be the fruit and that exotic pepper that gives it that special pizzazz.

Angerer’s wife, Lori Mason, obviously a willing participant in the enterprise, pointed out for those who were unaware that, ”I think a lot of the criticism has to do with the combination of sex and cheese, but . . . the breast is there to make food.” . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1555)

5 Pertinent and Impertinent Queries

. . . 4) Is Dan Rather a Racist Or Does He Just Talk That Way?  The racist stereotype is that blacks just love watermelon but is it racist if former CBS anchor Dan Rather makes a watermelon joke at Obama’s expense?  He did just that on the Chris Matthews’ Show when he refuted the conventional wisdom that the president is articulate: “He couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”  Read and hear Rather’s comments here: http://bit.ly/9zp4TO.  It’s a good thing for Rather than no one listens to Matthews. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1553)

Ireland Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow Part Two

. . . And it was not just Brits who were flocking to the Old Sod. 

Under the auspices and requisites of the European Union, by 2007, Iranians, Nigerians, Iraqis, Cambodians, VietNamese, Chinese, as well as Poles, Czechs, and other east Europeans, people of virtually every nationality were re-locating to Ireland seeking jobs and a better life–and citizenship. 

A puckish cousin had asked me on one of my visits, “Now, could you tell me what an American looks like?”  I answered that we look like what an Irishman will look like in a few generations: diverse in color, national origin, and cultural values.

In July, 2006, Ireland was pronounced the second richest country in the world, after Japan, in terms of real estate values, and the Irish puffed out their chests with pride in the knowledge that Ireland had finally arrived on the international scene.

Properties which were valued at thousands of Irish pounds ten years earlier were newly valued in the hundreds of thousands . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1549)

The Next Time . . .

The next time you’re tempted to throw in the towel and support the president’s socialistic power grab consider once again a primary model for Obamacare, the U.K.’s National Health Service or NHS.

Horror stories about the NHS regularly ooze out of Britain, tales such as the one about a woman giving birth on the street because the socialized NHS decreed she were too close to a hospital to dispatch an ambulance.  And the one about a guy who has an appendicitis attack and a ruptured appendix weeks after it was supposedly removed.

(For a first hand account of one man’s personal experience with the NHS, see “Considering Obamacare?  Consider the NHS Horror Stories,” http://bit.ly/3MFJb0.)
thereby deprive some poor old bloke of his care?

Chances are that the old bloke will have his tubes pulled and be unplugged under the NHS anyway.

One young bloke met his Maker . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1548)

Ireland Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow Part One

. . . It was then still a sleepy, little country, filled with picturesque, quaint villages and counties, and awash in history. 

With its thousand shades of green due to its many fine, soft rains, its countless pristine lakes, streams and rivers, its tumble-down ancient castles, peat bogs, tiny roads where people drive on the wrong side, its Blarney Stone, Ring of Kerry, Galway Bay, Cliffs of Moher, Aran Islands, Ireland was a beautiful, simple place then. 

And, Mr. Joyce, Dublin was bustling—and far from dirty.  But the Ireland of 1978 could not hide the reality that it was a benighted land.

The Battle of the Boyne in 1690 had been a watershed and since that British victory on that July day, the fate of Ireland was sealed for centuries. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1547)

Are There Love Crimes, Too?

For every yin there’s a yang, no?  For every plus there’s a minus, no?  For every good there’s an evil, no?  So, why shouldn’t there be love crimes for every hate crime?

Well, no.  Love crimes are only punishable by a face slap or a firm adieu.

The whole concept of “hate crimes” is an absurdity cooked up by minorities who pretend to believe that every insult, every malocchio, every slight infraction constitutes a crime of hate and must be punished by more severe retributive justice than your run of the mill, average crime.

Thus, if one gets knocked to the ground by a mugger who punches one’s face, kicks one’s ribs, steals one’s wallet but who never says a word in process, that’s just a crime.  If someone is tripped and falls and the tripper says, “Take that, you filthy honkie!” then the tripper has committed a hate crime.

Hate crimes, though, only seem to happen to black and homosexual victims. 

Go figure.

It’s all silliness, politically correct silliness that has the potential of condemning people to much longer prison terms than they deserve and, when they reach prison, woe unto him when other inmates learn they committed a crime of hate! 

That’s almost as horrendous as being a child molestor and they will be manhandled accordingly.

Where is the ACLU when you need them?

Chances are that someday hate crime laws will be declared unconstitutional since they are targeted laws written and passed to mollify certain segments of the population spelled out in Wikipedia as “racial group, religion, sexual orientation, disability, class, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, gender identity, or political affiliation.”

With all those categories, hate crime rates occurred at the rate of 47 per every 100,000 people through 2006, hardly epidemic proportions even though hate crime laws were on the books in at least 45 states. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1545)

The Terror that Was September 11th, 2001

Memories can be strange things which we understandably repress or reduce to selective memory when the conscious thought is too disturbing to dwell on. 

For many, thoughts of the events of September 11th, 2001 are, 8 1/2 years later, still too emotional and horrifying to be allowed regular admission to our consciousness.

Yet, they must not be relegated to distant memory lest by doing so we again let down our guard, either individually or collectively, and invite a repetition of that day.

We were 600 miles away from Ground Zero on 9/11, a very safe distance except for the facts our grown kids were in the New York City area and our son was working on 58th Street, less than 4 short miles away and close enough to witness the surrealistic collapse of the World Trade Center towers. 

Some wounds never heal, surreal or not.

No American has forgotten the horrific, . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1539)

The Final Prejudice: Catholicism

L. Brent Bozell concludes his brief essay, “A Year of Anti-Religious Bigotry” with this passage: “Catholicism is the single largest religious denomination in America.  In our news and entertainment media today, anti-Catholicism remains ‘the last acceptable prejudice.’  It is not that the cultural left is out of touch.  It is out to destroy.”

Sound exaggerated?  As a Roman Catholic, I would suggest Bozell’s remarks seem exaggerated only to non-Catholics and to the leftists to whom he refers.

In his book, The Enemy at Home, conservative writer Dinesh D’Souza defines the cultural left as referring mainly to “the left wing of the Democratic Party . . . [including] the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Organization for Women, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, Human Rights Watch, and Moveon.org.”

According to D’Souza, among the stars of that group are Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Michael Moore, George Soros, Barbara Boxer, Bill Moyers, Noam Chomsky, and the late Ted Kennedy and its influential allies in Congress, Hollywood, the media, the non-profit sector, and the universities: http://bit.ly/cfEEFR 

That’s some powerful army!

D’Souza’s controversial book focuses on the relationship between the cultural left and September 11th, 2001 as opposed to Bozell’s immediate interest in its effect on religion, specifically on Catholicism, which leads to the obvious question of, Why? . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1542)

The Black Agenda

When Father Merrin spake the words, “I do compel you” unto the Demon in “The Exorcist,” said Demon became uncomfortable to say the least. 

So too did PBS host Tavis Smiley feel a discomforting compulsion to react when he heard that some black leaders weren’t insisting that President Obama specifically focus on helping African-Americans.

“I was compelled to [call for ‘a black agenda’] because of this debate,” he said.

Now, compulsion is a pretty powerful impulse, an irresistible impetus to act, almost synonymous with an obsession and all because Smiley felt that black leaders were not seeking preferential treatment for one race over another.

To accomplish that “black agenda,” Smiley is organizing a public panel discussion and inviting his own version of America’s black leadership to debate its features and nuances. 

Among the invitees are such black luminaries as the racial agitator Reverend Jesse Jackson, the racist Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan, and radical black professor, Cornel West.  Lesser known but equally venomous activists include Michael Eric Dyson and Julianne Malveaux: http://bit.ly/9y7YJy

Smiley failed to spell out the precise nature and details of his black agenda and presumably we will all be enlightened when the televised Great Discusssion takes place on March 20th.

Meanwhile, out on the Left Coast, 3 white Los Angeles teachers made their own statement about that black agenda. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1540)

School Daze

President Obama knows exactly what to do when Juan and Juanita and enough of their fellow students were flunking: Fire every teacher, principal, assistant principal, social worker, secretary, security guard, custodian, anyone who has caused the failure of your bright, hard working, and cooperative child.

They did just that up at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island: http://bit.ly/bm3wNf

Literally enforcing provisions of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, NCLB, program for failing schools, the powers that be fired the entire staff, administration, and ancillary personnel of CFHS because that action would presumably alleviate the problem of grossly-underperforming students.

The unstated premises of those firings are that the school board knows what it’s doing, that a change of atmosphere, teachers, and administration will inspire the student population to excel or at least pass their courses. 

It also presupposes that pigs can dance and turtles can sing. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1537)

Ethics? Schmethics! Part One

Ethics: the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc. (Dictionary.com)

There’s something about celebrity whether achieved in the entertainment arena or in that other entertainment arena, politics, that imbues stars with a sense of entitlement to greater power, to greater greed, to a greater number of the opposite sex.

They tend to forget those “rules of conduct.”

It must be the adulation from enthralled audiences that convinces many entertainment and political celebs that they’re exceptional, above it all, the cat’s meow as was said in olden times, and not subject to the same moral and ethical constraints applicable to the hoi polloi.

In politics, ethical lapses are certainly not confined to Democrats.  Remember Florida Congressman Mark Foley and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.  (Maybe it’s the name, Mark?) 

However, Democrats are just so damned good at perverting power that they can’t be denied the title of Consummate Ethical Thrashers.

If Ya Can’t Beat ‘Em, Buy ‘Em!  President Obama learned that trick of the political trade from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: Stifle recalcitrance with remunerations.  Or maybe he learned it in Chicago, but there they usually just smash kneecaps.

Harry bought the Obamacare vote of Senator Mary Landrieu . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1538)

Scenario: Your public school child is gloriously flunking every subject he has, including phys ed.

What to do?

.  Do you call his school and ask for a parent-teacher conference with all his or her teachers?  Nah, you can’t do that, work schedule and all, and besides it won’t do any good, what could they tell you that you didn’t already know?

.  Do you sit down with Johnny or Janey–or Juan or Juanita, or Shaquille or Shaniqua–and read him or her the riot act and threaten to seize his or her cell phone, iPod, TV, pick one or more?  Nah, Johnny or Shaniqua would rebel and pout and not talk to you for a week.

.  Do you pull your child out of that school and place him in another school?  Nah, are you kidding?  Kids are locked into whatever school they’re told to attend, or not attend if they’re not in an attending mood.

.  Do you find a private or parochial school and enroll the flunker there?  Nah, that would cost an arm and a leg and maybe a kidney and you can’t afford it.

President Obama knows exactly what to do when Juan and Juanita and enough of their fellow students were flunking: Fire every teacher, principal, assistant principal, social worker, secretary, security guard, custodian, anyone who has caused the failure of your bright, hard working, and cooperative child.

They did just that up at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island: http://bit.ly/bm3wNf

Literally enforcing provisions of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, NCLB, program for failing schools, the powers that be fired the entire staff, administration, and ancillary personnel of CFHS because that action would presumably alleviate the problem of grossly-underperforming students.

The unstated premises of those firings are that the school board knows what it’s doing, that a change of atmosphere, teachers, and administration will inspire the student population to excel or at least pass their courses. 

It also presupposes that pigs can dance and turtles can sing. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1537)

Justifiable Murder?  Who Was George Tiller?

Ah, Bartleby!  Ah, humanity!  (”Bartleby the Scrivener,” Herman Melville)

That fatalistic sense of imminent doom, of forlorn despair and depression over one’s life and over the state of the human animal for different reasons must have afflicted both George Tiller and the man who killed him last May, Scott Roeder.

Roeder, according to his ex-wife, was upset over his inability to pay bills; he went from job to job seeking something, anything, that would fulfill his failed life and give it purpose.

He finally settled on what he saw as the greatest evil in America that he felt was in his power to somehow rectify: abortion.  A particular purpose he embraced was fellow Kansan Tiller and Tiller’s chosen occupation of snuffing out the lives of infants in partial birth abortions. 

Dr. George Tiller was living a life that was the virtual antithesis of Roeder’s, but was he any less disturbed?

A physician son of an abortionist with an inherited and successful abortion practice, he was married and active in his new church, the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita.

Indeed, almost every account of his murder includes within the first few paragraphs the fact he was killed while serving as an usher, handing out church bulletins in the lobby after Sunday services when Roeder accosted him, put one bullet into his eye and fled.

What’s rarely included in obituaries or articles on the slain Dr. Tiller is that he was handing out those bulletins at Reformation Lutheran because he had been excommunicated from his previous church, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod: http://bit.ly/awWKwL 

That latter church had expelled him because of the nature of his medical practice at Women’s Health Care Services. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1533)

Teabagging Cooper to Replace Perky Katie?

I can understand CBS’ desire to dump pretty, perky Katie Couric as its top news anchor since Katie’s only claim to fame is hatcheting Sarah Palin during the last presidential campaign. 

Well, that and having an on-air colonoscopy that made Ms. Katie’s rep.  Well, that and being one of the cuter cougars on the prowl for young, male stuff.

The wonderment is why CBS is looking at, (in police jargon), CNN’s Anderson Cooper   to fill Couric’s tiny shoes: http://bit.ly/9yDg9x

Is the swisher Cooper the next step in CBS’ death wish, a temporary gay stopgap in the network’s race to the Nielsen basement?  If so, CBS has made an awesome pick.

Not exactly the folksy model of Everyman, the son of Gloria Vanderbilt Anderson Cooper lacks the common touch preferred by networks for their anchors.  A regular on “60 Minutes,” he does have the anchor gravitas and 7 years experience on “Anderson Cooper 360.”

He also has to be the nation’s most renouned known, closeted homosexual.  See “Teabagging Anderson Cooper Outed?” http://bit.ly/9olgp2

Aside from his transparently gay demeanor, Andy presents a stiff and unlikable presence on-air.  The unmarried, grey-haired 42 year old tipped his grey, gay hand last summer when he let slip a comment on the Tea Party rallies and demonstrations. 

In fact, Andy may have coined the absurd link between Tea Party anti-tax rallies and ”teabagging,” an esoteric term formerly known mostly to active homosexuals and referring to the gay practice . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1536)