So, folks... what should I ramble on about today?
O.K., got it...
I was flipping through Netflix and stumbled upon "Reefer Madness" in "documentaries." I'd seen the movie years ago - on PBS if memory serves - and figured, what the heck, why not give it a quick revisit.
The opening scene of the film is set in a school... at a meeting of the Student-Parents Association.
Folks... forget Reefer Madness... forget the film... don't you find that interesting?
Not "PTA," not "Parent and Teacher Association," but simply Student-Parents Association.
Now I just did a bit of googling and the first PTA was apparently founded in 1897. (Reefer Madness on the other hand was released in 1936.)
Although I probably won't do the research, it would be interesting to know whether in 1936 Parent-Student Associations were the norm... or were Parent-Teacher Associations the norm - as they are today.
Think about it, folks... think about the very different concepts that the two distinct terms describe: one on the face of it describes a united front of parents and students working for students' best education; the other... well... think about it...
Surely teachers aren't the "enemy" of parents... or students... but teachers are a unionized workforce whose interests revolve not around what's best for students... or parents... but rather center on what's best for teachers!
The interests of parents and students are intrinsically linked. Most parents surely want the best for their children.
Teachers...? Sure... good teachers want the best for their students. And regarding fiscal matters, teachers are taxpayers too! But this said... ultimately aren't teachers about teachers... about pay... benefits... work conditions... pensions...?
So, folks, I suppose what I'm saying is simply this: The next time you get that warm and fuzzy feeling after hearing about the wonderful efforts of your local PTA... ask yourself... "wouldn't having a stand-alone parent-student association" make more sense and risk less conflict of interest?
(*SHRUG*)
I think so... and so... mark this "Bill's Thought of the Day!"
11 comments:
http://pix11.com/2013/09/09/union-square-beating-victim-dies-at-bellevue-hospital/#axzz2eVxOpJoS
A 62-year-old man who was brutally attacked in Union Square last week died Monday.
* BRUTALLY "HATE ATTACKED," RIGHT...???
On Wednesday, a man shouting that he “hated white people” punched victim Jeffrey Babbitt — who is white — in the face, witnesses said, causing him to fall and strike his head on the ground.
* SOUND LIKE A "RACIALLY MOTIVATED" CRIME... A "HATE CRIME"... DOESN'T IT...???
Lashawn Marten, 31, who is black, “made statements to the effect that I’m going to punch the first white man that I see,” said NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly.
* WOW... DOUBLE HATE CRIME - RIGHT? "WHITE"... "MAN." (RACE... GENDER...)
Brooklyn resident Jeffrey Babbitt died at Bellevue Hospital after a seemingly unprovoked attack at Union Square.
* THEY REALLY INSERTED THE WORDS "SEEMINGLY UNPROVOKED" INTO THAT SENTENCE...?!?!
(*GUFFAW*)
(*SNORTING WHILE SHAKING MY HEAD*)
After punching Babbitt, Marten allegedly attacked two other men who came to Babbitt’s aid, police said.
* YES... OF COURSE... "ALLEGEDLY."
Police were investigating the incident as a possible hate crime.
* P*O*S*S*I*B*L*E HATE CRIME... GOT IT...
Paramedics took Babbitt to Bellevue Hospital, where he lapsed into a coma and was pronounced brain-dead by doctors.
attack2
Babbitt was a longtime resident of the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn, where neighbors and friends were shocked by news of the assault. “Everybody’s broken up about this,” neighbor Audrey Feifer, 75, told Newsday. “If you had to go to the doctor or anywhere, he would take you.”
Babbitt reportedly lived with his 94-year-old mother Lucille, and was described by those who knew him as being ‘obsessed’ with trains and comic books.
Marten has been charged with second- and third-degree assault and will go before a grand jury Tuesday, the Manhattan D.A.’s office told PIX11 Monday.
Marten’s charges may be upgraded at that time.
http://nypost.com/2013/09/09/bus-riders-face-smashed-in-during-hate-attack/
An attacker pummeled a bus passenger so hard he smashed the bones in his face after calling the victim a “cracker” in Manhattan – marking the second time in two days that people appeared to be randomly targeted in racial tirades against white people, authorities said.
* A WHITE ATTACKER...??? AN ASIAN ATTACKER...???
In the latest incident, the suspect passed a 31-year-old rider on the M60 bus riding through Harlem, on West 127th Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive, around 2:45 p.m., Friday, when he shouted the racial slur and punched the victim in the face, breaking his nose and eye socket, cops said.
The victim was treated for facial fractures at New York Presbyterian Hospital and released, police said.
The suspect in the Harlem attack is 5-foot-11, 185 pounds and is believed to be in his late 30s.
* HERE'S THE PUNCHLINE, FOLKS: OBVIOUSLY ONE CAN "INFER" THAT THE "SUSPECT" IS BLACK VIA "CRACKER" COMMENT... BUT YOU DON'T NEED TO; THE POST POSTED A PHOTO OF THE SUSPECT! HE'S A BLACK MAN! BUT... APPARENTLY "BLACK" ISN'T A DESCRIPTIVE TO BE USED IN PRINT.
(*SNORT*)
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_BORDER_COMPUTER_SEARCHES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-09-10-05-30-23
Newly disclosed U.S. government files provide an inside look at the Homeland Security Department's practice of seizing and searching electronic devices at the border without showing reasonable suspicion of a crime or getting a judge's approval.
The documents published Monday describe the case of David House, a young computer programmer in Boston who had befriended Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, the soldier convicted of giving classified documents to WikiLeaks. U.S. agents quietly waited for months for House to leave the country then seized his laptop, thumb drive, digital camera and cellphone when he re-entered the United States. They held his laptop for weeks before returning it, acknowledging one year later that House had committed no crime and promising to destroy copies the government made of House's personal data.
The government turned over the federal records to House as part of a legal settlement agreement after a two-year court battle with the American Civil Liberties Union, which had sued the government on House's behalf. The ACLU said the records suggest that federal investigators are using border crossings to investigate U.S. citizens in ways that would otherwise violate the Fourth Amendment.
The Homeland Security Department declined to discuss the case, saying it was still being litigated. But Customs and Border Protection spokesman Michael Friel said border checks are focused on identifying national security or public safety risks. "Any allegations about the use of the CBP screening process at ports of entry for other purposes by DHS are false," Friel said. "These checks are essential to enforcing the law, and protecting national security and public safety, always with the shared goals of protecting the American people while respecting civil rights and civil liberties."
* WHICH BRINGS US BACK TO...
Newly disclosed U.S. government files provide an inside look at the Homeland Security Department's practice of seizing and searching electronic devices at the border without showing reasonable suspicion of a crime or getting a judge's approval.
(*SHRUG*)
House said he was 22 when he first met Manning, who now is serving a 35-year sentence for one of the biggest intelligence leaks in U.S. history. It was a brief, uneventful encounter at a January 2010 computer science event. But when Manning was arrested later that June, that nearly forgotten handshake came to mind. House, another tech enthusiast, considered Manning a bright, young, tech-savvy person who was trying to stand up to the U.S. government and expose what he believed were wrongheaded politics. House volunteered with friends to set up an advocacy group they called the Bradley Manning Support Network, and he went to prison to visit Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning.
It was that summer that House quietly landed on a government watchlist used by immigrations and customs agents at the border. His file noted that the government was on the lookout for a second batch of classified documents Manning had reportedly shared with the group WikiLeaks but hadn't made public yet. Border agents were told that House was "wanted for questioning" regarding the "leak of classified material." They were given explicit instructions: If House attempted to cross the U.S. border, "secure digital media," and "ID all companions."
(But if House had been wanted for questioning, why hadn't federal agents gone back to his home in Boston?)
(House said the Army, State Department and FBI had already interviewed him.)
* SO... HOMELAND SECURITY LIED... LIED TO THEIR OWN BORDER AGENTS.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* OPPS... IT'S GONNA BE A THREE-PARTER... (Part 2 of 3)
Instead, investigators monitored passenger flight records and waited for House to leave the country that November for a Mexico vacation with his girlfriend. When he returned, two agents were waiting for him, including one who specialized in computer forensics. They seized House's laptop and detained his computer for seven weeks, giving the government enough time to try to copy every file and keystroke House had made since declaring himself a Manning supporter.
* IS THIS YOUR AMERICA MY FRIENDS?
President Barack Obama and his predecessors have maintained that people crossing into U.S. territory aren't protected by the Fourth Amendment.
* IS THIS YOUR AMERICA MY FRIENDS...???
That policy is intended to allow for intrusive searches that keep drugs, child pornography and other illegal imports out of the country. But it also means the government can target travelers for no reason other than political advocacy if it wants, and obtain electronic documents identifying fellow supporters.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
House and the ACLU are hoping his case will draw attention to the issue, and show how searching a suitcase is different than searching a computer.
"It was pretty clear to me I was being targeted for my visits to Manning (in prison) and my support for him," said House, in an interview last week.
* SO IT WOULD SEEM.
How Americans end up getting their laptops searched at the border still isn't entirely clear. The Homeland Security Department said it should be able to act on a hunch if someone seems suspicious. But agents also rely on a massive government-wide system called TECS, named after its predecessor the Treasury Enforcement Communications System. Federal agencies, including the FBI and IRS, as well as Interpol, can feed TECS with information and flag travelers' files. In one case that reached a federal appeals court, Howard Cotterman wound up in the TECS system because a 1992 child sex conviction. That "hit" encouraged border patrol agents to detain his computer, which was found to contain child pornography. Cotterman's case ended up before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled this spring that the government should have reasonable suspicion before conducting a comprehensive search of an electronic device; but that ruling only applies to states that fall under that court's jurisdiction, and left questions about what constitutes a comprehensive search.
* I'LL RESERVE JUDGEMENT ON THE COTTERMAN CASE. (IN FACT, MY GUT SIDES WITH THE GOVERNMENT ON THAT ONE.)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
In the case of House, he showed up in TECS in July 2010, about the same time he was helping to establish the Bradley Manning Support Network. His TECS file, released as part of his settlement agreement, was the document that told border agents House was wanted in the questioning of the leak of classified material. It wasn't until late October, though, that investigators noticed House's passport number in an airline reservation system for travel to Los Cabos. When he returned to Chicago O'Hare airport, the agents waiting for him took House's laptop, thumb drive, digital camera and cellphone. He was questioned about his affiliation with Manning and his visits to Manning in prison. The agents eventually let him go and returned his cell phone. But the other items were detained and taken to an ICE field office in Manhattan.
* DOESN'T SEEM KOSHER...
Seven weeks after the incident, House faxed a letter to immigration authorities asking that the devices be returned. They were sent to him the next day, via Federal Express.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
By then agents had already created an "image" of his laptop, according to the documents. Because House had refused to give the agents his password and apparently had configured his computer in such a way that appeared to stump computer forensics experts, it wasn't until June 2011 that investigators were satisfied that House's computer didn't contain anything illegal. By then, they had already sent a second image of his hard drive to Army criminal investigators familiar with the Manning case. In August 2011, the Army agreed that House's laptop was clean and promised to destroy any files from House's computer.
Catherine Crump, an ACLU lawyer who represented House, said she doesn't understand why Congress or the White House are leaving the debate up to the courts. "Ultimately, the Supreme Court will need to address this question because unfortunately neither of the other two branches of government appear motivated to do so," said Crump.
* WHICH TELLS YOU EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT AMERIKA 2013.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/administration-changes-russian-proposals-origin-story
* GEEZUS... FRIGGIN' KEYSTONE COPS...
* REGARDLESS OF POLITICAL IDENTITY OR IDEOLOGY, HOW CAN SOMEONE NOT BE TOTALLY APPALLED - TERRIFIED EVEN - THAT THESE BOZOS CONTROL THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH OF THE U.S. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT?
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/sep/9/intel-clashes-obamas-election-year-al-qaeda-claims/
As President Obama ran to election victory last fall with claims that al Qaeda was “decimated” and “on the run,” his intelligence team was privately offering a different assessment that the terrorist movement was shifting resources and capabilities to emerging spinoff groups in Africa that posed fresh threats to American security.
* SO OBAMA LIED; WHAT ELSE IS NEW?
Top U.S. officials, including the president, were told in the summer and fall of 2012 that the African offshoots were gaining money, lethal knowledge and a mounting determination to strike U.S. and Western interests while keeping in some contact with al Qaeda’s central leadership, said several people directly familiar with the intelligence.
The gulf between the classified briefings and Mr. Obama’s pronouncements on the campaign trail touched off a closed-door debate inside the intelligence community about whether the terrorist group’s demise was being overstated for political reasons, officials told The Washington Times.
* OF COURSE IT WAS...
(*SHRUG*)
Many Americans believed when they voted in November that the president was justifiably touting a major national security success of his first term.
* MANY AMERICANS ARE IGNORANT. MANY ARE STUPID. MANY ARE BLINDED BY IDEOLOGY AND/OR PARTISAN IDENTITY.
* SO FAR... I'M NOT READING MUCH OF A "STORY" HERE...
(*ANOTHER SHRUG*)
[K]ey players in the intelligence community and in Congress were actually worried that Mr. Obama was leaving out a major new chapter in al Qaeda’s evolving story in order to bend the reality of how successful his administration had been during its first four years in the fight against terrorism.
* AS IS HIS M.O., OBAMA WAS SIMPLY DOUBLING DOWN ON THIS ASPECT OF POLITICS AS USUAL. NOTHING SHOCKING. SIMPLY DEFINING DEVIENCY DOWN FURTHER.
(*SHRUG*)
“I completely believe that the candidate Obama was understating the threat,” said Rep. Mike Rogers, Michigan Republican and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. “To say the core is decimated and therefore we have al Qaeda on the run was not consistent with the overall intelligence assessment at the time.”
* ANYWAY... THE WASHINGTON TIMES GAVE THIS STORY 6 PAGES. YOU HAVE THE LINK!
With America approaching the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and the one-year anniversary of the deadly terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, Mr. Obama will try Tuesday night to rally war-wary Americans to support military action by asking them to trust his description of the intelligence that Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons.
Some of those who will be listening in Congress say the president’s handling of the al Qaeda intelligence last year might provide a red flag for the coming debate.
Mr. Rogers, the House intelligence committee chairman, told The Times that there was “more than enough info at the time to understand the changes that were occurring in al Qaeda” and that two possible scenarios were at play behind the narrative Mr. Obama pushed on the campaign trail. “One, he wasn’t getting the information that the rest of us were getting, or two, he got the information and decided to disregard it for political purposes. Either of those is a problem for a commander in chief,” he said.
* I FEAR "NOT FOR THIS PARTICULAR COMMANDER IN CHIEF."
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-syria-presents-a-constitutional-moment/2013/09/09/e3c04d58-1971-11e3-82ef-a059e54c49d0_story.html
* GEORGE WILL WRITING IN THE WASHINGTON POST...
In London exile in 1940, Charles de Gaulle decided, “It was up to me to take responsibility for France” (“c’etait a moi d’assumer la France ”).
No U.S. president should assume he is, as de Gaulle almost mystically did, the nation, or is solely responsible for it. Remember this [tonight] when Barack Obama defends his choice to attack Syria.
* IF HE DOES...
* I HAVE A FEELING THIS OP-ED WAS WRITTEN PRIOR TO YESTERDAY AND THE PERSPECTIVE "RUSSIAN DEAL."
U.S. power and security are somewhat dependent on a president’s stature, which should not be diminished unnecessarily. Neither, however, should America’s well-being be equated with a president’s policy preferences or political health. The real but limited importance of presidential prestige and the real but limited diminution of it that would result from blocking Obama’s attack both matter. But so do the manifest and manifold weaknesses of his argument.
The debate about Syria has featured a peculiar phrase, “the vetted opposition.” Used by those advocating intervention, it implies that most anti-Assad fighters have been investigated enough to dispel doubts about them as appropriate beneficiaries of U.S. actions. But John McCain’s breezy assurance (“I have met them”) is insufficient. Skepticism is warranted, given the prodigies of confusion in administration statements, including historical amnesia.
George Orwell, who said insincerity is the enemy of clear language, would understand why our government talks of “quantitative easing” rather than printing money and uses “enhanced interrogation” and “extraordinary rendition” rather than more concrete denotations.
* AND SO TOO SHOULD AMERICANS REALIZE THAT EDWARD SNOWDEN WAS "VETTED." BRADLEY MANNING WAS "VETTED." HELL... MAJ. HASAN WAS VETTED TOO... WASN'T HE? (OH... AND THE BOSTON BOMBER BOYS... AND... AND... AND...)
(*SIGH*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons is only his most recent, and he is not the first to have used such weapons in war since the 1925 Geneva Protocol proscribing them. But because attacking Syria is said to be necessary as reinforcement of the 1925 “norm,” it matters that the norm has been violated before. In the 1960s, Egypt used chemical weapons against Yemen.
Saddam Hussein used them not only against disobedient Iraqis but in the 1980-88 war with Iran. A March 23, 1984, CIA report said: “Iraq has begun using nerve agents . . . [which] could have a significant impact on Iran’s human wave tactics, forcing Iran to give up that strategy.”
The argument for attacking Syria to strengthen a “norm” may be weaker than the argument for Congress halting the attack to strengthen constitutional balance. The outcome of the vote on attacking Syria may be less important than the fact of the vote. Through the physics of our Madisonian politics — one institution’s action producing another’s reaction — the nation has reached a constitutional moment.
* AGAIN... RIGHT NOW THE MAJORITY BET SEEMS TO BE THAT OBAMA WILL BACK OFF ON HIS EARLIER THREATS TO BOMB SYRIA.
Every policy choice occurs in a context conditioned by other choices. Barack Obama’s Syrian choice comes after multiple executive excesses that have provoked Congress to react against its marginalization, a product of its supine passivity regarding Obama’s unilateral lawmaking.
* IN ENGLISH: CONGRESS HAS ALLOWED OBAMA TO GET ALWAYS WITH WAY TOO MUCH SHIT! (AND DEMOCRATS IN CONGRESS HAVE ACTUALLY CONSPIRED WITH OBAMA TO WEAKEN THEIR OWN BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT!)
It is unfortunate that a foreign policy decision has catalyzed congressional resistance to presidential aggrandizement on many fronts. But no congressional vote about Syria can damage the presidency as much as Obama has done by overreaching, and by sophistical rhetoric that refutes his appeals for unconditional trust. The shriveling of his presidency probably became irreversible when laughter greeted his sophomoric claim that not he but “the world” drew a red line regarding chemical weapons.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
After incessant calls for “bipartisanship” to supplant “obstructionism,” there has emerged a broad bipartisan coalition to obstruct his Syrian policy.
(*SMILE*)
President Obama's policy is doomed without many Democratic senators swallowing their pride, disregarding past convictions and becoming presidential poodles.
* WHICH I FEAR MAY HAPPEN AGAIN...
(*SHRUG*)
Such canine obedience will express obedience to progressivism’s unchanging essence — exaltation of executive discretion and disparagement of the separation of powers. That is, implacable impatience with Madison’s constitutional architecture.
(*NODDING WHILE BITING MY LOWER LIP*)
Obama hardly has de Gaulle’s kind of mystical identification of himself with his nation, or de Gaulle’s desperate reason for such a conflation. However, Obama’s recent references to “my military” have a French antecedent in Louis XIV’s l’etat c’est moi.
This president has inadvertently made the case for strengthening the presidency by pruning the office’s pretensions.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nationalreview.com/exchequer/353292/bring-draconian-cuts-kevin-williamson
Hark, unless mine eyes are cheated, it appears that the House has passed a bill — on energy and water development — that would spend less money than we spent last year!
Indeed, that is the case: The $30.4 billion bill is $2.9 billion less than was appropriated for 2013. If my always-suspect English-major math is correct, that $2.9 billion represents a full 0.08% of 2012 federal outlays.
The White House has threatened to veto these “draconian cuts.”
(Seriously — OMB put out a statement calling these “draconian cuts.” Does anybody over there know what “draconian” means?)
Among the prize pigs being slaughtered by our beady-eyed Republican friends is a multimillion-dollar national propaganda campaign on behalf of alternative-energy interests, which went down thanks to Representative Tim Walberg of Michigan.
(It is bad enough that the federal government subsidizes these politically connected energy firms — spending millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to push their wares as well is a bit much to stomach.)
Representative Mike Burgess (R., Texas) offered an amendment that would block federal regulation of refrigerators and incandescent light bulbs, while Representative Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) took aim at ceiling-fan regulations. ARPA-E, the Department of Energy’s answer to DARPA, would see its funding cut by $215 million — that’s millions with an “m,” there, out of a budget in the trillions — and various other programs would be trimmed and consolidated.
Draconian cuts. Indeed.
(*SNORT*)
This is all very good, and it deserves to become law. But it also offers a dramatic illustration of how difficult it is to cut spending without cutting the areas where the spending actually happens.
This may be a minuscule cut in terms of overall federal spending, but it’s an 81% cut for ARPA-E, and a 50% cut for the newly consolidated delivery/reliability/efficiency/renewables program. The people who receive grants and other financial benefits under those programs will howl, and — more important — those who earn their living staffing those programs will fight to the death to avoid the hunt for productive employment in the real economy.
(*PENSIVE NOD*)
That is why spending reductions on those kinds of programs are never really enough: You have to eliminate the program entirely.
(*THUMBS UP*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Conservative populists sometimes get mocked for promising to cut entire cabinet agencies, but, in the long term, that is the most promising model for achieving a healthy fiscal balance.
(Obligatory reminder: None of this matters very much without entitlement reform and controls on defense spending. Non-defense discretionary spending, i.e. the stuff everybody promises to cut or cap, is a small part of federal spending.)
The Department of Energy, which like the Department of Education is a creature of the Carter administration, does some useful things: For historical reasons, it is entrusted with maintenance of the country’s nuclear arsenal, and it sponsors some worthwhile research. None of which justifies having a cabinet agency to tell us what kind of light bulbs to use. The best course of action would be to turn the department’s defense functions over to Defense and its research functions over to the National Science Foundation and to zero out most of the rest. That’s what real fiscal reform would look like.
* AGAIN...
That’s what real fiscal reform would look like.
Instead, we’ll probably be treated to a veto and drawn-out fight over a minuscule reduction in federal outlays simply because every dollar of federal spending eventually lands in the pocket of somebody with a powerful interest in receiving it.
(None of that is helped by the Obama administration’s apparent ideological commitment to maximizing the federal government’s control over the U.S. economy and its resources, a project that it pursues relentlessly while wondering why its more excitable critics describe its agenda as socialism.)
Yesterday, I wrote about “Obamaphones for millionaires,” the federal program under which telephone companies serving Maui beach developments and Scottsdale golf communities receive subsidies amounting to thousands of dollars per year for every line they install. The comments were predictable: Self-identified conservatives wrote in to assure me that, while they agree that federal spending is out of control, these programs — just these — are really, truly necessary, and that the telecoms receiving those billions of dollars a year in subsidies are totally deserving.
(*SPITTING ON THE GROUND*)
Every dollar in spending creates its own constituency, whether it produces cash in hand or a government-funded national ad campaign for your business. Representatives Walberg, Burgess, et al. will have worked a minor miracle if they can make the trivial reductions they have proposed a reality.
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