| by Diana Hartman "This is absurd, this hero's welcome for a box, not for my love There's no way you're not coming back, I know you'll be coming home My knees are weak, my heart is heavy. The sun beats down my mood When are you coming home my love? The shots rang out at half past noon" |
by John Spivey I've read much commentary over the years about the state of education in our country, most of it voiced by politicians and citizens who've never taught and some of it voiced by frustrated teachers. I've never read an account, though, by someone who has taught at a highly successful school. I did, so I want to stop and tell you about Santa Barbara Middle School. |
She's Not Stuck-Up; From Her Own Mouth
Goodness knows Gwyneth Paltrow is hardly any great statesman and such as Paltrow quotes are usually not the stuff of history. But sweet Gwyneth's response to the charge that she is stuck-up defies logic.
For to deny an attitude by claiming possession of traits that are the very definition of that attitude, well it boggles my fine well-organized mind.
From SFGATE.com:
It's kind of like saying "I'm not fat. Sure, sometimes I shop at Lane Bryant and I can't touch my toes but no, I'm not fat."
The "I" referred to above being the generic "I" as I'm sure you understand. Insert wink here.
Say One Thing, The Dems Do Another
I remember well the enthusiasm greeted the suggestion that current spending allocations be reduced to offset the financial losses bound to come from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina to the Gulf coast. Politicos and citizens alike shook collective heads and vowed that scheduled entitlement increases, pork expenditures and the like could be reduced with the blessing of both taxpayers and congress critters. After all it's not foreign to us idiots out here in la-la land. We've had money set aside for bathroom renovations only to have the funds diverted for a sudden roof leakage.
Yet such common sense doesn't seem to apply to the congress critters on Capitol Hill. With them, it's even worse. For they say they'll divert that bathroom renovation money then later they demand both the bathroom renovation and funds for the roof leakage.
Of course unlike us average peons, all the congress critters have to do is dip into the taxpayer pockets that their pet projects not be eliminated; that they may be re-elected.
Note from this quotable from Chuck Muth's News & Views,that for all the talk of compromise, when push came to shove, not a single Democrat followed through on the pledge to cut spending to allocate funds for the Gulf Coast via cuts in spending.
RSC CARRIES THE DAY
"When the House voted last week for final approval of $39 billion in spending cuts over five years for entitlement programs including Medicare, Medicaid and student loans, not one Democrat voted for the bill. The 216-214 vote was a victory for the conservative House Republican Study Committee, chaired by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.). The RSC had launched 'Operation Offset' last fall to push for cuts to offset the huge relief expenditures in the wake of Hurricane Katrina."
- Capital Briefs, Human Events, 2/6/06
True Then; True Now
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." - Abraham Lincoln
True Then; True Now
White House Correspondent Helen Thomas Without a Clue
For reasons unfathomable to me, respected White House correspondent and hater of all things American, Helen Thomas, continues to astound.
Now I don't know why this woman hates America but there's not one word anyone could offer to convince me otherwise. Although I'll lay odds this lady's had one long and fine life in the country she continually bashes. While I'm at it let me say I also don't understand why her snarling and dislikable presence is tolerated like it is but I suppose it's a seniority thing.
If the following exchange, from Chuck Muth's News & Views, isn't proof that this woman's either senile or dense as a rock, then nothing else ever will.
CLUELESS IN WASHINGTON
"I don't know."
- Washington correspondent Helen Thomas when asked by White House spokesperson Scott McClellan, "Are we at war, Helen?"
Beating on the Oil Companies
After Hurricane Katrina I noticed bottles of water being tossed all about by the box load. The big soda companies, Pepsi and Coca Cola, produced a lot of this water. I would imagine this was quite a windfall for these companies although I’ll allow they might have donated some. For sure they didn’t donate all the bottled water throughout the Gulf Coast region, including Texas where many Louisiana evacuees were taken for temporary shelter. The companies would have gone bankrupt donating so much product. Not to mention the stockpiling of bottled water that likely occurred before the storm hit.
Yet I saw not one Pepsi or Coke executive hauled before the congressional committee to investigate these “windfall” profits. Likewise, Home Depot and other stores probably did okay because of Hurricane Katrina yet again, not one executive hauled before the congress critters to explain their profits.
The oil companies did get themselves a nice sound byte this past year and it did stop the bloviating congress critters in their tracks. “The federal government makes way more on a gallon of gas than our company does,” or so went the mantra. Heh. This is true. Profit on a gallon of gas is about twenty cents or so I read throughout the oil hearings. The feds take approximately twenty eight cents a gallon for excise taxes to build interstates, etc.
The call went out for the feds and state to temporarily forego these gas taxes to help the country get through the Katrina disaster. Heh. The politicos were having none of it.
The oil guys are the big bad bogeymen and the congress critters are forever bringing them before committees that they may look concerned before their constituents. Evidently they weren’t concerned enough to give up their own tax windfall.
Let’s allow the government to take over the oil industry. That’ll make everything right.
Yeah. That’s the ticket.
from Chuck Muth's News & Views,
THE "WINDFALL PROFITS" SMEAR
"The recent announcement of record profits by ExxonMobil and Chevron is being met by widespread denunciations of oil companies' 'windfall profits'--and the demand that these profits be "given back" to society via a proposed $20 billion tax. . . . But America's oil companies have earned every penny of their profits. To characterize any portion of them as an unearned 'windfall'--like manna dropped from heaven--is a vicious smear. It is to evade what is truly responsible for their profits this and every quarter: the great value they create and the tremendous thought, effort, and risk-taking that goes into creating it."
- Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute
In all of the Internet there is no funnier "quip writer" than whoever does the front page of one of my favorite political sites,Lucianne.com. I don't know who writes this site's front page news quips but if nothing else, I always check in to see the fine summaries of daily news items in the site’s infamous short, terse and sarcastic prose. Lucianne Goldberg is the site owner and the lady is, indeed, a very funny and witty individual. She's the lady who was allegedly all involved with Linda Tripp in a conspiracy to write a book of Tripp's "lies" as the Clinton spin machine termed Tripp's tales of the hapless Monica Lewinsky. Lucianne was allegedly Tripp's "literary agent". Only Tripp has not written the blockbuster story as the Clinton spin machine shouted from the rooftops.
Could be the Clinton spin machine was lying?
Anyway, below, the news item as quoted on the Lucianne homepage.
Mindless Quote of the Day: 'You cannot explain to me why we
have not captured or killed the tallest man in Afghanistan' - Sen. Clinton
And below, the cute quip response:
Maybe because he's sitting down in Pakistan?
More Notable/Quotables HERE
Those Michael Brown Hearings
Kaitlyn Mae,
It’s now February 2006 and the blame game for Hurricane Katrina continues.
Last week I watched the Senate hearings on Katrina, specifically the one with Michael Brown on the hot seat.
Brown, Kaitlyn, was the head of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) during Hurricane Katrina. Before congress stipulated, right after the attacks of 9-11, that FEMA be under the umbrella of the then newly-created Department of Homeland Security, FEMA had been a federal agency in its own right for many years.
Michael Brown was a Bush political appointee, Kaitlyn, and Grandmother is not that stupid. Before the appointment, he had been the head of the Arabian Horse Association of some such. Hardly the exact credentials to be handling federal emergencies.
But FEMA was a bureaucracy and before Katrina, FEMA worked out fairly well as the after-the-fact responder. FEMA was never meant to be a first responder and does not possess the expertise required to come in DURING a crisis.
However, since the local government failed so miserably (and don’t let them tell you not, Kaitlyn), there was no preparedness for FEMA to take over those jobs the locals failed to implement. However again, Kaitlyn, Michael Brown could have told somebody that Louisiana was a dysfunctional basket case and got the feds in there a day or two sooner than they did.
Only problem, Brown didn’t want to report to Michael Chertoff, the head of the Department of Homeland Security and evidently refused to do so. The hysterical congress critters, many of them Democrats who believe the solution to every political problem is to create more bureaucratic layers, pointed this out constantly. I am of a mind, Kaitlyn Mae, that for congress to just point their lordly fingers at one big federal agency and command that they report to another, is just naiveté at its worst. FEMA never bothered to adjust its mantle under the umbrella of Homeland Security as that department was brand new and FEMA had existed many years on its own.
When Katrina hit, Michael Brown was used to coordinating directly with the White House and it would seem there was a total disconnect between DHS’ Chertoff.
It was a bureaucratic snafu Kaitlyn. Bureaucracies don’t function very well in situations requiring innovation on the fly. Duh.
The bigger failure on Hurricane Katrina, Kaitlyn, was the failure to respond by the local government. Although I’ll shrug my shoulders and profess that the federal government should have a plan in place in such an eventuality. There’s Baltimore city, Kaitlyn, a city right near you. If such a catastrophe occurred in Baltimore I daresay it would be the same situation as New Orleans. Democratic governments have a lousy track record after many years of governance for bringing its citizenry to peace, prosperity and a happening middle class.
Should it ever happen in Baltimore, Kaitlyn, some wise words of advice from Grandmother: TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF.
FreeRepublic live thread on Brown/Hurricane Katrina hearings.
A FreeRepublic thread asserting Katrina was Michael Chertoff’s fault.
Louisiana Turned Down Federal Help
As time goes on, Kaitlyn, more information comes out of the archives. Grandmother will keep documenting it for you Kaitlyn that your school history books do not lie.
It would seem Louisiana simply did not want to evacuate its New Orleans’ citizens before Hurricane Katrina because, as Grandmother surmises, they didn’t want to endure the expense.
They made a bad choice, Kaitlyn. And now they want to blame their bad choice on the federal government. With a little help from the Democratic party, they might get away with it.
From Captains’ Quarters:
| A ranking Louisiana health official turned down federal offers to help move or evacuate patients as Hurricane Katrina bore down on New Orleans, a newly released document shows. But the state's top medical officer said Louisiana coordinated with the federal Health and Human Services Department in evacuating hospitals and nursing homes after Katrina hit. Two days before the Aug. 29 storm, HHS was told by the state's health emergency preparedness director that the help was not needed, according to an e-mail released Monday by a Senate panel investigating the government's response to Katrina. The state official, identified in the Aug. 27 e-mail as Dr. Roseanne Pratts, "responded no, that they do not require anything at this time and they would be in touch if and when they needed assistance," wrote HHS senior policy analyst Erin Fowler. |
First Katrina/Kaitlyn post-the Beginning-9/6/05
9/7/05-H urricane Folklore/Wisdom and Nastiness
9/12/05-Hillary's "Katrina Kommission" and the Debacle of the Debit cards
9/14/05-FEMA Email; Dumb, blond Louisiana Senators
9/15/05-Ophelia and Grandmother
9/16/05-Katrina and the Helpless Pets
Stop Blaming FEMA-a pictorial explanation
What Will Become of New Orleans?
Katrina Gossip
Katrina Folklore
Nagin,the refinery bill,Character
Cops and Cadillacs
Those NO Prisoners
Documenting the Thieves
Blanco and the Dead
Samaritan Helps Evacuees-Murdered!
Those Wacky Louisiana Emails
The Myth of the Bridge Sniper
As the Media Preens the Myths Are Busted
Nagin and the Phantom Police
Grandmother Is Also Fooled
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