Michael Savage takes on CAIR

When president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, visited the United States and spoke at Columbia University earlier this year, radio talk host Michael Savage went on a predictable tirade or two about the rodent-like leader of Iran and his twisted ideas about Islam.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) lifted a few minutes of excerpts of Savage's tirades, posted the sound files on their website, and sent the sound files to Savage's sponsors in an effort to de-fund Savage and kick him off the airwaves.

Michael Savage is now suing CAIR for using copyrighted material without his permission. I haven't even fully read up on this case, and I can only take small doses of Savage on the way home from work before I need a breather, but I came across one thing tonight that really stood out, and that would be one of the most biased headlines I have seen in awhile.

Drudge linked to a story about Savage vs. CAIR, and when the Associated Press article on Yahoo News appeared, the headline might as well have had neon lights surrounding it. It says:

Radio host sues group that quoted him

Do you see what the headline did? It totally misrepresents why Savage is suing CAIR, and it gives a subtle little dig toward Savage as being some kind of dolt or bully who is suing someone for simply repeating what he said on his show.

Savage is not suing CAIR for quoting him. He is suing them for copyright infringement. He is suing them because while using this copyrighted material, they attributed what he said as applying to every Muslim instead of Muslims like Ahmadinejad, and then used those out-of-context remarks as a sledgehammer against his own show by complaining to sponsors about what he said.

I'm no legal scholar - especially when it comes to copyright law - so I have no idea if Savage has a case or not. What I do know is that the Associated Press is once again showing its bias with one doozy of a headline.

I think that Radio host sues group for copyright infringement would have been much more appropriate and neutral. Too bad the lefty media just can't help themselves.

Good Day to You, Sir

Sean Taylor, ghoulish statistics, and the Black KKK

One of this week's big news stories was the murder of Washington Redskins football player Sean Taylor, who was shot in his own home in front of his wife and daughter.

Even before any suspect had been caught, at least one columnist - using what he called "aggressive speculation" - guessed that the perpetrator(s) would be black. For the record, Sean Taylor was black, and the columnist, Jason Whitlock, is black as well. In an opinion piece entitled Taylor's death a grim reminder for us all, Whitlock describes a deadly, albeit, unofficial force in this country called the Black KKK. According to Whitlock, the Black KKK has claimed another victim in Sean Taylor. No, there is no organized terror group called the Black KKK, but as Whitlock writes,

There's a reason I call them the Black KKK. The pain, the fear and the destruction are all the same...

Well, when shots are fired and a black man hits the pavement, there's every statistical reason to believe another black man pulled the trigger. That's not some negative, unfair stereotype. It's a reality we've been living with, tolerating and rationalizing for far too long.

When the traditional, white KKK lynched, terrorized and intimidated black folks at a slower rate than its modern-day dark-skinned replacement, at least we had the good sense to be outraged and in no mood to contemplate rationalizations or be fooled by distractions.

Our new millennium strategy is to pray the Black KKK goes away or ignores us. How's that working?

Jason Whitlock touches upon an ugly truth. According to the Tuskegee Institute, the total number of lynchings of blacks in the United States between the years 1882 and 1951 - when post-Reconstruction racism in this country was at its most virulent - was 3,437 (1,293 whites were also lynched during that same time period). While this is certainly a tragic number of black lynching victims, let's put some perspective on it. While 3,437 blacks were lynched over that 70-year period, in 2006 alone, 7,421 blacks were murdered in the United States. Of that 7,421, about 92% were murdered by other blacks - again, in 2006 alone! Sean Taylor is yet another number in a statistic that far too many people have accepted as a normal part of 21st-century life.

While Jason Whitlock was guessing the race of the killer(s) before anyone had yet to be arrested, another columnist was a little more cautious. Leonard Pitts (also black) of the Miami Herald had this to say on Sunday in the Forum section of the Sacramento Bee:

Note that even before four people were arrested Friday, it was being taken for granted by some Internet posters and at least one black columnist (presumably Whitlock -Chanman) that Taylor's assailant or assailants would prove to be black. That is a dangerous and potentially embarrassing assumption. But at the same time, no one was exactly shocked when police released booking photos that proved that assumption to be valid.

Potentially embarrassing for whom Mr. Pitts? For an assuming speculator who turns out to be wrong? Or for the black community when the assumption turns out to once again be correct? It's very sad to say this, but what is "dangerous" Mr. Pitts, is to not base your assumption of being a crime victim on the race of your potential assailant. When approximately 3-6% of our country's population (young black males) are committing about 50% of our country's murders, you tell me what is potentially embarrassing or dangerous about being wary around young black males.

Ooooh, Chanman didn't just go there did he? Before you start pulling out the "R"-word, let's ask none other than Jesse Jackson what he thinks about this subject. In 1993, Jackson stated:

"There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life, than to walk down the street and hear footsteps . . . then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved."

Jesse Jackson felt compelled to state the obvious: that young black males commit a vastly disproportionate number of the murders and violent crimes in the United States each year. Jesse Jackson knows it, Jason Whitlock knows it, and even Leonard Pitts - although he is obviously loathe to admit it - knows it as well.

Whitlock ends his column with these final words about the Black KKK, which is wreaking so much havoc on blacks in the United States:

Blame drugs, blame Ronald Reagan, blame George Bush, blame it on the rain or whatever. There's only one group of people who can change the rotten, anti-education, pro-violence culture our kids have adopted. We have to do it.

According to reports, Sean Taylor had difficulty breaking free from the unsavory characters he associated with during his youth.

The "keepin' it real" mantra of hip hop is in direct defiance to evolution. There's always someone ready to tell you you're selling out if you move away from the immature and dangerous activities you used to do, you're selling out if you speak proper English, embrace education, dress like a grown man, do anything mainstream.

The Black KKK is enforcing the same crippling standards as its parent organization. It wants to keep black men in their place — uneducated, outside the mainstream and six feet deep.

In all likelihood, the Black Klan and its mentality buried Sean Taylor, and any black man or boy reading this could be next.

By the way, in case you didn't catch the answer to the mystery of whodunit in the Sean Taylor murder, here are the four suspects, some of whom have already confessed:

I doubt Jason Whitlock is embarrassed about his assumption, but (allegedly) because of these four unnecessary consumers of oxygen, a husband and father is dead.

Good Day to You, Sir

"What she did requires her life to be taken"

That is a quote from Yassin Mohamed al-Mubarak, a Sudanese protester who the the other day, was calling for the murder of Gillian Gibbons, a British school teacher working in the north African country of Sudan who had the absolute gall to allow her 7 year-old students to name their class teddy bear, "Muhammad."

This teddy bear case worked its way through the media wringer all last week, culminating in a 15 day sentence in a Sudanese jail for Ms. Gibbons. As absurd as it might sound for someone to receive 15 days in jail for naming a teddy bear Muhammad, her final sentence is actually the least absurd feature of this entire farce. Instead of 15 days in the pokey, Gibbons could have been facing years in prison along with 40 lashes of a whip. Now that she has been given such a "lenient" sentence, her real troubles have only now begun. Now she must face the fury of the practitioners of the Religion of Peace, whose blood lust has not been satisfied. In fact, another protester was quoted as saying, "Imprisoning this lady does not satisfy the thirst of Muslims in Sudan." Thirst for what? Ice water?

Last Thursday, Ms. Gibbons received her jail sentence. The next day, thousands of Muslims poured out of their Mosques after being riled up by the sermons of their Imams at their Friday prayers and marched through the streets of Sudan's capital city of Khartoum. Apparently, 15 days in jail for naming a teddy bear Muhammad wasn't what they were looking for as far as an acceptable punishment. Instead they were chanting charming little ditties such as, "Kill her, kill her by firing squad!" and "No tolerance: execution!" Did I mention that this was all because of a teddy bear being named Muhammad?

What I find most amusing was the mob's assertion that, despite Gibbons' protests to the contrary, the British school teacher INTENTIONALLY named the teddy bear Muhammad. Let's ask Yassin Mubarak what he thinks:

"It is a premeditated action, and this unbeliever thinks that she can fool us?" said Yassin Mubarak, a young dreadlocked man swathed in green and carrying a sword. "What she did requires her life to be taken."

You can't make this stuff up folks. Notice how Mubarak refers to Gibbons as an "unbeliever". Makes you wonder what pisses him off more: that a teddy bear was named Muhammad, or that it was an "unbeliever" that did it? And he was carrying a sword for crying out loud. Was that just in case he had a chance face-to-face run-in with Gibbons? I don't fully know what kind of copyright violations I am committing here - here is a link to the full article with picture - but I have to show you this guy. His image serves as a perfect representation of the insanity that is running rampant in the Islamic world. I give full credit to the Associated Press for running a picture of this clown:

There is the face of the Religion of Peace as he calls for the violent murder of a 54 year-old British woman who allowed her 7 year-old Sudanese students to name a teddy bear Muhammad. I mentioned in the beginning of the post that the full name of the above clown is Yassin Mohamed al-Mubarak. That made me wonder about something. If it is blasphemous to name a teddy bear Muhammad, why isn't it blasphemous to name a person Muhammad? Muslims are not even supposed to draw pictures of Muhammad - imagined or otherwise. Yet, Muhammad is one of the most popular names for Muslim boys. That has always confused me.

The most important part about Mubarak's statement is his outrage from believing that Gibbons intentionally insulted his dear prophet Muhammad. The important thing to consider is: SO WHAT IF SHE DID! That is the true difference between us (the decent) and them (the indecent): Decent people rationally discuss disagreements; they don't arbitrarily threaten to shoot or decapitate the person with whom they disagree.

Whether it's Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, or the murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh over a film about the abuse of Muslim women, or the political cartoons featuring images of Muhammad (See? That drawing thing again), or a teddy bear named Muhammad, it seems the Muslim world always has its collective beard tied in a knot about something. In each of these cases, murder has been either threatened or carried out. The worst thing that the western world could do would be to kowtow to these religious thugs who would have us abide by their rules, by their definition of what offends and what does not. I believe in respecting someone's culture just as much as anyone, but only because I want to, not because I am threatened with violent death if I do not.

Good Day to You, Sir

Is Hillary Clinton "blacker" than Barack Obama?

The man to ask is author, Shelby Steele. He has penned an intriguing article about the problems that Barack Obama has in selling himself to whites or blacks, because he is not able to please both. Steele divides the black camp into "bargainers" and "challengers". Bargainers are those blacks who, as Steele puts it,

make a deal with white Americans that gives whites the benefit of the doubt: I will not rub America's history of racism in your face, if you will not hold my race against me.

Steele offers Oprah Winfrey as the ultimate example of a bargainer. The other group of blacks are the "challengers", whom Steele describes as such:

Challengers never give whites the benefit of the doubt. They assume whites are racist until they prove otherwise. And whites are never taken off the hook until they (institutions more than individuals) give some form of racial preference to the challenger. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are today's best known challengers.

In the end, Shelby Steele admits that politically, Hillary Clinton is indeed more "black" than Barack Obama. How can this be possible? Notice I said "politically", not "physically":

Barack Obama is a plausible presidential candidate today because he is a natural born bargainer. Obama--like Oprah--is an opportunity for whites to think well of themselves, to give themselves one of the most self-flattering feelings a modern white can have: that they are not racist. He is the first to apply the bargainer's charms to presidential politics. Sharpton and Jackson were implausible presidential candidates because they suffered the charmlessness of challengers. Even given white guilt, no one wants to elect a scold.

But the great problem for Obama is that today's black identity is grounded in challenging. This is the circumstance that makes him a bound man. If he tries to win the black vote by taking on a posture of challenging, he risks losing the vote of whites who like him precisely because he does not challenge. And if his natural bargaining wins white votes, he risks losing black votes to Hillary Clinton. Why? Because Hillary Clinton always identifies with black challengers like Al Sharpton. This makes her "blacker" than Barack Obama.

I mean, why not? Don't forget that Bill Clinton was the "first black president". I guess Hillary Clinton would be the second.

Good Day to You, Sir

Location, location, location

My wife and I put our house on the market two weeks ago. No bites yet, but we're not sweating it. In the meantime, we have been perusing the listings of homes for sale, trying to find the one that we want to buy and move into... that is, once our home is sold.

The biggest problem with Sacramento is that the difference between a wonderful neighborhood and a dumpy one can literally be the distance of one street. There is often no clear-cut "good" side of town and "bad" side of town. You can have a dumpy area, and then right smack dab in the middle of it will be this island of prosperity and a desirable neighborhood to go with it - if you're a local, think Pocket area (nice) right next door to Meadowview (horrible). I don't know if this is unique to a "diverse" city like Sacramento, or if every city sees this issue, but in an environment like that, it is not easy finding a house that meets our every desire. It seems that every house we look at in the listings has one positive, but two or three negatives. Examples abound of what we have been up against:

1. Beautiful house with a big lot in a dumpy neighborhood or on a busy street (lots of these)
2. Great neighborhood, but a dumpy house on a tiny lot (big price tag anyway)
3. Great neighborhood, beautiful house, but a tiny lot (again, big price tag)
4. Great house, great neighborhood, great price, tiny lot, in the suburbs, terrible commute
5. Great neighborhood, beautiful house, big lot, but the public schools stink (lots of these too)

Number 5 stymies me the most. We have toured the most beautiful neighborhoods with the most gorgeous homes, only to look at the public schools that are zoned for that area and find that they are terrible. My first thought is always, how can the people who live in this area let that happen? What I'm sure has occurred is that the rich people with the nice homes in that area have put their kids in private school, and it's the people in the apartment complexes and rentals a few streets over who are sending their kids to the public schools.

My wife and I know that it will be just a matter of time before we find the house that is just right for us and our kids. We just hope that when we find it, our current house will at least be almost out of escrow! In today's market, who knows when that will happen.

Good Day to You, Sir

Alec Baldwin must be disappointed

He never got a chance to stone the guy to death. I am speaking of the death of Henry Hyde. The Illinois Republican who served as Speaker of the House during the Clinton impeachment has died at the age of 83.

During the impeachment, Alec Baldwin got out of his seat while appearing on Letterman, and screamed at the crowd, imploring them to go to Henry Hyde's house and stone Hyde and his family to death. Later, after Baldwin was condemned for his call for extreme violence, he of course just said he was kidding. I have seen the video. Baldwin wasn't kidding.

Baldwin's violent rhetoric was just another indicator of the hypocrisy of the "peace-loving" left who often justify their desire to destroy their opponents by painting said opponents as not just wrong, but evil. Henry Hyde was by no means a perfect man (who is?), but did he deserve to be stoned to death because he was working toward impeaching and removing a perjuring president? According to the left, he did deserve it.

Good Day to You, Sir

Thanksgiving in God's Country

One thing that I admit loving about being a teacher is the big blocks of time off. Adding the weekends, I had nine days off for the Thanksgiving holiday, and my family and I had the privilege of heading north to visit my parents and feast with them. My parents live in northeastern California, which I think is absolutely beautiful. In other posts, I have mentioned the volcanic topography, dry pine forests, and vastness of this region, and every time I go up there, I find something new to photograph. This trip was no different. Conditions weren't always great for taking pictures, but ya gotta try!

One place we love to go is Burney Falls. My daughter was taking her nap, so she and my wife stayed back at my parents' house. My son however, would never dream of passing up a chance to go tromping through the woods, so he skipped his nap and off he went!

Accompanying my son was his cousin, who is two months older than he. As you can see from the size difference, some kids mature faster than others... that and my brother and sister-in-law are both Amazonian.

Tourists entering Burney Falls National Park must pay a fee to your friendly neighborhood federal government official manning the shack at the entrance. The locals however happen to know about an alternate route whereby you can get in for free. The access road is on the other side of the creek from the main entrance, and to get to the park from the "local" route, all one has to do is cross this footbridge. And what a beautiful little footbridge it is.

I try every time I go there, but I have always been unable to stand at this point and not take a picture of Burney Falls. They are just too beautiful.

It was late afternoon, so the sun was doing some interesting things to the surrounding trees in relation to the falls. Those streaks you see in the photo are actually droplets of mist from the falls. Click on the photo and you can really see the streaks of mist. Click on all the photos for that matter!

This shot of the tourists at the bottom of the falls gives you a better idea of just how big the falls really are - 129 feet high to be exact.

When you are done looking at the falls, there is an intriguing trail that loops around and takes you back to the place where the locals park their cars.

My son was on the last part of the trail before making it back to our car, when I noticed the late-afternoon autumn sun was poking through the tree branches. It doesn't show up well in the photo, but the most ethereal light was illuminating the forest. The photo still turned out pretty well if I may humbly opine.

On Saturday morning, we departed my parents' abode and made our way on Highway 299 for Interstate 5, and home. There is this one place on 299 - not far west of Hatchet Mountain summit - where you can get the coolest views of Mount Shasta. The weird cloud cover made for some pretty horrible photographic conditions, but this time of year, I was just grateful that the mountain was visible at all.

Highway 299 and Interstate 5 link up in the city of Redding, which is by far, the largest city in California that is north of Sacramento. Redding's newest claim to fame is the Sundial Bridge, which spans the Sacramento River. It is a suspension footbridge with quite a gimmick. The gimmick is not so apparent with the above photo, but the next one gives you a better perspective:

In all honesty, a new-agey bridge like this looks totally out of place in a - ahem - rustic town like Redding. I am not making fun of Redding - I love Redding! My wife and I would love to live in Redding! However, looking at this bridge and where it is located brings to my mind an image of a pig in a tuxedo. Depending on your taste in architecture, I will leave it up to you to decide in this particular metaphor if the bridge is the pig or the tuxedo.

Once we walked to the far side of the bridge, we figured the world just wouldn't be right unless we gave the kiddos an opportunity to throw some rocks into the Sacramento River!

My daughter needed to get very close to the water in order for her rocks to make it in. Naturally, Daddy isn't going to let her get that close to the water without being right there with her!

After all the rocks had been picked clean from the embankment, it was time to cross the bridge and head for home. Walking the other direction gave me the opportunity to snap this interesting photo. The sky was doing strange things that day. Personally, I chalk it up to Global Warming!

Here's hoping that you and yours had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. Now, after my almost week-long hiatus, I am ready to start blogging again.

Good Day to You, Sir

Illegal Alien? You make the call

This Metro section article is actually from the Sunday, 11/18/2007 edition of the Sacramento Bee, but the case is still definitely ongoing. I will reprint for you, the first two paragraphs of the lead article in Metro, and then ask yourself if the perp is legally or illegally in our country:

For the past week, while Sacramento police searched for Miguel Carranza in connection with the Nov. 8 double homicide of his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend, he was already behind bars - 103 miles away in Santa Rosa.

Authorities there, apparently thrown off by a plethora of aliases, took days to realize Carranza, a Mexican citizen, had already been identified as a person of interest in the shooting deaths of 29-year-old Martha Lopez-Pachecho and Jever Lopez, 32.

As usual, the Bee engages in literary gymnastics in order to avoid identifying someone as an illegal alien. I have written on this subject before, and the Bee never seems to tire of giving me fresh material.

One more thing - and this doesn't have to do with the illegal alien angle. What is this person of interest nonsense? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like that term has only started to be used by law enforcement in maybe the last five to ten years. I don't ever remember hearing that term before then. Either you're a suspect or a witness. What the hell is a person of interest?

Good Day to You, Sir

*Update (11/20/2007 0705hrs) - I can't believe I missed this the first time, but later on in the article, there is this quote from a Sacramento police spokesman:

The guy has something like 14 or 18 different aliases... when you have an individual without documentation and no identifying characteristics who utilizes a number of aliases, it can be very difficult for our system to track him."

What?! If he's a Mexican citizen in this country, there should be all sorts of documentation to track a foreign national within our borders, right? Right?

Good Day to You, Sir (again)

Plant 'em, then watch their noses grooooooow

HotAir.com put together a masterful look into the undecided voters who asked the Democrat candidates what turned out to be planted questions at a recent debate in Las Vegas. The chutzpah of these people is indescribable.



Good Day to You, Sir

Suburban slow burn

On Friday, my wife and I put our house on the market. Several factors have prompted us to attempt to sell our house. With two kids growing up fast, it has become more and more apparent that we will need more than the 1360 square feet and three bedrooms/two bathrooms that we currently enjoy. Also, we have grown tired of the street on which we live. It isn't one of the main thoroughfares like that on which other people live - and I don't know how they do it - but it is a neighborhood street that many use as a cut-through to get from one side of the neighborhood to the other. Then there are our neighbors. Back in September, right when my wife and I began to sorta kinda talk about maybe putting our house on the market, this vehicle joined the four other vehicles already permanently parked in our neighbor's driveway:

Notice that my neighbors parked it as far away from their house as possible, and as close to our house as possible; that is my garage door on the extreme left of the photo. It's bad enough that there is an RV practically parked in our driveway, but to make matters worse, our neighbors' loud obnoxious mother/mother-in-law is living in the RV. We have figured out that she sleeps in it at night, however, they are sneaky enough about it that we most likely would never be able to prove to County code enforcement that she is sleeping there. Not that County code enforcement would do anything about it anyway. From what I understand, they don't have the time or manpower to worry about "small" stuff like that. Believe me, it's not small when YOU are the one living next to the Clampetts. And why can't any of those four other cars fit in our neighbors' garage? That's because they have one of those loud obnoxious speed boats that you cannot even use for pleasure boating. It only has one speed - insanely fast - and only for short distances.

The problem with a menagerie of vehicles like this next door, is that we could conceivably have trouble selling our house because of it. Were I in search of a new house and I saw a mess like that next door, I know that I would be hesitant to give the house a chance. That is the most frustrating part about all this is knowing that the biggest negative mark against our house is something that is not even on our property, and therefore, we have no control over it.

Sorry if I offend anyone reading this to whom the following statement applies, but if you have a big RV parked in your driveway, then shame on you! Try giving a thought about your neighbors and how it might affect their lives. It may be your property, but when houses are built right next to each other, your property is no longer an island. Either park it in your yard or rent a storage space for it.

Good Day to You, Sir

I got yer moronic bumper stickers right here

Via Little Green Footballs, here is a post from a blogger who resides in the People's Republic of Madison, Wisconsin. He has listed some of the dippier bumper stickers he sees around the Berkeley of the Midwest, and gives a short explanation of why they bug him so much. His number one most annoying bumper sticker?


And why does he dislike this bumper sticker so much? His explanation makes sense to me:

If some of the followers of the religion represented by the crescent moon “c” on your cute little bumper sticker would stop hijacking planes and blowing up buildings, coexisting would be a little easier.

Good Day to You, Sir

News from the front: The Achievement Gap

A friend of mine emailed me an article from Forbes Magazine. Simply titled The Achievement Gap, the article examines some of the quantified data about societal attitudes that address some of the possible reasons for the huge discrepancy in the academic performance of whites and Asians on the one hand, and blacks and Hispanics on the other.

You can read the whole article yourself, but there were some highlights that caught my eye. First was the article's take on the "acting white" attitude that has been blamed for so much academic malaise on the part of black students. There was one study that said, nope! The whole "acting white" theory is a bunch of nonsense, because we found that well-performing black students say they have just as many friends as badly-performing black students. Did you catch that? The study was conducted by asking students if they have any friends. As the article said, they might as well have asked the students if they were virgins. What the hell else did the researchers think the kids would say? After a more realistic study was done, it turns out that yes, many black (and hispanic) students are afraid to try hard in school on pain of being ostracized by their peers.

There was also an interesting computer game experiment done using purple and green employees. You can read the specifics of the experiment yourself, but suffice it to say that a catch-22 quickly developed. The Purples stopped trying harder because they thought it wouldn't do any good, and the employers stopped hiring Purples because they wouldn't try harder.

Finally, the most controversial part of the article (for me anyway). You may have heard about this experiment, where resumes were sent out - some had "black sounding" names like Jamal and Ebony, and some had "white sounding" names like Kristen and Brendan. The "white sounding" names got a much higher callback rate. I have a little issue with this experiment. Did all the white sounding names sound like Kristen and Brendan? Were I an employer, and I received a resume from an Earl or a Cletus - which are also "white sounding names" - I must admit that I might be loathe to give a callback to them either. To me, these names do not reflect race; they reflect culture. I for one have made no qualms about the fact that I detest these ridiculous faux-African names that black parents have been giving their children for the last 30 years or so - the name Shanequa tends to be an archetypal example. The record holder in the annals of my memory continues to be a high school football player from the Sacramento area whose first name was Syd'Quan. Now, for all I know, Syd'Quan could be the greatest, nicest guy you ever could meet, but his name could very well turn off prospective employers before they could find out about these positive attributes. You could also be a hard-working courteous person who dresses like a slob or a thug. Either way, a prospective employer is not going to look past the way you dress, just like he is not going to look past your name that reflects a lower-class upbringing, and the lower-class values that unfortunately too often accompany that upbringing.

What can I say? Life is unfair... get used to it.

Good Day to You, Sir

Worry about the biting, not the barking

That is the advice of radio/TV host and columnist Larry Elder, who is black. In the wake of the brouhaha over "Dog" the Bounty Hunter getting caught using the word "nigger" in an unknowingly-taped phone call, Mr. Elder had a few things to say about it in his latest column.

The gist of what Elder had to say was to say, "So what?" in response to Dog's racial outburst. What can Dog - or other people like him - say or do to keep Larry Elder from earning a living? Elder used a personal anecdote in his column to illustrate his point:

Does an outburst from a man like Dog truly affect one's self-esteem and self-respect? When I worked for a law firm as a young attorney in Cleveland, I once took the deposition of an orthopedic surgeon. The white opposing attorney and I sparred aggressively during the depo, but we respected each other's professionalism. So when we finished, we stood chatting in front of the doctor's office. Soon a raggedy car full of young whites slowly drove by, and one yelled, "Hey, n---er! It's almost sundown! Get out of town!"

The jaw of my opposing attorney nearly hit the pavement, and he said, "Did you ... did you –?"

I said, "And you were saying?"

The attorney again stammered, "Did you ... did you hear?"

"Sure, I heard," I said. "But, look. I'm standing here, making [in today's dollars nearly $150,000], wearing a three-piece pinstripe blue suit and carrying a leather briefcase. And those punks, who didn't even have enough guts to stop before calling me n---er, probably couldn't even get a job working the deep-fry at McDonald's. No, it's going to take a lot more than that to ruin my day. Now, as you were saying ...?"

Elder also took Dog to task for kissing the ring of Al Sharpton in the hopes of being granted forgiveness. Yes, Al Sharpton - the man who has used such epithets as "white interlopers" and "diamond merchants" to describe Jews. You see, Al Sharpton has bite. There are seven dead people lying in their graves, and many lives ruined as a direct result of his "intervention" into racially charged situations.

Good Day to You, Sir

Whoa Big Fella!

Have you ever heard of a crosswind landing? That is where an airplane coming in to land is dealing with a heavy crosswind and the pilot must point the plane's nose toward the wind, which sometimes means the nose must face away from the runway; sometimes 45 degrees away from the runway. Then right at the last second, the pilot steers the nose straight just before the wheels touch the pavement.

Doing this in a little two-seater Cessna would be scary enough. How about doing it in an Airbus A-380, which is the largest airliner in the world; even bigger than a Boeing 747!



Good Day to You, Sir

And then there was one...

Did you know there is only one remaining World War I veteran alive in the United States? He went to France but never saw combat. He ended up guarding German prisoners of war after the armistice had been signed.

His name is Frank Buckles. He was born in 1901, and you can read his story here.

Good Day to You, Sir

Thank you, and Happy Birthday!

First, even though I am now a day late, Happy Birthday to the United States Marine Corps, which was formed on November 10, 1775 - a mere 232 years ago.

Second, a big Thank You to all Veterans out there - both peacetime and wartime - who have fired a shot, stood a post, or cleaned a latrine. Everything you did and everything you do makes a contribution toward defending our country in that great sea of anarchy known as planet earth.

Good Day to You, God Bless You, and Semper Fi!

Clearing the snowjob on Finland

I currently have a troll in my comments section who seems to believe that Finland's recent school shooting tragedy happened because of that country's "lax" gun laws.

I am happy to concede that Finland has the 3rd highest rate of gun ownership in the world (I like this country already!), which is right behind the United States (We're #1!) and Yemen (Huh?). The biggest reason for such a high level of gun ownership in an otherwise gun-phobic continent is Finland's deep tradition of hunting. This is where we get to the part about Finland's so-called "lax" gun laws.

Here is an excerpt from an Associated Press article about the school shooting where we get an idea about Finland's "lax" gun laws, and all emphasis is mine:

Auvinen, who had no previous criminal record and belonged to a shooting club in central Helsinki, shot the victims with a .22-caliber pistol that he bought from a local gun store days before the attack.

Police revealed Friday that Auvinen had settled for the pistol after being denied a license for a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun.

"The application was rejected because a 9 mm gun is considered too powerful ... for target practice shooting," Detective Superintendent Tero Haapala told The Associated Press. "He was recommended to get a .22-caliber gun."

After Wednesday's shooting drew international attention to Finland's gun culture, the Interior Ministry issued a statement saying firearm sales were "strictly controlled."

Before granting a weapons permit, police "assess the applicant's suitability to posses a firearm, his or her way of life, behavior and possible mental health problems," the statement said. Applicants must prove also they have a legitimate need for a gun, such as hunting or target practice. Self-defense is not a valid reason.

Wow! I can just tell that country wants its citizens to strap one to their hips and walk in shootin'.

Meanwhile, here is my idea of lax gun laws, and notice the absence of air quotes around the word lax. The state of Vermont has a homicide rate of 1.3 per 100,000 people. Here are the gun requirements in Vermont. Check out the items I bolded:

State Requirements

Rifles and Shotguns

* Permit to purchase rifles and shotguns? No.

* Registration of rifles and shotguns? No.

* Licensing of owners of rifles and shotguns? No.

* Permit to carry rifles and shotguns? No.


Handguns

* Permit to purchase handgun? No.

* Registration of handguns? No.

* Licensing of owners of handguns? No.

* Permit to carry handguns? No.


Other Requirements

* Is there a State waiting period? No.

* Is there a FBI *NICS check for firearm transactions? No. State system.

* Permit to carry a concealed weapon required? No.

* Record of sale: Yes.

Meanwhile, The District of Columbia, which has a population roughly the size of Vermont, and has what have to be the toughest gun laws in the nation, has a per-100,000 murder rate of - remember, Vermont is 1.3 - D.C.'s is 35.4! In the District of Columbia, you can't even own a handgun in your own home, yet in Vermont, you don't even need a permit to carry a concealed weapon! Where would you want to live?

Yes, I know the argument will be that Vermont and the District of Columbia are states (well, Vermont is anyway), while Finland is a whole country. I'll tell you what, I'm not going to do it right now because it is pushing 2am (can't sleep), but how about someone out there do a little research and find out what happened to the gun crime rate in Great Britain and Australia after they both instituted gun bans in the mid-1990s after similar mass-shootings. I'll give you a hint: the rates didn't go down.

Good Day to You, Sir

More great stuff from Jolly Old England

I'm going to start billing Old Andrew for all the free publicity! I think Scenes from the Battleground is a truly amazing blog that pulls no punches about what plagues today's educational systems, and describes to a tee the same kind of disruptive and deviant behavior that I encounter on a daily basis - not only from students, but from hogtied and gutless administration ("managers" in oldandrewspeak).

Scenes specializes in providing informative lists of things we teachers face in school. Here is one example from a list of the "Top Five Lies About Behavior":

Lie Number 1:“If your lessons are good enough you won’t have any discipline problems.”
Who’s told me this lie: PGCE lecturers, OFSTED, LEA consultants, teachers from posh schools.
The Truth: Pupils don’t misbehave because you haven’t met their high pedagogical standards. The kind of kids that cause most disruption would consider any lesson where they can’t adjust their make-up, discuss their sex lives, and try and make one of the shyer kids cry as unsatisfactory. In fact one of the things most likely to make them kick off is seeing the rest of the class learning. The worst kids are a problem before you’ve even tried to teach them, they don’t care about the lesson, they don’t have a reason for misbehaving. They misbehave because they can. (emphasis mine)

I have lost count of the number of times I have been told that students won't misbehave if my lessons are "interesting" or "engaging" or "fun" or "cooperative". But Scenes nails exactly what I see instead, which is when a lesson actually starts taking off, I get less cooperation from the disruptors instead of more.

Keep it up oldandrew!

Good Day to You, Sir

For the record, I am not gloating

However, I hope the following story serves as a well-needed wake up call those self-righteous Europeans who tsk-tsk us barbarous Americans every time a school shooting happens in this country.

Yesterday, a high school student in Finland who apparently had some scores to settle, killed eight students and staff at his school before turning his .22 caliber pistol on himself. This is a tragedy, and I am so sorry and sickened that it happened.

My hope is that perhaps people on both sides of the pond can learn from this act of violence and come to the conclusion that more gun control is not the answer.

Good Day to You, Sir

Rehabilitating a hero

When people hear the name, Joseph McCarthy, chances are they reflexively blanch at the thought of blacklists and persecution. What people don't often ponder is whether or not Joe McCarthy was right.

One of the greatest books I have ever read is Ann Coulter's Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. The most eye-opening aspect of that book was Coulter's vehement defense of Senator McCarthy. In all my years, I had never once read a kind word about the man, and Coulter absolutely set fire to some of the major lies that lefties have said about him over the years; lies repeated so often, that they are now gospel in the American consciousness.

Ann Coulter's treatment of the McCarthy era was only a couple of chapters in her book. In her weekly column, which, if you have never read a positive description of Joe McCarthy, I highly recommend you read, Coulter tells us about a newly-released book whose only subject is telling the true and heroic story of Joseph McCarthy, who may have been rough around the edges, but was still a hero who helped secure America's future at the cost of his life and reputation. Leftists so hate the man because he was effective, and most importantly, he was right!

Good Day to You, Sir

The Carnival of Education

Check out this week's edition at Right Wing Nation. My post about school discipline in Africa is included in a rather humorous manner!

Good Day to You, Sir

At least he's an honest bum

The time: today around 5:30pm. The place: the bottom of the offramp at I5 and Richards Blvd in Sacramento. The sign being held by the bum at the end of said offramp:

HOMELESS AND DRUNK
I NEED A DRINK REAL BAD!
GOD BLESS YOU AND KEEP THE FAITH

At least he didn't insult my intelligence by carrying a sign saying he was willing to work for food.

Good Day to You, Sir

Go on, beat the kids

When it comes to their penchant for pride of ignorance, disrespect for authority, and the adulation of the "Gangsta" culture, our young people in this country are world-renowned. But as bad as you think the students are in the United States, apparently Great Britain has it as badly, or even worse.

It has gotten bad enough that some British parents of African descent are sending their children to Africa to be educated and "straightened out". Part of that straightening out involves beating their ass - and I'm not being metaphorical. Schools in Africa tend to be Old School, which means the time-honored (and very effective) tradition of corporal punishment.

The Times of London ran an article on this growing trend of looking to Africa to save kids raised in the excesses of modern Western culture. Here is an excerpt from the article to get you going:

According to Oswald Amoo-Gottfried, the school’s founder and director, the key to the success of pupils such as Sienam is the kind of discipline that has long since fallen out of fashion in Britain. “I believe in caning,” he declared. “I tell the parents: if you don’t want your child punished, then your child doesn’t belong here.”

His school is quiet, the atmosphere studious. The youngest children sit in neat sailor suits; older pupils wear blue shorts and white shirts, while the senior students dress in smart trousers and T-shirts emblazoned with the school badge.

In one classroom 30 pupils are arranged in rows of desks facing their male teacher and the white board. They remain silent until asked a question.

Oh, how I wish... never mind, with so many squid-spined parents in this country, it will never happen.

Good Day to You, Sir

Now this is a poster I'll hang in my classroom!

It's been awhile, but I have previously mentioned a fellow social studies teacher at my school with whom I get along great, but he is a radical Chicano activist who has a poster of Che Guevara hanging in his classroom.

Tonight, I came across a Che poster that I would loooove to hang in my classroom. It is a collage of that famous image of Guevara that is made up of the photos of many of his victims that he had shot at La Cabana prison outside Havana.

Now, the next step is finding out if I can actually procure one...

Good Day to You, Sir

Deviation from the lesson plan

Right now with my 8th graders, we are studying the beginning of the American Revolution. My plan yesterday was to teach them about the Battle of Bunker Hill, but I was caught off guard by my 7th period class and the questions they had.

While talking about the uncertainty and fears that men feel while going into combat, I had just finished making a comparison between the men at Bunker Hill and our soldiers in Iraq. That prompted some raised hands, and the questions quickly made it apparent to me that (not surprisingly), my students have absolutely no clue what is going on in that country. The number one misunderstanding that I was happy to correct was my students' belief that we are fighting the Iraqi army.

On the contrary, I told them; we are training, equipping, and often fighting side-by-side with the Iraqi army against the terrorists who are trying to destroy the country. My mention of the terrorists prompted another student to raise his hand and ask me who the "insurgents" were.
And so on and son it went. These students had so many questions about our current war, but apparently no one has taken the time to answer them. I hope I remedied some of that yesterday.

Good Day to You, Sir

OK, that was an impressive play

Have you ever seen the famous play with four seconds remaining in a 1982 football game between Cal and Stanford where Cal kept throwing laterals until a player scored a touchdown, and then crashed into a Stanford trombone player because the Stanford band had already gone onto the field, thinking the game was over?

History has repeated itself (sans the football player/trombone player collision). This time, Trinity University in Mississippi was on their own 39 yard line and losing the game to Millsaps College with only two seconds left. Trinity needed a touchdown to win. One pass and fifteen laterals later....

Click here to see the outcome.

Good Day to You, Sir

My thoughts exactly... literally

Several days ago, I blogged about two members of the "Jena 6" being rewarded with a trip to, and an appearance on the BET Awards. A radio host and columnist named Mychal Massie had very similar thoughts and even a similar headline: Beat Whitey - Get a Reward! Since I only do this as a labor of love, and Mr. Massie receives an income to do the same thing, I thought you might like to hear his comments on this travesty as well. He goes a little more in depth than I do, and he also gets a lot more nasty about it too, since he is black himself and hates to see what is happening to his heritage. Here is the first paragraph to wet your whistle:

Be a black thug – beat a white student senseless – you and your families get rewarded with an all-expense-paid "getaway for a relaxing weekend" while they watch you hand out awards on BET to a standing ovation. After all, six black thugs damn near killing a "white boy" in an unprovoked, cowardly attack can be tiring and stressful. But be a black student who works hard, gets good grades, speaks proper English, refuses to stoop to the lowest common denominator, and you are accused of "acting white...."

Amen!

Good Day to You, Sir

With a headline like this...

... you just knew I would have to link to it. From the online edition of the San Francisco Chronicle:

American kids, dumber than dirt
Warning: the next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history

I have this ongoing discussion with a longtime reader who also just so happens to be a longtime Oakland high school teacher, a wonderful guy who's seen generations of teens come and generations go and who has a delightful poetic sensibility and quirky outlook on his life and his family and his beloved teaching career...

It's gotten so bad that, as my friend nears retirement, he says he is very seriously considering moving out of the country so as to escape what he sees will be the surefire collapse of functioning American society in the next handful of years due to the absolutely irrefutable destruction, the shocking — and nearly hopeless — dumb-ification of the American brain. It is just that bad....

Be sure to read the rest.

Good Day to You, Sir

These things bug the ever-living $#!% out of me!

Make a mental picture: I am teaching my class (or trying to anyway), and I keep hearing this loud clicking and whirring noise. I look around the room, and I see it:

These itty-bitty skateboards - called Tech Decks - are becoming the bane of my existence in the classroom. Many of the 7th and 8th grade boys I teach are constantly fiddling with these things in the middle of class; doing little finger tricks which make the skateboard do jumps and 180s right onto the hard surface of their desk... all while I am trying to give instruction. I know more than a few fellow teachers check this blog - are any of you having to put up with these annoying little objects in your classroom?

When I see them out, I don't even say a word anymore; I just walk over and take them. This particular Tech Deck that my three year old son is holding for the camera was confiscated, stuffed in my pocket, and then forgotten about by both teacher and student. I found it in my pocket when I got home.

Have I given it back to its owner? I'll give you a hint: he hasn't asked for it, and my son is having a lot of fun playing with it.

Good Day to You, Sir

Step away from the Hijab!

Remember this charming image?

That's your fearless Speaker of the House cowtowing to those Islamoloonies in the tolerant and freedom-loving country of Syria by donning the hijab, which is the name of the hair-covering shawl that many Muslim women wear. I blogged my disgust about Nancy Pelosi's subservience to misogyny when the photo appeared back in April of this year. Lookin' good Nanc'!

Now we have another prominent American woman buckling before the religion of misogyny, and this time, she is from the right side of the political aisle. First Lady Laura Bush was in the tolerant and freedom-loving country of Saudi Arabia the other day, and here was her fashionable concealment:

Could you ladies please do us a favor and risk offending your esteemed hosts by not putting on that symbol of female oppression? Seriously! Laura Bush has actually done this before, but the last time it happened, she was in Jerusalem, where freedom still exists (for now). I didn't like it then either, but at the same time, at least she wasn't in one of these liberty-squashing countries like Syria or Saudi Arabia. Donning a hijab in the heart of Wahabbist Islam is different matter altogether.

Yes, I know what your argument is going to be: Pelosi and Bush were just being considerate guests by honoring the customs of the host country. While I agree that adhering to local customs is just fine, there is a limit to my adherence. What if in the time of Nazi Germany, we sent one of our diplomats - one who happened to be Jewish - over there, and he slapped on a yellow Star of David tag that Jews had to wear? No harm right? He is just making sure he is "honoring" their local customs, right?

You can dismiss this as some little thing about which I shouldn't get bent out of shape. The problem is that as you dismiss little thing after little thing, one day you wake up and realize that they all add up to a big thing. Submission to Islam when you are not a Muslim is not something to treat lightly.

Good Day to You, Sir

Kids these days

A dearth of half-and-half in my refrigerator this morning led to a unfortunate encounter with a member of our youthful entitled generation.

I usually make my own coffee in the morning, but I cannot drink coffee black... yuk! We were out of half-and-half, so I just stopped at a neighborhood donut place that is about a one-minute drive from my house so I could buy a cup of coffee. The place is owned by this incredibly nice Vietnamese family. The donut place (and my house) are just up the street from a middle to upper-middle class high school, and many of those students frequent the donut place before school. When I walked in the place to get my coffee, I noticed a group of boys all sitting at a table. They were straight out of 1976: they were white, pimply, and had long, stringy, unkempt skater hair. They were also being loud and obnoxious. These punks weren't the only ones in the donut shop, as there were also the bevy of regulars reading their newspapers and drinking their coffee; most of them alone, most of them elderly.

I got my coffee and walked over to the table that hosts the cream and stir sticks. I had just finished pouring my cream and putting on the lid when one of the punks got up and began walking toward the cash register; presumably to buy something else. He was walking backwards toward the cash register as he continued to converse with his friends, and that is when he - in jest - blurted out to his compadres, "Ah, fuck you man, I ain't doing that!" He said it loud and proud, as if everyone else in the donut shop would be so impressed with his daring utterance.

Mr. Chanman the parent, and Mr. Chanman the teacher erupted to the surface in one fell swoop! I was on my way to the door by the time Punk-Boy dropped his F-bomb, but I didn't care. I stopped in my tracks, did a 180, and said the following:

"Hey, watch your mouth! This is a public place; have some respect for yourself!"

I didn't yell, I didn't wave my arms around. I said it in a calm but matter-of-fact tone. I fully expected Punk-Boy and his friends to let me have it. Instead, Punk-Boy just stared at me with the strangest look on his face. It could best be described as one part shock, and one part perplexity. His peanut gallery didn't have anything to say either. I turned back around and walked out the door with my coffee.

In this case, I will agree with *CRINGE* Hillary Clinton. It does take a village in circumstances like this. Once upon a time, when young people got out of line, an adult - any adult - would call them on it and tell them to knock it off. Nowadays, adults often sit there, afraid to say anything.

I remember posting an article one time where the author described being on a train near New York City when some rowdy teenagers boarded the train and proceeded to be loud, obnoxious, and profane, yet none of the adults, including the author, said anything to these wayward youth. The author said something that has really stuck with me that I will paraphrase. He said that he and the other adults were acting like passengers on a Polish train circa 1942 while some Nazi soldiers were whooping it up in the same rail car.

Civility is a dying art, and is one that should be studied and encouraged again, even if you have to shock them into compliance like I did today.

Good Day to You, Sir

A spiked blog causes my blog to spike

I am always interested in how many hits my blog gets every day, and what brought those visitors to Buckhorn Road in the first place. This morning, I noticed quite a spike in the number of unique visitors, and the spike lasted all day. I checked the daily activity, and found that many people were coming here via a Google search for some guy named Bobby Caina Calvan.

I followed the link and it turns out I had mentioned Calvan in a post I wrote in March of this year, where I savaged an article he wrote for the Sacramento Bee in which he interviewed illegal aliens and used their quotes to sing the praises of Cesar Chavez, even though Chavez was opposed to illegal immigration - Calvan forgot to mention that little tidbit about the late labor leader, while at the same time, performing literary gymnastics in order to downplay the illegal status of his interviewees.

The reason so many people were going on Google to find out about all things Calvan was because he committed a bit of a faux pas recently. He is currently on assignment in Iraq for McClatchy Newspapers. On his personal blog, Calvan wrote of an encounter with an American soldier guarding a checkpoint, where - on his own blog, mind you - Calvan fully and confidently demonstrated what an arrogant ass he apparently is by describing his browbeating of a G.I. who had (HORROR!) never heard of the Knight-Ridder News Service.

But Calvan wasn't done. On the same blog, he wrote - on his own blog, mind you - about how he basically made up facts he couldn't verify about a firefight in Sadr City between American troops and the terrorists who lurk there. Naturally, Calvan's article stated as fact that the Americans killed innocent civilians even though he could not verify this information.

Not surprisingly, Calvan's blog was deluged with, shall we say, negative comments; so many negative comments that Calvan first pulled the offending posts off the blog, then he shut down the entire blog itself. He has rethought that squishy decision, and his blog is back up with a posted explanation attached to the beginning of the offending post:

(NOTE: This post was previously edited, then removed. By doing so, I was informed, I have violated blog protocol. I have reposted it in its entirety, with the caveat that it was reproduced using a post from another blogger who had preserved my original post.)

He also had a new post where he tried to further explain himself:

The Blogoshpere reacts
Date October 25, 2007

The response to one of my earlier posts, headlined “Simply Simpatico,” caught me off guard — further evidence of my naivete when it comes to the blogging world. My modest blog about my experiences in Iraq — that I assumed would only garner interest among family and friends — caused quite a stir.

By the way, this blog was never sanctioned by my employers, The Sacramento Bee and the McClatchy Co. It was meant to be a private blog that chronicled my experiences in Iraq and a way for me to express my personal thoughts. Again, it was meant for friends and family — to save me the trouble of responding to every e-mail I would get. I should have made this blog private — and judging from the response I’ve gotten, I should consider such a move.

Yes, I’m obviously new to blogging. Sometimes I share too much. The blogosphere has reacted and pointed out my folly. Yes, I can be pushy. Arrogant, too. I can also be wrong.

Consider this my apology.

Overwhelmed by the e-mails, many of them vitriolic, I initially edited the post, then blocked further comments. Finally, I took down the site. Unfortunately, my actions were yet another faux pas, I was told; I should have left up the post and created a new one to share my reactions and issue an apology....

You know, after reading his explanations and his articles, including re-reading the Chavez article I criticized, Bobby Caina Calvan does not strike me as being the sharpest knife in the drawer. I'll be looking for his next article in the Bee... that is, if he still has a job.

Good Day to You, Sir

Mythbusting in Jena, Louisiana

We have heard the sequence of events from the national media. Now let's get the skinny from a news reporter who lives in Jena, who works for a newspaper in Jena, and whose wife teaches at Jena High School. This column appears in the Christian Science Monitor.

The biggest surprise to me was finding out that the so-called "Whites-Only Tree" was anything but.

Good Day to You, Sir

The Carnival of Education

Edition 142.0 is currently underway at the blog History is Elementary. Do take the time to read this post by Old Andrew at Scenes from the Battleground. He does an excellent job at listing and explaining student behaviors that have always been found in schools and probably always will.

Good Day to You, Sir

Are they children of God or mindless animals?

There has been much controversy lately about middle schools in our country handing out birth control to their students, or considering doing it. Darren from RightOnTheLeftCoast (see blogroll) posted about it recently, and there was also a link on Drudge. Personally, I think giving birth control to middle school children - especially sans parental permission - is an absolutely horrible idea. As a teacher of middle schoolers, every day I watch this age-group make the absolute worst decisions one could ever contemplate. By and large, their emotional maturity has yet to even come close to catching up with their physical and cognitive capabilities. That is a dangerous combination of circumstances.

The common argument people make in order to defend the distribution of birth control to teens and preteens is that, "They are going to do it anyway, so we might as well make sure they are doing it safely." Horsesqueeze! How easily people forget that once upon a time, teen pregnancy was not nearly as ubiquitous as it is today. Young people fifty years ago had the same exact urges as the young people of today; human nature is human nature. The difference is that through parental, societal, and yes, religious pressure, the young people of yesteryear were much better able to delay gratification and not catch the diseases and early pregnancies that plague our youth of today. We must look at people - including our young people - as human beings blessed by God with the ability to know right from wrong, and to do the right thing. Animals don't have much, if any, concept of right and wrong. Animals just do whatever comes naturally, whether it is to kill and eat another animal, or copulate whenever the opportunity presents itself. When these do-gooder activists out there insist that teens and pre-teens cannot control their urges, that they are going to do the wrong thing no matter what we as a society say and do, then those activists are saying that our young people are nothing but wild animals with the morals of an alley cat. I think God made us better than that, and I refuse to sell people - and especially our young people - short. Again, I am not saying we don't have animal urges; of course we do! I am simply saying that we have been born with an ability to curb those urges. All it takes is the proper motivation. Unfortunately, the motivators of shame and disgrace have been removed in the last forty or fifty years, thereby making it more socially acceptable for teens and preteens to have sex. Now that is a shame and a disgrace.

This fits right into my position that I blogged about recently when I was talking about how microphones were offered up as the solution for teachers in Europe to be heard above their unruly students. Rather than present the students with the expectation that they will control themselves and not talk over the teacher, the chuckleheaded lefties of this world just dismiss these young people as simple animals who cannot control themselves, so therefore, modern technology must save the day.

Up to this point, this blog post has been all theory and philosophy. Just this week, I have seen the middle school sexual dynamic in action in a way I would rather forget. Yesterday, I confiscated a note from a male 8th grade student who was writing that instead of the in-class assignment he was supposed to be doing. I often privately read the notes I confiscate. I have found them to be an invaluable method of keeping my finger on the pulse of my school and my students. This note yesterday was a humdinger! In it, he was professing his love to his unnamed girlfriend, and he couldn't wait to see her after school at so-and-so's house (the parents must not be home yet at that time), and, oh yes, he was out of condoms, and he would pick up some more on the way to so-and-so's house. FOUL!!!

During my prep period, I called this boy's mother, and started off the conversation by saying, "This is a very uncomfortable phone call to make, but I would feel even more uncomfortable if I didn't make it...." And then I told her about the note and what it said. The mom asked me if the note mentioned the girlfriend's name. I told her it didn't, but after I read the note verbatim, the mom was able to figure out that it was the girlfriend the boy has had since last school year. The mom was horrified and told me that she was going to, "ride his butt when he gets home!"

Today during our department meeting, I mentioned this situation to my fellow social studies teachers. They knew the boy, and one of them had the girlfriend in his class last year. This teacher told me that a couple of times, he confiscated drawings she was making at her desk which showed a female form with a baby in her belly, and written above the drawing would be something like, "(Boyfriend) almost got me this month." This is when they were both 7th graders folks!

After hearing about middle schools handing out birth control, and after hearing about my story of the boyfriend/girlfriend at my middle school, I want you to ask yourself something: Did it make you feel any better that the 8th grade boyfriend was going to pick up condoms on the way to have sex with his 8th grade girlfriend? Or did you think that these two should live in a world where having sex at the age of 13 should simply not be an option whether they are using birth control or not? That world once existed, and I wish to God that it still did.

Good Day to You, Sir

We gon' done elected one a dem Injuns

So much for the conventional wisdom. The people of Louisiana have overwhelmingly elected Piyush "Bobby" Jindal as their new Republican governor.

Yes, those swamp-running backwater yokel locals, those racist intolerant scum who everyone thought were a bunch of noose-hanging numbskulls who have been painted with the Jena brush have managed to somehow elect a man who is not white and whose parents are from a south Asian country. I trust you can detect my sarcasm.

And they elected him in what was just about as much of a landslide election as one can find. Jindal received 54% of the vote. His next closest competitor received 18%, and there were 11 candidates in all. Jindal needed a majority vote to avoid a runoff election. It seems the only people who were surprised at Jindal's success were the northeastern media who couldn't conceive of Jindal winning the thing outright. Sure, they had to concede that he would do well in the election, but they believed that he would probably not receive a majority of the vote, let alone a 54-18 win over the runner-up.

Bobby Jindal's story is truly an amazing one. His parents were immigrants from India who had come to Louisiana to attend graduate school. He graduated from Brown and Oxford, then was a member of the Louisiana governor's cabinet when he was just 24 years old. He converted from Hinduism to Catholicism when he was a teenager, and is a political and social conservative.

Now he is the governor of Louisiana, and at the ripe old age of 36, has to be seen as a rising star in Republican politics. But let's see him learn to walk before he begins to run. Getting elected is only the first step. Now let's see how he leads.

I am very excited for Bobby Jindal, and in the wake of the black eye that Louisiana received as a result of the whole "Jena 6" affair, I'm glad to see the citizens of that state give an electoral middle finger to the sanctimonious race-baiters out there.

Good Day to You, Sir

Prison Predictions

My wife - who in case you didn't know, is also a teacher - attended a professional development seminar on teaching reading this weekend. She learned a startling fact that we had never heard before; so startling, that I Googled it just to see if it checked out. Apparently, states estimate how many prisons they need to build by analyzing the results of first through third grade reading scores.

The ability to read is that strong of an indicator of future success. All one has to do is find out the incredible amount of illiteracy among our prison population, and it becomes clear that what the states are doing might seem cynical, but it also appears to be accurate.

Good Day to You, Sir

Thou hast offended me with thy eloquence

You know what really drives me crazy? When a student takes me to task for using "big words."

Today, I had just set up the overhead and put a transparency up for the students to begin copying. A new student in the back asked me if she could sit up front while copying. I asked her, "Is someone's head in the way, or do you need to see an optometrist?" She smiled and said, "I need to see an optometrist."

Enter the mental meanderings of... oh, let's just call him Knucklehead. Here is the conversation:

Knucklehead: What's an optometrist?
Mr. Chanman: An eye doctor.
K: Then why didn't you just say 'eye doctor'?
C: Because I say 'optometrist'.
K: Instead of using big words, why don't you just say 'eye doctor'?
C: I prefer 'optometrist'.
K: Well, you say 'optometrist', I'm gonna say 'eye doctor'.
C: Thank you, I will. I am a teacher, so I'm allowed to teach you new words. Now you're going to go home this afternoon having learned what an optometrist is. As a teacher, that makes me feel like I accomplished something today.

I mean, Knucklehead truly sounded exasperated and offended that I said optometrist rather than eye doctor. How DARE I teach him something new! I didn't mind engaging him in a little repartee, because I had a few moments to spare while students were still transitioning to the notes on the overhead.

Just another day in the trenches.

Good Day to You, Sir

Beat a kid while he is unconscious, get rewarded

They may not have attempted to murder him, but six members of the Jena, Louisiana high school football team did beat and kick one Justin Barker as he lay unconscious on the ground.

What did two members of the "Jena Six" receive for their efforts besides 20,000 people marching through their town calling for their release for this violent crime? How about a trip to a Black Entertainment Television (BET) awards show?

This is truly reprehensible. I'm sure by now that you have noticed the number six that these two knuckleheads are making with their hands. They look really sorry for what they did; I'm sure they are crying on the inside.

Only in America.

Good Day to You, Sir

Final proof that we can't do anything right in Iraq

At least according to the oh-so-unbiased news media (can you just hear the sarcasm dripping from my tongue?).

In a story from McClatchy News Service, it has become apparent that the United States has gone from causing too many deaths in Iraq, to now causing not enough. With a title that elicits a shake of the head and cluck of the tongue, the McClatchy reporters tell us that as violence falls in Iraq, cemetery workers feel the pinch.

A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that's cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds...

OK everybody, all together now: Awwwwwwwwwww.

Good Day to You, Sir