Stabenow is stuck on stupid

I keep hearing smug little lefties carp about how the only people they hear talking about a possible return of the so-called Fairness Doctrine are from the political right and radio talk hosts who would be affected.

Naturally, this isn't true. Just reference past comments from the left side of the Congressional aisle by those who would love to see the so-called Fairness Doctrine reinstated, such as Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), John Kerry (D-MA), Charles Schumer (D-NY), and Maurice Hinchey (D-NY).

Now, you can add Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) to the peanut gallery. Speaking with uber lefty Bill Press on his radio show - and I noticed Bill Press's show did not include a balancing voice from the right - Stabenow and Press had the following exchange:

BILL PRESS: Yeah, I mean, look: They have a right to say that. They’ve got a right to express that. But, they should not be the only voices heard. So, is it time to bring back the Fairness Doctrine?

SENATOR DEBBIE STABENOW (D-MI): I think it’s absolutely time to pass a standard. Now, whether it’s called the Fairness Standard, whether it’s called something else — I absolutely think it’s time to be bringing accountability to the airwaves. I mean, our new president has talked rightly about accountability and transparency. You know, that we all have to step up and be responsible. And, I think in this case, there needs to be some accountability and standards put in place.

BILL PRESS: Can we count on you to push for some hearings in the United States Senate this year, to bring these owners in and hold them accountable?

SENATOR DEBBIE STABENOW (D-MI): I have already had some discussions with colleagues and, you know, I feel like that’s gonna happen. Yep.

The way I figure, the wannabe tyrants in charge of our government want to tell people how much their salary can be, so why not tell radio stations what they can say?

Good Day to You, Sir

Krauthammer calls it

I enjoy reading Charles Krauthammer due to his blunt and effective use of words. His latest column is proof of that. In criticizing the pork-laden spending, er, stimulus bill, Krauthammer gives a synopsis of how Obama's presidency is doing so far. Here's a hint:

After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.

Read the rest of Krauthammer's thoughts here.

Good Day to You, Sir

Classroom craziness

I have a couple of bizarre experiences this week at work. The first was a mother knocking on my classroom door yesterday morning with her 8th grade son in tow. She was trying to find out more information about why exactly he is failing my class. This should be no surprise seeing as how I had him last year as a 7th grader and he failed both those semesters too. In fact, he has been failing every class every year, no matter which teacher he has. Right now, he has a 0.17 GPA, and that is about the highest it has ever been. No matter; I fully expect this kid to be passed onto high school where he will most likely fail miserably and drop out by the end of his sophomore year.

In the meantime, I was dealing with one pissed-off mother, and it wasn't me at whom she was pissed. As I went over the gradebook with her and showed her all the assignments her son had not turned in, including easy assignments like daily bellwork that are turned in every Friday, I could see her getting angrier by the second. The kettle started whistling when I turned to the kid and asked him to get out his bellwork for this week. "I don't have it," was his answer. Why not? "Because I didn't do it," was his answer. That's when Mom slammed her fist onto a desk and yelled, "Boy, I will knock you across this room!"

I didn't know whether to snicker under my breath, or think about covering my butt and reporting her comment to the administration as a possible CPS matter. I have to admit, it was rather satisfying to see this kid - a perpetual disruptive class cutup - get his perpetual grin wiped off his perpetually smug little face. The problem is that when all the smoke clears, and Mom calms down, this kid will most likely end up failing this final semester of his middle school experience, and he will be academically eaten alive in high school next year. Chalk up another ugly statistic.

That same day, I called another student's father after school let out. The kid had decided to dig in his heels when I told him to remove a sweat band from his head. The rules are clear about stuff on your head in the classroom, but for whatever reason, the kid defied my instructions and instead chose to argue with me about what is and isn't acceptable to be worn on your head in the classroom.

I called the Dad on his cellphone, and when he answered, I immediately noticed a lot of whooshing background noise, like he was on the side of a busy road somewhere. After I identify myself on the phone with a parent, I always ask if he or she has time to talk. This Dad said, "Well, actually I am pulled over on the freeway and a cop is writing me a ticket." Wow! I told the Dad I could call him back later, but God love him, he told me, "Nah, we can talk. I'm just sitting here and the cop is back at his car filling out the citation. What's up?"

Now that is a dedicated parent!

Good Day to You, Sir

Driving the car over the cliff

That's what the Democrats are starting to do with our economy. With a Democrat president and a Democrat-controlled Congress, there is not much to stop the zealous compulsion they feel to control every aspect of our lives. Two recent examples of note come to us from the Messiah himself, Barack Obama, and that bizarro congresscritter, Barney Frank.

First, Barney Frank has made public his notion that due to our financial situation, Congress and the President should dictate to private companies how much they should pay their employees. At first, this rule was only going to apply to companies receiving bailout money from taxpayers; now Frank wants to apply this rule to all private companies in this country. Roll the quote:

Congress will consider legislation to extend some of the curbs on executive pay that now apply only to those banks receiving federal assistance, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said.

“There’s deeply rooted anger on the part of the average American,” the Massachusetts Democrat said at a Washington news conference today.

He said the compensation restrictions would apply to all financial institutions and might be extended to include all U.S. companies....

Just for suggesting such an unconstitutional notion, this man should be arrested. Of course, he should have been arrested a long time ago for his dealings with Fannie Mae and his use of his position in congress to manipulate the housing market. Also, wasn't there a male prostitution ring being run out of his house by a former boyfriend? Of course, Barney knew nothing about it.

So do you think the Messiah would back up Frank's insane plan? Let us recall Obama's worrisome quote about companies and CEOs from just the other day:

"There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses -- now is not that time. And that's a message that I intend to send directly to them."

Good God! Well, thank you for clearing that up, Emperor Obama. We are so screwed!

Good Day to You, Sir

Spotted...

A bumper sticker on a pickup truck while driving on Watt Avenue in Sacramento:

I'll keep my guns, freedom, and money;
You can keep the "change"

Good Day to You, Sir

Beware the Ides of March

In years when state and local budgets don't look so good (this is one of those years), California schoolteachers dread March 15, as that is the final day that they can be given a pink slip which indicates they might not be returning to their job next school year.

The trick is that just because you receive the dreaded pink slip, it doesn't necessarily mean you have lost your job, it simply means you may lose your job. Districts must cover their arses and overestimate the number of job cuts they might have to make. In many cases, either all or almost all of the pink-slipped teachers return. This year however, pink-slipped teachers might not be so lucky.

According to this article from the Sacramento Bee, almost all the major districts in the Sacramento area - Elk Grove, San Juan, Sac City, Folsom-Cordova, Twin Rivers - have already issued hundreds of pink slips. It is anyone's guess how many of those recipients will receive a final notice on the drop-dead day of May 15th.

My wife, who works in one of those aforementioned districts, came home today and informed me of the bloodletting that is scheduled to happen in her district. The word came down that any teacher hired after October 2002 is going to receive a pink slip. The juiciest part is that only certificated staff are going to have their jobs threatened; due to some kind of clause in their union contract, classified staff is safe from any layoffs for the next two years, so no one on the classified side will be receiving any layoff notices. Isn't that grand? Axe the teachers but keep the lunch ladies. God knows we need lunch ladies, but in the end, what is the mission of a school, to educate or to feed? My wife also informed me that as part of her district's shakeup, vice principals, curriculum specialists, and administrators from the district and county offices of education will be sent back to the classroom as teachers. This begs the question: were all those high-paying curriculum specialist jobs at the district offices even needed in the first place? What other kind of dead weight could be cut in our educational system, especially in the Taj Mahals that are many of our district offices?

What about the effectiveness of the teachers who are possibly being let go? The criteria for their dismissal is based solely on seniority. You could be one of those lazy teachers who hands out worksheets and reads the newspaper - it's not just a cliche', I have seen it with my own eyes - but in my wife's district, if you were hired in 2000, your job is safe. On the other hand, you could be an effective eager-beaver teacher who inspires your students to succeed and you are doing wonders with helping to raise test scores, but since you were hired in 2005, you are out of a job. This is a perfect example of one of the major reasons for the substandard education that we are seeing in California today. Until that situation changes, you are not going to see significant improvement in academic performance anytime soon.

My district actually has increasing enrollment, and so far no certificated job cuts have been announced. If they are, let's just hope the magic cutoff date is after July 2004!

Good Day to You, Sir

Barack Obama doesn't care about white people!

**Scroll for Updates

Sounds ridiculous doesn't it? A similar statement sounded just as ridiculous in 2005 when hip-hop idiot Kanye West told a nationwide audience that "George Bush doesn't care about black people." Roll the 40-second tape if you care to relive the moment:



If you think what that moron Kanye said was meaningless, think again. For literally years afterward, I had students - particularly my black students - ask me if George W. Bush really hates black people. When I asked them why they would think such a thing, their reply would be because Kanye said so. Fast-forwarding to 2009, I came across this headline today: Nearly 1M without power 5 days after ice storm.

I'm just wondering - where is Kanye West? Where is the media outrage? Where is the left-wing blogosphere spreading the meme that Barack Obama has dropped the ball? Now keep in mind, I don't think Obama has dropped the ball at all, nor did George W. Bush drop the ball in the federal response to Hurricane Katrina; that's the whole point. This ice storm is a state and local matter, just like Katrina was a state and local matter. Nevertheless, the federal government under George W. Bush was blamed for the deplorable conditions in New Orleans days after the hurricane ended, yet the federal government under Barack Obama is not being blamed for the deplorable conditions in states like Kentucky, Missouri, and Arkansas days after the ice storm struck, even though hundreds of thousands of people are living without power in the middle of temperatures that were well below freezing.

Once again, another blaring example of the selective outrage and hypocrisy of the political left and the news media.

Good Day to You, Sir

Update:
No sooner did I publish this post, then I quickly discovered that I am by no means the only blogger to notice this blaring double standard. For more insight on this situation click on the links to the following sites:

The Sundries Shack

American Thinker

Michelle Malkin

Good Day to You, Sir

Heat for me but not for thee

Do you remember this memorable Obama quote from the campaign trail? The enviro-cultists loved it:

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.”

Well, it seems that Barack Obama really does personify "change." What is his stance on thermostat settings now?

The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.

“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”

After a "green" inauguration that produced hundreds of millions of pounds of carbon dioxide and tons of garbage, Obama is now providing us with another glimpse of who he really is. Man, this next four years is just gonna be a hoot!

Good Day to You, Sir

Coma? Try brain death!

In a recent post, fellow edublogger Mrs. Bluebird gave a quality description of students in their 7th grade year as going through "The Year of the Coma." Their brains are so occupied with growing and hormones, they cannot seem to think of much else, like, say, academics or forming a coherent sentence.

I wholly endorse Mrs. Bluebird's coma theory, but after reading a note that I found left behind in my classroom today, I would say "The Year of Brain Death" would be a more apt description. I am often amused by the content of student-to-student notes that I find or confiscate, but this one struck me with its particularly brutal brand of nihilistic shallowness. Keep in mind that this exchange was written between a 7th grade boy and a 7th grade girl who I guess (???) are friends. I have typed it exactly as it was written, and a big warning to the timid - the language gets severe:

Wuz up Nigga
your dum Nigga!
whats your point?
That you dum thats my point
So is u is more dumb than me
NO NIGGA YOU R.N FUK YOU !!!
when, were, and what time
NEVER AND NO TIME AND NO SECOND BITCH NO DAY!!
watev so hou u been
Good I guess! you
Same o day koo
wow u hella stupid
wat eve
ha I got a on hush cause you know its true
what eve FUCK YOU!
O.K.

I mean seriously. Seriously? Am I really supposed to be able to expect any kind of academic proficiency from these two? If they don't score basic or above on the CST in April, is it really my fault?

Good Day to You, Sir

You're a little late guys

I have to give credit where credit is due: every single Republican (and 11 Democrats) in the House of Representatives voted against Obama and Democrat's $819 billion so-called stimulus bill - excuse me, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. So good for the Republicans for taking a stand; this kleptocratic sham belongs solely to the Democrats.

Here's the problem. Where was this Republican unity when George W. Bush was doing his best impression of a socialist by signing spending bills hand-over-fist? It's great to be a tempering force on the over-exuberant whims of the party in charge, but do you know what even better? To be the party in charge! The problem is that when the Republicans ran the show in the Executive and Legislative branches, the federal government grew even larger than when Bubba was in the White House.

So where does that leave us? Even if you can get the Republicans in the House to do the right thing, then you have to deal with the nitwits in the Senate. You know, the same nitwits I just described in the previous post on Al Gore's appearance before the Senate.

In the end, in spite of the House Republicans' principled stand, the almost trillion dollar spending bill passed anyway. Yay.

Good Day to You, Sir

Bipartisan global warming buffoonery

Kudos to Dana Milbank! The liberal scribe for the Washington Post is usually too annoying for me to tolerate, but I must commend him for calling out Al Gore's ridiculous globaloney warming testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

What was really amusing about the piece was not the greenhouse gas-inducing hot air being blown by the Goracle (Milbank also uses this moniker), but the absolutely embarrassing rounds of ass kissing that the senators on the committee were bestowing upon the Bloated One. Republicans and Democrats alike all acted like a bunch of mafia underlings as they conferred with their capo. Just listen to some of the exchanges as noted by Milbank:

"Tennessee," gushed Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican from Gore's home state, "has a legacy of having people here in the Senate and in public service that have been of major consequence and contributed in a major way to the public debate, and you no doubt have helped build that legacy." If that wasn't quite enough, Corker added: "Very much enjoyed your sense of humor, too..."

Dick Lugar (Ind.), the ranking Republican, agreed that there will be "an almost existential impact" from the climate changes Gore described...

Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), challenging Gore over spent nuclear fuel, began by saying: "I stand to be corrected, and I defer to your position, you're probably right, and I'm probably wrong." He ended his question by saying: "I'm not questioning you; I'm questioning myself..."

And those snippets are just from the Republicans! They are the ones who are supposed to be principled enough not to fall for this garbage.

And the first "True American" to lead our nation is...

Barack Obama of course! So says John Ridley from PBS. Yes, PBS. Your tax dollars are paying for this drivel. Get a load of this nugget from Ridley's commentary:

Every president to hold office has espoused some version of Americanism; the truths that we hold self-evident, even when those truths are not always in evidence. But for all their grand rhetoric and mostly good deeds, none was able to seal the deal on the trifecta of equality, plurality and socioeconomic ascendancy. Obama has. Obama is the more perfect union. He is a house united. Obama is the New Generation and the hot light of a dawn that goes way beyond clever phraseology of "Morning in America."

Quite simply, quite plainly, just by virtue of his being, Obama is America, and the first true American to lead our nation.

Ridley's reference to Obama as "the hot light of a dawn" reminds me of a joke I read today:

How many mainstream news reporters does it take to change a lightbulb? None. Obama is their lightworker.

See this San Francisco Chronicle article for that reference. Careful if you read it; you might vomit.

Good Day to You, Sir

Big new website for the blogroll

There's a new website in town, and it is tearing up the Internet: Big Hollywood.

Started by Hollywood insider and Drudge Report sous chef Andrew Breitbart, Big Hollywood provides a voice for the conservative side of Tinseltown (there are more hiding out there than you think!), and so far, the articles and posts written for the site have been absolutely fascinating. Give it a try!

Good Day to You, Sir

It's not easy to defend a brutal killer

Just ask Benicio del Toro. He is a left-wing actor who plays Che Guevara in a just-released biopic directed by Steven Soderbergh. Based on past interviews, it is obvious that del Toro thinks Che was a swell guy. However, when pressed by a Washington Times reporter about Che's documented brutality, did del Toro stand up for his revolutionary hero? Hell no! He walked out of the interview.

Soderbergh, another extreme leftist, recently defended his cinematic hagiography, saying,

"I've had people ask me: 'How can you make a movie about a murderer? A terrorist?'" he told reporters. "What they don't understand is that I'm in support of everyone who appears on screen. I have to be. I take the position of everyone who's on screen. I'm not judging them one way or another."

What a crock of bull! I will be the first to admit I haven't seen the movie, but I have read reviews from people who have. Soderbergh essentially glosses over or whitewashes Guevara's atrocities and shows him to be the heroic guerrilla leader that he wasn't.

By the way, this movie is over 4 hours long! You would think that in that amount of time, at least some acknowledgment could have been made about the dark side of Che Guevara.

Good Day to You, Sir

Pre-school history lessons

The following is not just me bragging; it can easily be confirmed by my wife: My four-year-old son practically worships the ground upon which I tread. I mean, c'mon, isn't every four-year-old boy awed by his father?

With that in mind, I do have to be mindful of what I tell my son, because he will believe every word I say and take it at face value. While I am indeed mindful of this, problems can arise when my stated beliefs conflict with those of others, and my intellectually curious son is all too happy to share my (his) beliefs with anyone who will listen.

A little back story is needed before I give you an example. Being a history teacher, history buff, and former member of our military, there are ample conversation pieces around the house that have prompted my son to ask me anything and everything about history; especially military history. He has grilled me on World War II, wanting to know who was involved, who were the bad guys, who were the good guys, what kinds of weapons were used, etc. I told him that in World War II, the primary bad guys were the Germans and the Japanese. I then stressed that this all happened when Grandpa was a little boy, and now in 2009, Germany and Japan are our friends.

Now I need to mention one more relevant piece of information before I continue my story. Every afternoon, two very nice Japanese ladies come to my son's pre-school to teach the students rudimentary Japanese - greetings, salutations, songs, that sort of thing.

(Yeah, you know where this is going, don't you?)

A couple of days ago, my son - bless his heart, he was just trying to make conversation - told the two ladies that "During World War II, the Japanese were the bad guys." Soon after, I arrived to pick him up, but when I entered the classroom, his teacher - who is an extremely sweet lady - gave me the "come hither" signal, and we spoke quietly in the corner, where she told me what had happened. Then it got interesting. In a very sweet and roundabout way, the teacher admonished me that she hoped that I would be balanced and tell my son that even though we Americans might look at the Japanese as being the "bad guys" in World War II, I also should explain to him that "in their eyes," the Japanese might look at themselves as the good guys in that War, and that who is considered to be good and bad is based on the perception of the two opposing sides.

I was surprised by my perfectly polite, yet firm, response. Without feeling the least bit embarrassed about pressing the matter (this is huge for me!), I quietly and very sweetly told the teacher that I had to disagree with her on that one, and that there was no way I would ever tell my son what she just suggested. I ended it by saying, "I'm sorry, but if you read about what they did, the Japanese were the bad guys in World War II." I then emphasized that I had also informed my son that the Germans were the bad guys too, and that we are friendly with both countries today.

It is this kind of guilt-ridden moral equivalence that runs rampant among much of the faculty and administration in our nation's schools, both public and private. It's a good thing that my children have a heartless right-wing warmonger like me to inoculate them against the inevitable inanities that they will encounter during their education years.

Good Day to You, Sir

Another simple change makes a big difference

Since I started teaching at my school almost 5 years ago, the campus-wide policy has been for the students to line up outside the classroom door at the beginning of each class period. It usually takes awhile to get the students lined up, and while doing so, the tardy bell will often ring with all the students still standing outside the classroom, and straggling students who should have been marked tardy are sneaking into line. Once they are all standing in line and quiet, we teachers usher them in all at once, and the students come in... usually at a very loud level.

At the beginning of this semester, I finally reached my limit. During the first week back from Christmas Break, I announced to my students that they no longer had to line up outside my door; that I would have my door open and they were free to walk into my classroom. There is a catch of course, and it has worked beautifully. I put my students on notice that once they have entered my classroom, they are there to work quietly at their desks; even if the tardy bell has yet to ring. If they don't want to come in and work - if they still want to socialize - they are free to do so... outside! Just make sure you are not still socializing when the bell rings or you are tardy; you must be in your assigned seat by the time the tardy bell rings. But once they walk into my classroom, the socializing must stop, they must take their seat, and get to work on the Bellwork. If a student comes in making noise or begins talking once he is seated, I quickly order him back outside. Doing that has made my students get the message, and so now when the tardy bell rings, instead of being an annoyingly noisy gaggle making their way to their seats and taking many minutes to get settled down, my students are silent and on task.

Whew!

In the meantime, my letter system that I described a few posts ago is still going really well. After a flurry of letters during the first few days to demonstrate my resolve and consistency, there was a huge dropoff in the number of letters issued at the end of last week and the beginning of this week. Hopefully that trend continues!

Good Day to You, Sir

Here's somethingy that bugs me very much

Teaching from year to year, I often notice unique trends that pop up in my classroom and on campus. It can be an article of clothing, a knick-knack (like those infernal teck-decks), or a catchphrase.

This year, I have noticed an extremely annoying tick enter the vernacular of both my 7th and 8th graders, and that would be the inclusion of the word "thingy" that is tacked on to the end of a sentence's subject. A perfect example happened this morning when a student who was absent yesterday asked me when she could make up yesterday's quiz. And how did she ask? "Mr. Chanman, can I come in after school and make up that quiz thingy?"

Or how about the other day, when during a lesson about the Bill of Rights, one of my 8th graders raised her hand and asked a question. "Mr. Chanman, you know that Constitution thingy? What is the difference between an article and an amendment?

I noticed the use of "thingy" so much last semester that when this semester began a couple of weeks ago, I made a point of warning my students against the use of it when I spent the first and second days reviewing rules and procedures.

The act of attaching "thingy" to the subject of a sentence is yet another way for the younger generation to perpetuate the Cult of Inaccuracy that was once described by Dr. Sam Blumenfeld and written about by me in a post from a couple years back. It is a way to tone down any chance of sounding interested in an academic subject. By adding "thingy," it seems the student is trying to give off an air of subtle anti-intellectualism that is so derigeur among today's youth, in order to let her fellow students know that she isn't too invested in the subject at hand.

I know it may seem petty for me to let something like this bug me, but I love the English language and I hate to see it mangled.

Good Day to You, Sir

...and to the banana republic, for which it stands...

Did you hear about the one where the U.S. Senate voted almost 2 to 1 in favor of confirming a tax cheat as our new Treasury Secretary? This would be the cabinet member who runs the executive agency that includes the IRS... you know, the agency that prosecutes people who don't pay their taxes. To see how your senator voted, check here.

Believe me, if we could abolish the income tax, social security tax, medicare tax, and the IRS tomorrow, I would be the first person to volunteer to sign the order. In the meantime, if I have to follow the government's confiscatory rules, don't also the government employees whose job it is to enforce those rules? If I failed to pay $34,000 in back taxes, do you think I could be Treasury Secretary too?

Now, President Obama and Senators like Republican Orrin Hatch chalked up Timothy Geithner's failure to pay as a simple "mistake." The problem I have with that explanation is that Geithner worked for the International Monetary Fund and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Someone in those positions of power don't make "mistakes" on their tax return. If he truly did err, then wouldn't this be the ultimate proof that our tens-of-thousands-of-pages long tax code has become too complex? If the president of a Federal Reserve bank can't get it right, how the hell can I?

Of course, even after Geithner figured out that he owed these taxes (which go all the way back to 2001), he didn't balance the ledger until he was nominated by Obama. I can't believe I'm on the same side as Robert "Sheets" Byrd (D-WV), but he summed it up pretty well, saying, "Had [Geithner] not been nominated for treasury secretary, it's doubtful that he would have ever paid these taxes." The definition of character is often described as doing the right thing when no one is looking. Since Geithner didn't pay his back taxes until everyone was looking, it would seem that he was out that day when character lessons were offered.

Timothy Geithner will fit perfectly into the Obama administration.

Good Day to You, Sir

There's more than just the "white male" quote

It's January 7th of this year; Obama economic advisor and former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich is testifying before a congressional committee about how to spend the taxpayers' money in order to "stimulate" the economy. At one point, Reich expresses his support of putting people to work by rebuilding and strengthening our infrastructure - bridges, roads, that kind of thing.

Reich's remarks to the committee (headed by that crook, Charlie Rangel of New York) reach an astonishing level when he belts out this little nugget:

I am concerned, as I'm sure many of you are, that these jobs not simply go to high skilled people who are already professionals or to white male construction workers....

Now, the "white male construction workers" reference has gotten the most play from the talk radio shows and conservative pundits. What actually bothers me more is his concern that only highly skilled professionals would benefit. Good Lord in Heaven, do you realize what this man is saying? Divvying out taxpayer money to workers based on their skin color is more important than giving it to people who actually know what they're doing! And just to emphasize what they are doing: Building bridges! You know, elevated stretches of roadway that would make you fall a long way down if they collapsed due to shoddy or inept construction!

Here's an example of what could be the ultimate result of Reich's plan of action:



Remember folks, these words were uttered from a man who advises our Dear Leader on economic matters. This next four (hopefully not eight) years are going to be so damn interesting.

If you care to watch a rather depressing (for our pocketbook) conversation between Reich and Rangel - including Reich's infamous words - watch the video:



Good Day to You, Sir

Carnival of Education

It is up, it is running at Teacher in a Strange Land, and my post on my new classroom management tool is included. Is the management tool still working? Mostly....

Good Day to You, Sir

Obama's benediction preacher forgets that it is no longer 1963

Talk about being stuck in the past and expressing it in a most racist and cynical fashion. The Reverend Doctor Joseph Lowery ended today's inaugural benediction with an embarassing, cringe-worthy ode to identity politics, and he uttered it in a way that would make you believe that since the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, we haven't made one iota of progress at all.

In the name of context, I have linked the entire 5-and-a-half minute benediction, but the embarrassing part comes right at 5:00:

... and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back; when brown can stick around; when yella can be mella; when the red man can get ahead man; and when white will embrace what is right....

OK, I get it; he was trying to inject a little levity. However, I have two problems with what Lowery said. First was his use of future tense - he was talking about a day that has yet to arrive, where the minorities of this country are still being held down by the evil white man who has yet to "embrace what is right." And he is saying this at the inauguration of this country's first black president for crying out loud! Talk about anachronistic! Second was Lowery's obvious slam against whites. Could he have been any more racist - assigning nefarious intentions to an entire race? Perhaps the good reverend should remember that this country's electorate is still 70% white. For Obama to win, quite a few of us palefaces had to have voted for him.

For all the talk of a "post-racial" America in light of Obama's arrival in the White House, I see race relations in this country becoming paradoxically more sensitive and more vicious in the coming four years. Joseph Lowery's race-baiting benediction served as a frightening harbinger of things to come.

Good Day to You, Sir

Inauguration Day

In light of the fact that our new socialist demagogue is being sworn in as President today, I have chucked my Stars and Stripes, and from now on, I will be flying this flag from my house. Thanks for the Christmas present, Mom and Dad! Give the photo a click for a nice look at the flag's finer details.

There were quite the fireworks on talk radio today. Rush Limbaugh expressed his hope that Obama's presidency is not a successful one, and then an hour later, Michael Medved was taking Rush to task, saying that we should always wish our president well, because to hope for his failure is to hope for our failure as well.

Sorry Medved, I have to agree with Rush on this one. If Obama is successful in his endeavors as President, we are thus condemned to socialized healthcare (which means rationed or no healthcare), higher taxes, cap-and-trade global warming cultism, higher prices, and a return to the malaise-inducing goodness that was the Jimmuh Carter era. No thanks.

I wish you much failure Barack Obama. I hope you fail miserably.

Good Day to You, Sir

Bush ends his presidency on a good note

Nothing like waiting until the last minute. President Bush has commuted the decade-long prison sentences of U.S. Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean. Instead of spending the next ten years in prison, the two former agents should be released from prison by the end of this March.

A full pardon would have been nice, but I'll take a commutation. I'm sure the agents and their families will also. Did Ramos and Compean do wrong? Yes - they didn't report their shooting in the buttocks of a fleeing Mexican drug runner and they picked up some shell casings. Did they deserve 12 years in prison for doing this? Absolutely not. President Bush agreed. This case was especially galling in that the federal prosecutor in the case actually gave the drug runner immunity so he could testify against the agents, and while the case against the two agents was ongoing, the drug runner got popped again for running drugs across our border.

President Bush was mealy-mouthed to the very end, but ultimately, he did the right thing.

Good Day to You, Sir

Nice to see she has her priorities straight

Behold, as a Maryland state senator makes an ass of herself by providing us with a textbook example of the Cult of Obama.

I haven't seen a statement this hilarious since the woman who was excited about Obama winning because now she didn't have to worry about putting gas in her car or paying her mortgage!

Good Day to You, Sir

I have a better idea: how about YOU tell your parents!

If you have taught elementary or secondary grades for any amount of time, I know you will recognize the following scenario:

Student disrupts your classroom, you warn student not to do that, student disrupts again, you send student out of your classroom to either another teacher's room or the office, after school is over, you call student's parents to let them know their child was being an unmitigated ass.

There have been days where I have spent two hours after school making phone call after phone call. Meanwhile, I pictured in my mind all those misbehaving students having a good ol' time at home while I was sitting in my classroom, away from my family, making phone calls. Over this Christmas Break just passed, I read something that gave me a revelation - why not have the student talk to his parents instead of me? The book from whence the idea came was Setting Limits in the Classroom by Rob Mackenzie, Ed.D. What Dr. Mackenzie suggests is that if you have to send a student out of the room, you send out that student with a pre-printed form letter that says the following:

From the Classroom of Mr. Chanman
Room ##, Unnamed Middle School
Social Studies


Date: ____________________

Dear Parent or Guardian,

This is to inform you that________________________________

was sent out of class today, and missed ___________ minutes of class

time because he or she continued to disrupt the class after repeatedly

being instructed to stop. The problem was handled at school, and

no further assistance from you is required at this time. However, too

many of these notices may indicate that your assistance may be

required in the future.

Please indicate that you received this notice by signing and

returning it with your child tomorrow. If you have any questions or

concerns please do not hesitate to contact me by email:

chanman@fakeemail.k12.ca.us or by telephone: (916) ###-####.

Thank you,

Chanman
Social Studies Teacher



Parent/Guardian Name (Please Print)


___________________________________________________________________



Parent/Guardian Signature


___________________________________________________________________

This is the exact letter (minus my redacted personal info) that I have given out this week on 12 different occasions, and I have gotten 11 letters back to me, signed by a parent. The difference in overall behavior in my classroom has been nothing short of remarkable. The first thing I noticed is that every single one of my letters has been given out in my after-lunch classes, and the 12 letters have been distributed among 7 different students. One of my 8th period frequent flyers has already received three of those letters! As I forewarn in the letter, that student is now becoming eligible for a phone call home and a possible parent conference being arranged. In the meantime, right there were three different phone calls I didn't have to make regarding that student, and in the four days of the school week that I handed out these letters, I left work on time because I didn't have to make a single phone call, except for two doubting parents who wrote on the letter that they would like a call back for more information. In both cases, it turned out that their kid had fed them a line of bullsqueeze about why they got in trouble, and I easily and pleasantly straightened out any confusion the parent may have had.

I think what made this letter work so well is that it took the responsibility for the students' actions out of my hands and put it into theirs. They would have to go home and face their parents; they would have to hand them that letter and explain why they received it; I wouldn't even be part of the equation. With the old method, even if the kid got a talking-to after the parent got off the phone with me, that just doesn't quite seem have the same impact when the parents are softened up by me first before dealing with their disruptive offspring.

For all I know, maybe I'm being a bit too optimistic; next week could be a disaster, and the letter could end up having as little impact as the traditional phone call home that I have used up until last week. Either way, I will definitely keep you all updated.

Good Day to You, Sir

Walter Williams must read my blog

Well, probably not, but I was pleased to see him articulate something I have been screaming from the rooftops, and that is this silly and dishonest notion that our current economic crisis was caused by "deregulation" of the mortgage and banking industry.

An example from Dr. Williams:

News media people, often plagued with little understanding, fail miserably in their duty to inform the public. This is particularly evident in their reporting on the current financial meltdown, suggesting it was caused by deregulation and free markets.

Professor David Henderson, research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, writes about regulation in "Are We Ailing From Too Much Deregulation?" in Cato Policy Report (November/December 2008). The Federal Register, which lists new regulations, annually averaged 72,844 pages between 1977 and 1980. During the Reagan years, the average fell to 54,335. During the Bush I years, they rose to 59,527, to 71,590 during the Clinton years and rose to a record of 75,526 during the Bush II years. Employees in government regulatory agencies grew from 146,139 in 1980 to 238,351 in 2007, a 63 percent increase. In the banking and finance industries, regulatory spending between 1980 and 2007 almost tripled, rising from $725 million to $2.07 billion. So here's my question: What are we to make of congressmen, talking heads and news media people who tell us the financial meltdown is a result of deregulation and free markets? Are they ignorant, stupid or venal?

For the rest of his column - hilariously titled The Media Think We're Morons - Click here.

Good Day to You, Sir

College is the new high school

So says writer of all things education, Diane Ravitch.

Good Day to You, Sir

Your government at work

When you listen to our current President, our President-elect, and our Congresscritters wax poetic about how they are working hard to keep our economy from going in the tank, that makes it all the more amusing when I find out about laws like the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSI).

This law came about in response to the 2007 lead paint panic from toys that were made in China, and CPSI was passed unanimously by the House of Representatives and by the Senate with just 13 nays. This law requires all home crafted toys to be tested for high levels of dangerous chemicals. That means anyone who makes toys and other products used by children (clothing, furniture, bedding) at home and then sells them on EBay/Craigslist, at county fairs, at trade expos, at church bazaars, and so on must pay an exorbitant amount of money (between $400 and $4,000 per batch) to have the products tested. In effect, this puts these entrepreneurs out of business. Meanwhile, goods coming from China - who caused this problem in the first place - keep on comin'.

Due to huge numbers of complaints from people who have taken the time to call or email the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is the executive agency that would carry out this law, there has been a tentative agreement to soften the requirements of the law, but nothing is set in stone by any means. For all we know, CPSI could still be implemented as written.

This is a perfect example of our nanny government hurting the American people in the guise of helping them or keeping them safe. It is especially galling when it was not home crafted toys that had high levels of lead in the first place; it was toys crafted in factories in China - factories mostlikely manned by political prisoners.

CPSI goes into effect on February 10th, 2009. As the American people worry about what is going to happen to our economy this year, laws like CPSI are exactly what will continue to financially hobble us, and make it that much harder to recover from our current economic predicament. Shame on Congress (both Democrats and Republicans - although the 13 Senate nays were all Republicans) and shame on President Bush for signing this travesty into law.

If you want to read the text/summary of CPSI or find out who voted yea and nay, click here. If you want to read what the media has had to say about it, read this L.A. Times article or watch this newscast:



Good Day to You, Sir

"Iceberg right ahead!"

My last post spoke of the "iceberg" that is Barack Obama, as he puts himself in the way of the "Titanic" that is our country and our economy. Here is a perfect example of his doings which illustrates my point. With the help of a compliant and sycophantic Congress, Barack Obama is ready to "invest" (his word) quite a bit of taxpayers' money - my money, your money - toward trying to get the United States out of its current financial mess. Not that this so-called investment is going to help. Here is the money quote from the Obamessiah:

"At the current course and speed, a trillion-dollar deficit will be here before we even start the next budget," Obama said Tuesday. "And potentially we've got trillion-dollar deficits for years to come, even with the economic recovery that we are working on at this point."

Rather than confiscating and borrowing trillions of dollars of our hard-earned money, the one thing Obama and the Congress need to do is the one thing that they will NEVER do, and that is to simply get out of the way. Contrary to leftist belief, it was overregulation of the business and financial sector, not underregulation, that caused this mess in the first place. The last thing we need is more regulation and government meddling. That has been tried before. It was called the New Deal, and it failed miserably. Unfortunately, voters get the politicians they deserve, and the fact that our two primary choices this election cycle were Barack Obama and John McCain show that voters from both parties are pretty damn ignorant. For quite a while now, American voters gauge the effectiveness of a politician on whether or not that politician does something. The thought that government should, by and large, stay out of our lives is one that has never crossed too many minds of the American people. Hence, the situation you see today, and have seen more or less since the 1930s.

Good Day to You, Sir

"Titanic will founder"

As our economy continues to circle the drain and the dire announcements of the incoming administration continue to cause uncertainty, it is sometimes strange to notice that on the surface, nothing has changed. If you drive down the street, or look out the window of a Baja Fresh as I did while eating dinner with my wife, you will notice that people are still driving their cars, businesses are open and the lights are on, pedestrians still walk along plugged into their iPods.

This evening, as I noticed all of these sights while enjoying my Baja chicken burrito, the goings-on outside had an almost calm-before-the-storm quality about them. I happened to think of a scene from the 1997 movie Titanic, where the ship's designer, Mr. Andrews, tells Jack and Rose that Titanic is doomed:



Rose: Mr. Andrews... I saw the iceberg and I see it in your eyes... please, tell me the truth.
Thomas Andrews: The ship... will sink.
Rose: You're certain?
Thomas Andrews: Yes, In an hour or so, all of this will be at the bottom of the Atlantic.

Just remove the word "ship" and plug in the word "economy" or "society." People are wearing life vests, but they don't seem too worried, being on an unsinkable ship and all. They are blissfully unaware of the disaster that is about to overtake "all of this" - this beautiful ship that surrounds them.

I truly hope that none of my worries come to pass; that once again, the American people can weather the storm and succeed in spite of all the icebergs put in their way by scheming, power-hungry politicians, including a particular iceberg named Barack Obama.

Good Day to You, Sir

You call that a Ponzi scheme? Now this is a Ponzi scheme!

In the wake of Bernie Madoff's $50 billion dollar bilking of investors, the ever-enlightening John Stossel puts things into perspective:

If Bernie Madoff tried to foist Social Security and Medicare on us, he'd be arrested, prosecuted and thrown in the hoosegow.

There's one thing I can say on behalf of Madoff: He never forced anyone to participate in his scheme. That's more than I can say for the government. Through taxation and inflation, it forces us to pay for all its schemes.

Read the rest of Stossel's column for a heads-up on a $40 trillion dollar bilking of the American people. And it's the government who are the perpetrators.

Good Day to You, Sir

The Neverending Vacation

Hi! Remember me? Unlike many other teachers, my district gives three weeks off for the Christmas Break instead of two, so I am still lollygagging at home until the 12th day of this month. I guess "lollygagging" wouldn't be the word, as I have been tackling a monster To-Do list this week while my wife is back at her teaching job, and my kids are at pre-school. Yesterday, I had out the asphalt cement and the caulking gun as I sealed a hole in our rain gutter and installed some hand-fabricated (by me) sheet metal flashing on some exposed rafters that stick out of the side of our house and into the elements. You don't want dry rot getting a foothold there! I also installed a ceiling fan in my daughter's bedroom, but I can't get the lights to work, even though the blades turn fine. Ugh.

Today, I will be picking up red volcanic rock from our front area that we are redoing, and then I will be patching and painting some small holes in our walls. I made the holes a few months ago when we were hanging things and then we changed our mind as to where to hang. That left us with holes. If there is time, I will also be cleaning our back patio with my new gas-powered blower that my mother-in-law was kind enough to get me for Christmas!

So this last week is work work work at home, but I sure had fun for the first two weeks of this break! During the first week of the break, a family friend and I took our sons to my friend's grandparents' 2,000 acre ranch in the Sierra foothills east of Stockton. There are ponds dotting the landscape where we caught a couple fish and there are roads where we drove along the property and took in the sights. The ranch is in that part of the foothills I love where you feel like you are in a Steinbeck novel: Grassy rolling hills that undulate with spurs and draws, and are dotted with oak trees. Here are some pictorial examples:










Not a bad way to spend a December day.

Good Day to You, Sir

An author answers my critique

Several posts ago, I expressed my displeasure for an article written by Dr. Calvin Mackie which appeared in an edition of a monthly newsletter that is put out by the Association of American Educators (AAE).

Many of my regular readers commented with their own frustrations about the article, and eventually, the criticism made its way to Dr. Mackie himself. I am pleased that Dr. Mackie took the time to leave a comment of his own, and I wanted to give him the floor by reprinting in this post the comment he left:

My People ... The only point I want to get over to my colleagues in the teaching profession is "Don't allow any one to take your JOY"! Teaching is a tough profession and guess what it isn't the only tough profession. We, teachers, act as if NO ONE can challenge us. There are good and bad in every profession, including teaching and we do ourselves a disservice by protecting and advocating for those who are not up to par. I didn't call anyone's name, school or district. I was taught if you throw a shoe in a pack of dogs, only the one that was hit howls. Corporations pay millions for people to come in and re-ignite the passion in professionals making much more than teachers in better environments. Teachers deserve and need the same type of professional development. So, don't take it personal, I feel your pain, I am with you and not against you. However, I will not allow those not engaged to define the profession I love. All that I am and will become is because of the teachers in my life.I am an educator, taught for 12 years on the college level, also taught pre-algebra for 6 years and I am in middle and high schools across America every week.

I have no reason to hide and my credentials are located at www.calvinmackie.com for anyone to examine. I would love to know the background of many on this blog.

Agree or disagree, I do commend and thank Dr. Mackie for stopping by to address our frustrations with his article.

Good Day to You, Sir

For your Christmas reading pleasure

It's that time of year again! Every December, the Media Research Center (see blogroll on left) releases its Notable Quotables, which documents the most laughable and outrageous examples of leftist lamestream media bias for the year.

I have linked to page one, but the final category is the Quote of the Year. I won't tell you what it is, but I have to say that when I read it, I got quite the thrill up my leg!

Merry Christmas and a bountiful 2009 to all of you. You keep on reading, and I will keep on blogging!

Good Day to You, Sir

What a tough guy

Believe me, there have been plenty of times I would have liked to have thrown something at our President, but there has been one thing about the shoe throwing incident that has bugged me, and finally, I have found an article that has properly articulated what I have been thinking:

But of course these Arab reporters know full well that they would never dare to throw a shoe or anything else at an Arab dictator, tyrant, emir, or king. If they did, they would be guaranteed a particularly unpleasant punishment, which would no doubt include painful amputations of various body parts. That is why Muntadhar al-Zeidi is a coward, for he knew full well that he can insult a western leader with impunity....

The ultimate irony about this shoe throwing is that beautifully illustrates the difference between the free world and the totalitarian regimes out there. If Saddam had been standing at that podium instead of Bush, do you honestly think that "brave" reporter would have thrown his shoes in the first place?

Good Day to You, Sir

Bush finally gives us his legacy

There is nothing like lame-duck status to bring out a politician's true colors. George W. Bush proved that today when he explained his actions and wishes regarding these lame-brained bailouts. Here is the money quote of the year:

"I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system."

Our "free-market system" you say? You mean the one in which car manufacturers are told by the government what kind of cars to make and financial institutions are told by the government to whom they will lend money? That "free-market system"?

The tragedy about this is that if you think Bush's strategy is bad, just wait until our Marxist-loving president-elect gets into office next month. The next four years are going to one wild ride.

Good Day to You, Sir

Next time you feel like giving your opinion... don't

Being an agency fee payer and non-member of the CTA and NEA, I belong to the American Association of Educators (AAE) instead. The AAE sends out a monthly newsletter called Education Matters. I usually enjoy the articles they have to offer, but of course, I'm not always going to agree with everything, because that wouldn't be any fun now would it!

The November 2008 edition had an article entitled Teacher Buried at 70, Died at 25: Rediscovering Your Passion for Teaching, by one Calvin Mackie, Ph.D. Dr. Mackie is a former associate professor of mechanical engineering at Tulane University in New Orleans.

Now, I get what Dr. Mackie was trying to convey in his article, however, he did so in a very sanctimonious and uninformed manner. He began the article with his basic thesis:

Many teachers and other educators are neither motivated, inspired, nor prepared to accept and deal with the daunting challenges facing us today.

Undoubtedly true, says I. Of course, many are the exact opposite of that, but I digress. Moving further down the article, Dr. Mackie says:

Famous boxing promoter Don King (He's using Don King as a source?), when asked what is success, replied, 'Set yourself on fire and people will show up to watch you burn.'

It's funny that Dr. Mackie used that quote, because a long time ago, my mother, who is also a teacher, used that very same imagery when explaining how hard it is to gain her students' attention. She told me, "I swear, in order to compete with their television, video games, and iPods, about the only thing I could do to get my students' attention would be to set myself on fire in the front of the classroom...."

But Dr. Mackie has a different take: we teachers are the problem. He says,

Maybe our students are not on fire because we, the educators, are not on fire. Many of us have become fire fighters, pouring water on the fire of our children's hopes and dreams, rather than being the fire lighter, and igniting them every day to go beyond their limited view. Be honest, which are you: fire fighter, or fire lighter?

Excuse the hell out of me, but I do not go to work with the intention of drowning the hopes and dreams of anyone. I go to work every day, hoping this will be the day when I will be able to get through 30 seconds of my lesson without having to wait 10 seconds for the troublemakers to quiet down, then repeat that process over and over again every period, every day, all school year long. I go to work every day, hoping that this will be the day when I do get to teach, when I do get to light a fire in a student, instead of being a babysitter with a masters degree. Dr. Mackie seems to be putting the cart before the horse. He makes it sound like we teachers have some sort of bitter stick up our asses which then poisons the student body and makes them bitter as well, and uneducable to boot. Hardly. I go to work every day with a positive, I-love-to-teach attitude, and certain students do everything they can - intentional and unintentional - to beat it out of me by the end of the school day. Anything "fun", like a review game, that I have planned, the students quickly ruin it because they can't even stay quiet long enough to listen to the game's directions. About the only thing for which they will stay somewhat quiet is silent reading and note-taking; and note-taking is what we teachers are always told that students hate the most. I would quite often rather do something else as well, however, that is about all my students seem capable of handling.

Dr. Mackie then engages in a very inaccurate analogy:

Many educators, especially those occupying positions in institutions of higher education, are becoming like doctors in hospitals who do not want to treat sick patients. They only desire and admit the healthy, well-prepared and equipped students who they can nurture and graduate. Then, they spend a lifetime bragging about how their great, healthy, and well students never became ill.

Dr. Mackie, when you talk of healthy patients and sick ones, they both have one thing in common: they want to be in the hospital! They want to do what it takes to get better or stay healthy! To expound upon your analogy, I work in a hospital where too many of my sick patients refuse to read the literature I give them that tells them how to get healthy. I give them a prescription that requires they take the medicine home a few times a week and ingest it there, but they refuse to do so. Many times, a parent will want me to let the sick patient make up all those prescriptions that the patient refused to ingest over the last few months. The problem is that you can never swallow that many pills all at once. To make matters worse, the sick patients do everything they can to sabotage the healthy patients and make them sick as well. And when, after all this, the patient is still sick, the patient's parent calls me or emails me and demands to know why the patient is still sick. Sorry parent, but I'm not allowed to follow your little patient home and ensure that he takes his medicine, and I am severely limited in my ability to keep your sick patient out of my hospital so I can stop him from infecting the healthy patients. When doctors encounter patients like this, the patients are not allowed back in the hospital!

I only have the short bio to reference regarding Dr. Mackie's job history, so I don't know all of his teaching experience. However, I would like him to know that teaching a bunch of apathetic general-population students in a public middle school is quite a different experience than teaching highly motivated mechanical engineering students at a private college where the annual tuition is in the neighborhood of $25,000.

Stick to what you know, Dr. Mackie.

Good Day to You, Sir

Even Hitler is in foreclosure!

Good Day to You, Sir

Thanksgiving in the desert

In a very much appreciated gesture, my mother-in-law rented a condo in Palm Springs, California, and invited her immediate family (my wife and kids, and my wife's sister and her family) to spend Thanksgiving there.

From Sacramento to Palm Springs is about an eight-hour drive, and we wanted to get there as soon as possible and avoid holiday traffic, so my wife and I packed up the night before, woke up at 4am, put our sleeping children in their car seats, and we were on the road by 4:40am. We rolled into Palm Springs just after 1pm. I had never been to Palm Springs; all I really knew about it was its ritzy "Golden Age of Hollywood" reputation. My final analysis of Palm Springs is that I would never want to live there, but it was certainly a beautiful place to visit.

As soon as we rolled into town, My attention was naturally drawn to the mountains that the city is literally jammed up against. They are those steep, rugged, rocky, almost treeless leviathans that make you almost forget that you are in a desert. Observe:





The pinnacle of these mountains is the 10,800 foot San Jacinto Peak. In front of the peak however are many smaller foothills that were accessible enough for my brother-in-law and me to take our children (age span: 2, 4, 4, and 6) on a hike one afternoon. Here are some of the highlights of that trek:

My daughter the mountain goat trying to catch up with the big kids.

Almost there!

My kids and I enjoy the view.

Whoops! The sun is beginning to set; time to head back toward the car.

The sun goes down fast around here.

My son takes one last look at the sprawl below before we start heading back into it.

On one of our days in Palm Springs, my sister-in-law and her family went miniature golfing, my wife took her mother and my daughter shopping, which left me alone with my son. Rather than sitting around the house twiddling our thumbs, I took him to the Palm Springs Air Museum. I took more pictures than I could possibly care to post, but here are some of the highlights:



The highlight of our visit was their fully functioning B-17G Flying Fortress. This World War II bomber has always been one of my favorite airplanes. For a further thrill, my son and I received a personal tour of the interior of the aircraft from one of the docents. I would show you pictures, but it was so dark in there, my camera flash didn't carry very far. I used my son for scale to show how absolutely cramped it was for the gunner who stuffed himself into the ball turret on the belly of the B-17. I can't even imagine how naked I would have felt in that thing as a German ME-109 raked the underside of the aircraft with machine gun fire.

The museum was dedicated to mostly World War II-era aircraft with the building divided into two wings: one for aircraft from the European Theater and another for aircraft used mostly in the Pacific Theater. Here are some of those airplanes in no particular order:

P-51 Mustang

P-47 Thunderbolt

P-40 Tomahawk

Dauntless Dive Bomber

My son loved the model aircraft display!

He was even more intrigued by the display of the many firearms used by the different countries that participated in the War. He's such a boy!

On display outside was a German 88mm anti-tank/anti-aircraft/anti-personnel artillery piece. American soldiers hated this weapon probably more than anything else in the German arsenal.

After a hard day of playing and visiting, we would all go home to the comforts of a rather plush condo. The two most inviting aspects were the master bathroom and the backyard. In the master bathroom was a tub and shower that reminded one more of a Roman bath:

And then in the backyard was something that looked like a mini-swimming pool, but was actually a hot tub. It even had a waterfall!

Even if it was just for a week, it was nice to experience how the other half lives! However, after a total of 16 hours on Interstate 5, we are ready to stay home for Christmas!

Good Day to You, Sir