Utterly Meaningless » 2009 » June
  • EVEN BIGGER IDIOTS

    Filed on June 28, 2009 at 8:33 pm under by dcobranchi

    OneNewsNow, of course:

    Many clear-thinking Americans believe that Marxists are in control of our country — and that there is no reason to believe they will ever give up their power.

    STILL AN IDIOT

    Filed on at 6:10 pm under by dcobranchi

    Sarah Palin, of course.

    THANK GOD!

    Filed on June 27, 2009 at 6:25 pm under by dcobranchi

    This lede should never had to have been written.

    Local volunteers from Turning Point Church can no longer evangelize at Totem Middle School in Marysville, Washington.

    Alas, it’s a OneNewsNow piece, so they just don’t understand why volunteer teachers aids shouldn’t be contacting the students at home and inviting them to church.

    DEAL OF THE DAY

    Filed on at 2:44 pm under by dcobranchi

    A laptop (not a netbook) for $359.

    EWWW

    Filed on June 26, 2009 at 6:49 pm under by dcobranchi

    I don’t think I’ll be visiting a BK any time soon.

    REALLY, REALLY LOCAL STORY

    Filed on June 25, 2009 at 9:42 pm under by dcobranchi

    CNN has a video news clip about a kid who got very sick swimming in a local “lake” (an old mill pond, actually).

    Hope Mills is the closest town to our home, and just the other day I almost took the kids to go swimming in the lake.

    BUH-BYE

    Filed on June 24, 2009 at 8:52 pm under by dcobranchi

    He was a strange duck at Furman. He was a little different when he was elected to Congress in the Republican Revolution. And he’s still strange.

    At least we won’t have to hear about his presidential aspirations any longer.

    OOPS!

    Filed on June 21, 2009 at 7:37 am under by dcobranchi

    I just realized I went a whole week without updating the blog. I plead work-related exhaustion. I was in Lean Practitioner training all week. Basically ran from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. (or later) each day. So blogging was a lower priority than vegging.

    HAPPY SOLSTICE!

    Filed on at 7:30 am under by dcobranchi

    It was 100 oF here yesterday! I hope that is not a harbinger of how Summer ’09 is going to play out.

    NO PLAN? NO MONEY!

    Filed on at 5:24 am under by dcobranchi

    I received two fundraising pitches from different cogs of the Democratic machine yesterday. I told them that I was angry at the way they were handling health care reform and that it looked like they were not going to include a public plan option in the final bill. You can see my response above.

    And even though the plural of “anecdote” is not “data,” there are lots and lots of anecdotes showing that the system is completely broken and that breaking the insurance companies’ pseudo-monopoly is the only way out.

    THE FATHER OF THE MODERN CHRISTIAN HOMESCHOOLING MOVEMENT

    Filed on June 20, 2009 at 7:43 pm under by dcobranchi

    This HuffPo piece on the Reconstructionists and their plan for America is well worth a read.

    SeinFi

    Filed on June 13, 2009 at 8:21 pm under by dcobranchi

    SciFi is showing “Serenity.” The chyron during the commercial break says “Serenity Now.”

    A HERO OF THE FAITH

    Filed on at 3:35 pm under by dcobranchi

    If this is what being a “Christian hero” is all about, I’m not sure that there’s much of a future for Christianity.

    A Christian teacher in a public school is being hailed as “a hero of the faith.”

    John Freshwater, an eighth-grade teacher in Ohio, filed suit this week against the Mount Vernon City School District and district officials, claiming they violated his free-speech and civil rights when he was released. The $1-million lawsuit claims he was fired by the district last year over accusations that he preached Christianity in class.

    [snip]

    In firing Freshwater, the Mount Vernon school board cited an internal investigation that found he had preached his Christian beliefs in class. Freshwater, a teacher for 24 years, was also accused of using a scientific device to burn a cross image onto a student’s arm and of keeping a Bible on his desk.

    FEAR AND LOATHING IN HOME ED

    Filed on at 8:54 am under by dcobranchi

    JJ has an excellent post up on how fear and poorly-thought-out arguments make home education more vulnerable to interference from the gov’t. Definitely worth a read.

    TOO COOL

    Filed on June 11, 2009 at 6:31 pm under by dcobranchi

    I believe Obama may be our coolest president ever.

    THOSE REALLY STRANGE (ANTI-CHOICE) TEACHERS

    Filed on at 1:19 am under by dcobranchi

    One of the stranger “arguments” against abortion (by a group of teachers):

    Abortion is the primary factor causing America’s economic recession, said Pawson. America is suffering the consequences for killing fifty-million people who are supposed to be among us today as teachers, producers, consumers, taxpayers, leaders, inventors, and problem-solvers. It’s no surprise that a nation which slaughters nearly twenty percent of its future customers, investors, and entrepreneurs also kills its own economy. Wrong moral choices have negative consequences. Evil acts generate their own punishment.

    Abortion has led to the destruction of fifty-million students and simultaneously eliminated hundreds of thousands of teaching careers and education-related jobs. Surely, some of those dead students were the ones God sent to cure AIDS, end world-hunger, and create clean-energy technologies, said Pawson

    UPDATE: On second thought, it appears that PLEAS consists of maybe 6 people.

    ONE FOR CAV

    Filed on June 10, 2009 at 12:35 pm under by dcobranchi

    If I buy a spot for myself, I wonder if my old friends at Hell’s leading daily (NSFW) would give me a tryout.

    DOVER, REDUX

    Filed on June 9, 2009 at 7:48 pm under by dcobranchi

    Fundies never learn. In Dover, Bill Buckingham helped to prove that ID was all about religion with this statement:

    2,000 years ago someone died on a cross. Isn’t someone going to take a stand for him?

    And now,4 years later, another fundie torpedoes his case:

    A federal appeals court has ruled that a Ten Commandments monument outside Oklahoma’s Haskell County Courthouse “has the primary effect of endorsing religion.”

    [snip]

    The latest ruling prompted Haskell County Commissioner Mitch Worsham to say, “Whoever was the judge in this, I feel sorry for him on Judgment Day.”

    Yeah, placing the Ten Commandments on public property had nothing to do with religion. Riiiiight.

    ANOTHER SAFE SCHOOL

    Filed on June 4, 2009 at 5:20 am under by dcobranchi

    This one is horrific.

    CRAIG’S LIST PORN

    Filed on June 3, 2009 at 8:12 pm under by dcobranchi

    This is the funniest CL ad I’ve seen.

    AND THEN THERE WERE SIX (AND A HALF)

    Filed on at 7:00 pm under by dcobranchi

    NH just legalized same-sex marriage.

    WHAT’S WORSE THAN HEART FAILURE?

    Filed on at 4:29 pm under by dcobranchi

    QOTD (from the anti-tax Tax Foundation):

    Targeted [business tax] incentives are to a state’s economy what steroids are to the human body – short term results that eventually weaken the bones, cause heart failure, or worse, impotency.

    I don’t know about the folks at the TF, but I think if given a choice of being impotent or being dead, I’d choose the former and hope for a cure. There’s no cure for the latter.

    VAX “NEWS”

    Filed on June 2, 2009 at 4:16 pm under by dcobranchi

    This local story is good news. Assuming that the expensive vaccine is made available at a reduced cost for those without insurance or who otherwise can’t afford it, of course.

    I’M STILL ALIVE…

    Filed on at 5:34 am under by dcobranchi

    but not terribly engaged right now. I can leave you with one quote from a g-school teacher, proving once again why g-school is so much better than home education, and why we’re all just a bunch of uneducated ignorant yahoos who don’t know our places:

    Homeschooling parent/teachers are arrogant to the point of lunacy. For real! My qualifications to teach English include a double major in English and education, two master’s degrees (education and journalism), a student teaching semester and multiple internship terms, real world experience as a writer, and years in the classroom dealing with different learning styles. So, first of all, homeschooling parent, you think you can teach English as well as me?

    Me daresay me probably could.

    [H/T: Kelly]