assault with a deadly weapon

willie campbell is h.i.v positive. during an arrest for public intoxication, he spit at the police officer and stated that he had aids. he was a repeat offender and under texas law that can get you 25 years in prison. another ten years was added onto his sentence because the dallas jury ruled that he had assaulted the officer with a deadly weapon, meaning his saliva. let's all take a minute to process that level of stupidity...if you go to the centers for disease control and read up on the h.i.v virus, it clearly states that no one has ever transmitted the virus through their saliva, sweat, or tears. hmm. i must be overly optimistic in hoping that after the near witch hunt like hysteria that greeted those infected in the early days of the disease, we had progressed beyond ignorance and fear into the realm of fact and science. apparently i am wrong. it is a sad day when there are still people that believe that h.i.v is some sort of andromeda strain, capable of leaping over tall buildings in a single bound and living outside the host for years on end. perhaps it's even acidic like the saliva from the creatures in the alien movies. leave it to texas to once again lead the charge of the imbecile brigade. willie campbell did something disgusting when he spit at another human being but he did not assault that person with a deadly weapon and i am inclined to believe that he might not have received the potentially harsh 25 year sentence for habitual offenses had it not been for the h.i.v spitting incident. this sets a dangerous precedence for all those infected with the disease and all diseases for that matter. when we allow ourselves to degenerate into a society controlled by fear then you can expect to see violence erupt that targets the weak, diseased, and those just plain different. i was reading what some wrote about this case and they do make my point nicely by saying that campbell should be executed, even going so far as to be set on fire. dear god! All these years of evolution and we have not progressed at all. spoke is going to go get a beer.

longer hours in school

i don't teach, although i did once for a year, and i have a healthy respect for those that slog it out in the trenches for the greater good of our kids...but this new call for longer class room hours is pointless. you can send our kids to school twenty four hours a day, seven days a week for the entire year and still not meet the so called goals of the leap test. once upon a time in america, kids had shorter days, more recess time, and summers off and they were graduating with the ability to read and process information. at the beginning of world war one, a cross section of incoming GI's revealed that approximately 90 something percent of whites could read and an 80 something percent of blacks were literate. by world war two, the numbers fell into the 80's for whites and the 70's for blacks and they have been steadily falling since. now, in new orleans for example, i would daresay the majority of the population has a 5th grade education even though they finished high school. so, what has gone wrong. i won't pretend to have all the answers but i do know that longer hours of poor instruction will still get you no where. i think we need to place less emphasis on education as a study that potential teachers can earn a degree in and more stress on obtaining that degree in the field that they wish to teach. history majors teach history. mathmatics majors teach math. education majors...well, i would rather see that you have an understanding of the subject matter you are teaching. i realize that there has to be some way to evaluate children at the end of the year but i am not so certain that leap tests are the way to go. some children do not perform well on standardized tests and i am not so sure but what those tests encourage rote memorization without true thinking skills. in other words, it scares me that we are graduating children that are taught to mindlessly regurgitate facts and follow rules without questioning why. critical thinking should be the hallmark of any education worth its salt. it is one thing to memorize the proofs in geometry but the knowledge of the proofs is worthless without the ability to apply them in order to solve problems. perhaps this is what the world wants...worker bees who do as they are told, blindly obedient, numbed on television and alcohol. we need to seriously reconsider how we educate our children instead of simply throwing more hours at the problem without ever solving it.

public rudeness

ok, let's revisit the rules of how to behave properly in public.
rule number one: blow your nose in private!! i know it is allergy season and we are all reduced to drippy messes but stop being lazy and get up and go to the bathroom and take care of your business there. please do this especially if you find yourself in a place that serves food or drink. thank you.
rule number two: i do not need to to see your food in your mouth while you are chewing it, nor do i need to hear the mastication process. you are not a trough animal. stop acting like one.
rule number three: if i let you in front of me in traffic, wave thank you. failure to execute this common courtesy makes me want to ram my vehicle into the back of yours.
rule number four: i don't need nor do i want to hear your music while you are driving down the street. i'm listening to my own music thank you very much.
rule number five: put the fucking cell phone down if you are at a counter being waited on. if your cell phone rings while in a coffee shop or restaurant, get up and take the conversation outside. i don't give a damn who you are screwing.
rule number five: control your children! the old adage, children should be seen and not heard...yeh think along those lines.
this is a start to a better society, so let's all pitch and do our part.

subprime crisis

you now have another reason to dislike the republicans and their new man of the hour, joh mccain...that is the subprime crisis and the recession we are in but no one wants to admit is going on. the problem is deregulation folks! once upon a time there was this little thing called the great depression. there were many people who blamed the depression and crash on the greed of unregulated bankers. hmm. imagine that! commercial banks were investing in the stock market, taking on riskier ventures and becoming more and more speculative. this should sound familiar. thus the glass-steagall act was passed which separated investment and commercial banking activities. in other words, the federal government would step in with regulations to dampen the out of control greed of bankers. seems good to me and it was until 1999. that is when phil gramm, a former u.s sen. and campaign manager for john mccain(who has admitted that he knows little about the economy) helped pass the gramm-leach=bliley act which repealed the glass-steagall act. what? yep, no regulation. banks could merge. " predatory tactics by lenders and brokers to place homeowners in high-cost mortgages" crept in. why? because the federal govt. was no longer watching. speculation rose. housing cost sky-rocketed and we entered yet anothe republican driven boom to bust cycle. hey kids, do us all a favor and don't vote for mccain.

dear george bush

i want to thank you for wrecking the economy in part by invading two countries in a war that we will never win. i know adversity builds character. thank you for going after the oil fields so that the price of gas could creep up towards 4$ a gallon and we could all eat that with the rising price of produce. tough times test what we are made of and boy are we being tested. i want to thank you for making us the laughing stock of the world. laughter is the best medicine and so we are doing our part to heal the planet. i am grateful for your pronunciation errors, your cowboy rhetoric, and the way you slouch over the lectern...it keeps us in the headlines and as mayor nagin likes to say, even bad news is good publicity. i think it is wonderful that as we sink deeper into a recession and continue to lose the war on both fronts that you seem ever gleeful, going so far as to entertain us with the occasional shuffle. your fearlessness fortifies us because at least we know that as we are all drowning, you will be safe aboard the only life raft. and living in the kingdom neath the sea, i will drink to that.

Sally Kern

i believe in the 1st amendment. you have the right to say the most vile thing you can come up with and to hell with those that might be insulted. you have the right to say things that make you look like an in-bred, dumb-as-fuck yahoo who just might be closeted. you have the right to your religion, intolerant though it might be but as a state representative, you do not have the right to allow those beliefs to interfere with how you vote. that's the bottom line. you think god hates gay people? fine but you can't vote to disenfranchise gays based on your back woods, jack leg preacher bullshit!! and that's what we have come to in this country. our lawmakers are voting against allowing gays to marry and have the same rights as straight people, simply because their religions say homosexuality is immoral. your religion has no place in my government. i pay taxes. i abide by the laws and i will not be treated like a second rate citizen. kern said that homosexuality was a bigger threat than terrorism and islam. first of all, i love that the most feverishly religious among us are the most intolerant of others' beliefs and that islam is a threat.it is not so much the religion as the narrow minds that populate it. homosexuality is a bigger threat than terrorism? i guess we are to assume that somewhere in sleepy middle america, there are secret homosexual training camps plotting to take over the country in explosions of pastel. "Death to bad fashion and pansies for everyone!" run for your lives if your blood pumps bible-black ink. the gays are coming and houses will be painted and yards landscaped and the lesbians just might win the damn war on terrorism. kern said "that studies show no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than a few decades..." hmm. what societies would those be? let's list societies that truly embraced homosexuality...um, yeh, there really aren't any. i mean in ancient greece, you could diddle with the boys but there was no word for homosexuality and you were not expected to do it exclusively and even then, the greeks had a pretty successful culture. alexander the great was most likely in love with his best friend and he conquered much of the known world. hey, kern, maybe you could give us some examples. she said, "it spreads and this stuff is deadly. it will destroy this nation". i guess homosexuality is like cancer or some world war one trench gas. yes, miss kern, you do have the right to free speech but it is highly irresponsible of you to spew that kind of hatred about your fellow americans when you claim to be such a patriot. when you equate homosexuality with terrorism, you open the door to hate crimes. you create a war mentality and it is only a matter of time before people get hurt as a result of those words. you have free speech but you also have an obligation to your fellow man to consider the consequences of you actions. when you spew hate, you divide and foster an environment for violence against gays. spoke the cat says shut the fuck up, go find a woman, and get laid!

nagin and his vagina-friendly quest

yeh...i don't have anything to say to that. shit!