don't let them snow you

bush is crying for the opening of the alaska wild life refuge as well as off shore areas for oil drilling, all with the promise of lowering rising gas prices and thus taking the strain off the backs of hard working citizens. someone nominate him for an oscar. please! when has bush ever been concerned for the well being of average americans? it is average americans getting killed in iraq and let's not forget how he misled us into that catastrophe. i know we are all hurting and we want a magic little pill that POOF lowers gas prices but allowing big oil into those areas will not solve our crisis. it will take years to begin to drill in those areas and gas prices will stay inflated. there is no relief coming. bush's proposal means one thing and one thing only and that is more money for the greedy oil guys and we all know bush is one of them. they want to tell you that it is safe to drill in those areas but we know accidents happen and the potential for an ecological disaster to occur is simply too great a risk to run for some pipe dream that might lower gas prices a couple of cents years into the future. they are missing the point. if we put our ingenuity behind alternative energy sources then years into the future, it won't matter if gas prices come down because we won't be dependent upon oil. this is a ruse people and we have to make some noise. does it seem odd to you that they just voted to extend tax breaks to oil companies but did not vote to renew tax breaks to alternative energy prospects? this should be a red flag. don't let this administration dupe you yet again by blaming the democrats for rising prices based on the fact that they won't let big oil in. never mind the fact that we ought to making some radical changes in the interest of global warming or all our coastal cities are going to be under water. call your elected officials and tell them NO to yet another asinine plan by the bush administration.

nagin

i wish i had something profound to say over the latest nagin antic or something witty with which to hold the interests of my one or two readers but i do not. i'm just sick and horrified. i'm saddened and exasperated. i never voted for the man and thus i never expected much but the fact that he is taking his wife out for their anniversary on tax payers' money really is a new low for the bastard. this is a man who at the very least pays lip service to wanting to resurrect new orleans and he is dining out with our money. shame on him. whatever happened to the self sacrifice of public office? my god! but i am sick of the corruption. this act is or should be an impeachable offense and yet no one seems to be raising the kind of ruckus needed to oust this pathetic excuse for a mayor. we ,as a city just sit idly by and allow our elected officials to continue to get away with the most egregious of actions...hell, in some instances we even elect them back into office. i swear but i am losing my faith and i believe that we just get what we fucking deserve.

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.