Black Friday

If it’s the “Job Creators” that power our economy, and not the consumers, then why the hell is Black Friday such a big deal?

Republicans take note:

Front page of the Salt Lake Tribune, Nov. 21, 2012:

“Obama’s aide: Hunstman was biggest threat”

Even before Jon Huntsman Jr. announced his candidacy for the presidency, the Democrats knew, or at least suspected, that extremism would be the downfall of the Republican bid for president.

All the numbers show that the middle (political philosophy) won the election for Obama.  He had the extreme liberals locked, just as Romney had the extreme conservatives.  Romney lost because Obama appealed to 56% of the moderates, compared to Romney’s 41%.

There is no doubt in my mind that Huntsman would have captured a lot of those moderate votes.  I know for a fact that he very likely would have taken 2 of the more liberal votes, mine and my friend Adele’s.  There’s no doubt in my mind that Obama is the better choice of the two we were given, by a longshot, but had he run against Huntsman I would have had some real thinking to do.

I voted for him in his bid for reelection as Governor of Utah, I was impressed with his ability to look at all sides of an issue and do what he thought was in the best interest of the state.  At times I disagreed with his decisions, other times I thought he was spot on, but either way it seemed he took into account all opinions, not allowing himself to get locked into a single view of the world. 

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again:  You guys have to jettison that psycho Tea Party, adopt a more inclusive and moderate platform and run candidates that can at least appear to sympathize with moderate Americans.  Because, I’d bet, most of us fall in that category.

A little cheese with that whine, Orrin?

Early in the presidential campaign, the [dis]Honorable Orrin Hatch, Senator from Utah, accused the president of future slams against the LDS Church as an attack against Mitt Romney.

Even though the article in the Salt Lake Tribune (Nov 17, 2012, page 1 of the Utah section) says “Proof of anit-LDS campaigning appears scant,” Hatch said “There was a lot more than you think, If you didn’t see it, there’s something wrong.”

Yeah, Orrin, there is something wrong.  Your shirt and tie are so tight that you’re getting hallucinations from the lack of blood to your brain.  Even the people at BYU, the LDS Church’s own University, disagree with you.  The Tribune wrote “Quin Monson, head of Brigham Young University’s Center for the Study of Politics and Democracy, says Romney’s Mormon faith wasn’t a big issue in the general election.”

Hell, Senator Mike Lee, Tea Party darling of the Utah Republican Party, even said that his faith got “trashed” more by his own party in the primary elections.  “I did expect it to occur; I didn’t expect it to come from the Obama campaign or the Democrats.  I thought that one or more super PACs or surrogates, whatever, would attack the church.  It didn’t really happen”, Lee said.

So Orrin, just shut the hell up.  The election is over, you were wrong.  All this bellyaching you’re doing does nothing but prove to people how desperate you are to be relevant.

Is the Tea Party dead?

Dear Republican Party,

I honestly believe you could have won this year’s presidential election if you had not been so willing to pander to the ultra right wing Teabagger fringe.

Why?  Well, I get the feeling that the Tea Party is dead. The moderates and even conservative moderates seem to be sick and tired of the blathering of this tunnel vision group.

I live in Utah, the reddest state in the union.  72.8% of our voters cast their ballots for Mitt Romney, more than any other state.  Yet no more than a lone Tea Party candidate made it through the Utah Republican primaries, and in the end Mia Love couldn’t even beat Democrat Jim Matheson in a gerrymandered 4^th District custom made for a Republican win.  Half of Utah County (home of Gayle herself), part of Juab and Sanpete counties and the more conservative south west part of Salt Lake County preferred a Democrat over a Tea Partier.  To me that says a lot about the popularity of extreme ultra-conservatism.

Now, I’m not saying that conservatism in general isn’t still strong, and I’m not even saying they are always wrong.  But I am saying that the semi-literate, foaming-at-the mouth Gayle Ruzicka lovin’ fringe of the Republican Party is scaring a big part of the more rational majority into the arms of the Democrats.

I truly believe that if the Republicans jettison the Teabaggers and put forth a more rational, compromising and moderate front *(ala Jon Huntsman Jr.), they well could well retake the Whitehouse in 2016.

Hell, even I was considering voting for Huntsman had it been him against Obama this year.  I voted for him twice as Governor of Utah.

Got this in an email.

The email read: (red from the person sending it to me, the blue from before.)

We should send this to everyone in our address book and hope that the one's that voted for OBAMA will change there VOTE this year before he ruins our COUNTRY!!! He's doing a great job of it now!!

GOD BLESS AMERICA

LETS MAKE IT STRONG AGAIN

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FOR THE REPUBLIC

OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY MADE THIS AND IT JUST CAME OUT 4   DAYS AGO AND HAS HAD 6 MILLION HITS.

So, unlike the person who sent this to me, I decided to do a little research on it.  I found it on YouTube, and this was in reference to the video:

FALSE: OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY MADE THIS.  Not according to the person who uploaded it to YouTube.

FALSE:  JUST CAME OUT 4 DAYS AGO AND HAS HAD 6 MILLION HITS. Says right there that it was uploaded on February 10, 2010,  Over a year and a half ago.  Yeah, it does have over 10 million hits now, but even if interest dropped off drastically after 4 days, that’s still not very impressive.

Regardless of whether or not one believes the message it sends, it still shows how little the person who sent it knows about me to even send it to me.

2012 Presidential Polls

This will automatically update as more Huffington Post polls come in.

Romney doesn’t give a shit about 47% of us.

“who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement.”

If he said “BMW, Adidas and Lobster on the nights you don’t have a T-Bone steak”, I might have been with him.  But what kind of human being would argue that every other human being does not deserve a place to live, food (at least the basics) to eat and the means to be healthy?  Seriously.  I have issues with people using the money my taxes give them for beer and cigarettes, iPods and cell phones, but food, shelter and health?  Food – you die without it.  Shelter – you can die without it.  Health – you die without it.  Seriously?  He might as well have just said “I don’t care if these lazy leeches just shrivel up and die, at least they would be off the government dole then.”  And he wants to be President of The United States of America.

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them…Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax…  And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Yup, everybody who supports the president is unemployed, living off welfare and not paying taxes.  Or at least everybody but me.  Because I support Obama and I’m fully employed, been so for most of the last 35 years.  I pay my bills myself, including my taxes.  Oh, wait.  There’s my brother too.  And my friend Ed.  At least 6 people I work with, maybe more.  So, in reality it’s only 46.94356718753675434578453%.  Unless you consider that I don’t personally know more than 1/1000 of a % of the population, so I really shouldn’t be talking for them.

Mr. Romney, where do you get the cajones to say that if I am an Obama supporter, I must be a leech on society?

Oh, I’m sorry.  You didn’t realize the general public would hear your comments.  You thought everything you said was between you and your millionaire cronies.  My bad.

Mr. Romney – go back to running a state or the Olympics, you are not Presidential material.

Jordan District: 1 - Eagle Forum: Pissed off.

Bingham High vs. Gayle Ruzicka.  I won’t rehash the details, but you can go backwards over my posts if you need catching up.

The game is over and although the Jordan School District didn’t just tell the Eagle Forum to go where they belong, the changes they did make are quite on the good side of reasonable.

They did:

Up the number of parents on both drama productions committees.  I don’t know what the original numbers were, but there will now be 4 parents at the school level and 5 parents on the district committee.  

What they didn’t do:

Issue a formal statement apologizing for putting on the play “Dead Man Walking”.

Require an open public forum for every proposed play.

From the KSL.com article on August 30, 2012

Eagle Forum President Gayle Ruzicka said she'd still like to see a statement from the district apologizing for the "Dead Man Walking," as well as future policy changes that would prohibit productions that contain offensive language and content.

Gayle, that’s what the parents on the committees are for, to make sure the standards of their community are respected.  Not what your personal standards are.

And when you consider that there was only 1 negative comment of 700 made to the district about the play before you stuck your big fat self-righteous nose into the whole thing, methinks “Dead Man Walking” just happens to be within the standards of the Bingham High community.

Quit helping people that really don’t want your kind of help.  Thanks anyhow.

Really that stupid, or Photoshop just that good?

There’s a gazillion pictures of people from the Teabagger Party carrying signs with slogans that look like they were written by 3 year olds.  Blind 3 year olds.  Blind 3 year olds whose primary language is not English.

I would love to be able to believe each and every picture is authentic and that these people are really that stupid.  Well, ok, I should say “that illiterate”.

But Photoshopping is so rampant that every one of the pictures here is questionable.  Which kind of ticks me off, because it would be even funnier if I could be positive they were all real.

But that’s ok, because even if the spelling is doctored, I have heard all these sentiments said out loud, I have read all these sentiments in legitimate news sources.

So there is no doubt in my mind that the Teabagger Party truly believes that Barack Obama is a treasonous, communist-socialist-fascist liar that wasn’t even born in this country.

And that’s funny, even when spelled correctly.

And it’s not even the misspelling that makes me laugh.

Keep Government out of Medicare?  What?

Note to dumbasses:  Medicare and Medicaid are government services.  We pay taxes to the government so that you can have Medicare and/or Medicaid.  If the government got out of Medicare and Medicaid, it would cease to exist.

If you are going to protest something, it’s best to know something about what you are protesting.  Otherwise your stupidity will be spread across the internet.

Oh, and learn how to spell.

Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?

They seem to be in South Jordan.

Senator Aaron Osmond gave a letter to the school board imploring them to apologize for putting on the play “Dead Man Walking”.  (More info here and here).  Larry Short, councilman for the city, asked them to apologize too.

The school board is in a frenzy trying to figure out how to prevent offending “anyone” again.

That “anyone” being Gayle Ruzicka. Period.

Because, only one (1, uno, amháin, eine, een, biri, jeden) comment out of the 700 the school district got was a complaint. Until over two month after the play ended and Gayle Ruzicka held a press conference.

Said some BS about it being because of violent undertones, unacceptable language and smoking cigarettes.

But the first thing the Jordan School District did when the controversy broke out was to “clarify it’s stance on the death penalty”, and 54” of newspaper space starting on the front page of the Salt Lake Tribune today was devoted to an article with the headline “Critical thinking was goal of controversial play at Bingham High Project requires schools to present well-rounded look at death penalty.”

So in my humble opinion, this is all because some group of teachers, parents and administrators wanted to get their students and patrons to really think about their beliefs about the death penalty.  And that’s a double-header boo-boo.  Getting people to think and questioning the death penalty.

So the Jordan School District apologized, every school play from here on in will have to be scrutinized through The Utah Eagle Forum’s eyes and never again shall the minions be forced to think on their own.

All is right in the land of Zion.

Eagle Forum trumps parents and common sense.

Salt Lake Tribune, Wednesday, July 11, 2012.  Utah section, page B3.

“Jordan school board to
apologize for school play”

I posted on this before, here, about Gayle and her cronies (allegedly) making up 5 parents (they never produced the letters or even names) that complained to them about the content in the high school production of “Dead Man Walking”.

Even though only one of the 700 comments to the school district by parents and patrons was a complaint, even though the school district received 100 calls complimenting the production, the Jordan School Board is thinking up ways to placate the bitchy few.

First, they are actually apologizing for putting on the play.  A very thought-provoking (oops, thought.  Bad word!) play that had already been watered-down for public school production.  If every school board across the country took the time and energy to publicly apologize to every group that chose to be offended by a school production, we’d have to pay for a second board to take care of the real business.  (NOTE: plays are re-written, with permission of the author, for “school productions”, with the specific intent to balance age appropriate content without diluting the story to the point of being meaningless).

Now the board wants to take it a step further:  change the process of how schools choose plays that they will produce.

Right now plays are picked by a school committee made up of parents and teachers, and then they have to clear it through a district committee.  But board member Carmen Freeman wants to hold open forums where the general public can comment on the choice of plays.

Now, generally I’m all for openness and public input, but parents already have input in the decision making.  Want to have a say in what plays get produced?  Get on the school committee that picks them.  Of course, you’ll have to be connected with that school somehow, someone from, say, 30 miles away in a completely different school district would have no say in what play your school puts on.

But shouldn’t the community the school serves have that power, not some wacko from Highland, Utah (unless it’s the high school in Highland)?

Two board members warned that they thought the public forum would make the process of producing plays too cumbersome, which would make it hard to recruit, and keep, good drama teachers.  I agree with them.

Singled out?

As I write this we have 8 large wildfires burning in the state of Utah, totaling just under 200,000 acres.

Open campfires are banned statewide.  Fireworks are banned in all unincorporated areas of the state.

Yet the headline in the Salt Lake Tribune today reads “Utah shooters fear they will be singled out.”

First off, “singled out” implies that you will be the only one, or group, that is asked to sacrifice.  This is not so.  Campers are being asked to sacrifice, so are people who like to set off their own fireworks.  At the very least, target shooters are being “tripled out”.

I watched the press conference where our governor announced that there may be a ban on target shooting outside of organized target ranges.  It was more of an apology than an announcement.  I was surprised as he hemmed and hawed around the Second Amendment, apologized for even thinking of it and seemed to be begging forgiveness from the gun lobby.  I really shouldn’t have been surprised, I know the influence these people have in our state.  Hell, we have an official state handgun.  But I thought this was a no-brainer.

We’re burning up, our resources are spread thin already.  90% of the state’s wildfires are human caused, a good portion of that because of situations by people who should have known better.  We need to do everything we can to keep it from getting even worse.

Everyone needs to do what they can to prevent any more fires, and if that means we have to give up one of our favorite recreational activities for the next few months, instead of bitching and moaning, we should willingly do so.

Head still firmly planted where sun don’t shine.

Is she really that clueless, or is it she just has an uncontrollable need to get here name in the news?

Yesterday Utah, and 4 other states, received a NCLB (No Child Left Behind) waiver from the Federal Government.  That means we now get to come up with our own process for school accountability and no longer have to meet the unreasonable (and impossible) AYP requirement that 100% of our students graduate at grade level by 2014.

Gayle Nazicka was quoted in the Salt Lake Tribune saying “This waiver is one of the most disastrous things that has happened to education in Utah since the history of federal involvement in education.”

Why does she believe that?  Because, according to her, this waiver binds Utah to the new Common Core.  That federally mandated, socialist conglomeration of propaganda that is going to force our Utah students to do math word problems filled with the homosexual agenda.  At least that’s the way the Feeble Forum sees it.

First, that’s all a load of horse manure.  Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education, said “That is just simply an absolute myth.”  In fact, one of the states that just received the waiver, Virginia, has not signed onto the Common Core.

You would think that as someone who so hates the involvement of the federal government in our education system, that she would be happy about this waiver.  After all, this means less federal involvement.

But reality doesn’t concern her.  She doesn’t care that the Common Core came about by states working together, completely absent of federal influence.  It’s irrelevant that the State of Utah voluntarily adopted the Common Core, and therefore can  un-adopt them if they prove to not fit our needs.

Nope, Gayle and her Forum just like to bitch about things and, putting all that is irrational aside, do what it takes to keep their names in the news.

Good job.  Seems to be working.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

Now, I’m not saying that the Teabagger Party has an unusual number of idiots subscribing to their platform, but if the Foo shits…

Now, I’m not a constitutional scholar, but I did pay enough attention in my secondary school classes to know that the whole purpose of the U.S. Supreme Court is to define what is and what isn’t constitutional.  Everyone is welcome to argue their interpretation, but legally, if the court says it’s constitutional, it is.

But that’s not going to stop all these morons from coming out and saying stupid things like that Senator did.

So, now the question begs to be asked – Since the court recently gave corporations some of the same constitutional rights as human beings, does that mean they are going to have to have health insurance too?

Prophecy, in retrospect.

Emmanuel Saez is a Professor of Economics at the University of California in Berkeley.  In 2003 he published an article on the income inequality in the US, and updated it in 2007.  This chart comes from the data in his study:

Interesting correlation between income inequality and economic meltdowns in an industrial economy, and another piece of information that reinforces my belief that Obama inherited an economy as bad as the Great Depression.

Propaganda

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prop·a·gan·da/ˌpräpəˈgandə/
Noun:

1. Information, esp. of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
2. The dissemination of such information as a political strategy.

From: Google.

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I saw this on Facebook and couldn’t resist commenting on it there, and now find myself compelled to bring it to the blogosphere too.

Lying.  That's what it really is.  “This one prohibits reading of the bible within it’s walls” is a flat out lie.  Public schools are not allowed to require or in any way promote the reading of any religious text, but we are also not allowed to prohibit a student from reading the Bible (or any other religious writings) during their free time.  I’ve had students that brought a Bible or the Book of Mormon to class and read it during our free reading time and some of our students carry it with them to lunch.  Nobody tells them to put it away, hide it in their locker or not bring it to school.  This is one thing some people have a hard time understanding (or intentionally misrepresent) – there is a huge difference between prohibition and not promoting.

They also leave out the fact that schools deal with children and prisons deal with adults.  Also consider the fact that public schools are institutes of academic education and prisons are supposed to be rehabilitative organizations.  Religious instruction strictly falls under the responsibility of parents and is completely different than encouraging adults to seek spiritual guidance as a form of rehabilitation.

Public schools need to be out of the religion business, neither promoting nor discouraging a parent and child’s spirituality at times it does not disrupt the educational goals (student’s cannot start quoting scriptures in the middle of math class, but I’ve also had to stop them from reading “Twilight” while I’m trying to teach).

Book banning alive and well in Utah

Ok, so this is not directly related to my buddy Gayle and her Eagle Forum storm troopers, but I reserve the right to comment on any Gaylesque news.

An elementary school librarian in Davis County put a copy of the book In Our Mothers’ House on the shelf when she realized that one of her students had two female parents.  She thought that it would help the other students understand the student’s home life better and hopefully relieve some of the bullying.

A parent complained, the district voted 6-1 (the one dissenting vote was the district’s library specialist) to remove the book from the shelves.  Students can still check it out, but only if they present a parent permission slip.

But it doesn’t stop there.  The district also removed the book “Totally Joe”, a book, written specifically for elementary aged kids, that deals with the bullying of students that are perceived to be gay.

And it doesn’t even stop there.  The district has all librarians scouring their books for any that contain gay themes or any gay characters.  Remove them all.

You can’t really blame the Davis School District, state law prohibits curriculum from showing homosexuality in any positive light.

You also can’t blame the librarians, who are trying to get a ruling that they are not constrained by the curriculum rules.  They argue that they do not provide just curriculum related reading, that part of their mission is to also provide recreational reading.

DEAR PARENTS,  You may not like it, but your child is going to meet students who are being raised by two mothers, two fathers, a single parent, their grandparents and even a sibling.  As they grow older they will be interacting with these students, and ones that are gay themselves.  At school, and later at their jobs, they are going to have to deal with people who fall into all those categories and also atheists, agnostics, communists, socialists, anarchists, liberals, conservatives and even the occasional intellectual.  Their job, their relationships, their happiness, may depend on knowing how to get along to all kinds of people, not everyone they are going to have to interact with is going to have the same beliefs and values.  Teach them your beliefs, instill in them your values, let them know that you don’t agree with all these different alternative lifestyles.  But don’t hide them from it, they need to know how to interact with differences.  You’re not protecting them, you’re hurting them.

I don’t suppose you actually SAW it?

Paul Rolly’s article, “Eagle Forum trying hard to be disgusted”, in the Tribune this morning goes to show exactly how far Gayle and the Eagle Nazi’s will go to wield their power.

Apparently they are offended by Bingham High School doing the play “Dead Man Walking”.

Her Heinie-ness was taken aback by the following three things:

1. Foul language – even though most of the foul language was taken out, with the permission of the author, for school productions.
2. Racial slurs – although the main character, a condemned killer, is a white supremacist, most of the harsh racial language was removed.  Just enough to retain authenticity remained.
3. Students acting out smoking cigarettes – the only cigarette on stage was a fake one tucked behind the main character’s ear.

I agree with Rolly’s comment that it’s like she didn’t even see the play.  There are a couple of other things that are funny (and not in the funny-ha-ha way) about this latest crusade.

Instead of meeting with administrators, after one of her cronies called the school district and they suggested a meeting instead of immediately groveling for their forgiveness, Gayle goes straight to the press, with five (unsigned) letters she claims are from Bingham High parents.  I guess she was smart enough to figure out that without names, no one could prove the letters were bullshit.

The school district’s Communication Director told Rolly that only one complaint was made to the district about the play, whereas they received over 700 positive comments from parents and patrons.

Yup, after losing the Sex-Ed and Common Core battles, seems these weary folk are desperately grasping at straws in an attempt to regain some semblance of control over education here in Utah.

May their efforts continue to be in vain.

A farce to be reckoned with.

Gayle and Ruzicka.  Two words that make everyone concerned with politics in Utah cringe. Liberals despise her.  Moderates wonder why she has so much power.  Conservatives wish she’d chill out a little bit.  And ultra-conservatives fear her power.

This power is derived from her well known phone tree (that which I call the “Phone Tree ‘O Terror), which she can activate in minutes and inundate any given legislator’s office with phone calls and emails from citizens demanding they vote a particular way on a particular bill.  In this fashion she can also mobilize her minions to pack caucus meetings and ensure that the ultra-conservatives control the majority of the delegates to the Utah Republican Convention.  (Up until this year at least, when moderates made it out to the caucuses en masse and leveled the playing field a little).  Since in most parts of this state a frothing-at-the-mouth teabagger Republican will be elected over even a moderate Democrat, this basically stacks the legislature in thier favor.

This is how a 69 year old mother of 12 becomes a major political power in the State of Utah.