“A Few Good Kids?”

As the kids return to school, a couple of interesting articles dealing with the subject of military recruiting on campus:
A Few Good Kids?
(Mother Jones) Sept/Oct 2009 – John Travers was striding purposefully into the Westfield mall in Wheaton, Maryland, for some back-to-school shopping before starting his junior year at Bowling Green State University. When I asked [...]

Hate goes back to school.

You can tell it’s time for the kids to head back to school.  You can tell by the amount of stupid the parents are sending out there…

“Devil” shirts send kids home
GAINESVILLE, Fl (Gainesville.com) 26 August – More children from the Dove World Outreach Center arrived Tuesday at area public schools with shirts bearing the message [...]

“Nazi Medicine.”

I received the following the other day in an email sent to me from one of the finest educational organizations I know, the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education. It was originally an essay published on The Huffington Post. It’s a powerful piece of writing, and I wanted to share it with you. Feel free [...]

Playing at war.

Not sure what to think about this.  You tell me…
Military enthusiasts begin re-enacting the Vietnam War
BOALSBURG, Pa. (AP) 17 August – The dirt paths that lead to Alpha Company’s field headquarters are lined with overgrown grass and weeds. A canvas tent is protected by machine guns, sandbags and Army-green storage boxes.  And lurking somewhere outside [...]

News flash:

Today, President Barack Obama went for a morning walk in the White House Rose Garden, looked up, and commented that the sky was “really blue”…

Shortly thereafter, conservative commentator Glenn Beck railed that the concept of a “blue sky” was something that Obama learned “at the knee of Saul Alinsky,” and that “blue sky” had also been [...]

Dear Glenn Beck:

Hi.  I know you’re probably having a little bit of a rough patch right now, but I just wanted to help you out a little bit with something that’s been bugging me for a while.
I actually listened to your radio train wreck show yesterday.  Don’t ask me why.  I was running errands and it was [...]

Here we go again…

Good grief.
Obama’s military spying on U.S. peace groups
by Amy Goodman
(TruthDig) July 28 - Anti-war activists in Olympia, Wash., have exposed Army spying and infiltration of their groups, as well as intelligence gathering by the Air Force, the federal Capitol Police and the Coast Guard.
The infiltration appears to be in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus [...]

Passing the hat for education?

Curious as to your responses to this:
Parents pass the hat to make up for school cuts
SEATTLE (AP) July 24 – Rachael Bouma calculated the cost of keeping rambunctious kindergartners under control at her son’s school at exactly $227.

That was the amount she and other parents in the Tacoma district figured every family with kids in [...]

Dear Pat Buchanan:

The other night on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, you went off on yet another long-winded rant about affirmative action and  Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court and the death of white male privilege in America.
As part of that rant, you mentioned the idea that “white people [mainly white MEN] built this [...]

Yet another reason why I am no longer a Democrat.

Democrats Drop Key Part of Bill to Assist Unions
(NY Times) July 16 – A half-dozen senators friendly to labor have decided to drop a central provision of a bill that would have made it easier to organize workers.
The so-called card-check provision — which senators decided to scrap to help secure a filibuster-proof 60 votes — [...]

Bad to worse.

First, we had all the news this weekeknd about the shananigans at the CIA.
Now THIS:
WASHINGTON (AP)  July 12 – President Barack Obama has ordered his national security team to investigate reports that U.S. allies were responsible for the deaths of as many as 2,000 Taliban prisoners of war during the opening days of the war in [...]

What we’re (still) up against.

Prepare to be angry.
Montco swim club accused of racial discrimination
PHILADELPHIA, Pa (Philadelphia Inquirer) July 9 - Days before a Northeast Philadelphia day camp’s membership at a private suburban swim club was rescinded, several of the campers said they had heard racial remarks about themselves at the pool.
Parents and staff members of Creative Steps Inc. day camp [...]

In memoriam.

Allow me to vent.
They’re burying Michael Jackson today, and they’re throwing him a big send-off in Los Angeles, and that “service” is being paid for with taxpayers’ money and that bugs me.  That’s millions in taxpayers’ money that the state of California apparently did not have when it shut down schools and laid off thousands [...]

Sick sad world, v. 1.

I give up.
Gun-loving pastor to his flock: Piece be with you
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) June 4 – A Kentucky pastor is inviting his flock to bring guns to church to celebrate the Fourth of July and the Second Amendment.
New Bethel Church is welcoming “responsible handgun owners” to wear their firearms inside the church June 27, a [...]

Riddle me this:

What are we supposed to do now?
U.N. Security Council condemns North Korea nuke test
NEW YORK (AP) May 25 - The U.N. Security Council swiftly condemned North Korea’s nuclear test on Monday as “a clear violation” of a 2006 resolution banning them and said it will start work immediately on a new one that could result in [...]

Here we go again. Again.

Sheriff: La. 8th grader planned school shooting
LAROSE, La. (AP) May 18 – A Louisiana middle school student who stormed into a classroom Monday and fired a gunshot over a teacher’s head, then shot himself in a bathroom had detailed plans for a rampage in a journal and suicide note, authorities said.
The 15-year-old student, whose name [...]

Just. plain. wrong.

A Different Kind of Boy Scout: Armed and Fighting “Terrorism”*
IMPERIAL, Calif. (The New York Times) May 14 – Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on [...]

We have become what it is we claim to fear.

The United States is a terrorist nation.  We have now become by our own definition a rogue state.
Any claims to the contrary are simply empty rhetoric and basically lies or expressions of delusional thinking.
If we torture them, we are no better than them.  And if we do this, then we are the same as they are:
White [...]

More on “The Army Experience.”

Seven Arrested at Philadelphia Mall Over Military Recruiting Practices

PHILADELPHIA, Pa (CommonDreams) May 2 - Several hundred demonstrators from a coalition of 30 national and regional veteran, youth and peace groups, including the Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, BuxMont Coalition for Peace Action, Student Peace Action Network, protested what they claimed were unethical military [...]

HUH?

WASHINGTON (CNN) April 30 – The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.
More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” [...]