Inane Inanities - God Bless America Edition

1.  I thought China owned the US.  But everywhere I go on TV I hear Brits.  I hear a Brit in Larry King's old show, and a Brit is one of the CNN anchors at the 6:00 am and a different one at 6:00 pm slots.  I like to hear them talk but just because they lost their empire doesn't mean they have to take what is left of ours.  And now that there is a heavy news watching period, what with Japan and Libya,  Lord there are even more.  It doesn't make me racist or ethnist (I love the Brits, RB and Karen), but it makes me feel like I'm not in America.  It's like I'm in Manchester or Nottingham and watching the BBC.  By the way is there any way we can get Wolf Blitzer to work for BBC?

2.  And speaking of the Brits.  On the last Oscar show, the American grunge and slowing educational system was on full display.  Natalie Portman sloshed through a rambling incoherent speech for Best Actress, while Melissa Leo wowed us with a white-trash embarrassing F-bomb-laced acceptance speech.  Cringe-worthy is the best that can be said about most American verbiage while the Brits came on stage with clever, humorous, classy (and brief) speeches.  Waving a flag and saying "We're number 1" doesn't necessarily make it so.  Remember:  there are more Straight-A students in China than there are American students.  And then we crush teacher bargaining rights in Wisconsin. Hmmm.

3.  It was a busy few days down here in St. Pete in early March.  Met three groups to catch up on old times from up north.  Mark and his Oakview CC golfing buddies stayed at the Ulmerton Road Holiday Inn, and we met for a couple beers and some laughs.  Jeff Sutor and his wife Carol met me at Three Birds after they drove up from Ft. Lauderdale after a cruise.  They live near Wataga. I worked with Jeff at the Mary Davis Home for 8 years.  In fact he was hired just days after I was. He then worked at the Henry Hill Correctional Center in Galesburg and retired last year. And finally, Virgetta Junk and her husband Rich came down from Galesburg to see their son Lee who works and lives down here in St. Petersburg.  I worked with Virg at the MDH also for several years.  She still works there as a Teacher's Aide.

4.  After the Japanese tragedy it sure makes the NFL owners and players look greedy over how to divvy up 9 billion dollars.  I remember Luther my naighbor on Chambers never did go back as a big Cardinals fan after the '94 baseball strike.  Wouldn't it be fun to send a message to pro sports from all us fans, but, we have short memories, and will blindly go back to being big fans just to fill up our empty Sundays.

5.  And this from blogger Bill: 

Sooooo it seems that the Libyan no-fly operation is called Operation Odyssey Dawn.

Odyssey Dawn? Really? How fucking gay is that? What happened to names for military operations that didn’t sound like your old biddy aunt Ester and her friends from her crochet circle picked them?

Names like, Eagle Claw, or Urgent Fury, or Overlord, or Steel Tiger, or Flaming Dart, or Linebacker, or Rolling Thunder.

Now those were some butch-assed operational names.

Names that when you hear them you just know that some shit is gonna get blown up and that we’re gonna go in and kill some motherfuckers.

But Odyssey Dawn?

That conjures up a mental image of Mr. Tumnus prancing around in the snow in the Chronicles of fucking Narnia to me.

7.  To-Do Tattoo

A picture of a guy's tattoo was supposed to be here, but it vanished (try clicking the little red square).  It was a design of a "to-do" list on his wrist.  He had a few notes scibbled in ink on a few of the blank lines.

After the initial snicker and possibly the "cool" thought on this tat, reality  sets in and one eventually says, "What a dork."  You just inked, permanently, a stupid, minor, small world, blank to-do tat on your person. That defines, you man.  Forever. Idiot.

9.  I'm sitting here watching CNN (and all their English accented anchors) talk to former Generals and military experts talk about how our command structure, fighting equipment and trained personnel are the greatest with state-of-the-art "bar none" technology.  And I wonder why we are in a stalemate with sari-robed, pistol-packing, boot-n-shoot jihadists in Afghanistan.  Because if we can't get a bunch of bearded mountain goats in a fifth rate land, how are we ever going to handle a real army?

10.  It's kind of hard for me to get worked up over the death of Elizabeth Taylor.  Even as a movie buff I never saw many of her films.  And what I did see didn't impress me.  She always seemed a rather superficial high maintenance type girl what with 8 marriages and more Marilyn Monroe than Katherine Hepburn.  She was, simply, in my time, famous for being famous.  She befriended the friendless (Aids and Michael Jackson) so she gets points for that.  Still, she was one of a kind and her passing leaves a void.

11. “The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.”

Bob Herbert in the New York Times.

Maybe in my older age I've gotten more myopic, or perhaps I'm just seeing things different, but let's talk about our schools for just a second.  Perhaps the train that is now off the tracks called our educational system needs works first before we help rebel Muslims in Libya.  Here are just a few things I see as terribly wrong:

a.  No Child Left Behind - teachers hate it and students hate it.  Nuf said.

b.  Co-ed gym classes.  C'mon, guys need to play gym sports with guys and girls with girls.  Feminism is fine, but it forgets the most obvious tenet which is there is a difference between the sexes.  It's like that poor high school wrestler in Iowa who forfeited his state championship match because he would have had to wrestle a girl.  Don't blame the kid.

c.  We need year-round school.  We have kids bored after two weeks at home during the summer forgetting everything they learned, while kids everywhere else in the world are schooling year around and beating us at almost every level and subject.

d.  Too much politics in schools.  Piss off a board member and a teacher may be packing, regardless of the quality of your work. And yet that brings us back to NCLB again, doesn't it?

e.  March madness has just gone by but what about the school student-athlete-pro problem.

f.  And what about the schools who have the ridiculous zero-tolerance, or the no-American-flag-on-your-bike-equals-suspension policies?   Want me to go on?  A kid was expelled for giving another kid a Lifesaver.  Another kid, Justin Denney, in Pennsylvania was denied his diploma because he blew a kiss to his mother during the graduation ceremony.  Another kid was expelled for having a 2 inch lego gun.

g.  Most schools no longer allow showers after PE.  The reasons seem to be a new awareness of the locker room milieu as well as lack of time.  This is crazy.

h.  Check your kids' spelling and then let me know if I'm being too tough.

There are many wheels on a train that goes off the tracks.  Perhaps one of the wheels that derailed was when the Courts awarded $2.86 million to a lady in a McDonalds drive-thru who spilled coffee in her lap. 

12.  And what I hate about American Idol: 

a.  Those kids like to evaluate their performances and invariably they talk about "having fun".  What they don't realize is it's not about their fun, but rather ours.

b.  Mugging to the camera and following it wherever the camera goes, to the point of bodies twisting like a pretzels has never been artful or flattering.

c.  Steve Tyler's evaluative prowess is almost as poor as Ellen's were.  I miss the evisceration of Simon.  Poor Randy has been forced to be the "bad guy".  In a recent show Tyler called one of the contestants a "perfect imperfect" singer.  Oh, man, where are you Simon.  You could be cold but you were unequivocal and usually right.

d.  The audience booing any negative or constructive comments is old.        

13.  And this:  states are broke, the poor get poorer, the middle class shrinks, there are no jobs and the price of everything goes up.  Medicaire and Medicaid is going to be slashed, Social Security is going to be less for those who pay into it their whole lives, clean air and water is going to become irrelevant, but we can still build nuclear subs and fighter jets. 
What this chart tells us is that the US spends over 42% of ALL money spent by ALL nations in the world. Why not put a moratorium of defense spending (less troop salaries and other essentials) and put back into the US?  Couldn't we take care of people, and the military, and the deficit?
God bless America.

14.  And finally:  John Kyl from Arizona got up in Congress last week and claimed that 93% of what Planned Parenthood did was abortions.  Turns out it is only 3%.  His office issued a statement that Kyl's remarks were "not meant to be factual".  A guy standing up in Congress, representing his state, lied and didn't seem to be particularly troubled by it.  Again, God Bless America.