- From the “Brotherly Love” Department – The police union in Philadelphia is holding a fundraiser for a police officer that has been suspended and may well be fired, at least for a few days, over an incident in which he punched a woman at a parade. You know, in IT, when someone gets caught abusing their privilege, like going through other people’s email or hiding their own unethical or illegal activity, they are kryptonite. In the army, someone who abused his rank, such as a drill sergeant who used his troops as a personal harem, was somewhere between whale scum and the bottom of the ocean with the rest of us. In this case, the police union is reinforcing the belief in an “us versus them” mentality in the police force. If the police want to have the trust of the rest of us, they need to be willing to single out those egregiously violate codes of ethics and conduct. Put another way, if the police won’t condemn one of their own who breaks the law, why should we allow them to condemn us when we break the law?
- From the “Big Plane, Small Plane” Department – The city of Minot, on the beautiful wind-swept prairies of North Dakota, is raising funds to build two models of B-52’s. The models are going to be donated to nearby Minot Air Force Base to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the B-52. The 1/8 scale models will have a wingspan of 32 to 36 feet, which will tell you how big a B-52 really is. Also, how many things in our world are still working after 60 years of almost constant use, including when people are shooting telephone poles at them at high speed?
- From the “Lying or Incompetent, You Make the Call” Department – Vice-President Joe Biden has started using our intelligence services and the State Department as wheel chocks for his tour bus after claiming that neither he nor the president was aware of requests by diplomats in Libya for additional security prior to the attacks of September 11, 2012. One of the things I look forward to in the event of a Romney victory is a plethora of hearings in Congress that feature a tape of the Watergate hearings saying “What did the President know, and when did he know it?” being played in a loop. To my brothers and sisters at Fort Meade and Foggy Bottom, you have my deepest sympathy, but at least you are in good company with the President’s grandmother under that bus.
- From the “Long Live the King” Department – The prince of Sealand, which is an artificial country situated on an old ocean platform the British military abandoned in the 1960’s, has died. His son, the crown prince, can now be expected to assume the throne. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a European coronation, so I expect to see the staff at the major news outlets freezing their butts off to cover what the new ruler and his family are wearing as they take control of their fiefdom. I’m guessing it will be a lot of fur and long underwear, accesorized with the scalps of all who oppose them.
All posts by daddybear71
News Roundup
Posted by daddybear71 on October 12, 2012
https://daddybearsden.com/2012/10/12/news-roundup-160/
What’s the Difference?
I know, as a parent, that I’m not supposed to compare my children. But something just happened that is absolutely remarkable, so I’m going to bend that rule just a tad.
Girlie Bear just came home with her first official progress report from her freshman year of high school. She got 4 A’s, 1 A-, and 2 B’s, and all of her classes except for JROTC and Choir are in the “Advanced” college prep track. She called me when she got home and was ecstatic about the grades, and actually had reasons for why the B’s weren’t A’s. I, of course, reassured her that a B was entirely acceptable, but if she wanted to work to an A, I wouldn’t complain.
In comparison, at this point in his freshman year, Junior, who went to the same school and took the same classes from a lot of the same teachers, had one A (Band), 1 C, four D’s, and a couple of U’s, which is modern educational jargon for what we used to call an “F”. The rational discussion I tried to start over what went wrong and what he was going to do to rectify the situation pretty much degenerated into one of those arguments that’s spoken of in hushed tones at family reunions after everyone has had a decade or so to cool off.
Junior is very bright, as is his sister. Girlie Bear has grown up here in Kentucky surrounded by college educated people who thought that getting a good education was the most important thing a young person can do. Junior spent his educational years, up until his freshman year of high school, going to excellent schools in California with his mom and step-dad, both of whom are college educated and also value learning. When he moved here to live with us and go to high school, he was in the same situation that Girlie Bear and Little Bear had grown up in.
So what is the difference?
Junior was identified early in his life as one of the smart ones, but never seemed to polish talent with hard work. He was one of those who didn’t do homework or participate in class, but could do OK to well on tests. His teachers in California did him no favors by putting up with this, because when he reached middle and high school, the habit of hard work just wasn’t there. When being smart wasn’t enough, and he was expected to also put in the hours and show product, he failed. To a large part, I blame myself, if for no other reason than the fact that I, as his father, should have been more forceful in his younger years to get him held back until he matured enough to handle both being intelligent and doing the work.
Girlie Bear, on the other hand, has never had anyone tell her that she’s the smartest girl in the room. Of course, I praise her when she does well, and I reward success as much as I try to motivate after failure, but we never blew sunshine up her skirt and as far as I know, neither did her teachers. She learned early that if she wanted to succeed, she had to work hard at it, and the habits stuck. It took one summer of giving up two days a week to go to math tutoring to convince her that it was easier to learn the first time.
The two have a much different attitude toward life. If anything, Girlie Bear is too hard on herself. If she comes home with a C on an assignment or test, we have to talk to her about how much she worked on it, and convince her that if she put forward her best effort, we were satisfied with the grade. She still looks at each A she gets as manna from heaven, even if she busted her tail to get it. Junior, on the other hand, looked at top marks as his birthright, and lower grades were blown off as “not his fault” or were because he “wasn’t interested” in the subject.
Now, will the grades on a six week report card when they were 14 mean much in the long run? Honestly no. Unless Girlie Bear becomes a mathematician, she won’t use a lot of what she learns in Geometry. The same goes for her other subjects. But the habit of working hard and wanting to earn each and every thing she has will help her in life. Junior is still struggling to learn that lesson, but he will eventually come around to it. It’s just easier to do when you’re still sheltered by your parents and school. Doing it when you and you alone are on the hook for food and shelter is much harder.
Posted by daddybear71 on October 12, 2012
https://daddybearsden.com/2012/10/12/whats-the-difference/
30 Days of Obama – Day 10
The private sector is doing fine. — 2012
My Take – The price of everything is going up. The number of people who have either taken part time employment because they can’t find a full time job, or have just given up on looking for a job, is higher than I’ve ever seen it. Companies are actively trimming their work force so that they can get out from at least a little of Uncle Sam’s regulatory thumb. Even companies that have been slathered liberally with taxpayer money are failing.
Yeah, the private sector is going just peachy. To quote a slogan from when I was a child, are you better off than you were four years ago?
Posted by daddybear71 on October 12, 2012
https://daddybearsden.com/2012/10/12/30-days-of-obama-day-10/
News Roundup
- From the “Father of the Year” Department – A man in Pennsylvania made a bad decision worse when he left his one year old daughter home alone while he went off to go rob houses in his neighborhood. I’m not sure if he’d be considered a better or worse father if he’d taken her along on his little caper. Talk about using the TV as a babysitter. Hopefully the little girl is able to overcome such a beginning. I also hope that this bluntskull doesn’t have any more kids.
- From the “Mother of the Year” Department – A woman in Texas is facing life in prison for using SuperGlue to fix her two-year-old daughter’s hands to the wall and savagely beating her over potty training. Her defense? Well, you see, this June Cleaver wannabe seems to have a pretty big marijuana habit, was stressed out by her kids, and just needed a break. Now, my kids get on my nerves on a regular basis, but I never considered beating Boo with a milk jug while he was glued to the bathroom wall. Hey, maybe she can be cell mates with the guy in the last story, assuming of course that both of them are fixed so that they don’t make an ungodly mix of stupid and hateful that will bring about the end of society as we know it.
- From the “Backyard Gourmet” Department – Several families were burned out of their homes recently when one of the neighbors used a propane torch to burn the fur off of a squirrel he planned to eat and set fire to his deck. I’m guessing that the erstwhile chef never heard of, oh I don’t know, skinning the darn thing? Plus, how hungry could he have been after smelling all that burnt hair?
- From the “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished” Department – The ATF agent who was among the group that brought Operation Fast and Furious, the Three Stooges inspired plan to weaken the Mexican drug cartels by arming them, has been fired by the agency. The agency maintains that he was let go because of a “lack of candor” in an unrelated case. If you believe that, I have some beachfront property in Tucson for you to look at. My guess is that the politically appointed management at the ATF is cleaning house while it still can. I hope he is reinstated, and if not, lives a long and rich life of the money we are all going to lose when he sues.
Posted by daddybear71 on October 11, 2012
https://daddybearsden.com/2012/10/11/news-roundup-159/
30 Days of Obama – Day 9
I opposed DOMA in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying. … I know how important the issue of equal rights is to the LGBT community. I share your sense of urgency. If I am elected U.S. Senator, you can be confident that my colleagues in the Senate and the President will know my position. — 2004
My Take – Like I said in an earlier post, I don’t care if gay people want to get married. I’m not exactly an expert in keeping a marriage together. If I’m free to screw up a marriage, then why not anyone else? President Obama promised for a long time to get the federal government out of the way for people who want to marry people of the same gender, and that was one of the few times I agreed with him.
Problem is, once he was in the White House, he didn’t do much for a very long time. I haven’t seen a motion to repeal DOMA, even when he had majorities in both houses of the Congress. He took several years to find a way to get rid of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which I would have thought would have been at the top of his to-do list in January 2009. He’s considered the military as a perfect laboratory for every other social experiment, why not that one?
Posted by daddybear71 on October 11, 2012
https://daddybearsden.com/2012/10/11/30-days-of-obama-day-9/
Thoughts on the Day
- Good – Spending the better part of Monday afternoon in a cubicle and conference room with a colleague working to diagnose and correct an issue with his systems.
- Bad – Said colleague calls in sick on Tuesday with strep throat
- Good – Getting effective treatment for your arthritis so that you can be a contributing member of society
- Bad – Said treatment suppresses your immune system so that it doesn’t attack your body, so you’re more susceptible to infection from co-workers with strep throat.
- Good – Going to bed Tuesday night feeling well
- Bad – Waking up Wednesday morning with just about everything wrong with your respiratory system except pneumonia.
- Not sure why I bother to have a primary physician anymore. I haven’t been able to get in to see her when I’m sick for several months. She’s wonderful for preventive things like physicals, but when I need her to help me get over the ick, there’s a two day wait.
- The doc in the box, on the other hand, got me in and out in 30 minutes.
- “Go to bed and rest” he says. “You’ll feel better after some sleep” he says.
- Irish Woman worked from home today, and her schedule was full of conference calls that require her to be on her computer in the bedroom all afternoon.
- Sleeping on the couch was out because the new gutters were being installed, and the gutter guys were playing whack-a-mole with the old gutters.
- Bluegrass was losing her mind trying to get through the front door to stomp a mudhole in someone.
- I guess I’ll sleep when I’m dead.
- NyQuil – For when moonshine just isn’t letting you breathe through your nose and sleep.
- Girlie Bear has her first air rifle competition. To say she’s excited might be a bit of an understatement.
- Is it “feed a cold and starve a fever”, or is it “drown both in corn liquor and spicy food”?
- ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Posted by daddybear71 on October 10, 2012
https://daddybearsden.com/2012/10/10/thoughts-on-the-day-56/
30 Days of Obama – Day 8
Most of all, I want to thank you for all the generous advance coverage you’ve given me in anticipation of a successful career. When I actually do something, we’ll let you know. — 2006
My Take – I know it hasn’t really ever happened, but I really wish I could find a news source that didn’t have an editorial department. Yes, I know that the ideal of a neutral news organization that only reports the facts without spinning it or cherry picking what gets reported for political purposes is a myth, and that the press has never truly been unbiased.
But it seems that in the past couple of decades even the genteel facade of neutrality that I remember seeing in the papers and on the evening news growing up has been stripped away. News organizations seem to be either rabidly out to destroy those in power if they disagree with them, or they seem to be the worlds biggest cheering section and smoke screen for those they like.
As someone who tries to be an informed voter, I find myself doing a lot of coin flipping in deciding whose reportage is accurate, and whose is nothing more than political editorializing with a news banner over it. I wish it weren’t so.
Posted by daddybear71 on October 10, 2012
https://daddybearsden.com/2012/10/10/30-days-of-obama-day-8/
News Roundup
- From the “Honor to the Honorable” Department – The Navy has commissioned a destroyer named in honor of Lieutenant Michael Murphy, a SEAL who was killed in Afghanistan in 2005. His actions to save his team earned him the Medal of Honor. Now his sacrifice is memorialized in a new ship that will continue his work to defend the nation.
- From the “Bad Things” Department – A fire on a Russian ammunition train caused several explosions recently. There are no reports on injuries, so I’m hoping that this just goes down as an “Aw crap” moment. No telling what caused this, but here’s hoping that the train wasn’t loaded by a bunch of conscripts that think that “Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives” sounded like a great combination.
- From the “Hard Time” Department – Jerry Sandusky, former football coach and current pederast, was sentenced today to at least 30 years in prison. Here’s hoping he lives to be a very old man so that he can savor each and every day of those decades. Hopefully some of those who covered for him and allowed him to continue raping little boys join him soon.
- From the “Aw Crap” Department – The Secretary-General of NATO has affirmed that the alliance is ready to defend Turkey from Syria if necessary. Those of you who have “The Guns of August” running through your mind at the moment, you’re not alone. I wonder how hard it is to entrench in southern Turkey? Unfortunately, almost all of my experience was up by the Black Sea.
- From the “Where Great Britain May Be Again” Department – The British Prime Minister has announced plans to change the laws on defending a home against an intruder in such a way that a person who uses force to stop a burglary will have an easier time avoiding prosecution. It seems that the limit on what you can and can’t do is to not attack a helpless burglar. I congratulate Mr. Cameron on his good sense and look forward to watching our British cousins take back their homes from criminals.
- From the “Taste of Things to Come” Department – A guidance counselor at a school in New York, who is reported to have had a stellar 12 year record in her job, has been let go because racy pictures, which she claims were taken when she was 18 to 20 years old, have started appearing at questionable websites. She is, of course, suing. With the advent of cheap, high quality camera phones, I see this as the tip of an iceberg that is going to strike the workforce in the next few years. All those youthful indiscretions would have been nothing more than memories to be dredged up at class reunions are now going to live forever on YouTube. I wonder how hard it would be to take a still picture of a job applicant and then run it through facial recognition software that mines the various picture and video websites looking for behavior that an employer might disapprove of. All of a sudden, taking a video of you and your girlfriends having a banana eating contest doesn’t sound like such a good idea, now does it? Or you and your fraternity brothers might want to make sure no-one has their phone out while you do a butt chug, just in case the people you try to get a job with after graduation do a quick check of your recreational activities.
Posted by daddybear71 on October 10, 2012
https://daddybearsden.com/2012/10/10/news-roundup-158/
30 Days of Obama – Day 7
The forces of division have begun to raise their ugly head again … It reminds me: We’ve got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country. A lot of pent-up anger and mistrust and bitterness. This country wants to move beyond these kinds of things. — 2008
My Take – Recently, an actress of African descent announced that she supports Mitt Romney in this election. She was almost immediately attacked, belittled, and insulted. These actions seem to have frequently included remarks about her race. How post-racial is that?
Am I wrong because I’m of northern European descent* and I like the messages of Herman Cain and Allen West? Of course not. Is the Irish guy I ran into today with the Obama tee-shirt on wrong? Nope. I may disagree with his choice, just as he may disagree with mine, but I’m not going to fault him because he chooses to support a candidate who happens to have a greater concentration of melanin than we do.
Race is still a large issue in this country, and it will be for a long time. The reasons why are both simple and complicated. The situation is complicated because there are so many different cultures and ethnicities mixed in our great melting pot, and breaking down the barriers and prejudices of all of them is going to take a lot of time, energy, and patience, and it will only be done as the people who hold them learn that race is an accident of nature, not a determinant of anything good or bad. It’s simple because race is usually only brought up when it’s used as a bludgeon, which only makes the hard work of getting something done about race even harder.
Want this country to move beyond race? Then quit stirring up old hatreds by equating someone being a jerk now with things that happened 50 years ago. Are there true racists in this country? Yes there are, and you now find them on the far fringes of our culture, unless you count the guys running the Nation of Islam, the hucksters who use race as a way to make a quick buck, and the soft racists who believe that non-Caucasians can’t make it on their own and need special programs and privileges to muddle their way through life. Most of America has turned its back on racism, and it’s way past time that those who use it as a tool or an excuse do the same.
*I’m not white. I’m much paler than that.
Posted by daddybear71 on October 9, 2012
https://daddybearsden.com/2012/10/09/30-days-of-obama-day-7/
Explorers
Leif Erickson sailed across the sub-Arctic seas in a small open-top boat with a bunch of cantankerous Scandinavians and landed and settled on one of the garden spots of northern Newfoundland 500 years before Columbus.
Gee, must be rough landing on a tropical paradise after sailing across the ocean in a boat with a roof.
Posted by daddybear71 on October 9, 2012
https://daddybearsden.com/2012/10/09/explorers/
DaddyBear
DaddyBear’s Den 