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News/Politics 11-26-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Let’s hope this sends the message loud and clear that covering stuff like this up will not be tolerated.

From CNN  “A grand jury investigating the 2012 rape of a 16-year-old girl in Steubenville, Ohio, has indicted four school employees, including the school superintendent, who faces felony charges, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced Monday.

Steubenville City Schools Superintendent Michael McVey faces three felony counts: one charge of tampering with evidence and two counts of obstructing justice. He also is charged with making a false statement and obstructing official business, both misdemeanors, DeWine said.

Also indicted was elementary school principal Lynnett Gorman and wrestling coach Seth Fluharty, both of whom are charged with misdemeanor failure to report child abuse. Volunteer assistant Steubenville football coach Matt Belardine was charged with four misdemeanors: allowing underage drinking, obstructing official business, making a false statement and contributing to the unruliness or delinquency of a child.

This brings to six the number of people the grand jury has indicted after two students were convicted of rape, DeWine said. A school technology director and his daughter were indicted in October.”

And Anonymous deserves some credit here for shaming authorities into doing the right thing.

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2. This one doesn’t surprise me.

From TownHall  “The magnitude of this Obama administration’s “progressive” radicalism becomes more evident with each passing day. In recent months, there has been a drastic spike in acts of both anti-Christian and anti-conservative discrimination and intimidation on military bases across the country. This mounting harassment is not being carried out at the hands of regular enlisted folk but, rather, at the hands of high-ranking officials who, in their official capacity, are targeting Christian and conservative organizations and individuals in an effort to silence them.

It has long been suspected that the Obama administration is using propaganda circulated by the roundly discredited Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, a left-wing extremist group that, in recent years, has adopted two primary goals: 1) raising truckloads of money and 2) smearing as “domestic hate groups” dozens of mainstream Christian ministries like the Family Research Council, or FRC, and the American Family Association, or AFA.

This suspicion has now been verified.

The problem on military bases has gotten so bad, in fact, that the U.S. Congress is demanding answers from the Pentagon. Recently, the AFA-affiliated OneNewsNow.com newsgroup reported that “Congressman Alan Nunnelee (R-Mississippi) is 1 of 38 members of Congress signing off on a letter to the Secretary of the Army – especially about an incident last month at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, in which the Tupelo-based American Family Association was labeled in Army training material as a ‘hate group.’ The Army initially claimed it was an isolated incident.”

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3. This one? Wow. Just wow.

From TheDailyCaller  “In a frank and stunning letter to parents, eight school principals from  around the state of New York have expressed deep concerns about the validity and  usefulness of new Common Core-aligned tests foisted on all public-school  children in grades three through eight.”

“We know that many children cried during or after testing, and others vomited  or lost control of their bowels or bladders. Others simply gave up. One teacher  reported that a student kept banging his head on the desk, and wrote, ‘This is  too hard,’ and ‘I can’t do this,’ throughout his test booklet.

The principals also observe that students are spending considerably more time  taking standardized tests this year. New York third-graders, for example, are  now spending 163 percent more time filling in bubbles thanks to Common Core.

In addition, the principals say the tests are too long and contain too many  experimental questions which don’t count toward a student’s score. “We know that  many students were unable to complete the tests in the allotted time,” they say.  They point out that it’s hard to know if students don’t know the answers to all  the scored questions, or if they just aren’t getting to them in time.”

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4. Some of the victims of Syria’s war are finding care in Israel. The Islamic rebels will not be pleased.

From BBCNews  “She had to be taken to a point inside Syria from where she could be seen by Israeli soldiers patrolling the fence that marks the old ceasefire line between the two countries that dates back decades. A military ambulance then took her to hospital – she made it on time.”

“The humanitarian chain that got the woman from her home village under heavy shellfire to the boundary fence and then to hospital links guides in Syria to Israeli Army paramedics on the frontier, to the doctors and nurses in Tzfat.”

“She was the 177th person to make the journey to the emergency room in what has become one of the most extraordinary subplots of Syria’s agonising civil war.

“And yet, since the first patients arrived around nine months ago, the informal system of patient transfer has become so well-established that some patients have even arrived with letters of referral written by doctors in Syria for their Israeli counterparts.”

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5. This one is quite lengthy and made it’s way around Facebook yesterday, so you may have read it. You don’t need to be an animal rights activist to think that this is wrong.  

From TheHollywoodReporter  “A year later, during the filming of another blockbuster, Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, 27 animals reportedly perished, including sheep and goats that died from dehydration and exhaustion or from drowning in water-filled gullies, during a hiatus in filming at an unmonitored New Zealand farm where they were being housed and trained. A trainer, John Smythe, tells THR that AHA’s management, which assigned a representative to the production, resisted investigating when he brought the issue to its attention in August 2012. First, according to an email Smythe shared with THR, an AHA official told him the lack of physical evidence would make it difficult to investigate. When he replied that he had buried the animals himself and knew their location, the official then told him that because the deaths had taken place during the hiatus, the AHA had no jurisdiction. The AHA eventually bestowed a carefully worded credit that noted it “monitored all of the significant animal action. No animals were harmed during such action.”

A THR investigation has found that, unbeknownst to the public, these incidents on Hollywood’s most prominent productions are but two of the troubling cases of animal injury and death that directly call into question the 136-year-old Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit’s assertion that “No Animals Were Harmed” on productions it monitors. Alarmingly, it turns out that audiences reassured by the organization’s famous disclaimer should not necessarily assume it is true. In fact, the AHA has awarded its “No Animals Were Harmed” credit to films and TV shows on which animals were injured during production. It justifies this on the grounds that the animals weren’t intentionally harmed or the incidents occurred while cameras weren’t rolling.”

“The full scope of animal injuries and deaths in entertainment productions cannot be known. But in multiple cases examined by THR, the AHA has not lived up to its professed role as stalwart defenders of animals — who, unlike their human counterparts, didn’t themselves sign up for such work. While the four horse deaths on HBO’s Luck made headlines last year, there are many extraordinary incidents that never bubble up to make news.”

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25 thoughts on “News/Politics 11-26-13”

  2. I have a friend whose daughter is a straight A student. She missed about 2/3 of the questions on that test. The girl said she is use to being able to study for a test. I’m not sure if it is a problem with the public school system or the test.

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  4. Something did not ring true to me when the story first appeared. It was too close on the heals of another similar story.

    In my younger, “witchier” days I did not leave a tip and told the waitress why she did not receive one. She poured me a refill of iced tea, didn’t get enough ice in it so she poured my tea back in the pitcher and then repoured my tea–remember, I had probably back washed into the original glass!

    Now I would NEVER do that! I would leave a tip and a note telling her to watch out the next person might now be as forgiving as me. Although I have never waited tables if I have a meal in a restaurant with someone that has they often ask where I waited tables.

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  5. Kim,

    The key thing to remember is never complain until you’re done eating. 🙂

    And whatever you do, don’t allow them alone time with your food if you have already complained. 😯

    Trust me, bad things happen.

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  6. Karen,

    The story seems to indicate that she knows she’s been caught lying, so she says that’s the way she remembered it. Doesn’t look like she wants to fess up to the hoax.

    And I got a laugh out of the rest. saying they had launched an internal investigation. They must have called in the kitchen police. If charges for filing a false report are necessary, she will be judged by a jury of kitchen workers, and if found guilty, she will be sentenced by the hostess on that shift. 🙄

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  7. I once carpooled with a lady who had been a waitress. She said that if you had bed service, and want to make a statement, always leave two cents for a tip. If you leave nothing, the waiter/waitress thinks you forgot.

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  8. AJ, in my earlier years someone told me that it was very likely the wait staff was spitting in my food.
    I got the message and mended my ways. In all fairness these incidences happened before I was 20. Somehow I didn’t know better and it wasn’t because I had never been to restaurants or because I witnessed my parents mistreating the servers.

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  9. You guys are so right about it being a bad idea to complain to the same staff that handles your food! My dad is often rude to the wait staff, and makes me and others we’re with uncomfortable when we’re out with him. My sister and I always try to make clear to the wait staff that it’s *him* being the jerk, not us.

    Did any of you see the story on one of those newsmagazine shows (like 48 hours or 20/20 or whatever) where they have hidden cameras inside a roadside restaurant in Texas (I think)? They set up a phony ‘family’ of two lesbians and a couple kids eating at a table, and a ‘waitress’ who gets abusive with them when she realizes the women are lesbians. The goal is to capture the reactions of other patrons who witness the confrontation. The patrons generally come to the defense of the ‘family,’ and advise the ‘waitress’ to be less hostile. The tone of the piece, as expressed by the show’s narrator, is one of surprise that people down in Texas would come to the defense of people who are actually homosexual. To me, it was *hilarious* that the show’s producers unwittingly demonstrate their bias, having clearly assumed that hicks down south would have run those dirty lesbos out of town.

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  10. Warning there may be language or content:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/30/the-daily-show-alabama-mississippi-gay-video_n_4177839.html

    What is most telling is the comments. People are so deeply entrenched in their stereotypical beliefs about the South that surely the Daily Show must have edited out the bad parts and what if it were an inter-racial couple. Two people from the South responded but were ignored.

    Me? Well, Litlle Miss L will be attending Thanksgiving at my house this year. Her mommy is the white daughter of my white friend. Her daddy is the black son of a realtor I know.

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  11. What confuses me is that people in restaurants know the sexual orientation of the customers or wait staff. Unless they were doing something unbecoming, that normal couples wouldn’t even do.
    Under normal conditions, I never know, not even think about, the sexual orientation of people.

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  13. More early-season candidate musings.

    http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/11/luke-scottwalker-for-president.php

    Solar/Kim, there are some strong anti-southern (Texas being particularly disdained) biases among west coasters (and east coasters, too, I’m sure).

    And Fox News has become one of the most pilloried entities among liberals on social media these days. Whenever I post a news item on fb I try to find the CNN or another outlet’s version — otherwise I know it will simply be dismissed if not worse by people reading it. 😦

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  14. Speaking of stereotyping southerners, this is weirdest thing that ever happened to me while raising a biracial child in the deep South. It happened when we lived in an apartment while our house was being repaired for tornado damage. My son had befriended a little boy whose family had just moved down from Michigan. One day they were playing together at the pool and the boy’s mother came up to me and asked it she could get my son a piece of candy from the club house. I said “sure.” Then she said that my son had said he couldn’t go in the club house because he was black, then she went into the club house. Just then my husband walked up and I told him what she had said. We called the Kid over and asked what he has said to her. He said he told her he couldn’t go into the clubhouse because he was WET. Then I realized that she hadn’t come out of the club house and I got a sinking feeling. I go inside and and sure enough, find her berating a couple of confused looking employees. I clarified what he had really said. The employees looked relieved, Michigan mom looked embarrassed and they kind of avoided us after that.

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  15. Donna,

    Ah yes, the closed mindedness of the supposedly open minded liberal. They can’t stand Fox because it might destroy their worldview with actual facts. We can’t have that. 🙄 So the open minds clamp shut at the mention of Fox. It’s a self-preservation thing. Otherwise they might have to admit there are flaws in their theories on life, and then the whole charade crumbles.

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  16. Thanks for that link, KimH. I’m not able to watch the clip where I’m at, but it looks similar to the one I had seen. Notice the headline of the huffpo article/clip:

    ‘The Daily Show’ Sent A ‘Gay’ Couple To Alabama And Mississippi, And The Results Might Surprise You

    What “results” were they expecting from those southerners? Lynchings? Firebombs? There are some gay marriage advocates who insist that if you merely oppose gay marriage rights, or the concept of gay marriage, you are by definition a hateful bigot. Many of the comments in KimH’s article demonstrate that rationale. There’s really no getting through to those people. Maybe there are more reasonable gay marriage proponents who can appreciate some of the nuances of counterarguments, but those people are either few and far between, or not ‘vocal’ on internet forums. Whatever the case, there’s a clear irony at how bigoted those anti-Christian bigots are.

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  19. I saw that episode from the Daily Show on the “gay” couple in the South and I thought they did a rather clever job mocking the stereotypes people had of the south. At the same time I’m sure they edited out anyting they didn’t want to show and probably prevented any visceral reactions (which they would do for any satirical skit)

    I’m pretty ambivalent about standardized testing. In Ontario its done in grade 3,6,9, and 10. When it was first started, there were reports similar to the ones listed about the common core much of it from teaching professionals opposed to it but once things settled into routine few complaints are heard anymore. However, its important to maintain other evaluation tools and other sources of learning (the arts, phys ed, etc). And its important to create the test to match the curriculum and not the other way around.

    For those who missed my post yesterday

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  21. Mumsee. No, but I only noticed it after it was posted and I figured nobody would notice.
    Now, don’t go making assumptions about the structure of that last statement. 🙂

    Rather, I figured that everyone would know what I meant.
    I mean…………………….
    I’ll bet everyone will go back to read it now.

    :loL:

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  22. I doubt they had to edit the skit much. Probably less than if they had done the skit somewhere else. We are polite and tend to mind our own business.

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  23. A guy goes into a bar in Louisiana where there’s a robot bartender! The robot says, “What will you have?” The guy says, “Whiskey.” The robot brings back his drink and says to the man, “What’s your IQ?” The guy says,” 168.” The robot then proceeds to talk about physics, space exploration and medical technology.

    The guy leaves, . . . but he is curious . . . So he goes back into the bar. The robot bartender says, “What will you have?” The guy says, “Whiskey.” Again, the robot brings the man his drink and says, “What’s your IQ?” The guy says, “100.” The robot then starts to talk about Nascar, Budweiser, the Saints and LSU Tigers.

    The guy leaves, but finds it very interesting, so he thinks he will try it one more time. He goes back into the bar. The robot says, “What will you have?” The guy says, “Whiskey,” and the robot brings him his whiskey. The robot then says, “What’s your IQ?” The guy says, “Uh, about 50.”

    The robot leans in real close and says, “SO . . . you people . . . still happy . . . with Obama?”

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