In the Platteville, Wisconsin race for sheriff, one of the candidates has legally changed his name to Andy Griffith. If his opponents would change their names to Claude Akins and James Arness, this thing might get interesting.
The State of Georgia requires 3rd, 5th and 8th grade students to take the CRCT, or Criterion-Referenced Competency Test. They are supposed to pass this test, showing whether or not they are working at their grade level, before being promoted to the next grade. Those who fail can take the test again. There is a waiver available to students who, at the principal's discretion, are performing well in class but fall just short of passing the CRCT. Sounds fair to me. Certainly no single test should determine if a student is prepared to advance. That being said...
Here in Bibb County, nearly 1,100 students in those three grade levels in Spring 2006 failed the CRCT and the retest. Of those, only 71 were held back. More than 93% who failed were passed on to the next grade.
None of the 432 eighth-grade students who failed were held back. Not a single one.
Is it possible that every single eighth-grade student who failed the test were actually working at or above grade level? The odds on that must be astronomical. Or is it more likely that the principals chose to simply overlook the CRCT scores and socially promote nearly every one of these students?
We had a fantastic trip to Charleston, South Carolina. I can't wait to go back again. Coming home from a fun vacation is always hard, but getting back in the swing of things at work is so much worse. Spending the last nine days (mostly) away from any and all things news-related was also sweet.
The wife and I are going on a short little trip out of state, so posting will be sparse between now and the middle of next week.
The media-enthralled side of me found this story interesting. The popular "Veggie Tales" animated Christian children's series has recently been added to the NBC Saturday morning lineup. The creators knew that some Christianity-specific lines might have to be changed. According to this interview with Phil Vischer, one of the co-creators, they never anticipated the amount of change that would be necessary. Apparently NBC never realized the show had a religious basis. You might think the creators would be upset by NBC's desire to change the shows, but I really like Vischer's attitude about it all...
I’m baffled when we Christians are shocked that the world is acting worldly. I wasn’t surprised at all. I’m hoping the reaction doesn’t turn into a letter-writing campaign to make a big stinky fit. It’s NBC. What did you expect them to do? Jesus warned us that we will not be popular.
A police officer from Tifton, GA was arrested for driving under the influence in his own patrol car.
A Gwinnett County, GA woman is again pushing to have the Harry Potter books removed from school libraries. It's mostly the same old prattle: they promote witchcraft, blur the line between reality and fantasy, etc. But there's a new twist this time around. She's claiming they create the right culture and conditions to lead to school shootings. Geez...
DDT, the most effective pesticide ever developed for fighting mosquitoes, is making a comeback in the Third World. John Stossel details the hysteria that let to the banning, and the rebirth, of a pesticide the World Health Organization now says "presents no health risk when used properly."
Further evidence of the strength of the U.S. economy, the Dow today topped its all-time high trading value and closed at a record high of 11,727.34, up 56.99 points.
This editorial from Yahoo News asks the same questions lots of folks are asking. Some excerpts:
...it didn't take long at all after Foley's resignation for the Democrats to call for an investigation of the entire Republican leadership in the House, charging that GOP stalwarts knew early on that Foley, as they like to say in the rehab business, had a "problem."
Democrats have begun losing their once-significant lead in the polls, and a mere five weeks before the midterm elections. Is this scandal the Democrats' own "October Surprise," meant to throw the GOP into a tailspin shortly before the vote?
Despite this, the immediate take by Democrats and much of the mainstream media was that this was a classic example of Republican hypocrisy -- talking "morals" and "values" while all the time shielding a child predator. But it was nothing of the kind.
If anything, the episode reveals the Democrats' hypocrisy about their own behavior. The fact that Foley resigned virtually within minutes of being told that ABC News had copies of his salacious e-mails and text messages indicates he at least felt shame for his actions. Can the same be said for Democrats?
Sadly, it doesn't seem so. How else can you explain the following?
In 1983, then-Democratic Rep. Gerry Studds of Massachusetts was caught in a similar situation. In his case, Studds had sex with a male teenage page -- something Foley hasn't been charged with. Did Studds express contrition? Resign? Quite the contrary. He rejected Congress' censure of him and continued to represent his district until his retirement in 1996.
In 1989, Rep. Barney Frank, also of Massachusetts, admitted he'd lived with Steve Gobie, a male prostitute who ran a gay sex-for-hire ring out of Frank's apartment. Frank, it was later discovered, used his position to fix 33 parking tickets for Gobie. What happened to Frank? The House voted 408-18 to reprimand him -- a slap on the wrist. Today he's an honored Democratic member of Congress, much in demand as a speaker and "conscience of the party."
In 2001, President Clinton, who had his own intern problem, commuted the prison sentence of Illinois Rep. Mel Reynolds, who had sex with a 16-year-old campaign volunteer and pressured her to lie about it. (Reynolds also was convicted of campaign spending violations.)
You get the idea. Democrats not only seem OK with the kind of behavior for which Foley is charged, but also they protect and excuse it. Only when it's a Republican do they proclaim themselves shocked -- shocked! -- when it comes to light.
We have a lot more questions about this whole affair. The timing of the revelations, as we noted, couldn't be more propitious for the Democrats. Turns out both the Democrats and several newspapers seem to have known about Foley's problem as far back as November, according to research by several enterprising blogs.
Why didn't they come forward then? Who dredged up these e-mails -- and why did they hold them until now? This reeks of political trickery.
Douglas, GA is holding their 2006 National BBQ Festival on Friday and Saturdya, November 3rd & 4th. It's a pretty big event, featuring top five 2005 Overall Cooking Teams from every sanctioning organization in the country.
Mark Goley was sharing some very inappropriate emails and IM's with underage kids. We know it and he resigned because of it. Those facts are not in dispute. He's a sick person, and he deserves far worse treatment than he's probably going to get.
But, the story behind the story is getting pretty sordid. Copies of emails have been released, supposedly exchanged between Foley and one or more Congressional pages. Much like the CBS Memogate scandal, a lot of scrutiny is being put on those emails. And you know, some pretty odd things are turning up.
Wild Bill at Passionate America, and others, have noted that the emails seem to have been altered or retyped before being released. Blogger Rick Moran at Rightwing Nuthouse has looked into the web site that "broke" the story. Sounds like a concerted effort to bring Foley down. It's an interesting read. Gateway Pundit looks at someone who may have been trying to "out" Foley for some time.
I'm no conspiracy nut, but this is all very interesting.
Last week, the Macon Telegraph had stories and pictures from the latest expedition to the undersea resting place of the USS Macon. Before it went down in 1935, it was the world's largest airship, measuring 785 feet in length.
This morning, we see what looks to be the next generation in airships, built by Millenium Airship Inc. These futuristic looking craft will have enormous payload capabilities, and the ability to load or unload cargo anywhere, even at sea. Pretty neat...
The Census Bureau estimates that the population of the U.S. will top 300 million sometime around the middle of the month. This will apparently make us the #3 nation on Earth, behind China and India, in population.
Like most people, my stomach has turned reading about the inappropriate emails and instant messages sent by Florida Rep. Mark Foley to some congressional pages. The guy is sick, plain and simple. Not because he was interested in other guys, but because he was interested in underage guys. A person's orientation is their own business. But these were kids, and this slimeball seems to have been trying to entice them. That deserves investigation.
I hate that this guy is a Republican, but he had to go. It means losing that seat in the House, but that's not important. I also hate that the Dems are going to try to make political hay out of this. But you know what, if the GOP leadership knew ANYTHING about Foley's actions and did nothing to remove him... well, we deserve what we get.
This is the new (and hopefully improved) look for AWFTR. I think I'm happy with the way it's turning out. I'm feeling recharged, and ready to bring this thing back to life. Of course, the law of unintended consequences brought itself to bear during the makeover. I've lost all the visitor tracking statistics from the first two years of this blog's existance. That's not a problem, though. We're looking ahead, not behind. I think the design is more appealing to the eye. Comments and backlinks should be easier now, also.
Now, if I can just get back everyone lost during the sabatical...
Recently I've grown more and more unsatisfied with the look and feel of this blog, but I really haven't had time to do a complete rework on it. Rather than make small tweaks here and there, I just took a break for a while. In TV terms, I put the darned thing on hiatus. But soon, a new look will be unveiled. Stay tuned...
To me, that would be Bob Hope. No one was off limits, and his humor was always good natured. For my money, the greatest comic/comedic actor of all time. I've been watching an old movie of his, "The Ghost Breakers". Long plot made short, Hope tries to help Paulette Goddard rid her ancestral home of ghosts and bad guys. Hearing about zombies, Hope asks Richard Carlson's character about them...
Carlson: "It's worse than horrible because a zombie has no will of his own. You see them sometimes walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring."
Hope: "You mean like Democrats?"
Connecticut millionaire businessman Ned Lamont, who sharply criticized the employment practices of Wal-Mart this week in his campaign to unseat Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Democrat primary. Turns out, Lamont and his family own about $31,000 in Wal-Mart stock, producing $3,500 annually in dividends to the Lamonts. In addition, Lamont set up a trust fund for one of his children with $15,000 of Wal-Mart stock, generating over $1,000 annually in dividends. I suppose he figures they might be an evil, bad company, but their money's just as green as everyone else's.
The more that's uncovered about the supposed Israeli "massacre" of civilians in the Lebanese city of Qana, the more certain it is that the "massacre" was a staged event by Hezbollah. Staged to make Israel look evil. It sure worked, the world media ate the story up. There's never been an anti-Israel story the mainstream media didn't like. Especially now. But this one is falling apart, and David Warren discusses how it's going down.
