Sarge

Clichés

The daily tedium starts with the awareness politicians will speak enough clichés daily to send any pundit screaming from the room in hopes of: A.) removing himself from the vacuous speechifying, B.) distancing himself from the candidate’s generalized lack of verbal acumen necessary to get a thought across or, C.) being able to keep from slapping the idiot speaking with a two by four.

Homogenizing America

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is a man I once respected as a great American and an ideal to pattern oneself after. Today I think he’s an idiot worthy of relegation to a home for the terminally senile or worse, incredibly stupid and insensitive. I not only question his patriotism, I place in question his loyalty to America.

In a Killing Haze

The tragedy of 911 started a chapter of history never to be fully appreciated by all Americans. The statement’s bold because it means some people will have suffered the effects of war in a far more personal manner than those glibly spouting theories as though their philosophical worldview is any less prismatic than our politics.

Life in a Petri Dish

Yesterday was a prime indicator of teachers’ and their unions’ integrity as it relates to the NEEDS of kids as opposed to their own. The debate’s childish when looking at the conduct of the participants and how their ultimate goals relate to each other.

Bait and switch

My father absolutely loved to dine on Hash. It was an agglomeration of not always recognizable meat by-products. It may well have been definable as leftover chopped meat and vegetables, cooked in a skillet, sometimes with gravy. I called it a mess more reminiscent of previously eaten and digested foods rather than a coherent, recognizable dinner. After rejecting the meal on a regular basis and after being told to eat what was placed before me or leave the table, I scavenged leftovers in the refrigerator when nobody was looking. (It beat getting a spanking and/or losing TV privileges.)

‘Da Gambler

Just another Monday morning. The coffee’s hot and the politics is tepid as usual. It’s tepid because it’s the same old thing of ego-maniacs preening and posturing rather than working on solving problems.

Bail-out for CATS

“CATS” is supposed to stand for: Capitol Area Transportation System. It should be called: the Capitol Area Taxing Specialists, led by Mayor Kip Holden and his band of Meddlin’ Merry Minions. They want to control everything. Their competence is easily recognized as questionable.

Real jeopardy

Question: Marlin Perkins and Jim Fowler? (Insert music from Jeopardy ©.) Answer: Who are these men and what did they do? They were the weekly hosts of a nature/animal oriented television show sponsored by an insurance company. It was the manner in which Marlin Perkins (Director Emeritus of the St. Louis Zoo) and Fowler highlighted the lives of various animal species captured on film in their natural habitat made them competitive with Disney’s “pocket documentaries” (90 minute or less durations).

Ad hominem…ad nauseum

min·is·try: n. (pl. min·is·tries) 1.a. The act of serving; ministration. b. One that serves as a means; an instrumentality. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Engagement

This Sunday’s Advocate, quoted Louisiana State Treasurer John Kennedy as suggesting legislators and BESE Board members should “substitute teach in a Louisiana public school at least one time in 2012”. Kennedy suggested the “substitute” assignment should be more than a self-serving press opportunity and “feel-good” (my quote) political photo-op of a politician (or his wife) reading “The Cat in the Hat” to kindergarteners. Real engagement with the kids is desirable.

Sacrifice unappreciated

The first place any presidential administration or Congress looks to when the belt needs tightening is the military. They never restrict themselves or their cronies; they simply cleave military funding until Valley Forge looks like a picnic. Witness the resurrected attempt to take health care funding for retirees, wounded warriors and dependents from the responsibility of the government and transfer it to private insurance carriers a la’ ObamaCare.

Get a clue

The National Governor’s Association is more a showcase for dysfunctional politics than it is a foundation for bipartisan solutions to America’s ills.

Power slidin’ toward oblivion

Barack Obama has a problem and doesn’t know how to overcome it: how do you continue to mask your inability to lead a country when you have nothing but your own tired, hackneyed rhetoric to instill confidence in a people having none in you?

Moral structure

Moral structure’s a lot like a building; it can protect you from the storm if constructed properly and attention’s paid to its maintenance. Or, it can provide a false sense of security falling to the first windstorm of detrimental circumstances testing the structure’s integrity. It’s a matter of how much attention was paid to the selection of the materials used in the construct.

No basis for faith

In the beginning, man was connected to his world by his posture of subservience to the world around him. This world dictated he fend for himself, to explore, seeking the sustenance gave him strength to seek it more efficiently and successfully. He arose from his stooped, inferior posture to one of burgeoning dominance over what he developed as HIS world. He bonded with others like him, creating society. Society developed culture. Culture developed acceptable practices (and unacceptable acts to be avoided) for individuals living in groups.

Rime of the ancient copier

Should kids be allowed to quit school at 16 years old? Is it any better if they wait until age 18? Keeping them in school until 18 only creates people with a history of 730 more days of enduring classes they don't want to participate in.

The Death of Logic

Where do we begin? Let's start with the cosmological Big Bang Theory. In pre-history, nothing came together with other quantities of nothing and so aggravated nothing it became excited and created an explosion of such colossal proportions the space dust came together as it split apart (?) and the universe was born.

Looking back at Civics

Many years ago, back when the earth's crust had barely cooled and politics was known as the infernal pit it is, there was a course taught in schools. It was called CIVICS. It was defined as the social science of municipal affairs. It was a class where you learned what your government did and how its job was done.

When they came…

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist.

 When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat.

 When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist.

 When they came for the Jews, I remained silent; I wasn't a Jew. 

When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out. --Martin Niemoller (1945)

The Day of Atonement

Barack Obama quotes scripture to justify taxing people. Luke 12:48 says: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” He chose this tract to make his point.