Up and Ready Again

Lots to discuss this AM, while Ashley naps....

I see U of M athletics is in the news again. This time it wasn't the shady doings of hiring. Apparently there are allegations of grade coddling. Hello!?!?! Can anyone doubt this? Do you remember the reaction to Jim Harbaugh's concern with the lack of academic effort and achievement expected of UM athletes? As I wrote then, every, and I mean every, U of M grad should be furious if Harbaugh's allegations are remotely true. But then again, if the teams are winning, what U of M alums care? Such hypocrites! "The Harvard of the West" my eye--it's not even the Harvard of Michigan. Back to the current snafu. Does anyone doubt this grade padding isn't going on? Has anyone listened to any of the player interviews in recent years? Has anyone noted the police blotter in recent years? And, although I don't know for certain, consider tihs: some prof has hundreds of "independent study" courses, 86% of which go to athletes; the average grade point for these athletes in these IS courses is greater than 3.6!!!!! Now that's more than a full letter grade higher than their already inflated GPAs. C'mon, a 3.6 is an A-; are these athletes A- students, in a discipline like psychology? See above. Once again, U of M alums should be outraged at this--but, hypocritically again, they won't care.

Ethanol?!?! Our former earth saver is apparently not anywhere close to it. In fact, it uses more energy in its creation than it saves! It also has unintended consequences that Congress and the President never considered. Of course, would any of us ever think Congress and the President would ever consider possible unintended consequences? So, let's let the federal government solve all of our problems, you know, like global warming, the housing crisis, etc. And we just sit back watching American Idol or whatever shows they are..... Shame on them; even more shame on us.

And, finally, someone points out in the newspaper how school districts fudge their budget crises. Now there's a surprise, that school districts are duplicitous, disingenuous, even dishonest. They sit on their "rainy day funds" for what? Some "rainy day," of course. But what, to these people, is a "rainy day?" I know, I know--for one thing, interest rates on borrowing are lower if there's such a fund. Hmmmm. I wonder if the money were used to balance budgets, that is, to be more financially/fiscally responsible--not running a deficit?--lending institutions would consider that in determining lower borrowing rates. Nah, think about the housing/mortgage situation.

Yep, let's bail out those greedy people--both borrowers and lenders--who tried to get richer and richer, live well beyond their means. Let's take the money (you know, steal more of it in the form of taxes) from people who were more frugal (dare I say intelligent?) and saved, actually saved, money to buy houses and reward those who want it all right now. Let the lenders go bankrupt; let the buyers struggle. This might be a hard, but a good, lesson for everyone. By the way, remember buying your first house? I think my mother-in-law still harbors it against me for making her daughter eat "Chunky Soup on bulk white rice" two or three times a week for dinner while we were saving for the first house.

Let me leave on a positive note. My grandkids are great! I just love the heck out of both of them. Ashley is the cutest thing going--not that I'm prejudiced at all! She bawled like, well, a baby, when I left her yesterday afternoon; she motioned me with her cute little "come here" gesture. Yeah, it melted my heart. Michael and I had a great time earlier yesterday--and Sat eve. He helped me make dinner, preparing a lion's share of it himself. We went to Borders for books yesterday, with a detour to DQ for a blizzard on the way home. Ah, yes....life is good. Speaking of the devil (or angel), Ashley just woke up from her nap.

Gotta run; forgive any errors since I don't have time to proofread.