July?

July?  Already?  What happened to June??????

Two stories this week are bothering me a great deal.  Apparently, in Metro Detroit, a 2-year old was gunned down deliberately, the murderer leaving a van, walking up to the youngster playing in the yard and putting a bullet in her head.  He then turned his gun on two people on the porch and wounded them.  A 2-year old???  It's heinous crimes like this that makes a good part of me want to bring back the death penalty--and maybe the rack and the screw, too!

And a soccer referee was assaulted on Sun, dying from the attack.  He had thrown out a player who had been playing too rough, in a recreational soccer game.

Is this where we've arrived?  It's become OK in some people's minds to behave in this anti-social way?  Is this a result of a change in societal values over the past few decades?  I've blogged about this many times before and I don't want to rehash it all over again, but somewhere, sometime we have to get it through people's heads that not all ideas, not all desires are equal.  Being "dissed" or having something undesirable occur doesn't give one carte blanche to exact revenge any way one wants.  I remember seeing a tee shirt a long time ago that read, "I'm somebody because God didn't make any junk."  Well, in these two instances, and more, even if God didn't make them, these murderers became junk.

Howard Baker died last week and, even if one disagreed with his politics, one had to agree he was an honest man with a lot of class.  He is known for many things, perhaps best as the US Senator who, in 1974, asked the questions regarding Watergate, "What did the President know and when did he know it?"  That is, in the words of one writer, a statement "piercing in its clarity."  We have lauded Senator Baker for this, rightly so.  Now, I have a question, perhaps not so clear, but perhaps piercing in its own way.  Where is the statesman who will ask similar relevant questions of our current President and members of his administration?  No, I'm not holding my breath.

Did you catch Hillary Clinton's statement that she and her philandering husband are not "truly well off."  The chutzpah of the woman!  The Clintons are said to be worth in excise of $100 million.  Gee, in my whole lifetime of work, sometimes holding three and four and even five jobs at a time, about 50 years now, I'll be lucky to have made, in total, about 1-2% of what the Clintons have.  I guess, since I mentioned Howard Baker's question above, one might ask how the Clintons "born to the middle class" (her words), became public servants whose salaries were handsome, but not necessarily extravagant, soon became mulit- multi- multi-millionaires.  How anyone can even think about voting for her for President is beyond me.

A recent Quinnipiac poll shows that American "voters" think Obama is the worst President since WW2.  Hmmm......  Didn't they elect him a second time?  Less popular than W. Bush?  Still, worse than Carter and Nixon?  Wow! That's saying something.  Again, I've blogged numerous times about how bad I think Obama is; no need to repeat that here and now.  The same poll revealed that the respondents think Reagan was the best and Clinton the second best since 1945.  Hmmm......  History books and we history teachers must not be doing a very good job--or perhaps there's a little bias in our books and classrooms?  Have we forgotten about Truman and Eisenhower?  Apparently we have.  I think I can make a pretty good case that they were, not only the best Presidents since WW2, but rank right up there at the top--in the top three or four--since Abraham Lincoln.  Still the poll led my brother to suggest an op-ed by Nolan Finley in today's Det News.  http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140703/OPINION01/307030004/0/OPINION0305/Brightest-aren-t-your-election-ballot

Why aren't our "best and brightest" running for office?  (I'll let slide, at least for today, the quality or lack of it, in those now holding public office.)  There are a number of reasons.  Why would a decent, reasonable, intelligent person want to be associated with the likes of today's politicians?  That is, who wants to be labeled "a politician?"  Oh, there are some good ones, maybe most are OK.  But the really rotten ones, usually those at the top, give the entire group of them bad names.  And, with the imprimatur of society to lie and cheat and do all kinds of dishonest things with no repercussions, why would any decent, self-respecting person want to have his/her good name besmirched with lies and other dishonest claims?  I guess I liken that to becoming a teacher in today's climate, at least here in Michigan.  Not only is the pay lousy and getting worse due to seemingly annual pay cuts (not to mention benefit slashes), but it's open season on teachers.  (Remember, I think some, maybe many, teachers deserve the scorn; but certainly not all of them.)  Who wants to work hard, only to find they are underappreciated, if at all, and constantly criticized?  Who wants to work in an educational system that has become dominated by politicians and corporate-types, who know little if anything about learning and teaching other than they went to school when they were younger?  Again, see the Common Core (and, again, follow the money!).  We have to find someway to change the culture of politics.  Otherwise, we'll be stuck with the same Bozos.

Speaking of education, the Common Core, etc.  Here is another very good article in the News today, http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140703/OPINION01/307030006/Why-Pledge-stands-civics-fails  I've argued this for years, to no avail.  Administrators with no sense of history merely followed the herd toward "social studies," to the detriment of history.  Again, I've blogged about my view on the importance of history and how our lack of knowledge of it opens us up to exploitation by politicians.  Note the article; it contains much of what I've lamented over the years.

Out to weed......