Sat AM

I woke up to rain this AM.  Hmmm......  Coming back from our game last night, I don't recall any mention of rain on the forecast, but raining it is.  I went to the two Web sites I (foolishly?) use for my weather predictions.  Both have "0% chance of precipitation right now."  Maybe rain is no longer considered "precipitation."

I don't know who, if anyone, has claimed credit for the Nice bombing.  But I wonder how long people will take this; that is, when will they really respond?  With all of the vaunted intelligence agencies in the world, I would think someone somewhere would be able to track down the leadership of these radical groups.  And I would also think that, in their communities, someone somewhere would think something weird is going on with these terrorists, immigrant or home-grown and turned.

And should we now ban trucks?  Should we prohibit people who are on random "no-fly lists" from purchasing trucks? After all......

George Will and I go back a long way.  No, I don't know him.  But I've read him for years and years and years.  Although mostly known as a political writer, I particularly liked two of his books about baseball, Men at Work and Bunts.  Often I agree with his views; sometimes I don't, seeing him as a cog in the Establishment.  I didn't care much for his column in this AM's newspaper, about teacher tenure.  There is much in his article to commend; it's true.  I've blogged about how many rotten teachers are out there, who don't deserve to be teaching.  There are too many of them, no doubt.  Do the tenure laws protect them?  Yes and No.  If administrators, or at least some of them, don't follow the laws, yes, bad teachers are protected.  If administrators do follow them, it's not nearly as difficult to get rid of bad apples.  Will completely misses this point, citing that false claim that it takes many years and much money to dismiss teachers who deserve to be dismissed.  He ignores that many administrators fail at their jobs of evaluating teachers, either not recognizing bad ones or taking the easy ways out by approving of their performances.  He also ignores the original purpose of tenure laws. They were not enacted to protect rotten teachers.  They were there to protect teachers from wrongful dismissal.  "Wrongful?"  Of course.  There might be personality conflicts.  There might be some friend or relative who needs a teaching job and, if a position can be opened by dismissing an otherwise competent teacher......  (And if you don't believe that might happen, you don't know the history of pre-union labor in the US!)  Even more, how easy to get rid of teachers who vocally oppose rotten administrative programs or policies.  (And if you don't believe there are a lot of "rotten programs and policies," you might as well stop reading this paragraph right now.)  It doesn't take much to find teachers who stood up for what was right, opposing administrators and politicians, not to mention bureaucrats and, yes, columnists like Will (who, because they went to school know all about teaching or can cite statistics without analyzing them), who were ignored, marginalized, and even punished.  Is dismissal much farther removed?  Without protection?  Let me repeat that I acknowledge there are far too many lousy teachers out there.  But getting rid of tenure laws or, as in Michigan, weakening them to effective impotence, is not the answer.  How about making others, too, do their jobs?

Why did Mike Pence accept Trump's offer of the VP position on the Rep ticket?  My admitted perfunctory view of Pence is that he's a good enough guy, did pretty well in Indiana.  But he is a member of the Establishment, no Ted Cruz or Mike Lee.  Why would anyone associate himself with the train wreck called "Trump?"

And now Clinton is talking "free college" for up to 80% of students.  Will she stop at nothing to pander for votes?  Tell me this one won't ring with the younger crowd, those facing a lifetime of student debt?  And remember that this generation has been brought up on getting things for free or not working for them.  ("Everybody gets a trophy!")  Where she was critical of Sanders for this, she now embraces "free college?"  See below, but does she not at all see the consequences of this, the monetary costs and beyond?  I'm sure she does, but this is Clinton, remember?

BTW, I'm still waiting for a "Never Clinton" movement and all those upper level FBI agents to resign.  I'll bet I wait a long time.  Once again I wonder, "What is wrong with us?"

Is it human nature to want to control others' lives?  I don't know.  I have enough trouble controlling my own life, let alone others' lives.  Why are there so many politicians and bureaucrats out there so intent on controlling us?  No doubt some mean well, but are just misguided in their attempts.  They don't see beyond their actions.  That is, they don't realize the consequences of their actions.  For instance, I see with the cities and states increasing the minimum wage this year, unemployment for youths, namely high school kids and others without training for anything other than entry level jobs, is up quite a bit.  It makes for good copy, "a living wage."  Who can, at face value, argue with that?  Yet, I wonder if any of the proponents realize the consequences.  Do they realize how many people will be laid off or not even hired, so we don't even know the real consequences of the "minimum wage?"  How many are so arrogant and elitist they don't care about what we think?  They know better than we do; consequences be damned.  I wonder how many human lives have been saved since DDT was banned.  I wonder how many mosquitoes lives have been saved and, in effect, how many human lives have been lost due to the malaria those saved mosquitoes carried?  Again, we'll never really know, but......