Sometimes...

...I wonder if they do it on purpose.

Listening to the weather forecast this AM, the "meteorologist," as if that covers for how wrong they often are, said, "Very warm today, with a high of 88."  She continued, "Not as warm tomorrow, with a high of only 87."  OK.  And I don't know what "lower" humididity means.  I keep hearing how the humididity is "lower," but it's still in the 60 and 70 percent range.  I guess that's "lower" than the 85% of last week and the weekend, although that, too, was supposed to be "lower."

I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I pass schools whose outside message boards include words that are misspelled.  Ah, "Your Public Schools.  No Better Place to Learn."  But perhaps I'm being too critical, maybe even picayunish.  Still, with Spell Check?

That might be a reflection of the lack of importance in teaching spelling today.  Certainly it's not important--spelling isn't on the state tests.  And the rationale is "Students will catch up. They'll learn how to spell eventually."  I guess whoever thinks that is relying on osmosis?  But, from my perspective and all of the writing I have my students do, they don't "catch up," not at all.

Of more importance, why doesn't President Trump get rid of the federal bureaucrats impeding his agenda, that is, assuming he really has one?  Not all of the positions filled by Presidential appointments require Senate confirmation.  In fact, I think the majority of them do not.  I'm guessing that the Trump transition team had no real idea of what transition meant or entailed.  Maybe that's because his closest supporters and advisers were as surprised as he was in winning.  But just make the appointments.  He promised to "drain the swamp."  Often it seems he's dammed it up.

Dennis Praeger had a good point this afternoon on his radio show, to which I listened driving home from the car dealer.  I've addressed this idea before, more than once, but months ago.  Why isn't there a huge meeting of imams from around the world to loudly and roundly condemn the despicable actions and violence committed in the name of their religion?  They can cite the Quran and the Hadiths in their condemnation.  Blast it to the world.  Urge Muslims not to cooperate with the Islamofacists and that, if they do, they will face Allah's wrath.  Are the imams afraid?  Afraid of the extremists?  Afraid of losing their flocks?  If so, that surely casts doubt on the contention that there are "moderate" Muslims and that Islam is a "religion of peace."

What was it Dante wrote in The Inferno, the first book of The Divine Comedy?  "The darkest places of hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis."  If this is not a time of "moral crisis, " then the Apocalypse has arrived.