Seeing Black and White

In a world full of shades of grey

In the course of writing this blog, I rarely get reader comments. It’s discouraging because I really want to hear from my readers and I usually take the time to respond to those who do comment and thank them for reading. If the commenter happens to disagree with my opinions, rather than berate or name call I simply take the writer’s opinion in stride or respond with more facts and details if possible.

Which brings me to this recent comment referencing my earlier posting entitled Minds Full of Mush:

“Did you read the article closely, or just see an opportunity for your own mushy mind to start ranting?

the article says that most of the letters were supportive of the soldier. i guess the majority of the kids just decided to ignore all of the evil indoctrination, right?

you're a fool to believe the post so blindly.

those kids get their opinions from their parents. you basically admitted that you didn't listen to your teachers. why would these kids be so different?

btw, from a teacher's pov, why would you be proud to have tortured your teachers? that's pretty lame. if you support the usa, then you'd realize that people died for your right to a public education.

think through things before you start blabbing. what's a blog anyway except just another way for mminds full of mush to find a place to voice their opinions?”

Since the commenter chose to do so anonymously, I am taking the liberty to publicly respond since I can’t send them a personal private rebuttal. So here goes…

First things first. I must have struck a nerve with this individual, whom I would assume is a school teacher, because they open their comment by quoting my own “minds full of mush” back to me in reference to my own mental capabilities.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion so I will accept their assessment of my intellectual faculties although I believe that holding different political and social views does not automatically define someone’s intelligence.

Next they quote The New York Post article saying that “(m)ost of the 21 letters Jacobs provided to The Post mentioned some support for the armed forces, if not the Iraq war, and thanked him for his service. But nine of the students made clear their distaste for the president or the war.”

Doing a little math (and I didn’t have to use a calculator), nine of twenty one is 42.8%. Nearly half of the letters expressed distaste for President Bush or the war in Iraq. If you are a liberal I guess that you would say that more than half of the letters were positive. The commenter asserted that somehow my assumption that the teacher (or other teachers) had been spouting anti-war and anti-Bush propaganda in the classroom was refuted by 57.2% of the letters not containing similar references.

I would somewhat agree with the argument that the kids get their opinions from their parents. However, with all of the single parent homes in today’s society and in light of the fact that by the age of 12 most kids from such households have spent at least 1/3 of their lives in the hands of strangers at daycare and in government schools, and assuming that the average kid spends 1/3 of their time (8 hours) sleeping, the parents at best have equal time with the children as the other individuals entrusted with their care and education. Therefore, my assumption that the teacher(s) was the source of the mis-information written in the children’s letters is not entirely unfounded.

Next my commenter challenges my intelligence for blindly believing The New York Post. I guess as an option they are suggesting that I should believe everything written in the New York Times or the LA Times? This story has been widely covered in the Main Stream Media and Fox News has an even more damning set of excerpts. One kid stated that because Bush was re-elected “that only 50 or 100 (solders) will survive.”

Give me a break here plueasssss. It’s one thing to disagree on politicts, but it’s another thing entirely to basically tell a young solder that he is going to die and possibly that you hope that he dies because of his politicts.

Next my commenter says “think through things before you start blabbing. what's a blog anyway except just another way for mminds full of mush to find a place to voice their opinions?”

Let me tell you, I spend a great deal of time thinking things through when writing my blog. I sometimes do research for days if not weeks before I address some subjects like the The Fair Tax Plan Is Really Fair. I spend two to four hours each day reading news and commentary from both sides of the political spectrum. I cringed my way through four hours of National Public Radio yesterday at the behest of my fellow craftsmen on our theater set project for the Island Players.

The rant in question here did come off the cuff, however. And by the way, Mr./Miss. Commenter, this is MY BLOG and I can say whatever I want to say in it and you are welcome to stop back by and read my writing and make further comments. You are also welcome to never come back as, just like a TV has a channel button, your mouse has a couple of buttons and by correctly using them you never have to read anything from my “mind full of mush” in the future if you don’t want to.

And finally, there is this issue: “if you support the usa, then you'd realize that people died for your right to a public education.” Excuse me, but the Constitution of the United States does not contain wording saying that I have the right to “life, liberty, and to waste twelves years of my life in the watered down liberal propaganda machines that we call public education.”

Public education is not free. Property owners like myself pay dearly for other peoples kids to go to government schools. I don’t have children, but the tens of thousands of dollars I have paid in property taxes since 1985 when I bought my first house entitle me to comment on and worry about what is happening in our government schools.

And many times, your beloved “free public education” is not quality education. Yes there are some excellent teachers in public schools. Yes I had a few myself in my day. Unfortunately I can count the number on two hands. The rest were angry, mindless robots that couldn’t teach their way out of a wet paper bag. Between their ineptitude, the federal and State Government’s meddling with the curriculum, and inane rules and policies, I wasted two or three years of my life screwing around in my free public education because the program was set up to teach to the middle one third of the students and the gifted kids were left to waste time and become discipline problems. By discipline problem I don’t mean bringing guns and drugs to school either. I was a straight A student that was graded down to a B sometimes in retaliation for my behavior.

Here is my final point about the news story that I did not make in my first posting. The purpose of sending letters to solders overseas is ostemsibly to offer encouragement and support. The word censorship brings a grimmace and knee jerk reaction from most people, but the teacher should have "screened" the content of the letters and suggested at least toning the rhetoric of the 12 year old's down a little.

I say that if the teacher was not the source of the mis-information, he should have taken the time to address with the children their concerns about things like massive civilian casualties, destroying mosques, etc. After spending a few weeks reviewing the facts, perhaps the children would have been less inclined to make the acusations contained in the first round of letters. I wonder if my commenter believes that "Bush's armies" are actually targeting civilians and journalists and blowing up Mosques just for shits and grins?

There is a time and a place for political advocacy, but delivering the type of garbage that this teacher allowed to be mailed to a young solder (who happened to not even be serving in Iraq) is completely unacceptable and Democrats and Republicans and school teachers of all subjects should be equally outraged.

And by the way Mr./Miss. commenter...Y’all come back now…ya hear?

Someone Call 911

To my way of thinking, much of the activities conducted in the name of “Law Enforcement” these days are much like shooting fish in a barrel. Don’t get me wrong here, the police and other authorities generally provide an acceptable level of civil security but, if you dig into the details, you will find a certain level of incompetence and indifference with regard to even the most basic crimes.

For instance, let me drive down Interstate 75 at 15 MPH over the speed limit and I will most certainly owe the local jurisdiction a hundred or so dollars in the form of a speeding fine. Lets face it, the police love to enforce traffic laws because it generally involves a fairly low level of personal risk and it generates a great deal of revenue.

Next comes crimes involving “moral turpitude.” Oh boy do the local cops enjoy these indescressions. Have a few too many drinks, smoke a joint, or hire a prostitute, and they are on you like white on rice. Again, I’m not promoting the abuse of alcohol, drugs, or risking acquiring a sexually transmitted disease here, but since these so called “crimes” generally involve abusing your own body or are committed among consenting adults, I believe that way to much of our law enforcement resources are devoted to preventing people from making poor personal decisions while the real criminals run unfettered through our communities.

I believe that too much money and time is spent on these areas of law enforcement because the police know that it is easy to nab the perpetrator in these instances and there is a large financial reward in pursuing the conviction for the government. If these same resources were instead focused on real crimes like burglary, assault, and theft, our society would be a much better, safer place. The bad news is that these types of crime take a lot more time and energy and yield very little in the way of financial return for the authorities

That really sucks, because practically every single time (with one exception) that I have been the victim of a crime involving person or property, the police have either acted like I am imposing on them by asking for their assistance or they refused to get involved without making my life very difficult.

In 1979 three of my friends and I had the misfortune of interrupting a robbery in progress in a Pizza Hut in Atlanta near Georgia Tech. Before the event was over with, one of the robbers had taken my money, my watch, and pistol whipped me with a cheep gun, breaking the barrel off of the weapon on the back of my thick skull. All of us escaped that evening with our lives, but I bled all over a leather jacket my father had given me from the 1950’s and I never heard another word from the police after filing the initial report at the scene.

In 1981 someone broke into my home in an Atlanta suburb. Besides damaging the door they entered through, the stole a variety of irreplaceable personal items like my class rings and other jewelry—things that were invaluable to me and netted them $10.37 at the local pawn shop. The police reluctantly responded but didn’t even bother to dust for fingerprints—they just filled out a form. I never heard from them again.

In 1992, while attending a Georgia Tech basketball game in downtown Atlanta, someone smashed the passenger side window of my S-10 Blazer and removed the CD player from the dash, ripped the lid off the center console, and stole my bag cell phone. Upon discovering the damage, I walked one hundred yards down the street and asked an Atlanta police officer who was stationed in the intersection directing traffic if, when he was finished with his traffic duties, he would kindly come over and fill our a police report and investigate the scene.

His response? They didn’t respond to auto break-ins unless there was personal injury or assault. I would have to drive four or five blocks to the police station and they would fill the report. Again the officers acted like we were putting them out and refused to even dust the car for fingerprints, even though I had made my ex-wife keep her panicking hands off of everything and ride in the back seat to the police station. Incompetent idiots they were, and I never heard another word from them.

In 1999 someone broke the drivers side rear window on my Suburban ($350 worth) and stole my portable telescope and a couple hundred dollars worth of CD’s. I phoned my report into the police and they again refused to bother to look for any evidence. Us mean old rich white guys just got to suck it up and get with the program I guess is their attitude—you ain’t got insurance to cover that?

On New Years evening, 2002, I was on the beach in Mexico Beach, Florida. Mexico Beach is one of the last areas in the world where you can ride a horse on the beach, walk your dog, have a bonfire, and legally shoot fireworks. Some friends and I were on the beach setting up some fireworks for the enjoyment of our fellow revelers in “The Lookout Lounge” where our evening festivities were being held.

I was out front setting up a couple hundred dollars worth of South Carolina “mortar tubes” which are the best-darned fireworks available anywhere. I mean near professional quality fireworks. My girl Pat and another couple we had just met that evening (Benji was an air force staff sergeant) were standing fifty feet behind me where they were setting up and firing some little bottle rockets.

I turned around to say something to them just in time to witness a teenager step out a passing group of young punks and proceed to start yelling and screaming and sucker punch Benji for no reason. I vaguely remember covering the fifty feet between the melee and myself in about two seconds and I did a flying tackle on the 150 pound offender with my 225 pound frame and he went down like a ton of bricks. His co-conspirators then preceded to beat the back of my head with their fists and delivered a couple of blows with a tequila bottle that fortunately did not break.

When the dust settled, the county sheriff hauled two of the three punks off to jail and Benji and I belatedly shot our fireworks and celebrated new years. In Atlanta, the cops would have hauled everyone to jail and let the judge sort it all out. The only thing that saved me was the large number of witnesses and the fact that I never threw a punch, I just tackled the guy. Hurray for good law enforcement , FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE.

This past Tuesday I was over in Brunswick running errands and I made my bi-weekly visit to check on some vacant rental property I own. The bad news is that someone had kicked in the side door on one of my units. The good news is there was nothing to steal inside and other than the door they didn’t cause any damage.

As usual, I called the police and as usual, they acted like i was imposing on them to actually expect them to attempt to enforce the laws. “It could be a couple of hours before we can get a unit out there” said the dispatcher. “Never mind,” I said. I drove back home, got my tools, went by Ace Hardware, and a couple of hours later I had the door repaired.

I have a little message for the police…

KISS MY GLUTEUS MAXIMUS!

They Should Be (Ho)axed To Death

I was trying to force myself to turn the computer off and get some additional sleep, but then I came across this CNN story about someone impersonating a military officer making a false notification of a soldier’s death.. What a heartless hoax.

You heard me right. Some anti-war moron showed up, in a uniform, at the Savannah, Georgia home of the wife of an Army soldier deployed to Iraq and proceeded to tell her that her husband had been killed.

"Right off the bat, she noticed some things were not right," Whetstone said. "The individual's uniform wasn't correct -- there were no markings or name tags. Plus, the person was alone, and she knew one person does not make (death) notifications."

Fortunately, the Army has been briefing the families of deployed troops because there have been previous incidents of fake death notifications being delivered by telephone.

Forget using schoolchildren to write anti-war letters, this sinks to a new low. If they happen to catch someone that has the gall to attempt to hurt the family of a soldier by falsely reporting a death, that individual should be deported within 24 hours of conviction to the middle east or North Korea.

That will teach them…

Minds Full Of Mush

I heard mention of this story on the talk radio shows yesterday, and my blogging acquaintance Kat over at CatHouse Chat made mention of it in her blog and provided a link to the story.

It seems that a bunch of Brooklyn middle school children were taking a “social studies” class and had a letter writing assignment that has caused a bit of a stir.

You remember “social studies,” don’t you? You know, the one-hour rest that your brain got to take between math class and science class? The class that, in retrospect, should have been called “multiculturalism” when I took it? Who really gives a damn about life on Fiji spent eating breadfruit and running around in a loincloth, with your private parts flapping in the breeze, while the mean old USA has aircraft carriers and submarines destroying the marine ecosystem on which your entire culture’s very existence has been based for the past five thousand years, you know?

I’m certain that things in “social studies” class have only gotten worse in the past thirty-five years since I took it.

I used to cause my “social studies” teachers’ heads to spin around at 3000 revolutions per minute, ultimately separating from their bodies and flying around the room while screaming my name. I nearly caused my fifth grade “social studies” teacher, Mrs. Williams, to have a cerebral hemorrhage several times. If there had been such a thing as speed dial in 1970, my mother’s phone number would have been at the top of the list.

Any way, back to the goings on at the Brooklyn middle school, JHS 51 William Alexander. Teacher Alex Kunhardt’s little angels had an assignment to write letters to soldiers overseas. So good so far.

But…Apparently Comrade Kunhardt had been doing a little political demogogging in front of the old chalkboard or something, because the writers of 9 of the 21 letters sent to 20 year old PFC Rob Jacobs serving in South Korea were, shall we say, a bit “mis-informed” or just down right “insensitive.”

“Pfc. Rob Jacobs of New Jersey said he was initially ecstatic to get a package of letters from sixth-graders at JHS 51 in Park Slope last month at his base 10 miles from the North Korea border.”

“That changed when he opened the envelope and found missives strewn with politically charged rhetoric, vicious accusations and demoralizing predictions that only a handful of soldiers would leave the Iraq war alive.”

"It's hard enough for soldiers to deal with being away from their families, they don't need to be getting letters like this," Jacobs, 20, said in a phone interview from his base at Camp Casey.
"If they don't have anything nice to say, they might as well not say anything at all."

And this rhetoric is coming to a kid serving his country overseas from children only a few years younger, sitting comfortably in the homes that Pfc Jacobs is defending.

“One Muslim boy wrote: "Even thoe [sic] you are risking your life for our country, have you seen how many civilians you or some other soldier killed?"

His letter, which was stamped with a smiley face, went on: "I know your [sic] trying to save our country and kill the terrorists but you are also destroying holy places like Mosques."”

Excuse me Severely Mis-informed Muslim Child, but why don’t you save up your vitriol and write to the Muslim “Insurgents” that want to use your holy Mosques as armories and insist on blowing up your own Muslim people as they go to worship? What about writing a little love note to complain to the terrorists that worked under Saddam to kill hundreds of thousands of your fellow Muslims?

“The JHS 51 teacher, Alex Kunhardt, did not return phone calls, but the school principal, Xavier Costello, responded with a statement:

"While we would never censor anything that our children write, we sincerely apologize for forwarding letters that were in any way inappropriate to Pfc. Jacobs. This assignment was not intended to be insensitive, but to be supportive of the men and women in service to our nation."”

Well of course Alex Kunhardt isn’t going to face the music that his efforts in his “Social Studies” class have produced. Alex Kunhardt has no gonads. Alex Kunhardt uses children as a tool to express his own warped political beliefs. For all I know, Alex Kunhardt has his “Kunhardt” for his own young male students and it is just a matter of time until Alex’s “Kunhardt” gets his stupid ass put in prison.

And by the way, Principal Xavier, why is it that you have no trouble censoring the information provided to your students by your teachers, but you will allow anything that comes out of their young “minds full of mush” to be written down and sent to young solders overseas?

If one of Principal Xavier’s parent’s as a roaring alcoholic and died as a result, would he sanction his parent’s Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor standing up at the funeral and saying: “ we all loved ole’ Xavier Senior, but good God, the man was a useless womanizing drunkard.”

Sorry Xavier, but we would never censor…

Choose Your Weapon Carefully

You just can’t make stuff like this up, even if you were crazy.

It seems that Pennsylvania law enforcement officers shot some chainsaw wielding moron 13 times yesterday.

“ Henkle, 40, allegedly struck Trooper Michael Hartzel in the shoulder, lower back and buttocks with the saw. The trooper was treated for minor injuries at a hospital and released."

"Henkle called 911 early Monday and said he was having a heart attack, but when police and an ambulance arrived, he was outside the house with the chain saw running, said Capt. Kenneth Hill, commander of the state police barracks at Wyoming.”

I know that I often get confused trying to decide whether to spend my afternoon cutting firewood with my new Stihl Chainsaw as apposed to having a Myocardial Infarction.

“About 10 state and local officers formed a semicircle around Henkle and ordered him to drop the chain saw, but he revved the saw and refused to put it down, Hill said."

"Police said they used pepper spray, then fired when Henkle lunged at Hartzel.”

Needless to say Mr. Henkle a.k.a. ”Paul Bunyan” was killed in the process.

He obviously had been watching too many video games or “Conan the Barbarian” sword wielding movies to be stupid enough to take on ten guys with 9 mm pistols.

In a follow-up interview after being released from the hospital for treatment of his injuries, Trooper Hartzel reported that the big blue Ox “Babe” was quite a tasty feature at the Policeman’s Benevolent League cookout…..

Sorry…just kidding ;-)

California Washes Into The Pacific Ocean

I’m sitting here watching Fox News and just shaking my head at the stories about the hysteria and damage caused by a little rain (by Georgia standards) in Southern California. Some areas have recently gotten nearly 9" and people are waterskiing down the street behind Ford pickup trucks out there today.

Since California receives most of it’s rainfall in the winter months, it would seem that their busy-body government officials and their government “licensed” civil engineers would be getting a grip on designing modern storm sewers to handle rainwater runoff. The California governments are obviously too busy passing Greenspace laws and outlawing logging and leaf blowers to pay much attention to such trivial matters as rainwater runoff and the resulting flooding it can cause.

I don’t mean to be insensitive to the suffering of the citizens of the left coast, but com’ on people—think about the situation for a minute.

We here in the Southeastern United states are required to design the structure of our homes and offices based primarily on wind loadings. Here on St. Simons, that would be a 140 MPH hurricane wind loading. We can thank Hurricanes Andrew and Opal for awakening the powers that be to revise the code upward from 110 MPH in the past few years.

In the northern areas of the country like Wisconsin, a combination of wind loading and snow loading controls the cost of the building structure. The roof isn’t supposed to collapse under a couple of feet of snow. They base the design on historical records of snowfall.

In California, seismic (earthquake) loads dictate the sizes of the wood, concrete, and steel found in a building. The codes were all re-written in the past 20 years and a lot of buildings have been modified and stiffened up as a result.

Aside from structural loadings, what is the common denominator of design in all areas of the world?

LOCAL RAINFALL HISTORY, that’s what.

Just ask the people in Bangladesh about the Typhoon in November 1970 .

“The greatest tropical system disaster this century occurred in Bangladesh in November 1970. Winds coupled with a storm surge killed between 300,000- 500,000 people. These cyclones usually cause the most misery, loss of life, and suffering in low lying areas in Bangladesh and coastal India”

Anybody out there but me know about that storm which happened before the existence of CNN, FOX, and the Weather Channel? I haven’t it heard mentioned once since the tsunami, which everyone is being lead by the news to believe is the greatest natural disaster in modern times.

Well, it was not.

Now back to the situation in California. I guess I don’t completely fault the homeowners, but, being an engineer, I have to wonder what the hell is going through the heads of the planning boards and the civil engineers on the southern west coast.

Like us here in Georgia, can’t they just take a glance at their metrological records and predict that they are likely to get ten or twenty inches of rain in a matter of days—once every fifty or one hundred years?

Well, now they know, and it will be interesting to see what, if anything they do to remedy the situation in the future.

In 1990 it rained 16” within 24 hours in my mother’s back yard and the river breeched the levee and flooded the town of Elba, Alabama 16 feet deep. As a result of additional floods in 1994 and yet again in 1998, the US Army Corps of Engineers just complete rebuilding the levee around town based on the new flood data. They also forced some people to abandon their homes and not rebuild in unprotected flood prone areas.

By the way, my Grandfather had the good sense to move himself and our family out of town onto a farm on nearby high ground in the early 1930’s as a result of a similar flood in 1929. We haven't had any problems since. See, intelligence runs deeply in my family.

So I guess the people in California will just keep on enjoying earthquakes, aftershocks, brush fires, floods, and mudslides in return for having the right to be near Hollywood and eat all the tofu that their stomachs will hold.

Well, they can have my share too...

NASCAR's Back And....

Rednecks Everywhere Are Happy

We made a point of watching the Daytona 500 yesterday afternoon. What an exciting (though marred by caution flags) finish. I think that the race set a record for the number of cautions with 12 total.

Darned old Jeff Gordon held off "Little E" (who is driving more like his dad every day,) much to Tony Stewart's chagrin.

The network did a great job of cutting to commercials at just the right time thereby causing the TV audience to miss both of the big wrecks live so they had to show everyone replays. Some people I know were probably busting a blood vessel over those broadcast mistakes.

Rather than republishing it, I direct your attention to my NASCAR Hype posting that I did last August. It was the third thing that I ever wrote for an online blog.

I'm now one hundred and forty three rants later, and still going strong.