Jan's Stinkin Blog

Friday, November 23, 2012

SNYDER'S NEW SCHOOL PLAN IS WHAT WE NEED!

Michigan’s Governor Snyder has just proposed a sweeping new plan on how to handle our school system and I am 100% behind it.

In the past, I was adamantly opposed to any voucher school system because I felt it was a devious way for religious schools to get state money to preach their religious beliefs to young, impressionable minds and to me that is unconstitutional because our Constitution mandates a separation of church and state; giving money to church run schools is tantamount to endorsing religion.

I am still opposed to giving tax money to church run schools even though I am a product of such schools, but the voucher system where a student can attend any school in any district that has an opening, is intriguing. The vouchers, which are basically state education money certificates that each student possesses, can be used at public schools as well as private, for profit schools.

Many are saying that this plan would kill public school education as we have known it forever it seems. Well, maybe the system we all grew up in is no longer a viable system especially to the people that are forced to send their kids to a “failing” school.

I know we moved from Detroit even though we had a grade school half a block away. We bought a house in Livonia even though we couldn’t afford one, just to give our kids a better education, and it worked but many can’t just up and move to a better school district.

Transportation will be a big issue since transportation will only be available for students living in a school district but parents that can drive their kids to school or teenagers that can drive themselves to school can make use of the new options available to them.

The biggest challenge to the new plan will come from the teacher’s union which will lose their stranglehold on education in Michigan but it is time that they lose their monopoly that they use to get higher and higher benefits for lower and lower academic results.

I will have more on this issue as it develops because I think this will be a great boon to the state which needs better educated workers to sustain its economic growth.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

GAZA AND ISRAEL: Time to face reality...

It seems I have been reading about the Israel-Palestine conflict since my early years. I studied the history of the lands in question and all the historical events that have impacted the land and the people, searching for some indication as to which side is right and which side is wrong in this struggle but I don’t think that matters anymore…

The recent Gaza incident where both sides pummeled each other with rockets, mortars and airstrikes is just another example of the absurdity of this whole situation.

The people involved in the current turmoil are victims of history; victims of decisions made many years ago by people no longer alive but the people of today still carry the anger of those people and the same determination of those people to get their land back.

The Palestinians can never return to the land they lost to Israel when their forefathers had to leave or were forced to leave after a very ill advised war on the Jews when they did have the option of sharing that land with the Jews; shooting missiles into Israel will never make that pipedream come true…so why do they do it?

The Jews keep building homes in areas reserved for the Palestinians saying that God gave them the land and they have a “divine” right to occupy it. Sorry but whoever wrote the Bible (a Jew) promised you the land that was not his to begin with. Yes, Jews occupied this land for many historic years but then they left…should the land have remained unoccupied till the Jews decided to come back centuries later?

But who cares at this point, who was there first, etc. we need to deal with the reality on the ground and the real suffering of people, mostly Palestinians and mostly in the Gaza Strip.

The people in the Gaza Strip need to decide once and for all, that they will never destroy Israel and take back the land they still feel is theirs. They need to look to the future and start developing a modern society that will prosper and grow. And to do that they cannot support Hamas and other Palestinian parties that have as their only goal in life, the destruction of Israel.

Once the ever improving missiles of the Palestinians stop being fired into Israel and Israel lifts the blockade on Gaza, life may actually start getting better for the people of Gaza but the onus is on the Gaza Palestinians to start the peace process not the Israelis.

But if they are stupid enough to keep doing what they are doing one Israeli columnist suggested that Israel do what the U.S. did to Japan when Japan would not stop fighting…

Friday, November 16, 2012

CATHOLIC IRELAND: Shame on you...

I am so glad to see some reaction to the poor woman in Ireland that died of septicemia after being denied an abortion that may have saved her life. She was told by her Irish doctor that Ireland is a Catholic country and they don’t do abortions and will only evacuate the uterus when there is no fetal heartbeat…well guess what, it was too late or maybe it was God’s will; she must have pissed the catholic God off at some point…but she’s not Catholic?

Ireland, of all places, has been shit on by the Catholic Church for ages and they continue to take it in the rear like good little sheep but maybe even the Irish have had enough…I hope so, its time!

Medicine and religion should never be allowed to mix; well maybe in Voodoo.

Religion and science can coexist on some levels but once religion gets radical and loses all sense of reality, we have a problem.

In this country where abortion is legal, the forces against choice and abortion are constantly at work trying to undermine the law and our access to it, in effect trying to force their views on us which affects our very well being.

The woman in Ireland was not of Irish decent and probably not Catholic. Her main concern was to stay alive and yet the medical help to allow her to keep her life was denied to her because of some religious belief that has nothing to do with emergency medicine. The doctor in this case failed to live by the Hippocratic Oath that he took to ABOVE ALL ELSE, DO NO HARM and so mother and fetus died.

I remember working in an emergency room when a Jehovah’s Witnesses woman was brought in suffering from blood loss due to a miscarriage. We were warned that under no circumstances, was she to be transfused. We though of doing it anyway since we were trained to save lives but a superior told us we had no legal right…she died.

I also remember reading about Christian Scientists that do not believe in medicine at all and just pray over the sick. Some have been thrown in jail when children started dying of Scarlet Fever because their Strep Throats were not treated. Are children also to be sacrificed for religious lunacy?

At some point in our history we MUST come to an agreement that religion and state/ government cannot be allowed to mix, same goes for religion and medicine and same goes for religion in the lives of people that do not want religion in their lives…

UNION KILLS WONDER BREAD AND TWINKIES

Wouldn't be proper if I didn't throw in a “union” story…

HOSTESS – the maker of Twinkies, Wonder Bread and Ding Dongs FOR OVER 80 YEARS said it is going out of business because it cannot survive the strike called by its 18,000 employees.

I don’t have all the facts and it could be a ploy by the company to end the strike but the fact that 18,000 workers are willing to lose their jobs to prove their point is a little absurd.

A good rule of thumb to remember is DON’T BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU.

The news about HOSTESS products brought back some memories. I haven’t eaten a Twinkie or any of the other Hostess products in decades but do remember getting Twinkies in my lunch bag and boy were they good…but probably really bad for you.

The other is Wonder Bread that builds strong bodies 12 ways. I heard that on TV over and over and over again. My mother preferred good ole Polish rye bread with a real crust so I had to beg her to get some Wonder Bread for toast. She called it “cotton” bread because it had no body to it and you could hardly spread anything on it but I had to have it because it was on TV.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION Raises its ugly head AGAIN...

There are a lot of stories in the paper today that really irk me.

One big issue that we thought we were done with is AFFIRMATIVE ACTION.

If you remember some years back (2006), we here in Michigan passed and therefore it was VOTER APPROVED, a ban on affirmative action in all cases which also included university admissions.

BUT people and organizations (Civil Liberties Union) could not allow the will of the people to stand and have kept appealing the vote ever since.

Yesterday, the U.S. 6^th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati voted 8-7 to overthrow the ban we, as Michigan voters, approved as violating the “Equal Protection Clause” of the U.S. Constitution thus making it unconstitutional…really?

I tried to explain it some time back but no matter how I try, it sounds like total bullshit.

Here goes…It is more difficult for a minority student to get a university to adopt a race-conscious admission policy than for a white student to get a university to adopt an admissions policy that considers family alumni connections…got it?

One of the lawyers pushing this case said that now thousands of black kids will get a chance to go to college they never would have had…and that is utter nonsense! Minority kids can go to any college they want to; the doors are wide open but in certain elite schools where applicants far outnumber available openings, the school has to choose who gets in and who does not.

Let me say it a different way…I went to Wayne State University in Detroit and when I applied (1965) there were so many applicants (baby boomers) that you had to take an admissions test and only people that had the highest test scores were allowed in, the rest had to try at another school. I had a buddy from high school that did not make the cut and was pissed at me because he though of himself as smarter than I was but he went to another college and now is a pharmacist…so there!

Now Wayne State does not have as many applicants and anybody and everybody that applies gets in and that includes minorities, etc. BUT at the University of Michigan they have to go through an admissions process which does not just take the smartest kids but looks at many factors including race and we, the voters of Michigan, told them that they cannot use race as an admission factor because that would not be fair to non-black applicants whose whiteness was a point AGAINST admission.

So it is NOT about getting a chance to go to college, it is about getting into the University of Michigan.

We want to be a color-blind society but we will never be a color-blind society when race keeps being an issue. Here in Michigan, we have banned the use of race or gender as a factor in college admissions as well as in all other considerations. Discrimination using race, gender and age has been banned so why are we inserting race into our business again?

The argument that disadvantaged minorities should have a leg up in the admission process at the University of Michigan would be more palatable if the argument was that ALL DISADVANTAGED KIDS should have a better chance BUT all disadvantaged kids do have a chance to go to college but it may not always be to an “elite” college like the University of Michigan which has too many applicants.

My parents were poor as dirt but I managed to finish college…I got a scholarship and then I received help from the GI Bill to attend college…and anyone can do the same…so quit whining you can’t get in to the University of Michigan and go to one of the scores of other good schools with wide open doors…

The Supreme Court will get this case but they already have a Texas case with a similar issue. In the University of Texas case, the university admits the top 8% of ALL Texas high school students but reserves some spots for students with race being a factor.

A white student challenging the policy says she is in the 8% of high school students from Texas but was denied admission based on race. The argument is that the 8% rule is without stipulations as to race or gender and therefore affirmative action is not needed.

Stay tuned………………………………….

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

FIELD GENERAL'S BEHAVIOR AND PRIVACY...

OK the news on TV is all about General Petraeus and General Allen and their lady friends…enough already!

Historically, most generals engaged in war had mistresses; the mistresses probably helped relieve the stress the generals were under and that is a very important duty…?

Generals like Eisenhower, Patton, MacArthur and even ole’ Bradley had female companionship other than their wives; powerful men seem to attract women and they don’t even have to sing or play guitar.

I could see a problem when a general officer coerces an underling into sex or if the sexual partner is getting secrets out of her general and selling them to the highest bidder but other than that…it’s none of our damn business!

The military has a law that makes adultery a crime…really? I've been in the military and unless something has changed drastically…

The main concern here is because of our digital age, we may be invading privacy to the detriment not only of individuals but the country as a whole; Petraeus was/is a very talented and valuable person and for him to step down because of embarrassment is just plain stupid.

I think we should have strict rules governing what can and cannot be disclosed to the public as a result of an investigation especially an investigation utilizing emails.

We have seen how rabid the media is about scandals and especially juicy sex scandals and media types do not care about the impact the revelations may have on the people involved or even on our own country, it’s about the ratings which a juicy sex scandal drives through the roof.

Unfortunately, men will be men; Mother Nature has left some males vulnerable in certain situations and I probably can explain it in biological terms but let us just say that even the mightiest can be played by a skilled temptress; the opposite can also be true… of course.

But with people in such high positions of responsibility and positions of power over others, there is something to be said about being above reproach; there is something to be said about wisdom and character and self control but I digress…

PS: I had to add the picture of a Polish general in WW!! (General Anders) that my father served under. My mother knew about the general's mistress so I would imagine everybody did but it didn't seem to be looked on as a career- ender...