How Could Anyone Possibly Be Offended By That?

From Today's Atlanta Journal Constitution:

Catherine Ariemma never intended for students to be offended by the sight of four Ku Klux Klansmen at Lumpkin County High School.

Wow! Really, I just don't have anything to add to that. I've just been sitting in stunned silence since reading that opening sentence.

Ariemma, a six-year veteran with the Lumpkin County school system, said the students, who were working on a film project for her advanced placement U.S. history class, meant no harm.

She admitted that she may have made a mistake by letting the students film the Klan reenactment on campus.

Yeh, ya think? You think maybe that might not have been the wisest course of action? You sure?

"I feel terrible that I have students who feel threatened because of something from my class," Ariemma told the AJC. "In hindsight, I wouldn't have had them film that part at school."

Oh, well hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it? I mean, who could have possibly foreseen that any students would take offense at the sight of robed Klansmen walking around campus?

Ariemma's students were filming reenactments of various historical periods last week, and four donned Klan outfits, superintendent Dewey Moye told the AJC.

She said she walked with them through the cafeteria, but forgot students were there eating lunch.

Oh, my God! I totally forgot that the cafeteria is used by students as a place to eat lunch!

"I told them, ‘I don't want you to walk through the building by yourselves because I don't want people to get the wrong idea," Ariemma said. "I failed to think about that there was a lunch track in the cafeteria when they went by."

How could anyone get the wrong idea? Four guys in Klan robes? Do you think someone might somehow mistake them for actual Klansmen? Seems pretty far-fetched to me!

Ariemma is an award-winning teaching.[sic] Last year, the Georgia Senate passed a resolution lauding her "dedication to her students and her profession" after she was honored as Lumpkin County High School's 2009 STAR Teacher.

And that is why we steer clear of Lumpkin County.

Let Me See If I've Got This Straight. . .

Sarah "Drill Me, Baby, Drill Me" Palin on the Obama Administration's reaction to the BP Oil spill:
(source)

“There is perhaps a hesitancy I don’t know how to say this the oil companies who have so supported Obama why the media hasn’t asked if there is any connection there to President Obama to take so doggone long to dive in there and grasp the complexity and potential tragedy that we are seeing there in the Gulf…if this were President Bush or Republican who hadn’t received the support form the oil companies as Obama, the msm would be all over his case, askin’ why he didn’t get in there to make sure the regulatory agencies were getting in there to make sure the oil companies weren’t getting away with this..”

So, let me see if I've got this. . .
Big Government has not done enough in the Gulf.
There wasn't enough regulation of the oil industry.
Those are your complaints here.
Really.

The problem here is, that this is your model that the administration followed for whatever reason. No government interference, let BP solve the problem on its own, the free market solution, blah blah blah. . . this is what you and your free-market conservative brethren have been preaching since at least the 1980's. Get government out of the way, let business have free rein and the market will solve all our problems with an invisible hand job.

And this is what happens when people are stupid enough to believe in this claptrap.


And it's not like this is some isolated incident. Remember when they de-regulated the Savings and Loans? We got stuck with a taxpayer-funded bailout.

Remember when they de-regulated the Airlines? We got ValuJet.

Remember when California de-regulated their Electricity Market? They got rolling blackouts, and eventually Arnold Schwarzenegger.

When they de-regulated the Accounting Industry, we got Arthur Anderson helping turn Enron into a giant con game.

When they de-regulated the banks, we got another taxpayer-funded bailout.

When they stopped enforcing the regulations on Coal Mining, we got the Sago diaster in 2006, the Upper Big Branch disaster in 2010, and lots of other smaller disasters. (see: link)

And yet, you people are continuously wailing about industry being over-regulated and how we need to get big government out of the way of these poor businesses who only want to do the right thing and create jobs and blah blah blah. Of course, whenever your advice is taken, big business proves itself to be completely untrustworthy, totally irresponsible and absolutely incapable of self-regulation. But apparently, you already know that, hence your criticism of the Obama Administration's reaction to the current disaster.

So, Congratulations, Sarah Palin! You were right about something. I'm sure it was completely accidental, but you were finally right about something. The regulatory agencies should have been much much stricter about safety precautions.

It's as if you were trying to pass the ball to a teammate, and your pass was so errant that the ball accidentally went through the hoop. Don't feel bad about how it happened, just be glad you got the two points.
Maybe the expression "pulled a Homer" could be replaced by "pulled a Palin." (h/t Simpsons)

One More random Thought About Rand Paul: He's a Total Tool

From the AP:

Rand Paul: WH criticism of BP sounds 'un-American'

(AP) – 8 hours ago

WASHINGTON — Kentucky's Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul is criticizing President Barack Obama's handling of the gulf oil debacle as putting "his boot heel on the throat of BP."

Yeah, that's a pretty typical tea-bagger insane overreaction. Criticizing someone is pretty much the same as crushing their windpipe with your boot. (a jackboot, one assumes)

Paul says Obama's criticism of the oil company sounds like an attack on business and "really un-American."

Um, you do know that "BP" stands for British Petroleum, right? They're a British company. So criticizing them is really more un-British, if anything.

In an interview Friday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Paul says the president's response is part of the "blame game" that's played in the U.S. Paul said that leads to the thinking that tragic incidents are "always someone's fault" and added, sometimes accidents just happen.

I thought that these Libertarians were supposed to be real big on personal responsibility. Apparently, not when it comes to large British corporations, I guess. Then, demanding that they pay for the damage that they did, for which they are responsible, is an un-American boot to the throat. So, what? we should pay? The American taxpayers should pay for cleaning up BP's mess? I don't get it. If I crash my car into Rand Paul's house, can I say that "sometimes accidents just happen," and it's not "always someone's fault," so stop playing "the blame game" and asking me to pay for the damages I did. God! It's like you're crushing my throat with your boot!

This seems like it could be Important

I'm re-posting this from Phydeaux and Phriends 'cause it seems like a story that should be getting more coverage. Or any coverage.

19 May 2010

It's Not News Unless It Fits the Narrative

Did you hear about the terrorist attack in Florida last week? Unless you live in Jacksonville, you probably haven't. Outside of local news (and, now, online), there's been no mention of this act -- even dismissed as a "deranged individual" or a "one-off".

Despicable.

This is the direct result of profit-driven news divisions.

In case the links don't work, here's the story from Crooks and Liars:

Florida mosque bombed; FBI calls for help; national media mute

By karoli Wednesday May 19, 2010 2:00pm

On May 10th, a middle-aged man carried a can of gasoline and a pipe bomb into the Jacksonville Islamic Center of Northeast Florida during evening prayers and detonated it. Fortunately, there were no injuries to people, though the bomb did damage property.

The surveillance video above gives a fairly decent picture of this man, who is clearly white, middle-aged, and on a mission.

The local news is all over it, of course. WOKV.com reports the FBI investigating it as a hate crime and possible domestic terrorism.

"It was a dangerous device, and had anybody been around it they could have been seriously injured or killed," says Special Agent James Casey. "We want to sort of emphasize the seriousness of the thing and not let people believe that this was just a match and a little bit of gasoline that was spread around."

Casey says surveillance video from the Islamic Center shows the arsonist carrying gasoline and the pipe bomb. When the explosive went off, parts of it were found 100 feet away on 9A.

So, a mosque is bombed by a white guy and the bomb isn't exactly small, but the national media sees no value in reporting it? Really? And yet, that is evidently the case.

Random Thoughts On Rand Paul

Random thought #1:
What kind of a douchebag names his kid after Ayn Rand? How does that conversation go?

Mrs. Paul: Honey, I was thinking that if it's a boy, we might name him after my father.
Ron Paul: Nope. Gonna name 'im after my favorite pseudo-philosopher! The woman who put a quasi-intellectual sheen on being a self-centered asshole, Ayn Rand.
Mrs. P: But what if it's a boy?
Ron P: If it's a boy, we'll name him "Rand." "Ayn" if it's a girl, "Rand" if it's a boy.
Mrs. P: But what if he doesn't grow up to be a narcissistic bag of greed?
Ron P: Oh, he will, honey! He will!

Random Thought # 2:
What kind of a tool gives an acceptance speech at a country club? Especially when the teabaggers make such a big deal of their phony populism, it seems a little politically tone-deaf to give your obligatory "standing up for the common folk against the Washington fat cats" speech at a place whose name is synonymous with elitism.

Random Thought #3:
Why do we have to pretend that this victory is some sort of a big deal? It's a primary. Primary voters tend to be those on the right wing of the Republican Party, it's not surprising that they would choose the nutty libertarian. And I gotta think that having a famous/notorious father probably did at least as much to propel him to victory as his affiliation with the Teabaggers. (See Bush, George W.)
If/when a teabagger candidate wins in a general election, then maybe, maybe that might be an indication that the Tea Party is a significant force in politics. Right now, you've just got an extremist candidate being nominated by Republican voters. Quell Surprise! The bigger story is that in Kentucky of all places, there were nearly 200,000 more votes cast in the Democratic Primary than in the Republican one. (Source: Pensito Review) That doesn't bode well for Rand in the general election.