Follow-Up

As per my last post, I attended last night’s regular school board meeting.

The superintendent gave a report on the so-called “health curriculum,” which consisted of him saying that the committee was going to revise the curriculum document, with special attention to age-appropriateness, present it to the board on September 14th, invite public comment in late September, then vote in October.

The superintendent in his remarks said that they’d studied other curricula around the state, and that the vast majority of the districts followed a more “traditional” model for sex ed.

I commented at the end of the meeting that perhaps the reason for that is because a traditional model is what most accurately reflects Montana’s values.

Some of the people I talked to view this as a victory, but I’m not so sure. Less than a month to adjust a curriculum that needs major rewrites? I dunno. It reeks of lip service to me.

The meeting was not nearly as well-attended, and most people left when the main topic — the budget — came up.

Guess where most of your tax dollar goes around here. Not to the feds; not to the state, but the local school.

I’m a pessimist. I still think they are working very hard to push this thing through, and it’s going to get passed in one way or another.

Filed under: We're So Fucked

Helena School Board Meeting Recap

I’m not going to recap the whole controversy here, just because you can go Google it, if you really don’t know yet.

This article gets it mostly right, but there is a subtle bias. The article notes that 34 spoke in favor and 30 in opposition, which may lead to the impression that there were more proponents than oppenents. This is misleading at best. Rough guesstimate, 70%-80% of the attendees were opposed.

The ground rules laid down were pretty much “stick to your two minutes,” “no personal attacks,” and “be respectful.” Three or four proponents made use of their “respectful” time by making snide remarks about Catholic education. Which was evidently OK, because the “facilitator” didn’t say anything.

Commentary in favor seemed to be largely anecdotal evidence and pleas for “tolerance.” The “usual suspects” were there: P-FLAG, Planned Parenthood, NARAL, Human Rights Network, ACLU. There were some arguments based on prevention of STI’s and pregnancies. (Whatever happened to STD’s? “Disease” too harsh or something?)

One of the arguments that bothered me the most came from a school board member (who is, incidentally, married to a Democratic legislator) who said that he, too, objected initially, but then came around to agreement because teaching a child about sex can prevent sexual abuse. This is an LEO, by the by. He drug out a long story about a convicted sex offender who was on the run and was possibly in Montana, and how this curriculum could maybe prevent some kid from being abused. First of all, most child sexual abuse comes from someone who is in a position of trust and authority, i.e., family, teachers, and/or clergy; not some wild-eyed stranger. So, this argument was not only a non-starter in my book, it was utterly nonsensical.

Several gay men spoke to how they were bullied and tormented, and how this curriculum would fix that. Well, no it wouldn’t. Is bullying a problem? Absolutely. Ask anyone who is “different.” Doesn’t matter if you’re gay, or a computer nerd, or any number of “things,” cretins will bully you. Is bullying a problem that can be solved? Probably not. People are assholes. Always have been, always will be. Don’t cheapen someone else being bullied, by placing special emphasis on sexual orientation. Plenty of straight kids get bullied, too. I don’t want to minimize the bullying in any way. But it’s a discrete issue.

After the “pro” side spoke, most of them left. (Tolerance for diffrerent viewpoints, yanno.)

As the opponents spoke, there were a couple anecdotal speakers. One said, “I knew everything about sex, and ended up getting pregnant anyway.” There were two former teachers who basically said, “Leave this out. Math, reading, writing, literature, music and art are far more important than this. Shore up those programs first.” Many people said, in essence, “We were left out of the process. Let’s step back and bring EVERYBODY to the table and find something that the community can live with.” Not once did I hear that from the proponents. (To be fair, someone may have made that point, but if so, I don’t remember.)

There were the requisite appeals to morality, of course. While relevant, I’m not sure that they “win hearts and minds,” in the parlance of our times.

So now it’s back to the board’s hands. I suspect they are being inundated with calls, emails, letters and faxes.

I’ll be going to the next board meeting, so will have more to talk about then.

As for me, going into next school year, my school kids will be 12, 9 and 5. They want to teach 5 year olds about penis and vagina and uterus. My five year-old says stuff to me like, “Daddy, butterflies are very beautiful,” “Daddy, fireworks are for boys AND girls,” or “Daddy, your tools can fix everything,” She’s not ready for “penis” and “vagina.” I know that. I can see it. She knows that no one is supposed to touch her private places.

Right now, that’s enough for all of us.

Filed under: We're So Fucked

We The Sheeple

Yesterday, I did my civic duty and went to the polling place to vote against the school mill levy.

Yeah, I know. Anti school! Anti kids! My feeling is that if we didn’t send so much money to those chuzzlewits occupying the Department of Education, we could buy all the shit we needed without going begging every year.

Oh, and BTW, the language on this one made it a permanent increase. I just wish there was a ballot option for “Fuck NO.”

Anyway, hanging outside the polling place was a Concerned Citizen(tm) (only thing missing was eau de Patchouli) gathering signatures on a petition to get bus service into the rural area of the valley.

As I went in, she accosted a soccer mom on her way out and said, “Would you like to sign our petition to get bus service in the valley on the November ballot?” Soccer Mom said, “Sure!” and happily signed the petition.

So, I went on in to vote, and sure enough, she buttonholed me when I came out.

I said, “If you’re getting this on the ballot, how are you planning on funding it? Public funds?”

“I don’t know. Mill levy? Grants?”

“Did you do a feasability study that I can read?”

*blink*

“Sorry. Not interested.”

Bet your ass, though, that this thing will end up on the fucking ballot in November, and people will vote for it because Hey! Bus service! Good for the environment & shit.

Then no one will fucking ride it, and the taxpayers will be left holding the bag. The Bus Board, or what the fuck ever, will blame the problem on a “Lack of Awareness,” so there will be expensive advertising campaigns on the public dime.

The thing is? Most of the people who live out in the valley don’t need to take the fucking bus anyway!

But Hey! Bus service!

Filed under: Beavis, You Are One Dumb Sonofabitch, Go Fuck Yourself, We're So Fucked

Ain’t No Hate Like Librul Hate

So, I’m checking in on Twitter today, and I see this from @RickSheridan. (BTW, I’m disturbingly close to calling people’s names with the word “at” in front. “Hey, has anyone seen at-Paul today?” Jebus, maybe I need some help here.)

Nice. RT @JMRsOMA @RickSheridan U look like a fucking pervert saying this & standing next to child of color I SPIT ON YOUR ASS 4 THAT CHILD

So, of course, I had to see what precipitated THAT outburst, and I find that the post that started the whole thing was this (again from @RickSheridan):

Don’t mind booing & hissing. Though I agree with Joe Wilson I don’t much cotton to calling the President a liar in that venue. #tcot #tlot

Wow. That seemed to me to be pretty much uncalled for, so in my own subtle way, I jumped into the conversation.

@RickSheridan Wow. That was incredibly fucking insightful. You stay classy, @JMRsOMA.

Which of course, resulted in this:

@pottymouthcon I’m glad you enjoyed it you ignorant hillbilly

Alright, now the game is ON.

@JMRsOMA That’s the best you got? Ignorant hilbilly? What verve! What wit! What charm! You hacked on a guy’s kid. You’re a hateful fuckwit.

@pottymouthcon Thats where you show your ignorance asswipe! What are you his mouthpiece? Fuck you, Fuck him, & God keep that kid safe!

Now here’s where it starts getting good, because I’m thinking at this point, “How in hell does a one-off comment about Obumble engender this?” And I figure now that I got the stick in the hornet’s nest; what harm in giving it a little stir! A little riposte to see what parry might come back.

@JMRsOMA I was right from the get-go. You are a racist fuckhead with nothing to contribute except bile and hate. Thanks for playing.

@pottymouthcon Im 4 real so get use to it bitch the kid w/be raised with values & traditions contrary to the experiences of his ethnic group

Wut? “The kid will be raised with values and traditions contrary to the experiences of his ethnic group.”

Then followed these streams of invective to Rick.

@RickSheridan WHAT U R TEACHING YOUR BLACK CHILD: It’s bad to watch anything concerning the first Black US President-Poor kid w/b fucked up
@RickSheridan WHAT U R TEACHING YOUR BLACK CHILD: To be disrespectful of the first Black U.S. President and that makes you unpatriotic~!
@RickSheridan WHAT U R TEACHING YOUR BLACK CHILD: Intolerance of Black men. White men like you of course are acceptable.
@RickSheridan WHAT UR TEACHING YOUR BLACK CHILD: To develop mixed emotions about people like #Kutcher who love people who look like him/her!

I’m still on the “values and traditions” of ethic groups, so I ask:

@JMRsOMA By your logic, then, should white kids be raised in white neighborhoods surrounded by other whites for purity of ethnic experience?

To which I get:

@PottyMouthCon Fuck you bitch, I have nothing more to say to you wannabemouthpiece

Wait! I asked a question, and I think I deserve an answer here, don’t you?

@PottyMouthCon Don’t go there with me you Ultra insensitive #Republican! It’s about demonstrating respect ESPECIALLY given the facts.

Respect!

@JMRsOMA Respect?!? It’s a two-way street, my friend. Now, one last time, please explain your REASONING – sans bile – if you can.

Still no answer here, and now we’re bringing up “facts.” I’m generally a fan of facts. Facts teach me stuff. Facts allow me to make rational decisions; not based on emotions. Let’s do. Let’s do talk facts.

@JMRsOMA I’m trying to give you a chance to enlighten me; to change my mind with logic and facts. Can you do that, or is hate all you offer?

I even put the lid on Potty for that one.

@PottyMouthCon I don’t give a fuck what you think, feel, believe. It’s clear you have no respect for the President of the United States!

Well, I can’t fucking argue with that.

@JMRsOMA That’s very true. But it has everything to do with his policies and ideas and nothing to do with skin color. I have the same…
@JMRsOMA …opinion of Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, Chris Dodd, and many, many others for the same reason. NOT SKIN COLOR”

The conversation ended there, as @JMRsOMA decided to block me. (Which doesn’t do a fucking thing, since I can log out and see the tweets just fine anyway.

That’s not the point.

This is the point. This is why racism will never end in the US — not while people like this are so concerned about the “ethnic experience” only for their own skin color. If I said that white kids should be raised by white parents in white neighborhoods, I would be called a Klukker, and there would be figurative crosses burning on my lawn for daring to suggest this.

I have a great deal of respect for anyone who adopts a kid. As Rick said in a tweet to me; he expected this, and they’re used to it.

So much for content of character, eh, Dr. King.

Filed under: ...And The Horse You Rode In On, Go Fuck Yourself, We're So Fucked, What the Fuck?

The Language of Debate

I woke up this morning and headed to my Bloglines page, where I subscribe to a few of my local lefty blogs.

I pretty much do this every morning to keep a consistent level of bile in my system, and believe me, it fucking works.

Anyway, I tumbled on to one that referred to “anti-reformers” and went on to call them (us) “fascists” for wanting the government to prop up private insurance companies.

I looked at that and said, “What in the blue FUCK do you mean by that?” Then, I wished upon them a skull-fucking, the likes of which haven’t been seen since Gunny berated Private Pyle when he was on the shitter with his rifle. But upon reflection, I decided that the skull fucking had already happened, since only a mush-brained O-Bot could make that logical leap.

Using “anti-reform” in that manner indicates some pretty deep intellectual dishonesty and laziness. And “fascist?” Give me a fucking break! You keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means.

But this language gets picked up and parroted through the MSM on a nightly basis, and the people who can’t be bothered to actually learn anything from somewhere else accept it as gospel.

Let’s get one thing straight: I have insurance through my employer, and it’s OK, but holy mother fuck do I hate the insurance companies.

Their policies are byzantine to the point of being unreadable, and Gord help you when you have to enter the bureaucracy. It rivals a government agency, and in fact, the way insurance is set up in my world, it is a quasi-government agency. Since I am (unwillingly) a union member, I have a grand total of 3 plans to choose from, offered by two companies. The opportunity for me to find a policy that is tailored to my needs is exactly fucking nil.

Plus, what I pay in a year to insurance, combined with what I pay out of pocket is fucking obscene. I could split that money in a concierge-style manner among my doctor, my dentist and the eye doctor, and probably keep everyone in business, and not have to worry if a claim is going to be approved or not.

This “reform” that HRHBPBHO calls for “sacrifice” from just about everyone except trial lawyers and unions. Not only that, but why aren’t we asking the fucking DOCTORS how we can help them lower costs?

You want fucking reform? Here’s PMC’s plan for reform.

• Tort Reform: This can bring malpractice premiums down, which in turn brings costs down. We’re so litigious that malpractice now means the smallest fuck-up. Doctors are humans and make mistakes. Let’s fix it up so that they have to make them right for the minor fuck ups, and yes, let’s sue the shit out of them when it’s egregious.
• De-Couple Insurance and employment: This has a double effect, a nice one being a reduction in the cost of labor for employers, it gets rid of COBRA, and allows people to seek out their own insurance plans, rather than one that hits one standard deviation from the middle of the Bell curve. Competition for insurance will also lower the cost in that arena as well.
• Reduce the amount of paperwork and coding that has to be done. Next time you’re at the doctor’s office, find out how many employees are dedicated almost solely to paperwork and administration.

Those are three things I think would make an immediate and significant impact. There are other issues, as well, but I think reducing costs in this manner would have a cascade effect, and maybe people who have been using the ER for primary care could now afford to see a GP.

The vast majority of people who work in health care want to, you know, HELP PEOPLE.

Let’s fucking figure out how to make it easier and cheaper for them, which makes it cheaper and easier for all of us.

Filed under: ...And Your Mom's A Whore, Beavis, You Are One Dumb Sonofabitch, Go Fuck Yourself, We're So Fucked

Heinlein Nails it in One

In a past life, I ran a “respectable” blog (though that could be argued), where I tried to give everyone a chance and speak their piece, and not just call them fucking assholes outright, although many deserved it.

After the election and the inauguration, I pretty much gave it up, since I knew I couldn’t interact with these chuzzlewits and not snap.

And so, PMC was born.

Every time I sit and watch the news, I just get angry and frustrated and, truth be told, a little bit scared. I really think that it’s going to take a generation to undo the fuckery that has been done in the past 6 months. I hope I’m wrong; but there you go.

So, I’m feeling a little unbalanced; one might say “Beck-ish.”

To counterbalance that, I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading. One government enterprise I believe in is the public library, and I try to get there every other week. But I haven’t been reading heavy political tomes or anything like that, I’m going back to one of my first loves: Science Fiction.

There are two authors who I’ve been devouring, and the first is Philip K. Dick. I haven’t seen the movie, but “A Scanner Darkly” was one of the most disturbing and jarring things I’ve read in a long time.

But the one I’ve really been paying attention to is Heinlein, and I’m reading him a lot differently than I did 20 years ago.

The latest one I finished since I’ve been feeling Beck-ish is “Friday.” I tumbled across this (rather longish) passage, and my jaw hit my chest.

It doesn’t really require any context other than Friday’s assignment from her boss is to think about “How to identify a dying culture.” He asks her if she’s given it any thought.

(Hold on — this is going to take me a while to type.)

“[ . . . ] It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn’t the whole population.

[ . . . ]

So far as I have listened, before a revolution can take place, the population must lose faith in both the police and the courts.”

“Elementary. Go on.”

“Well . . . high taxation is important and so is inflation of the currency and the ratio of the productive to those on the public payroll. But that’s old hat; everybody knows that a country is on the skids when its income and outgo get out of balance and stay that way — even though there are always endless attempts to wish it away by legislation. But I started looking for little signs, what some call silly-season symptoms. For example, did you know that it is against the law here to be naked outside your own home? Even in your own home if anybody can see in?”

“Rather difficult to enforce, I suspect. What significance do you see in it?”

“Oh, it isn’t enforced. But it can’t be repealed, either. The Confederacy is loaded with such laws. It seems to me that any law that is not enforced and can’t be enforced weakens all other laws.”

[ . . . ]

“. . . I suspect that little incidents of violence, pecking away at people day after day, damage a culture even more than riots that flare up and then die down. I guess that’s all for now. Oh, conscription and slavery and arbitrary compulsion of all sorts and imprisonment without bail and without speedy trial — but those things are obvious; all the histories list them.”

“Friday, I think you have missed the most alarming symptom of all.”

“I have? Are you going to tell me? Or am I going to have to grope around in the dark for it?”

“Mmm. This once I shall tell you. But go back and search for it. Examine it. Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named . . . but a dying culture invariable exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than a riot.”

When I finished this passage, I bookmarked it and re-read it when I’d finished the book. Then I re-read it again. And again.

This passage, more than any other thing I’ve read, articulates exactly what I believe is happening right before my eyes, and I hope — beyond hope — that I am wrong. I often worry that I am being a bit hypersensitive, as I do tend to steep myself in current events, and try (try!) to make sense of them, so I wonder if I’m not suffering a bit from the canary in a coal mine syndrome.

Incidentally, this book was published in 1982, so what was going on in the world as Heinlein wrote it wasn’t all that different from what we are seeing right now.

I don’t know. What do you think? Are Heinlein and I way off base here, or what? Because it doesn’t look like it to me.

Filed under: We're So Fucked, What the Fuck?

Do These Clowns Ever Stop To Think?

A better question might be: “Did they ever start?”

So, here’s the latest from the Obumble administration. He proposes to “outline plans that would require state governments and colleges to change many of their practices and rules.”

(You ever notice how often this schlub speaks in the first person. “I will do this” and “I will do that?” Arrogance personified.)

The plan, which is, as one would expect from these fuckwits, scant on details. But here’s a teaser:

[...]administration officials said Obama wants states to let unemployment insurance beneficiaries continue collecting checks while they attend a broader array of educational or vocational programs than is currently allowed.

“We want the states to make use of the latitude they have to make an expansive definition of retraining,” said Deputy Undersecretary of Education Robert Shireman, former director of a Berkeley nonprofit, the Institute for College Access and Success.

“More expansive definition.” We all know what that means, and it should send a shiver down your back (not your leg — or your chin, for that matter.)

So now, not only are we expanding benefits, which costs the taxpayer (directly and indirectly), we are going to pour a whole shitload of money into “retraining programs.”

Now I ask you: With all of these training programs and benefits and whatnot, why the fuck would anyone want to get off unemployment?

Filed under: We're So Fucked, What the Fuck?

Masters of the Completely Fucking Obvious

• I read yesterday about a study that “linked” kids TV viewing habits to their sexual activity. The younger they were allowed to watch adult content, the sooner they became sexually active. I didn’t read the study, just the reportage of it, but I’m sitting there yelling at the screen, “Correlation is not causation. Fer fuck’s sake, if the parents are letting them watch these shows, there’s probably quite a few other “enabling” behaviors going on. But let’s not get bogged down in analysis and details.
• On the way into work this morning, there was a whole segment on the radio news about how sales of cheaper beer are increasing, while sales of the “premium” brands are declining. Due to the recession of course. I yell at the radio, “This is fucking news?” Then I realize how economically illiterate most people are.

I guess those are the first two things to piss me off today. More to come, I’m sure because as “they” say, “If you aren’t pissed off, you’re not paying attention.

Filed under: We're So Fucked