I'm hot for teacher.....

Usually it’s democrats and other useful idiots who find themselves the subject of my wrath and scorn here. Today is different. Today I’m upset with one of my favorite columnists, Ann Coulter.

One of the things that has often been the subject of her wrath and scorn over the years has been, and I think rightly so, the public school system. It’s broke. Kids who survive it are stupid compared to their world-wide peers.

But today, she went after not just the idiotic bureaucracy that is the Department of Education, she went after the teachers themselves in general terms that are altogether inaccurate and hurtful.

In her condemnation of BHO’s stimulus/rescue/spending/whatever-you-want-to-call-it plan in general and its planned outpouring of dollars to the DoE in particular, she described the teachers as “lethargic incompetents who kick off at 2 p.m. every day and get summers off. Actually, that's not fair: Some teachers spend long hours after school having sex with their students.”

My wife is a high school teacher in the toughest ghetto school in our area where she enjoys the distinction of being in what is by far the minority of the teaching staff. I know for a fact that most of the teachers in that school do in one way or another fit Ms. Coulter’s description. My wife works her butt off and earns every penny of her meager salary.

At least once a week, I hear complaints about her coworkers leaving early while she stays, even when her last block of the day is free. She works hard developing lesson plans that her department peers then use for their own classes. She cares about her students while others send them out to buy lunch.

Recently, my wife was awarded her National Board Certification. She worked weekends for months bettering herself and still found the time to help other (undeserving) teachers who were also going through the process.

In the Marine Corps we have a saying, “Every unit has its 10 percent.” Among every large group of people there will always be those few who disgrace themselves regularly. Unfortunately for teachers, their numbers are upside down. It’s the 10 percent who are the good ones; the ones whom the other 90 need to aspire to be.

So Ms. Coulter, do those outstanding human beings the well deserved courtesy of acknowledging them. Liberals by definition are wrong headed and thus easy for you to generalize. Teachers are not a group you can so wholly condemn.

I know, let's give it cancer!

It’s scary when intelligent, or at least educated, people say stupid things. Scary because when they do, they often present these stupid ideas in such a way that doesn’t look that bad to someone who might not be paying close attention.

I was reading a column by Erica Etelson this morning (I know, I could have avoided the heartburn by stopping when I saw Berkeley in the dateline), and as a whole I think she said fairly accurate things about the economy. But she also said this: “Meanwhile, the one measure that should and could be instituted immediately is a floor for the retail price of gas. If, for example, the minimum were $4 a gallon and the market price was $2, the government would pocket the difference and find itself with billions to spend on mass transit.”

When are these numbskulls going to figure out that the government needs to stay out of the economy? I’m not an economist. In fact, most of what I hear about the economy today goes right over my head. But I do know that the government is about as good at fixing an ailing economy as I am at fixing a broken space shuttle.

The economy (I’m already sick of saying that word) lives and breathes like an organism. Sometimes it gets sick. And then it heals itself. Government involvement is like a really bad episode of House where the patient gets exponentially worse and worse while the doctors try more and more. Then the (well-intentioned) doctors just stop meddling and the patient gets better because it was just a case of dehydration to begin with.

Problem is the people in Washington who want the government to continue doing more and more are not well intentioned. They kind of look like they are if you don’t really pay attention, but they’re not. Liberal policy and practice put the economy where it is today. Now liberals are using the fear of economic meltdown to push the idea that the government MUST do something NOW! They are using today’s crisis to rush all sorts of crap (pork) past the normal scrutiny it would be subjected to. They have been trying for years to spend more (of our) money on their pet projects. Now they’ve found a way to do just that.

The economy has a cold, let it heal. Government intervention is just like feeding it a big, steaming bowl of cancer.

I’m rambling, sorry. I’ll shut up now.

Well isn't that interesting.....

Welcome back, sometimes reader. Fans of Stephen King will recognize the almost plagiarism. Can that man tell a story, or what?

Anyone who has paid any bit of attention here probably understands that most of my rambling comes from my frustration at the idiocy of others – mostly politicians or the media. I’m generally unhappy with most of what they are doing, but every once in a while one of them would raise the level of my pisstivity or amazement to the point where I could hold it no longer and I needed to vent. Remind me to thank whoever invented the blog.

In the weeks and months leading up to last November’s elections there was simply too much of this. Every single day there was something new to make me angry and I couldn’t keep up. Those things that just make your jaw drop and eyes go wide or your fists clench, and you say to yourself, “are you freakin’ kidding me?”

So now I’m back here and going to try to vent some more. I think it will be good for me. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get around to writing about something other than the idiocy of others.