Letters to the Editor
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We agree?
Sorry it took so long to get back to those who responded to my post a while back regarding education today, and our young folks. Miraculously, I sensed a response of unanimity in recognizing that we’re in deep shit (sorry, it’s the only phrase that expresses my feeling) vis-à-vis our kids, and what they’re carrying around in their brains.
**Quick side note…… To the person who wrote something like, “You old people think you’re better than the young folks,” (I think I recall there were a bunch more capital letters,) Reading isn’t enough; you really should take the time to try and “comprehend” what you’ve just read. Had you done so you would have realized that nowhere did I say, or imply, that we are better than they are. I just think they have a lot more, as the marines call it, “shit-fer- brains” than we do.
I gotta admit I kinda winced a little when I started reading the responses from those hearty soldiers of our educational system, the ones who have, or did have, their “boots on the ground” experience, but I was quickly relieved. That they recognize the seriousness of the problem is at the same time profound…..and dreadful. Profound, because it’s gratifying to know the educators are troubled; and dreadful because in not offering doable solutions, they display a pragmatic realization that the problem is just too big, and the entrenched bureaucracy too rich, and powerful as to make the problem unfixable.
Certainly everyone here is smart enough to know “what” needs doing; I also believe you’re all smart enough to know it won’t get done.
I think those of us in, or around the six decade mark, we feel a sense of pity. The kids are really getting screwed. To my friend above, I actually believe they’re “better” than us; just not as smart. Notice I didn’t say, “not as intelligent;” They’re bigger, stronger, healthier, and less burdened by our prejudices than us. That makes them much better prepared to learn; yet we’re satisfied teaching them crap. They’re missing so much………and that’s a pity.
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HILLARY CLINTON MUST DO WELL TUESDAY. IT’S UP TO US HERE IN PENNSYLVANIA
Many of the Obamamania people are complaining about the tough and challenging questions put to Mr. Obama in the recent debate here in Philadelphia. Well, they can handle it. Check the Constitution. It’s O.K. I say, right on. It’s about time, we (the voters) asked tough, challenging, and specific questions of a candidate who has obtained so many delegates in his favor.
BEWARE THE “SWOON” FACTOR
I am deeply concerned that much of the Obama delegate “pile-up” has been a result of some of these super charged “tent revivals” as Mr. Obama often refers to them, or these super-heated rallies or whatever you want to call them with masses of thousands in front of him and below him ready to swoon at every word and phrase, such as the reported 35,000 people who showed up at his campaign rally this past Friday in Philadelphia. I will quote from the public record a specific quote that Mr. Obama said at one of these “tent revivals” or rallies: “At some point in the evening, a light is going to shine down and you will have an epiphany and you’ll say, I have to vote for Barack Obama!” Continuing, I submit another quoted report from a Connecticut radio talk show host Jim Vicevich in which he has counted five separate instances in which women have fainted at Obama rallies, and these are only the ones he knows about. There are many other supporting quotes as well.
Ladies and Gentlemen, can we here in Pennsylvania, go to the polls on Tuesday, April 22nd, and make a calm and rational decision to vote for the best candidate who gives us straight talk, specific solutions, no hype, no “hot air” from an “empty suit”, no “swoon” factor, yet instead gives us specific tactics to address the multitude of serious and major problems we have as a result of the blunder of this incompetent buffoon and his henchmen who have been running our Executive Branch of our government the last seven years? I hope so. My wife and I are voting for Hillary Clinton. Thank you for your attention.
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Pundits Don't Get It
There's a lot of discussion about the debate and how badly Senator Barack Obama did in responding to questions about his "character" from the psuedo-journalist moderators. Most of the pundits don't understand that American voters are smarter than they think, and I think pundits have been too fond of their own thinking.
The shenanigans behind the scene concerning the debate (and it appears there's more coming) will put Mr. Obama's performance in context. Gotcha questions from the press no longer have much impact on voter decision-making (except for those who use it to bolster their ideological arguments).
Senator Hillary Clinton certainly did not do herself much good in her repeated unsuccessful "attacks" on her opponent and her sideways answer about the Bosnia lie.
Pennsylvania's vote next Tuesday will show the extent of voter fatique from the Clinton campaign's untrustworthy tactics.
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@maureenodonnell -- you are being a tad witless
You say, presumably of me (and implicitly of Obama)
"but what's not great is the assumption of superiority in some of those witless ones who have had the financial resources to swan around some university while their dilettante lifestyle is being subsidised by the taxpayer."
Little shock to you -- at least one of my degrees I worked my way through a very expensive school (I was not entitled to student loans at the time, even though my parents were not rich), getting up at 8am and going to be at 1am, day after day, heading to work in the morning, or class, back to work, back to class, back to work -- so did my law-school roommate. The school was not a state school and there was no taxpayer subsidy, no student loan, nada. But of course you think I was swanning around.
And here is a real shock to your ignorance -- Obama got a scholarship to Harvard, and student loans he just finished paying back -- guess what, that scholarship, that was not state money, and the student loans simply had a guarantee -- he still had to pay them. By the way, none of the scholarships at private schools have state funding in the US. Hillary on the other hand had her parents pay the full ride and Wellesley and Yale, neither cheap, and was a Goldwater girl at Wellesley (which say a lot.)
As for your idea that I swanned around Trinity, maybe the people you hang out with did, I was a scientist -- 37 hours a week on my class schedule, and in the summers I worked in construction in the US, in 100 degree heat, at huge heights. But of course you would not know that, as bottled up in resentment and assumptions as you are. Obviously I cannot expect any retraction form you, that would be admitting your imperfection...
And since you claim some rurality, let me say something realy harsh, don't talk about subsidies, since most of your life rural Ireland paid no tax, nada, zip, but engaged still in the sort of dishonest whining that you now do about the drop of the tax money that Galway, Dublin and Cork paid that they got to spend on themselves, while cannily investing in property there. Likely you have been subsidized all your life ... but that did not stop you being as my grandmother (from Munster) or my Father (from Munster) would have said, a "small person."