Michael Berry — Term Limited — Yay!

Thank goodness for that.  I’d also think that his future in talk radio is limited as well.  Ring-wing radio, as far as I can tell, is losing it’s audience.  More people call in and discount what the hosts say, or make them eat their words or backtrack.

For example, this morning, before 9:00, Michael Berry stated that liberal ___ (you fill in the blank — it’s not available on his podcasts tonight — it’s not hard to imagine, though, right?) call in only after nine.  I listen to Mr. Bill and then Mike Gallagher.  If I tune in before 9 to Michael Berry, it’s because I’m early for work or Gallagher’s substitute is boring — which happened today.  (Gallagher’s sub was calling a currently serving Marine a pawn of Al Qeida.  Yawn.  He and Mike call everyone against Bush policy  terrorists/traitors.  It’s become so common, it’s boring.)

Back to Michael Berry — I certainly hope his wife doesn’t run for Shelley’s open city council seat.  I also hope that he just stays on the old radio waves.  He’s a little late to the game and should have a short run.  Perhaps he will see the light and just go back to practicing law.

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Good Grief

The nonsense on what passes for National Media and the blogosphere is sometimes more than I can take.  Oh, and now teevee.  The “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader” institutionalizes cheating.  Perfect.  Way to go Fox.   It’s sponging off the “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” music crap.  If you quit you “drop out of school.”  Stupid on stilts.  Where’s my remote?

Of course, there were people who regretted that Cheney didn’t die in the suicide attack today.  And of course there were people who pounced upon that percieved feeling in the U.S. who went on blog sites and trolled.  Glenn has the rundown.  I haven’t read all the comments, but Glenn puts it all together.   As for me, I’ve never wanted anyone to die.  I have hoped that certain people pay a price for their actions.  If you wished Cheney had died, I’d rather you not sit on my side of the fence.  Seriously.

I had thought yesterday that I would write about how wrong Condi Rice got history on last Sunday’s Fox News Sunday, but Olberman did it better than I could.

Crap, I’m going to watch the ABC thing. 

Weird Monday — Good Weird

I connected with people today at work that I hadn’t before and it was a very good experience.  I connected with people today at work in a way that I hadn’t before and it was very good.  I met some new people today at work and connected with them and am very glad I did.  It’s complicated and given the very good advice that I have gotten here I won’t go into it more.  Suffice to say, someone was a hero today (not me) and that hero changed the way another human thinks about other human beings.  I feel very fortunate to have witnessed it.   It was awesome.  I have to stop there.

My laptop died.  It was a Gateway and in the years I had it, I filled it with crap.  I’m not sure what happened — I think it was the battery or maybe my lack of care for it.  I bought another one.  I paid the same amount I did before, but now I’ve got a wide screen with Vista.  It seems freindly enough.  It didn’t like my favorite arcade game at first, but adjusted rather well.  It also has a numeric key pad on the side like a desktop keyboard.  That will be useful in doing grades at home.  As for my old little laptop — I will get it repaired and already have a person in mind to give it to.

I had an idea of a topic to write about before I went to the meeting this afternoon.  It can wait until tomorrow.

I don’t think my writing has been so good to justify the difference in numbers that I see in those number gathering mechanisms, but I am grateful for the readers I have.  Every day that I think I can get back on track, something happens that derails me.  I am determined to get back on track.  Today’s derailment was important. 

My Troubles at Work

It turns out that, had I had a supportive boss, nothing would have happened to me.  It wasn’t about my opposition to the war.  What happened to me was grounded in the long-standing disagreement between my boss and me.

I know this because I asked for copies of everything in my personnel file.  My boss and her boss wanted to terminate me.  They gave a list of 9 reasons.  Reason 9 was the emails I sent to the conservative prof.  It was opportunistic.  My boss and I must now meet every two weeks for a year.  In the end, my troubles are with my boss.  And now she must listen to it every two weeks.  I suspect she will grow to hate meetings as much as I do.

This is the last I will write about it.  Seriously.

Haditha, Murtha, and Kline (formerly “Open Thread for Rick”)

I don’t know what the trouble is with your comments, and I don’t have time right now to look into it or read what you left on the other post.  However, I am very interested and would like to discuss the topic with you (and whoever else wants to) but it will have to be later on in the day.

So let this post be a place holder for that discussion.  I will update it with content later.

Knock yourself out Rick 🙂

****************** 

I finally had the time to think about it and figured out that Rick’s comments were trapped in Akismet Spam.  (I don’t know why I couldn’t figure it out last night — sorry.)  I released all of them and it shouldn’t happen any longer.

This discussion started over on Greenwald’s blog at Salon the other night.  Rick posted a letter from the attorney defending one of the men who stand accused in relation to the deaths of Iraqi civilians in Haditha.  Rick has suggested that I email him, and I will, but I want to see if I can put the comments he made about that topic on other posts of mine on this post.  (I am interested in having it all in one place. Additionally, I’d rather have his argument in his own words than writing a summary here.)  If he agrees, I put it together in a post.

It’s all below the fold.

My Lovely Students

A few years back I taught a guy from Korea.  Every day at the beginning of class, he would tell me, “We are your lovely students.”  I really liked that and use it often with my good groups.  I was lucky enough to have three lovely groups this term.  Here’s the proof:

I wish that the color were truer.  They are a beautiful dark pink.  I may try to take another picture tomorrow in the morning light.  It was so sweet.  I had been working with my writing students on the finishing touches on their papers when I had to go down the hall to my office.  When I returned and opened the lab door, there were shouts of “wait”!  I went back into the hall.  A moment later, they let me back in.  They gave me the roses and a card they had all signed.  I admit I cried a little with joy.  I hugged and thanked them all.  It was really quite a surprise and the perfect ending to our time together.

I should have some time over the weekend to write about the interesting topics my students covered in their papers.  For now, I’m just happy everything went well today and grateful to have the chance to teach such wonderful people.

New pic a day late

Roberto said that he liked the first pic so much, he might use it for his next music release 🙂   I’m still happy — enjoying them — that this was given to me.  They are one of the most beautiful gifts I have ever received.

Finals!

start tomorrow.  I brought home some work tonight, but I don’t really want to do it.  I’ll finish it all up while I am proctoring my first exam.  The second thing I have to do is listen to speeches.  I hope everything goes smoothly.

My student’s research papers are working out, for the most part.  I have two very iffy papers — no citations, no works cited list — despite the fact that all of them have been told that those are required.  I have tried in vain to find the source for one, and even had another teacher search with no results.

I hope to take some of what I have read from them as a launching place for some posts.  For example, the paper on AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa is excellent; the paper on the Kyoto Protocols is informative; and the paper on alternative transportation has something quite surprising in it.  I’ve learned a lot from those three students.

Talk Radio

Or what I heard today.  Look 🙂 talk radio is meant for people like me.  People who only catch parts of what people on talk radio say.  I tune in and out all day.  This is what I gathered from listening to talk radio today.  If I get it wrong, wha.

First up, Bennett.  He leads off Presidents day with a bash of Jimmy Carter and, wait for it . . . a lauding of Reagan.  Surprise!  After that, he claimed to want to chat about Iraq, but no, his listeners 🙂 and callers all wanted to tell him how to stop his dog from chewing.  Take from that what you will.
I missed Gallagher because I was working, but then on my way to anger management, I heard Medved on the same station.  He was on the Presidents day thing, too.  However, he wasn’t going the bash-Jimmy-Carter-route.  He deduced that an atheist would never be elected because such a person would call all believers delusional.  Then he had on a former Israeli ambassador who has written a book about why Jerusalem is not for the Arabs, and then (after my anger had been managed) he had on — wait for it — a BIG FOOT EXPERT.  Medved is fair and balanced.  Let the BIG FOOT skeptics call in.

Finally, I listened to Hugh Hewitt until the NEWS Hour.  Hewitt asked Steyn (!) about General Odom’s lack of knowledge about the 12th Imam(n).  Had Hewitt asked Odom about the Mahdi, Hewitt would have gotten a response, I think.  (There’s an old movie with Chuck Heston about it.)  It would be like some expert in US foreign policy from  another country being asked about the Second Coming.   Spluttering talk radio host, “You don’t know that the U.S. is a Christian Nation and you don’t know that their foreign policy is directed by those who wish to hasten the Second Coming?  How can you deal with them?  You know nothing about them!” 

When will this stop?    Greenwald and The Editors are working overtime in the push.  Me?  I’m still pulling myself up out of the goo.

Two weeks, I’ll be back.  Minimum.  Links and all.

 Anyone who reads this, think positive thoughts for my best friend.  I always think of the strongest creature I have ever known.  Stella POWER! 

Silliness

After submitting that last post, I took a look at my stats page and saw that someone clicked through a Spanish translation of my little bloggity blog.  On a whim, I thought I’d take a look.  It’s really funny — babelfish funny.  I laughed out loud.  (Too rare an event lately, sad to say.)

It reminded me of how some of my students try to hand in similarly “translated” essays as their own work.  Proper names always give these types of programs problems, as do idioms.

Farmers Branch Update

Since I have been busy with (distracted by) two very serious issues in my life, I haven’t followed up on the Farmers’ Branch saga in a while, and for that I apologize.

But wait!  My blog friend Ski has been researching and writing steadily about it, and I found a blog tonight with an absolutely devastating post.  Dig has the stats to shoot down all of Tim O’Hare’s claims.  These two bloggers have really done a lot of quality work and I wanted to recognize it on my little blog.

I’ll let each of them know directly on their blogs, but I’m adding them to my *exclusive* 🙂 blogroll.