This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Society

  • Veteran barred from school for paper on killing

    We’ve grown accustomed to the stories about elementary-schoolers suspended from school for bringing to class little plastic army men and tiny toy guns or drawing tanks and planes. VTWoody sends us a link to an article about a Baltimore college student who has been banned from his campus until he seeks professional treatment for writing about his experiences in combat;

    So [Charles] Whittington, an Iraq veteran, submitted an essay on the allure of combat for his English class at the Community College of Baltimore County in Catonsville. He called war a drug and wrote that killing “is something that I do not just want but something I really need so I can feel like myself.”

    Whittington’s instructor gave him an A and suggested that he seek publication for the piece. The essay appeared in the Oct. 26 edition of the campus newspaper.

    Two weeks later, the former infantryman was called to a meeting with high-ranking college officials, who told him he would be barred from campus until he obtained a psychological evaluation. “We all believe in freedom of speech, but we have to really be cautious in this post- Virginia Tech world,” says college spokesman Hope Davis, referring to the 2007 massacre of 32 people by a student gunman.

    Post VA-Tech? Really? Was Seung-Hui Cho a veteran who relived his experiences in combat in his mind? A veteran who knew that killing is no solution to personal problems? A man trained to keep his finger off the trigger until he needed bullets?

    But Whittington, 24, says that he has his violent impulses under control with the help of counseling and medication and that the college is unfairly keeping him from moving forward with his life.

    “Right now, that’s all I have left,” he says of his classes.

    The dispute speaks to the apprehension that steers college officials as they try to prevent campus violence. But it also illustrates a common dilemma for veterans, who have endured traumas their peers can barely fathom and who often feel misunderstood when they try to discuss their experiences.

    Yeah, that’s not preventing campus violence. That’s proof that the gap between Americans and those who serve is widening.

    Would the college ban violent rap music? Would they ban violent Islamic professors? Would they ban Black Panthers?

    It’s just easier to ban veterans because we make less noise and aren’t a real threat anyway. And everyone feels safer because the college acts like it’s doing something – even if it’s the wrong thing. Like the TSA.

    Update here.

  • School forbids kid to put flag on bike

    See, I hardly know what to make of crap like this. Ya know, ya read the thing and you know there has to be more. From Fox40 in Sacramento;

    13-year-old Cody Alicea rides with an American flag on the back of his bike. He says he does this to be patriotic and to honor veterans, like his own grandfather, Robert. He’s had the flag on his bike for two months but Monday, was asked told to take it down.

    A school official at Denair Middle School told Cody some students had been complaining about the flag and it was no longer allowed on school property.

    So you go looking for more information;

    “(The) First Amendment is important,” [Denair Unified School District Superintendent Edward] Parraz said. “We want the kids to respect it, understand it, and with that comes a responsibility.”

    Parraz said racial tensions boiled over at the school this year around the Cinco de Mayo holiday.

    “Our Hispanic, you know, kids will, you know, bring their Mexican flags and they’ll display it, and then of course the kids would do the American flag situation, and it does cause kind of a racial tension which we don’t really want,” Parraz said. “We want them to appreciate the cultures.”

    Apparently, the kid says he flies the flag on his bicycle to honor veterans – what does that have to do with Mexican kids (who by the way are in a school funded by American taxpayers)? And so what if they do fly their Mexican flags? How is that “racial tension”? Since when is Mexican a race?

    The schools have brought this shit on themselves focusing on shit that doesn’t matter like race and sex and whatever else you have that we can fight over. If we’re all going to an American public school, we all have a shared American experience. What’s wrong with point that out?

    The world has gone nucking futs.

    Thanks to Jeff for the link.

  • SF homeless battle McD’s over pricing

    Homeless people and their advocates have taken to fighting over one MacDonald’s restaurant decision to raise the cost of their “dollar menu” items fifty cents;

    The decision, made by the owner of the franchise, does not particularly affect any of the other McDonalds in the area. However, the restaurant is located across the street from Golden Gate Park and an almost steady stream of homeless people who often order the cheapest items available on the menu now say the approximately half dollar difference in prices sometimes means the difference between eating and not eating.

    It is no wonder that some believe the price hike was aimed at the homeless population.

    “That means that the Dollar Menu is a hoax, a fraud, a phony,” says Blake Edwards. “If you come here and say ‘I want something off the Dollar Value Menu,’ they say, ‘Well, we no longer have it, but this is what it is.’ Yet, you can’t get it for a dollar. It’s basically a lie.”

    I quit going to MacDonald’s in DC because they were all infested with filthy, smelly street dwellers who would panhandle from me while I was eating. The stench was overwhelming and unnecessary. There are empty beds at the shelters every night in DC. Charities deliver food twice everyday to the hobos on their park benches (and then the bums throw their Styrofoam plates on the ground instead of walking the six feet to a trash can).

    I’m pretty sure the situation in San Francisco is probably the same. In the eleven years that I lived in DC, I saw the same hobos at the same corners every single day. Being homeless is a career. Raising prices 50 cents doesn’t mean that there will be dead bums lining the sidewalks of San Francisco.It just means that they’ll have to get their food somewhere else like the rest of us who can’t afford to eat out.

  • Muslims: Will we ever belong?

    The New York Times is tearful over the treatment of Muslims in this country. The single act they have to use as an example is the attack on a Muslim cab driver in New York by a liberal film student. Some how that single attack reflects the constant danger in which millions of Muslims live every day.

    “We worry: Will we ever be really completely accepted in American society?” said Dr. Ferhan Asghar, an orthopedic spine surgeon in Cincinnati and the father of two young girls. “In no other country could we have such freedoms — that’s why so many Muslims choose to make this country their own. But we do wonder whether it will get to the point where people don’t want Muslims here anymore.”

    Eboo Patel, a founder and director of Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based community service program that tries to reduce religious conflict, said, “I am more scared than I’ve ever been — more scared than I was after Sept. 11.”

    Yeah, when you can count attacks on Muslims in this country on more than one finger, I might worry with you. When the attacks continue when you start informing police about potential terror plots, I might be concerned for you. When the Muslim community condemns terror and terror’s supporters as a single, united voice and you still live in fear from liberal film students, I’ll stand with you.

    Until that time, you reap what you sow.

  • People can’t sing our National Anthem on the people’s property

    I saw this story yesterday about a group of students from across the country who, while visiting the Lincoln Memorial were inspired to begin singing the National Anthem. They were told to stop singing by the Park Police.

    A program officer of the YAF tells the story;

    So they did it again;

    I’m inspired every time I look from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial across the Reflecting Pool to the World War II Memorial to the Washington Monument and the Capitol.

    Now, I just watched on Fox News, a member of the Park Police defending their actions because the students were blocking the HUGE steps of the Lincoln Memorial and their need to enforce a reverence for the memorial. Really? I wonder how many times they’ve enforced the reverence for the Memorial when ANSWER, Code Pink and IVAW were blasting loud rock protest songs a few yards from those steps.

  • This is starting to smell like a scam.

    A Fallen Hero: How an Insurance Company Profited

    A headline like that kinda gets your attention. Long story short it seems that when Sgt. Ryan Baumann, killed in Afghanistan his mother was unable to bring herself to seek the money. But when she tried to use it 6 months later she ran into problems.

    She eventually filed, electing to receive a lump sum of $400,000. But the check never came. Instead, she received a check book and a packet from Prudential saying the money had been placed in its “alliance account” where it was “available immediately” and would “begin earning interest” right away.

    Everything seemed fine, until she tried using the checks.

    “I was told that the check could not be verified,” she said.

    But here is where is it gets interesting. It seems that the Government was giving the money to a private third party to handle giving the money out. But not quite.

    Evans’ six-month investigative report, appearing today in the magazine’s September issue, reveals that Cindy Lohman’s money was being held in Prudential’s general corporate account — accruing interest –most of it going to the insurance giant.

    So if I understand this correctly the Government is giving SGLI money to third parties that are not only restricting handing out the money to the survivors while making a profit off the interest? (A rate of 5% compared to the .5% that Cindy Lohman account was being credited.)

    I really do not want to jump the gun on this one but I have a bad feeling that I am right about this one.

  • Facebook kills

    The Associated Press reports this morning that a feud between two women over a prison inmate’s affections spilled out of the pages of Facebook into the streets of Pontiac, Michigan.

    Police say Emery was driving around with her 3-year-old daughter in the back seat when she saw her rival, Danielle Booth, in the passenger seat of another car. They say Emery rammed the car, then chased it at speeds of up to 100 mph.

    Police say Alesha Abernathy, who was driving the second car, ran a red light and hit a dump truck. Abernathy was killed and Booth was critically injured. Emery and her daughter were unharmed.

    Is there such a shortage of men on this planet that women need to kill each other in order to attract some loser bozo who gets his plumbing snaked out in a prison cell nightly? And a high speed chase with a 3-year-old in the backseat? That’s the kind of woman who’ll attract a six-figure income husband.

    Well, maybe little Torrie will get a chance to glance at her paramour through her own cell window when he’s cruising in the exercise yard for his true love.

  • Flag burner busted in Ohio

    Dr. Chiroux and TSO simultaneously sent me this article from Fox News about a 20-year-old in Ohio who was arrested for burning 19 US flags “out of boredom” on Memorial Day;

    Authorities say 20-year-old Samuel Sneller of Wooster used a lighter to set the first flag ablaze May 28 and burned 18 more in the early morning hours of Memorial Day. A local Rotary Club had placed about 1,000 flags in lawns around town.

    Detective Tony Lemmon says police used a search warrant to obtain copies of text messages that implicate Sneller in the case.

    So, I’ll pay for a video of Matthis yawning while he burns a flag. If you can get him to text you about it, so much the better.