Bits & Pieces

1) In the interest of fairness I have shown below recently published details regarding the dismissal of an entire high school faculty in RI. The stated reason for the dismissal was that the teachers' union would not agree to the conditions the superintendent felt necessary to improve a miserably failing school:

"The conditions are adding 25 minutes to the school day, providing tutoring on a rotating schedule before and after school, eating lunch with students once a week, submitting to more rigorous evaluations, attending weekly after-school planning sessions with other teachers and participating in two weeks of training in the summer."

The question now is does this change anything about what I said in the previous piece? My answer is no. Yes, there is another piece to all of this but the measures taken are inappropriately extreme to say the least. What happened to the concept of negotiation? What happened to thoughtful analysis to solve a problem? No evidence here of any of that.

2) By now everyone has heard about the Sea World trainer who was killed by a 30 year old Orca, aka killer whale. Recall the woman who was viciously mauled by her friend's pet chimp. Recall some of the countless stories of people mauled or killed by big cats or bears while working with them. Recall the recent story about the circus elephant who 'went nuts' and killed its trainer. Hello out there! What is it you're not getting about the concept of wild animals? At any given time every single one of them has the capacity to do harm to you. They're wild-remember? When you choose to get into a pool, ring, cage, whatever with a wild animal, the burden of risk is on you-not the animal.

3) Conservative pundits are gasping and sputtering about the 'shallow' efforts of the Obama administration to engage Republican leadership in the health care reform discussion. Damned if you do. Damned if you don't. Doesn't it seem that way to you, Mr. President? Let's face it. It doesn't matter what Obama does. There are those who simply will not be a part of any solutions put forth. The hell of it is they're doing a great deal of harm to the country they claim to love. Hypocritical gasbags-all of them!

Thus endth my rant this fine, rainy day.