10:14 a.m. - March 23, 2007
Reading The Newspaper Can Be Fun, Right?
Yesterday, there was a veritable plethora of news bounty from the Journal Courier and the Journal Review, so today, I thought I'd share a lot of it.
Actually, the bounty started on Wednesday with an article that got Liz and I riled up a bit from The Paper of Montgomery County.
Liz was on the Sex Education Committee for the League of Women Voters, and was rather much astounded at some of the things they teach and don't teach around the county. Last year, in Crawfordsville, they had someone come in to teach some curriculum that used faulty figures and facts about condoms and all kinds of things. Of course, he was an advocate for abstinence only.
They changed that curriculum this year, and had a meeting about it recently.
Oh, my stars and garters! Instead of a small gathering, there was a large amount of people, because one teacher told her church about the meeting and got a lot of the facts wrong.
I understand people have moral values about pre-marital sex. That doesn't excuse the fact that kids NEED TO KNOW about condoms, birth control methods, STDs and the like. What if little Miss Jane Abstinent in High School, at 23, decides to sleep with someone. She could really be in trouble if she doesn't have some basic information.
I'm sorry, objecting to you shoving your moral values down my kids' throats doesn’t make me anti-Christian. I don't see why your view has to 'win or else'.
Oh, and telling kids about birth control doesn't encourage kids to have sex, just like teaching kids about the effects of heroin doesn't turn the junior high into Needle Park.
Yeesh.
Now this is another yeesh moment, though it's not here in BFE land. Actually, it's in Fountain County, which makes Montgomery County seem like a posh suburb.
The scene is a county commissioner's meeting in Fountain County. They are discussing a vote to authorize funding of a jail remodeling and expansion, and at the last commissioner's meeting one of the commissioners wanted to see a spreadsheet of the costs, which the other two commissioners said, "Neener! Neener! We've got it and you can't have it!"
Nice.
Well, the next meeting takes place, and, well, one of the commissioners is a candidate for asshat of the year.
As you read (or skimmed), he basically said that an open public meeting didn't need to be attended by "all these people", told a deputy to leave a public meeting, and then when someone (the mayor of Attica, who goes by "Butch" - apropos for sure) asked if the meeting could be moved the asshat objected.
Oh, and that asshat also told the crowd that "That little girl hasn't gotten anything right since the first of the year," in reference to a reporter from the Journal Review. Fortunately, someone wrote in a letter to the editor supporting the reporter, and the reporter has offered to play the tapes of the meetings to this commissioner. He, of course, ignored the request.
Numbnuts. Dinglephwatt. No, wait, I was right at first. Asshat.
Since there's not a whole lot of news at times, they have to fill a lot of space with wire copy. And Thursday it was a verrrry good day for wire copy.
This story showed up in the local papers from the AP. Bascially, some nutball, who is creating a 'private currency' is suing the government for alleging that the government has hurt his company by warning everyone that the company's notes and coins are an illegal currency.
Never mind that it IS an illegal currency, but this nutball says it's a 'private voluntary barter currency'. Um, currency, dude, currency.
Your words.
When I was trying to find a link to the article, I stumbled across a message board for militias, and even those guys said that this Von NotHaus (his name) was a nuthouse.
I guess NORFED ceased to exist on January 1, 2007. Awwww…here's what the Southern poverty Law Center had to say about it.
Ah, go you guys, spend those Liberty Dollars. Woot!
Sometimes, you get some good op-ed pieces via wires and news services. Here's one from Harold Meyerson, talking about how fundamentalists may be caught in a trap as science evolves.
But, some people continue to deny science, such as the evidence that global warming does exists and we're at least partially responsible for it. Of course, some of those people deny evolution exists.
In fact, some even think that Jesus rode a dinosaur. (Scroll down for the goods on this one. All I have to say is...Oh! My! GOD!)
Oh, and some even think that the Earth is the center of the Universe.
Oh, and Copernicus was wrong. But are the fixed Earth people going to fight the Flat Earth Society?
And if THAT stuff wasn't enough to make your head spin, then I read about a new dating site.
Just for you all that need to prove to the world that you're a shallow, superficial egomaniacal idiot, instead of just having 95% of you all supposing it.
Yes, that's right, it's a dating site where you have to be HOT or you don't get to play.
Oh, joy.
So, you have to be rated an '8' or higher to get into the club, so you can join judgmental, shrewy people who only care about outward appearance.
You know, I love my wife dearly, and she is the hotness, yo. And each of us have differing opinions on what is "hot" and what is "not".
I personally think wafer-thin models are bit oogy, and prefer women that have at least a bit of shape and form, ya know?
Gack. I really, truly, feel sorry for those of you in the dating scene, because you have people out there like this who are total asshats.
Maybe this guy can join up with the Fountain County commissioner and the Texas legislator and the Liberty Dollar dude and form their own 'Asshat Idiots Associated' club.
Makes a man want to go out and eat some Chinese buffet.
Ah, General Tso's, my favorite.
Oh, CRAP!.
