More lies from the lying liars who tell them

Some time ago, now Senator Al Franken wrote a book called Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.  I read the book, and found it to be a lousy read as petty, spiteful, and true.  You may not agree with his politics or his style, but the one thing you can say about Senator Franken is that he has always valued the truth.  On the other hand, I don’t know why anyone actually believes Fox News at all.  Because they and their chief liar Bill O’Reilly are at it again!  This time, it’s a railroad job against Senator Coburn, who had the audacity to call my Congresswoman, Nancy Pelosi, a nice lady, and who said, when talking abut the insane notion of putting people in prison for buying insurance, that “The intention is not to put anybody in jail. That makes for good TV news on FOX but that isn’t the intention.”

Bill O’Reilly can’t have that, so he claimed, “We researched on Fox News if anybody had ever said you’re going to jail if you don’t buy health insurance. Nobody’s ever said it.”  Guess what?  The New York Times did some investigating and found at least six instances where someone on Fox News  did say it.

When reporter at the New York Times was caught some months ago for plagiarizing, he was forced to resign and the entire newspaper was shamed.  Not so for Fox when they just make stuff up, as apparently they have no shame!  And so I think they deserve a new name: The Republican Liars Network (RCN).  Not all Republicans are liars, and not all liars are Republicans, but those who choose to believe what they know to be lies, aren’t much better than the liars themselves, especially when they act on that information in the voting booth.

All I can ask is please, Senator Franken, don’t update your book.  There’s just too much material.

How many of these people do you know?

Update!  One additional person (don’t know how I missed him the first time around).

Let’s play Bearded Hippy Bingo!  Check out this photo and see who you recognize.  Drop a comment if you have a guess.  I’ll post the answers in a few days.  Clicking on the image should enlarge it.

Happy Passover/Easter. Now let’s stop arguing

Listen: Jews and Christians aren’t all THAT different. Both believe that the Messiah will come, only for Christians it will be the second time. First of all, of all disputes to have, it seems to me it’s like arguing over whether or not God visited the 7-11 one extra time.

Anyway, it’s easily resolved: when he gets here, ask the the Messiah, “Hey, have you been here before?”  Of course, then the “I told you so”s will begin.  Oh- and if he answers, “I’ve always been here,” then he’s not a Messiah, but a Vorlon.  And if it’s Ragnarok, then the Norwegians can really get a good laugh at the bunch of us.  And if nothing happens, we can all continue arguing.  What Fun!

Remembered: Jaime Escalante and the Public Schools of California

CNN reported the death of legendary teacher Jaime Escalante on Tuesday.  Escalante was a mathematics teacher in East Los Angeles.  He was made famous only in part by his wondrous ways with students, but also by the sheer disbelief that the state and district had that any teacher could helped students in that district score well in math.  He was then immortalized in the movie Stand and Deliver, starring Edward James Olmos.

We need more teachers like him, and we need more people to believe that there can be teachers like him.  The so-called “No Child Left Behind” Act, is leaving all children behind, and desperately needs to be reformed.  Perhaps one thing we could do is pay for more teachers’ educations in exchange for several years of service.  Perhaps another thing we can do is fund schools properly.  It’s a particularly serious problem in California, with no easy answer.  Here is a well written article that explains how the local tax base cannot even take matters into their own hands unless they expend a WHOLE LOT. Not that it would help East LA, mind you.  Perhaps this obituary should be for the California public school system.

A social network not to be part of

We’ve discussed the unintended evils of social networking sites in the past.  But here is a story about a “Social Networking” site that seems to have intended evils.  The site, which I won’t name, uses video cameras, and people are randomly connected to one another.  You can then chat with the person, click “next” to go to the next person, or report the person for inappropriate content. Doing so blocks an individual for about 10 minutes.  When a friend of mine told me about the site, I thought it was an interesting concept.  But then he told me that what he saw quite often would disgust most any normal person.  And then he told me that he saw young children using the program.

This raises all sorts of questions:

  • Where the heck are parents of such children, and why would they ever let them near this type of “social network”?  Where’s the little report button to report them?
  • As someone who believes in free speech, if the primary use of a technology is to violate the law, in this case child protection laws, perhaps I’ve just found my limit.  If we look at how Napster fared in the courts, because their business model was predicated on breaking the laws, in the end they had no legal defense.  Can this business argue that they have a viable model, absent the lurid behavior being demonstrated?
  • Even if they claim to have such a valid business model, should this site be required to exercise due diligence in protecting children?  A report button that knocks someone off for 10 minutes doesn’t seem like much of a deterrence.  How about the report button sending identifying information to the service so that they can review the video, where it could be used as evidence in a prosecution?

Here’s one reason I won’t go to the site in question, and neither should you: what if law enforcement finds even a hint that you’ve been there?  Could this be turned around such that you could be assumed to have participated in a lewd act in front of a minor?  After all, we’ve seen other instances where the presence of porn was enough for someone to lose his job and face prosecution.