respublica

An Open Letter to Mr. Daily Kos

A good point of view by Stephen Green, the Vodkapundit in an open letter to Daily Kos detailing a different take on the demonstrators in Madison Wisconsin. 

I have to say, it's gratifying to read a POV which does not mirror what we see on tv and read in papers by reporters and pundits. 

An upfront, on the front lines, look at the Madison demonstrations

Ann Althouse is doing such a terrific job of sorting out what's going on with the union protests in Madison this week.  She's armed with using her camera and video cam, bringing us images we might not see on tv.  Her short video interviews of some of the protesters are great, she's polite, friendly and curious, but still tries to get people to explain exactly what they are thinking.

I'm just going to link her website as a whole because her posts on the situation go one after another.  Really good stuff if you like sociology and politics.

Making the SOTU fun

Watch the speech while reading websites of those who live blog. If it weren't for those hardy souls who can listen, react and type at the same time, I'd be turning to HGTV.

I bookmark Vodkapundit and Ann Althouse, maybe others if something pops up. Ann's commenters do the heavy lifting.

Hairy stuff

The Riverfront Times presents the results of their annual Best of St. Louis 2010 featuring numerous categories.

Interesting.  Their choice for best blog is "Girl, You've Lost Your Weave"

RFT:  (The Blog) is snapshot after snapshot of nasty-looking polyester hair extensions: chunks of weave on the sidewalk, chunks of weave in the gutter, chunks of weave dangling from barbed wire. It's like a little piece of roadkill, adorning the streets of our fair city. Call it found art, call it schadenfreude, call it whatever you want — we call it the best blog in St. Louis."

I'd call it hooey. 

Fisking or rebutting

Whatever you call it, Powerline has done a great job of refuting a New York Times article on the dumbness of republicans or anyone else who doesn't go all in for Obama.

Fisking is a word derived from Robert Fisk who wrote articles which were easily rebutted or a point by point debunking of lies or untruths put forth as fact. 

Collinsville Farked

The story of Collinsville's new ban on the rolling Stippermobile made it onto the Fark website.  Every day Fark posts funny one liner takes on unusual stories from all over the country and often around the world.

Comments broken

The comment section of this blog has been down for a week because of something I did some time back.  I'd been getting overseas spam, sometimes 20 a night with message jibberish.  Typepad allows the blocking of certain key words and that is what I did.  Believe me, no one who comments here uses these weird words.  Not obscene, just strange. 

Typepad helped me get things back to normal. 

Can you criticize a teacher?

Students have moaned about teachers forever, mostly out of earshot of the teacher.  Teachers know this, teachers complain about students too.  Mostly out of earshot of the students.

So this story from Chicago suburban Oak Forest is interesting.  Should a student be suspended for criticizing a teacher on a Facebook page?

Sophomore Justin Bird was given a 5 day suspension after creating a Facebook page about the teacher.  The suspension will be removed from his permanent record:

"if the student completes a program that deals with anger management and making better choices, he can have three of the five suspension days removed from his disciplinary record. An outside consultant is being brought in to work with the student, but the family has to pay $25 for the four 1 1 / 2 -hour sessions."

Justin did not use school time or school computers to do the Facebook page.

But wait, there's more, this time about the teacher:

"...during parent-teacher conferences in November the teacher admitted to trying to "get a rise" out of Justin on several occasions but would stop. However, it began again, she said, and during one encounter the teacher called Justin "stupid" in front of his classmates."

Have other school districts created policies similar to this?  Is it fair?  Should not the teacher also have received some sort of reprimand?  Or should this just have been ignored?

A walk in the snow

Matt Welch, one of Wonkette's writers, made a video of his walk in the DC snow Saturday morning to a store for dish washing detergent.  This goes on for about ten minutes while he walks and talks.  I found it rather ingrossing in a watching paint dry kind of way.  He carried an umbrella with a newsprint design, the strap often floating down in front of the camera.

Anyway.  The comments are hilarious, they had me laughing out loud and one in particular made me laugh til I almost cried. 

"I find that, during a summer shower, nothing keeps the rain off my head like a snow shovel."

Here's the link to watch and read the comments.

What excites you more?

The new Apple Tablet being unveiled today or the State of the Union speech?

Why I love Ann Althouse.

One of her commentors made me laugh:

"The mere Wednesdayness of tomorrow exceeds the State of the Union Address in excitement by a factor of 17.5."

And so did this comment:

"Yeah but I bet the tablet won't be able to do soaring rhetoric.

Well, unless there's a teleprompter app."