Stones Cry Out

Technology tracks truancy
In Anaheim, the school district is using GPS technology to keep track of habitually truant students.

“The idea is for this not to feel like a punishment, but an intervention to help them develop better habits and get to school,” said Miller Sylvan, regional director for AIM Truancy Solutions.

Things sure have change from when I was in school! Back then there wasn’t a feel-good “let’s not make this a punishment” mentality regarding school truancy – if you weren’t at school when you were supposed to be, then the next time you were, you also found yourself sitting in the Vice Principal’s office.

Not all parents were supportive.

“I feel like they come at us too hard, and making kids carry around something that tracks them seems extreme,” said Raphael Garcia, whose 6th grader has six unexcused absences.

…

“This makes us seem like common criminals,” Garcia said.

…

Juan Cruz’s mom, Cristina, said she supports the program and hopes it helps her son get to school – and stay there.

“I understand that he’s been missing class. He’s one of six children, and we can’t always keep an eye on him,” she said in Spanish. “I think this is a good idea that will help him.”

So much for expecting the parents to be in control of their children.

I guess it takes a government to run our lives.

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You’ve lived worked long enough, there, buddy
A survey suggests that an aging workforce, bolstered by those who put off their retirement, will end up hogging jobs.

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So long, bookstores, we hardly knew you
Al Mohler comments on the impending demise of the brick and mortar bookstore.

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Concealed Carry on Campus in Texas
Ever notice how virtually all mass shootings take place in so-called “gun-free” zones.

Good morning.

1. Good links (for thinking as it were) from Brandon.
2. Well, if government should find happiness for its people … looks like the way to prosperity in concert with non-individual honor/shame society is the goal, eh?
3. Currents not driven by dynamo.
4. Getting pretty close to the spread of democracy theme of Mr Bush.
5. Talking Jersey. Here too.
6. And … the Democrats holding the line against budget cuts.
7. Not the biggest drinkers, just the most lethal.
8. Huh? 
9. Union and cporporate influence on politics.
10. A pointed question for Fox News.
11. A missionary.
12. Violence and threats in Wisconsin.
13. Perhaps THE interesting question asked about Wisconsin.
14. Pizza, saving a life.

I host an pretty-much-monthly podcast called Shire Network News, and if you’ve wondered what I sound like, you can find out here. It’s a right-of-center podcast that tries to use humor and satire to make its point. Much of the commentary in this episode is about the latest turmoil in the Middle East (well, more turmoil than is typical, at least). Show notes are at the link as well as ways to listen to the individual show or subscribe to the podcast itself.

Good morning.

1. LOTR from another point-of-view. Yikes.
2. Urban deconstruction.
3. The man-who-needs-to-buy-a-saddle noted. A co-conspiratorial advice.
4. “higher productivity is not the answer” (to employment) … which, taken to its logical conclusion, is a call for a return to subsistence farming, after all employment was almost 100% then.
5. Zapow!
6. Cooi. A liberal against the teachers union in Wisconsin (or perhaps he’s just confused as to whom the “people” are in this case, i.e., the taxpayers).
7. Intervention?
8. Ms Arendt got excommunicated by the intellectual elite for suggestions of Jewish complicity with the Nazi genocide, I guess she just chose the wrong audience.
9. Economics is a kernel, not the whole picture. Reductionism isn’t normally all that helpful in describing the human experience.
10. Libya.
11. Commit to memory.

Back to the routine. So … whaddeyemiss?

1. Brandon notes a series of discussions on the ethics of lying here, here and here.
2. Some common ground betwixt Atheists and Theists regarding the existence of God.
3. An evangelical view of how to go about seeking God … missing the whole fasting, rejection of the passions, and prayer thing, which as Lent approaches is a thing which stands out.
4. Not, I think the innovation he suspects as it’s likely that Stalin or Hitler beat him to it.
5. Comparing Al Jazeera and the UN.
6. Time to panic? But hey, at least the President is unserious about the problem.
7. Sorrow.
8. Words from Iraq.
9. Self referential words from Mr Krugman.
10. Time to step away slowly.
11. Putting Wisconsin unions in perspective.

Muammar Gaddafi, like any good magician, is employing misdirection to try to avoid happening to him what is happening in other Arab countries. “Hey Palestinians, let’s you and him fight!”

Is the Obama White House turning social media into State Run Media 2.0?  There’s a bit of media sour grapes in that charge, but it’s also true that the more the White House does an end-run around the media, the more they can paint with whatever rose-colored paintbrush they want.

Really, is Israel the main problem in the Middle East? Even those who are protesting in Arab countries are protesting their own governments, not Israel.

And if Obama has lost Bill Maher, he’s lost liberal America.

So what’s the huge deal in Wisconsin? Why are teachers abandoning their posts (and students) to protest at the capitol. The Wall St. Journal explains.

Mr. Walker’s very modest proposal would take away the ability of most government employees to collectively bargain for benefits. They could still bargain for higher wages, but future wage increases would be capped at the federal Consumer Price Index, unless otherwise specified by a voter referendum. The bill would also require union members to contribute 5.8% of salary toward their pensions and chip in 12.6% of the cost of their health insurance premiums.

If those numbers don’t sound outrageous, you probably work in the private economy. The comparable nationwide employee health-care contribution is 20% for private industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average employee contribution from take-home pay for retirement was 7.5% in 2009, according to the Employee Benefits Research Institute.

Mr. Walker says he has no choice but to make these changes because unions refuse to negotiate any compensation changes, which is similar to the experience Chris Christie had upon taking office in New Jersey. Wisconsin is running a $137 million deficit this year and anticipates coming up another $3.6 billion short in the next two-year budget. Governor Walker’s office estimates the proposals would save the state $300 million over the next two years, and the alternative would be to lay off 5,500 public employees.

(Hat tip: Betsy Newmark, a teacher.)

In short:

• The union refuses to be treated same as everyone else.
• The union doesn’t care about the state’s financial problems; let someone else pay the price.
• The union doesn’t want the governor to make the tough choices, at least if those tough choices affect the union.

This is what liberal politics has given us; teachers, and a union, that frankly don’t care about the fix we’re all in. If you want to complain that teachers aren’t paid as  much as those in the public sector, who’s fault is that? It’s the fault of those who insist on keeping their jobs, and their paychecks, in the hands of government.

Not all Wisconsin teachers approve of playing hooky for politics, nor are they all against this belt-tightening. But those that are, are doing their profession a disservice, and are exposing the problems with their union.

And here’s another entry for Civility Watch. If you thought the previous video of the lady with a Hitler sign was a one-off crackpot, check out those signs, including a very clear gun-violence message towards the governor.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is compared to Hitler for his stance on unions.

Yeah, no big deal to Democrats. But put targets on a map in areas your campaign is targeting, and that’ll turn a mild-mannered guy into a killer, eh?

Justin Bieber, in an interview with Rolling Stone (yes, I’m really noting and linking to this item), gives one of the best anti-government healthcare arguments ever. He said,

Canada’s the best country in the world. We go to the doctor and we don’t need to worry about paying him, but here, your whole life, you’re broke because of medical bills.

Think about that. We go to the doctor and we don’t need to worry about paying him…

Herein, despite all the wisdom of a 16 year-old, lies the mindset of those who believe in government healthcare, namely, that of getting something for nothing.

Georgetown University Law Professor Randy Barnett provides a succinct explanation of what’s wrong with the Obamacare individual mandate:

Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine that I tell you 100 things that you may not do tomorrow. For example, you cannot run on a treadmill, eat broccoli, buy a car, and 97 other things. While your liberty would be restricted, there would still be an infinite number of things you may still do.

Now suppose I tell you 100 things that you must do tomorrow. You must run on a treadmill, eat broccoli, buy a car, and 97 other things. These 100 mandates could potentially occupy all your time and consume all your financial resources.

You can see why economic mandates such as the individual mandate in Obamacare are so much more onerous than either economic regulations or prohibitions, and why so dangerous an unwritten congressional power should not be implied.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

Well, allegedly. You think sophisticated man-made computers and the amounts of data they store are a lot, just wait until you find out what’s inside you.

Looking at both digital memory and analog devices, the researchers calculate that humankind is able to store at least 295 exabytes of information. (Yes, that’s a number with 20 zeroes in it.)

Put another way, if a single star is a bit of information, that’s a galaxy of information for every person in the world. That’s 315 times the number of grains of sand in the world. But it’s still less than one percent of the information that is stored in all the DNA molecules of a human being.

If you found a disc drive in the middle of the jungle, you’d just know that it was man-made. But we have something far more capable (and small) inside of us, but that just worked itself out on its own. Riiight.

Ignorant 2nd Amendment related comment by a pundit (# 1)

But whether you think a ban on police-style assault weapons such as the one Jared Lee Loughner used in Tucson is good policy or not, it is curious to see that Republicans are not even bothering to make legitimate arguments against such proposals.

Note: The Glock 19, used in the Tucson shooting, is not a police-style assault weapon (whatever that means). It is a semi-automatic handgun, used by military, police, and civilians in both law enforcement, self defense, and sport shooting.

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Ignorant 2nd Amendment related comment by a pundit (# 2)

Even the most conservative jurists held for decades that the Second Amendment was meant to protect state militias rather than an individual right to own weapons.

Note: Reference the Militia Act of 1792 (several years after the Bill of Rights, by the way). Regardless, the means to have a well regulated militia is by the enumeration of a right to the people.

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Ignorant 2nd Amendment related comment by a pundit (# 3)

Members of the narrow majority on the Supreme Court who believe that the Second Amendment establishes an individual right to bear arms would not hold that the Constitution protects one’s right to own a nuclear submarine.

Note: Darn! I’d been hoping to get one of them there nucular subs.

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Ignorant 2nd Amendment related comment by a pundit (# 4)

No one has argued that gun laws were the reason Loughner carried out his attack. What they suggest is that someone who wants to carry out an attack might be less able to do so without legal access to automatic weapons.

Note: Agreed. And the public has very little legal access to automatic weapons (which is probably why we use semi-automatic weapons).

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Why the euphoria over Egypt’s change in power?
Usually, a buyer wants to know what it is he’s purchasing before he buys it… So, Mubarak steps down, and there’s dancing in the streets, Obama applauds the Change, pundits drool over how Obama was – somehow – the catalyst. Yet no one is sure exactly who or what will replace Mubarak (other than the military, which is essentially what was there before).

Now, with Mubarak thumbing his nose at the president, the Obama administration may manage to achieve what only few governments in history have done: alienate their enemies as well as their friends. Worse, Obama’s actions have regionalized the Egyptian conflict. KSA has belayed Mubarak on the sheer cliff that he dangles from. It has forced a public confrontation between Mubarak and his regional allies and the unrest sweeping the Arab world. If Mubarak goes spinning into the abyss, the House of Saud will find itself pulled right after it.

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Border States tired of waiting for the Feds to act
Interesting. In New Mexico, the first female Hispanic governor in the U.S., Susana Martinez (R), issued an executive order directing police to ask the immigration status of criminal suspects, thereby ending the state’s sanctuary policy.

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Finger Motion Car Stereo Control

A new device is being presented to technologists this week that lets you control your car stereo by finger movements while your hands are still gripping the steering wheel.

Oh… I foresee some unexpected road rage incidents in the works if any of your finger movements, intended to turn up The Beatles, are misinterpreted by the driver next to you.

Think of how big the US economy is; the sum total of all the goods and services produced in an entire year. That’s how deep our debt is.

President Obama‘s budget, released Monday, was conceived as a blueprint for future spending, but it also paints the bleakest picture yet of the current fiscal year, which is on track for a record federal deficit and will see the government’s overall debt surpass the size of the total U.S. economy.

Mr. Obama‘s budget projects that 2011 will see the biggest one-year debt jump in history, or nearly $2 trillion, to reach $15.476 trillion by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. That would be 102.6 percent of GDP — the first time since World War II that dubious figure has been reached.

And the budget projects the government will run a deficit of $1.645 trillion this year, topping 2009’s previous record by more than $230 billion. By contrast, 2007’s deficit was just $160 billion altogether.

We do not need more tax increases. That has not solved the debt issue. Spending must be cut, substantially. That is one thing that has simply not been tried. The Tea Party exists because of this; the huge debt we are going to pass on to our great-grandchildren if we don’t do something about it now.

Within hours, maybe minutes, of the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords, Liberal pundits began to point fingers at right wing extremists which, apparently, applied to Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican candidate for Vice President. Of particular concern was the “cross-hairs” image, used by Palin to establish which Democrats to target in upcoming elections. Evidently and, coincidentally after-the-fact, such violent imagery and rhetoric was said to have led to the carnage in Tucson. The cross-hairs image was referenced by Barbara Walters (on The View) when she stated,

“…and certainly cross-hairs are very scary…”

I wonder how scary Ms. Walters thinks a depiction of the President getting assassinated is?

Back in 2006 I wrote a blog post, for RedBlueChristian.com, about a docudrama depiction of the assassination of President George W. Bush. Note that the TV movie was produced in the U.K. Per The London Standard,

Held up by a secret service bodyguard in his dying moments after being shot in the stomach, this is President Bush being assassinated.

Surrounded by a crowd of panicking onlookers, the American leader is pictured just seconds after being gunned down by a sniper following an anti-war demonstration.

Of course, this 2006 docudrama is just a drop in the bucket of violent left-wing rhetoric – rhetoric which typically goes unreported by the mainstream media.

Regardless of the political affiliation of our elected officials, let us remember to treat them all with the respect and dignity they deserve, especially when they are maligned by those who truly would hope to do them harm.

It’s not often (well, ever) that a Friday Link Wrap-up would have breaking news, but as I type this, Hosni Mubarak has stepped down as President and put the military in charge, not his recently-named VP. This is a historic day for Egypt, as it now has its first living ex-President. Barry Rubin runs down the "now what?" scenarios.

Some town in the US, including one suburb of Atlanta, have a law requiring each household to own a gun. These towns have much lower crime rates than their neighbors. But with the cases going through the courts on the constitutionality of the ObamaCare individual mandate to buy health insurance, and with South Dakota considering a bill requiring gun ownership, Glenn Reynolds goes over the major differences between the two.

Reaganomics vs Obamanomics and getting us out of a recession.

In his first speech as Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron argued that a shared national identity prevents extremism more so than multiculturalism, and indeed, the latter may encourage it. If you have no connection to your country, you have no problem burning it.