I was watching Jay Leno's last show before he left for his short stint in prime time and he did his Jaywalking thing. I was amazed at how stupid some of the people were. I think that we should be very worried about this. Some of the people had very simple answers suggested to them by Leno. One was what is the largest state in the union? Anyone who doesn't know it is Alaska should go sit in a corner with a dunce cap on. Even when Leno gave the guy a clue the guy still took several tries to get it right. Another person, female, said that freedom of speech was a commandment. It is obvious that these people have few if any intelligence genes in their bodies. What these people thought that some of the answers were was so erroneous that their answer made them seem stupid.
Of course it is our schools to blame because they are not reaching the students with the education they need. These people are operating with less than adequate mental resources. In my days in school we would learn the lesson or else we would fail and if we continued to fail we would be held back a year until we got it right. Now that appears to be the last thing any teacher wants to do. If the student wants to ignore the teacher and not learn anything it is okay for them to do that. The reason why is that schools are pushing them into the next grade without caring whether the student knew the material from the year before. They do this so they won't stigmatize the student. Hurt their fragile egos by making them feel like failures. So they turn out idiots who can get into college because the colleges have lowered the admission standards to accommodate the little idiot and make money off them even though they are as dumb as fence posts.
This country needs to wake up and see what the harm to our society is from these idiots who go into the workplace ill prepared for it. If we had people who were moderately well prepared to understand what the customer really needs our auto industry would be in better shape. Now after years of trying to make the customer fit the car they are realizing that the car must fit the customer. This is a reality most other automakers understand. Detroit is just catching up to that idea.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Memorial Day 2009
By Douglas E. Pritchard
Today I was taping the National Memorial Day Concert. It made me sad to think that we had to celebrate the death of so many innocent boys who gave up their lives for our continued freedom. These are men who can never be paid enough for the sacrifice they made for us in the course of their young lives. As I watched our various patriotic songs being sung I felt sadness in my heart. My eyes starting to well up with tears as I thought of the great spirit that this country has which is unconquerable and ever strong. We have conquered the worst that hell can throw at us. We live unconquered in our hearts and minds. The great beauty of our country is that it gives its citizens the ability to think and live as they see fit.
I was also thinking of the flag and what it means to me. Years ago it was made possible for the flag to left up in any kind of weather, any time of day and never be removed from its pole. This shows that as we are strong our flag is strong also as it faces any indignity that can be thrown at it and still keeps waving. This country has existed for two-hundred and thirty-three years. During all that time we have lived under the same set of principles that we have always lived under. Our flag has always stood for those principles no matter what our national condition has been.
I am planning to observe Memorial Day 2010 much the same as I did last year. Our soldiers deserve nothing less than our total and heart felt gratitude.
Today I was taping the National Memorial Day Concert. It made me sad to think that we had to celebrate the death of so many innocent boys who gave up their lives for our continued freedom. These are men who can never be paid enough for the sacrifice they made for us in the course of their young lives. As I watched our various patriotic songs being sung I felt sadness in my heart. My eyes starting to well up with tears as I thought of the great spirit that this country has which is unconquerable and ever strong. We have conquered the worst that hell can throw at us. We live unconquered in our hearts and minds. The great beauty of our country is that it gives its citizens the ability to think and live as they see fit.
I was also thinking of the flag and what it means to me. Years ago it was made possible for the flag to left up in any kind of weather, any time of day and never be removed from its pole. This shows that as we are strong our flag is strong also as it faces any indignity that can be thrown at it and still keeps waving. This country has existed for two-hundred and thirty-three years. During all that time we have lived under the same set of principles that we have always lived under. Our flag has always stood for those principles no matter what our national condition has been.
I am planning to observe Memorial Day 2010 much the same as I did last year. Our soldiers deserve nothing less than our total and heart felt gratitude.
TV's in cars, etc
When I was growing up we would take long trips to places we hadn't been to before. We only had black and white TVs at home and had to go to the movies to see color. Of course we had a radio in the car so we could listen to music. As we rode along we played games that mom would come up with. Sometimes we watched the fantastic panoramas that flashed by us. We missed nothing on those trips. We also were awed by people we would see. We had a rich source of entertainment surrounding us. It was a wonderful world we loved back then. Each season played it's act out before us. The wonders of the landscape always awed us. There wasn't anything lovelier for us to see.
Todays children don't get that opportunity because they have miniature TV's tucked into the headrests of the seats in front of them. A parent has slipped a DVD into the player up front and the kids have plugged their headphones in. In effect they are tuning out the world. The parents do this so they don't have to hear the child asking if they're there yet. Or maybe they don't have the intelligence to encourage the children to get out of the cocoon they have trapped the kid in at home.
The television is the new nanny for many kids and parents. They place a child in front of the TV and leave them there for the whole day as they do adult things. These children are being short changed. They are not getting the chance to explore or be amazed by something as simple as a herd of deer standing in a meadow near the road. The ability to understand the world is not being given to them.
They are living in a video bubble created by the fear of the parents that the kid might actually learn something about the world. The beauty of the world is ignored and the fake world of the video generation is made to look real. What we are turning out is video idiots who don't know the difference between what video and reality is.
Todays children don't get that opportunity because they have miniature TV's tucked into the headrests of the seats in front of them. A parent has slipped a DVD into the player up front and the kids have plugged their headphones in. In effect they are tuning out the world. The parents do this so they don't have to hear the child asking if they're there yet. Or maybe they don't have the intelligence to encourage the children to get out of the cocoon they have trapped the kid in at home.
The television is the new nanny for many kids and parents. They place a child in front of the TV and leave them there for the whole day as they do adult things. These children are being short changed. They are not getting the chance to explore or be amazed by something as simple as a herd of deer standing in a meadow near the road. The ability to understand the world is not being given to them.
They are living in a video bubble created by the fear of the parents that the kid might actually learn something about the world. The beauty of the world is ignored and the fake world of the video generation is made to look real. What we are turning out is video idiots who don't know the difference between what video and reality is.
The Health Care Mess in this Country
Our present health care system is rotten at it’s core. Most of it is driven by money and the ever increasing greed of the companies which run it. Our insurance companies charge increasingly higher fees in their pursuit of their profits. Drug companies are the most greedy entities in the system. They treat us like piggy banks from which they can extract any amount of money they want. They treat people in the USA as nothing more than cash cows. They do this under the guise of companies which are treating the public to the most advanced medical care in the world. We are being sucked into their greedy paws like children running to get free lollipops, but they are even taking the lollipops back.
Our hospitals are always building something even though they cry about a cut in state funding. They spend millions of dollars on new buildings when the money should be going towards patient care. They are to blame for this health care mess as much as the other companies are.
There is a lot of talk about health care and most of the protests are based on ignorance. This discussion about death panels is pretty far fetched. The government has been running two separate health plans for about forty years. Medicaid and Medicare are both government programs and have never been involved in deciding who lives and who dies. These programs have been designed for the benefit of the elderly and those who cannot afford medical insurance at all. As far as I can see these programs have been fairly successful for all those who can use them. This talk on the implementation of new plans run by the government and the supposed dangers of the government running these programs are based purely on the ignorance of people who have money and don't want to part with it.
One good example is the Walton Family. They are the richest family in the world but their charitable nature is nonexistent. Bill Gates looks like a spendthrift in comparison to them. Walmart pays the store clerks very little and urges them to get food stamps and go on Medicaid to get health insurance. You can bet that the executives and board get the best health insurance money can buy. But their stingy nature does not extend to those outside the executive branch. A lot of their goods are manufactured outside of the country in third world nations which do not have minimum pay rates.
Our hospitals are always building something even though they cry about a cut in state funding. They spend millions of dollars on new buildings when the money should be going towards patient care. They are to blame for this health care mess as much as the other companies are.
There is a lot of talk about health care and most of the protests are based on ignorance. This discussion about death panels is pretty far fetched. The government has been running two separate health plans for about forty years. Medicaid and Medicare are both government programs and have never been involved in deciding who lives and who dies. These programs have been designed for the benefit of the elderly and those who cannot afford medical insurance at all. As far as I can see these programs have been fairly successful for all those who can use them. This talk on the implementation of new plans run by the government and the supposed dangers of the government running these programs are based purely on the ignorance of people who have money and don't want to part with it.
One good example is the Walton Family. They are the richest family in the world but their charitable nature is nonexistent. Bill Gates looks like a spendthrift in comparison to them. Walmart pays the store clerks very little and urges them to get food stamps and go on Medicaid to get health insurance. You can bet that the executives and board get the best health insurance money can buy. But their stingy nature does not extend to those outside the executive branch. A lot of their goods are manufactured outside of the country in third world nations which do not have minimum pay rates.
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