(a rare pasttime over there) that several parents are pushing for the President of Virginia Tech to be fired due to the negligence and poor handling of the tragedy yesterday.
“My God, if someone shoots somebody there shouldbe an immediate lockdown of the campus,†said John Shourds. “Theytotally blew it. The president blew it, campus police blew it.â€
I can't say I disagree. The warning disseminated to students was a , more than two hours after the first incident and ten minutes after the second had already started. My sends me about 80 junk mails a day (most universities sell their student email lists to advertisers), so many student don't even check their student accounts. Those who do have to fish through scams and spams; once they actually find the email, are we to expect them to react quickly when the email is squished between Lunch Specials and Student Club sign-ups?
. Not sure if there were , and if there were, they aren't pursuing anyone for the first shooting. Tons of speculation in the press conference.
I know this kind of thing isn't supposed to happen, but parents should hold the university accountable for parts of the disaster that could have been minimized or avoided altogether.
famously predicted that technology and information would lead us to what he called a revolution of technology that would inevitably unite us and give us the ability to communicate to anyone in the world at anytime with just about any means.
I am a senior in and in three weeks I'll graduate with degrees in Advertising and Public Relations. One of my morning classes deals with : how to handle tough situations, having a plan in place, communicating facts and answering questions appropriately, etc. My morning class today, Persuasive Communication taught by Dr. Robin Meyers (author of the famous speech, and author of ,) took a detour from the syllabus - about Marshall McLuhan - to just talk. It's difficult to gauge how you're feeling as readers, but as a student I find myself not needing to see political banter or politics for a few hours, at least a few minutes, and rather find myself just wanting to talk.
As a student in , I felt the building shake as I sat in my fourth grade classroom at 9:02AM on April 19, 1995, the morning of the . I drove through the torrential rains and heard my mother scream as the phone disconnected the night she was buried underneath her own house by the - May 3, 1999. I sat in my 11th grade Government class and watched as the second plane crashed into the . Yesterday, I sat in an empty room, the living room where I'll soon occupy in my new home, and listened to the cries of a university, a city, a state, a country, about the horrors of what transpired at .
My life and the technology within it has allowed me to step out from a small suburban classroom, from a city-wide terrorist attack, from a statewide natural disaster, into what was the first of, unfortunately, many global tragedies. The global village has its ups and downs, and the down is that we must all experience the devastation of tragedy without ever feeling the ground shake or hearing the shots fired.
At the time of this publication, we have learned and and have begun to piece together the history of the individual: , , . We've watched a university stumble in crisis from , , and We've watched media outlets frantically interview second- and third- and fourth-hand witnesses and provoke emotional reactions. We've watched Fox News tell you how this will impact the stock market and the war on terror and the security and sanctity of our schools. Unfortunately, until now, we have yet to just talk.
McLuhan says, In this place, the home of inclusion and open-mindedness and intelligent dialogue, I hope the message can resonate from those values. I needed to engage the global village, to speak back to it instead of merely observing it. I hope you'll do the same.
If there's anything you'd like to share - comments, critiques,condolences, thoughts in general - please use the comments section todiscuss.
A new book details the low things that Republicans say behind the backs of Evangelicals, while at the same time using them to get votes.
David Kuo was the Deputy Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives under President Bush. His book, , reminds Evangelicals that the Republican Party's religious rhetoric is all an act. Furthermore, Kuo writes that Bush's cabinet even joked that Evangelicals were "out of control" and "goofy".
On MSNBC's show Countdown, host Keith Olbermann previews Kuo's book -- which paints a portrait of a Republican Party that will do anything to get the vote of the Evangelical community, even if that means lying to them:
Click to
--- Partial Transcript ---
DAVID KUO: "National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as "ridiculous, 'out of control' and just plain 'goofy.'"
Evangelical voters are being used by the Republicans. What better way to pay the GOP back than through the power of democracy this November?
Do Republicans genuinely care about Evangelical voters at all, or do they just want use them for political gain? Exciting voters with like-minded rhetoric can win you votes in the short-term. But when voters discover the real truth, there is usually a backlash. That is what has happened ever since the Mark Foley scandal errupted. Evangelical voters are finally figuring out that the party that talks a whole lot about faith and values has failed the truth test.
On the syndicated weekend program the Chris Matthews Show, conservative panelist Tucker Carlson, who lives next to a number of elite Republican strategists, admits that Republicans leaders have contempt for the Evangelicals and their movement.
Click to watch
--- Partial Transcript ---
CARLSON: "The deep truth is that the elites in the Republican Party have pure contempt for the Evangelicals who put their party in power."
MATTHEWS: "How do you know that?"
CARLSON: "Because I know them, because I grew up with them, because I live with them -- they live on my street -- because I live in Washington. And I know that everybody in our world has contempt for the Evangelicals. And Evangelicals know that. And they're beginning to learn that even their own leaders..don't share their values."
The Republicans are trying to play the same game that they played in 2002 and 2004. Guess what? This time around, Evangelicals aren't buying it.
With the prominence of the Iraq war, gas prices and all the Congressional scandals putting economic issues on the back-burner, people tend to forget that the latest Census Bureau numbers spell trouble for the middle class. The number of uninsured is at an all-time high.
Robert Greenstein, Executive Director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, of these numbers just released two days ago:
“It is sobering that 5.4 million morepeople lacked health insurance in 2005 than in the recession year of2001, primarily because of the erosion of employer-based insurance.â€
Census data show that 46.6 millionAmericans were uninsured in 2005, an increase of 1.3 million from thenumber of uninsured in 2004 (45.3 million). The percentage who areuninsured rose from 15.6 percent in 2004 to 15.9 percent in 2005. Thenumber of children who are uninsured rose from 7.9 million in 2004 to8.3 million in 2005.
Any effort by John Kerry, John Edwards or any other Democrat to tackle this issue has been labeled as . Even though foreign policy seems to trump every other issue now, middle class families want to hear the Democrats discuss the issue of health care a lot more. This is a winning issue.
Ever wonder to yourself, amid all the violence abroad and corruption on the home front, what our leaders are teaching our children? Conservatives are right that one of the most pressing moral problems in this country is the breakdown of family values. But our family values are under attack not because of Hillary Clinton or liberal Hollywood, but due to the currently unstable economic and political conditions in this country.
On the economic front, and are down. Insurance and education costs are up. More Americans are working into their 60s. Many single mothers who are not working at least two jobs have already created an insurmountable amount of personal debt.
Politically, we have leaders that stretch the facts on issues to the point where nearly 2,500 Americans have literally died to know the truth. For example, in his latest piece how Karl Rove is being rewarded for misleading the public:
The decision not to charge Karl Rove shows there often are no consequences for misleading the public.
In 2003, while Rove allowed the White House to tellthe news media that he had no role in leaking Valerie Plame's CIAidentity, the presidential aide was secretly telling the FBI the truth.
It's now known that Rove had discussed Plame's CIAemployment with conservative columnist Robert Novak, who exposed heridentity less than a week later, citing two unidentified senioradministration officials.
Children are supposed to know that there are always consequences for their actions. But when the leaders of the society that they live cannot pass that moral test, again it needs to be asked what message this sends to our children? And this is is a question that I challenge all conservative minded individuals to ask themselves.
My generation, more than any other American generation prior, has a serious problem on our hands when it comes to the amount of National Debt that has piled up. Each day that legislators vote on bills, teenagers and 20-something college students around my age listen to their ipods without the faintest idea of how much more money is being leveled onto our shoulders.
Even with all that said about the National Debt, President Bush wants to shoulder yet another burden onto our generation -- this time when it comes to savings. how teenagers between 14 and 17 years of age that try to save money are going to get scammed under this recent round of tax cuts:
The $69 billion tax cut bill that President Bush signed this weektripled tax rates for teenagers with college savings funds, despite Mr.Bush's 1999 pledge to veto any tax increase.
Under thenew law, teenagers age 14 to 17 with investment income will now betaxed at the same rate as their parents, not at their own rates.Long-term capital gains and dividends that had been taxed at 5 percentwill now be taxed at 15 percent. Interest that had been taxed at 10percent will now be taxed at as much as 35 percent.
Theincreases, which are retroactive to the first day of the year, areexpected to generate nearly $2.2 billion over 10 years, according tothe Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, which issues theofficial estimates.
Over all, the tax bill that Mr. Bush signed Wednesday reduces taxes by $69 billion.
Mr. Bush pledged in 1999 to veto any bill that raised taxes. Inresponse to a question about the tax increase on teenagers in the newlegislation, the White House issued a statement Friday that made noreference to the tax increase, but recounted the tax cuts theadministration has sponsored and stated that President Bush had"reduced taxes on all people who pay income taxes."
Challengedon that point, the White House modified its statement 21 minutes laterto say that Mr. Bush had "reduced taxes on virtually all people who payincome taxes."
It is devious to steal from teenagers who give up their entire summer to work a full-time job. What kind of message does it send when the government penalizes hard work from young Americans?
Within a matter of hours, some very influential voices within the conservative movement took two different approaches on how the Republicans should or should not campaign in 2006. One was from Laura Bush, and the other from a religious group in Northern Virginia.
On one hand, that the issue of same-sex marriage should not be used by GOP strategists as a wedge issue like in 2004:
The first lady told "Fox News Sunday" that she thinks the Americanpeople want a debate on the issue. But, she said, "I don't think itshould be used as a campaign tool, obviously."
"It requires a lot of sensitivity to just talk about the issue — a lot of sensitivity," she said.
But a highly influential religious group that met in Virginia, as emphasized in their opinion over the weekend and , would strongly disagree with Mrs. Bush:
And at a meeting in Northern Virginia this weekend of the Councilfor National Policy, an alliance of the most prominent Christianconservatives, several participants said sentiment toward the WhiteHouse and Republicans in Congress had deteriorated sharply since the2004 elections.
When the group met in the summer of 2004, itresembled a pep rally for Mr. Bush and his allies on Capitol Hill, andone session focused on how to use state initiatives seeking to bansame-sex marriage to help turn out the vote. This year, someparticipants are complaining that as soon as Mr. Bush was re-elected hestopped expressing his support for a constitutional amendment banningsuch unions.
...Butthe complaints this year are especially significant because theyunderscore how the broad decline in public approval for Mr. Bush andCongressional Republicans is beginning to cut into their coresupporters. The threatened defections come just two years after manyChristian conservatives — most notably Dr. Dobson — abandoned much oftheir previous reservations and poured energy into electing Republicansin 2004.
When political realism sets in, the GOP will choose to side with these fringe conservative groups, not the wife of a lame duck President. In June, Senate Majority Leader yet another same-sex marriage ban legislation.
But one little bill is not going to quickly change sentiment within the conservative base. I have a few friends that are Republican activists, and they all agree that they are much less motivated this year than in 2002 or 1998 to do door-belling. There is no steam left in the engine. If the Republican base is going to be revived, it will be revived by the White House, not by a bunch of elitists on Capitol Hill that like lecturing at a podium each day before Congress.
Besides, most Americans are worried about Iraq and gas prices, not whether two women in San Francisco are getting married.
This summer, as families all over the country (especially college students) think about planning their road trips, about driving 300 miles with gas prices expected to reach $3.50 per gallon by Memorial Day weekend. They might even be $4.00 by mid-July. A lot of people I know are either planning less getaways, or are cutting costs on hotel and meal expenses. The point is that gas prices could have a significant impact on all aspects of the travel industry.
A number of leading economists agree, as explained in :
In a USA TODAY survey of economists taken April20 to 25, 40% said higher energy prices are the No. 1 risk for theeconomy. While other risks were cited, such as a decline in the housingmarket and terrorism, energy was the top concern.
Economists mentioned that higher energy prices pose potential troubles for both economic growth and inflation.
released a few days ago shows that Americans are fuming:
"Which of the following statements comes closer to your views about the reasons for the recent price increase in gasoline? It is MOSTLY due to unethical behavior by people involved in the production and distribution of gasoline. Or, It is MOSTLY due to a decrease in the supply of oil and an increase in demand for it."
Unethical Behavior - 61%
Supply and Demand - 26%
Neither - 7%
Unsure - 6%
It has also been pretty much established by now that the short-term proposals by both the Republicans and Democrats were insulting. A $100 rebate would have only lasted a few trips to the gas station. Also, the elimination of the gas tax for two months was more of a joke than an actual long-term solution. Both parties need to do a better job of thinking 10 years down the road.
If this still remains a problem in 2008, don't be surprised if Al Gore is the Democratic front-runner, not Hillary Clinton.
Irony is the word I would use to describe the fact that on the same day that a testified before Congress, a for engaging in a similar act with a minor:
The deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Securitywas arrested last night on charges that he used the Internet to seducean undercover Florida sheriff's detective who he thought was a14-year-old girl, the Polk County Sheriff's Office said.
Brian J.Doyle, 55, was arrested at his Silver Spring home at 7:45 p.m. andcharged with seven counts of using a computer to seduce a child and 16counts of transmitting harmful materials to a minor, according to asheriff's office statement.
Agents with the department's Inspector General's Office, the U.S.Secret Service, the Montgomery County police and the Polk CountySheriff's Office served a search warrant and seized his home computerand other materials, the statement said.
If found guilty, Doyle, just as all the other predators out there, need to be locked up for a very long time.
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