Happy As Kings

Kansas City still the wild, wild west

I don't know what's going on here (too far out in the 'burbs to see the city dynamic), but the evening news snips I see, and the newspaper reports are giving me more reason to avoid driving near KC, as if last summer's "stray bullets" haven't been enough.

Police arrest 10 after armed robbery, kidnapping, carjackings, standoff

Twenty years of being a potential terrorist target in Europe via the distinctive American military car license plates didn't give me the sense of unease I feel here.

Health care bill debate and political positioning

I like Howard Dean's position as he described it on this morning's Meet The Press. 

A comment of his that resonated with me on the debate around the changes in how the American system is structuring itself to manage medical costs is that the Republican legislators have put "party before country."  That observation's overtones were echoed in Eugene Robinsion's op/ed this morning in the KC Star on Sarah Palin's change in direction on climate change.

American health care

Isn't this how health care is managed in those backward nations we Americans hear about in the news?

Free health clinic draws hundreds to Bartle Hall, 10 December 2009, Kansas City Star

About 1,600 people already have made appointments for the Bartle Hall clinic today. Previous one-day clinics in Houston, New Orleans and Little Rock, Ark., also attracted thousands of patients, but the two-day Kansas City event is expected to surpass their numbers.

It is a good thing that people who need care and are unable to find/afford it were able to get a start on managing their health problems, but unless the system is effectively reformed, the problems, both for individuals and the country, will only continue. 

• Preëxisting Condition, 7 December 2009, The New Yorker
  
  "At present the United States has the unenviable distinction of being the only great industrial nation without compulsory health insurance," the Yale economist Irving Fisher said in a speech in December. December of 1916, that is.

Handi-Foil

Dear Handi-Foil,

I appreciate the holiday gift-giving convenience of baking fruitcakes in single-use aluminum foil pans.  What I don't appreciate is the glue you use to stick your label onto the bottom of the pans.  The glue sticks so well that, in removing the label, the bottom of one pan of each set is deformed -- the glue is stronger than the pan.  I understand the need for a label, but I don't appreciate almost ruining one pan in three.

Also, it is a bit of mental whiplash to find that you have a website, but that your "contact us" information is only a street address.  My concern about the stickiness of your label's glue would have remained only between us had you included an Internet-accessible email address on your Internet-accessible website.  Trying to write an email to try to counsel you regarding my 'customer satisfaction' was an inconvenience; having to find paper, envelope and stamp to do it would have significantly diminished what is left of my satisfaction.

Now that I've straightened out the bottoms of two pans, expressed the irritation caused by the glue & the straightening-out, and found a workaround for the need to pay even more if I want to tell you directly that your technique almost ruined my purchase, I will return to my fruitcake-making.

Regards,

V. Moon

Salon.com: Home schooling: How we do it

The article at the link is the second in a series from Salon.com

Home schooling: How we do it -- What's the curriculum for our twin 5-year-olds? Greek myths, costumed trips to the Met and Lightning McQueen

So at least for a while, the bunny chasing and melon smashing, and the trips to the Bronx Zoo and the New York Hall of Science, were free of any explicit educational intentions, beyond the universal goals of all exhausted parents of small children: to get through the day without unacceptable acts of violence, while demonstrating that the world is full of cool and exciting stuff. But as the months rolled on and the 3-year-olds in Leslie's group turned 4 -- the age when most public-school kids head off to pre-K -- their parents began to face the inevitable question: What do we do now?

First installment:  Confessions of a home-schooler -- Call us crackpots, but our kids spend their days at beaches and museums, not in school

Reply to Oath Keepers post

For reasons beyond my knowledge, the comments section at the previous post would not accept this comment from me.  Because of that, it's going here.

1.  I acknowledged my authorship via the links.  In my comments, I spoke in 1^st person singular, and then provided links back to the blog.  If readers had bothered to follow the URLs, both the blog, and my authorship, would have been evident.  (my mother is out of the hospital, but care continues of course; thank you for your consideration)

 

2.  One does not pick and choose within the oath of office and say, “I will follow this part, but not that one.”  The oath requires protection and defence of the Constitution, and obeying the President of the United States and superior officers according to regulations and the UCMJ.  I did not claim that the officer oath included obeying the President, although apparently this is included in the oath National Guard officers take.

 

3.  The flag section of AR 670-1 begins on PDF-page 263/reg. page 240.

28–18. Wear of full-color U.S. flag cloth replica

 

4.  Unauthorized articles are unauthorized whether they are patches manufactured to resemble military patches in “subdued colors,” my co-worker’s red socks, your pink muumuu or an official item the wearer is not entitled to wear.  Intent is irrelevant.  Color is irrelevant.  The item is irrelevant.  Unauthorized is unauthorized.

 

5.  Encouraging soldiers, again, to pick and choose, and select which orders to follow does put unit morale at risk, as well as careers.   Whether the recommendation to pick and choose comes from a Yale graduate or from someone else is immaterial.  SAEDA doesn’t care who recommends the picking and choosing.

AR 381-12 Subversion and Espionage Directed Against the U.S. Army 
3–1. SAEDA incidents
i. Active attempts to encourage military or civilian employees to violate laws, disobey lawful orders or regulations, or disrupt military activities (subversion).
k. Participation by Army personnel in activities advocating or teaching the overthrow of the United States by force or violence or seeking to alter the form of Government by unconstitutional means (sedition).

 

6.  Comments are now moderated because I tired of the back & forth 'tennis game' with no progress.  If readers care to comment further on my opinions on this topic, they may do so at their own blogs.  

Oath Keeper badge on an Army uniform worn in Iraq

I just came across the picture that is said to be of an American soldier wearing an "oath keeper" badge on his uniform in Iraq.  If this picture is real (I've seen references to the uniform and gear looking "too clean" to have been taken in a war zone), it would show a violation of the Army regulation on the wear of the uniform.  All soldiers know that how the uniform is worn is controlled by regulation, and suggesting that active duty soldiers are wearing unauthorized items of such a nature, and approving of it, shows support for defiance of the regulation.

Army Regulation 670–1:  Wear and Appearance of Army Uniforms and Insignia  (337 pages worth of "do this ..., do not do that ...")

1–10. e. (1) The wear of a combination of civilian and military clothing is prohibited, unless prescribed in this regulation or other authorization documents approved by HQDA.

I presume that this would also apply to wearing civilian badges on an Army uniform.

A soldier sporting ultra-nationalistic patches on a uniform may seem "historically romantic" ("the revolutionary war was won by three percent") or "patriotically heartwarming" (Christian Embassy video in Pentagon) to people of similar opinions, but to me it indicates a breakdown of the discipline necessary for the safe conduct of operations in a war zone.  It also indicates to me a desire, on the part of some people sympathetic to the values of "oath keepers," to use the military services for anti-pluralistic propaganda.

Yes, I remember Viet Nam war era photos of soldiers with peace signs on their steel pots, and the Gulf War era photo of the young mother with a button picture of her daughter pinned to her helmet cover.  Inside each soldier is a regular person with a point of view, and those points of view are protected by the first amendment of the United States Constitution.  But the wearing of spurious insignia indicating allegiance to "oaths" that begin, "We will NOT obey orders to ...," is a purposeful challenge to the military chain of command. 

It also appears that the oath keepers want active duty service members to be oath breakers, in that all service members take an oath to "defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic ..."  If active duty oath keepers have to choose between a domestic enemy and the Constitution, which oath will prevail?

And we do all know that the person who gets in trouble for following this Hollywood moment is the trooper who falls for it, not the organization exercising its first amendment rights, don't we?

Edible food-like substance pantries

From Deborah at Antiquity Oaks:

Food, oh, food, where have you gone?

I just received an email requesting donations for a local food drive. The problem is that they are not asking for food. They are asking for the stuff that Michael Pollan describes as "edible food-like substances." Here's the list of requested donations:

Mac & Cheese

Cereal

Instant Potatoes

Jell-O

Hamburger Helper

Tuna Helper

Cake or Brownie Mix

Stuffing Mix

Pasta Mix

Soup Mix

Fantasy Fiction clichés to avoid

I don't write fantasy fiction, but I like the nutshell descriptions of the fantasy clichés to avoid.  In thinking about it, though, I would like to do a fun writing exercise of putting them all in.  That would be a hoot.  (Oh, look!  Another CHICKEN!!)  (and yes, I actually have the chicken t-shirt, well, the sweatshirt)

Fantasy Fiction Writing - Six Cliches to Avoid by William Meikle at Fantasy Factor

The 'Merlin' gambit ...

The 'Galahad' gambit ...

The 'Dick Whittington' gambit ...

The 'John Carter' gambit ...

The 'Inn at Bree' gambit ...

The 'Ugly Duckling' gambit ...

Hat tip to Fiction Factor Newsletter

The Camazotz Award

Camazotz is the name Madeleine l'Engle gave, in her book A Wrinkle in Time, to a planet controlled by the "Black Thing."  On Camazotz, everyone obeys each tiny legal dictate to the nth degree.  L'Engle shows this when her characters, Meg, Charles Wallace and Calvin, see all the children in town jumping rope and bouncing balls in time with each other, with each in his or her proper place on each home's sidewalk, and with each child being called inside at the same instant by his or her mother.  In other words, the entire population functioned together more strictly than the purposeful precision of the 82nd Airborne.

I, not knowing I'd be doing it again, apparently issued my first Camzotz Award back in 2005 at the Home Education Magazine blog. At that time, the award went to a public official determined to test all homeschooled children in Alaska, despite their privately-schooled status.  I even stole a tune rhythm, and parodied lyrics to acknowledge the move.

A law was made a distant moon ago here, that kids and parents shall not be forgot.  And there’s a legal limit to deciding, in Camazotz.

Pre-testing is required in December, and follow-ups in March on the dot.  By order schooling lingers through September, in Camazotz.

Camazotz!  Camazotz!  I know it sounds a bit bizarre.  But in Camazotz, Camazotz, that’s how conditions are.

The kids may not leave school till after sundown, by eight the morning lessons must begin.  In short there’s simply not, a more observ-ed spot, for reading, writing, ‘rithemetic than here in Camazotz.

Today, with a hat tip to Jeanette, I have another recipient for the Camazotz Award: the Michigan Department of Human Services.

• State to mom: Stop baby-sitting neighbors' kids, 29 September 2009, Associated Press as distributed by Yahoo! News

The Michigan Department of Human Services has told Lisa Snyder that she was operating an "unlicensed daycare center" because she allowed children waiting for the school bus to come into her house while they waited.  A neighbor reported her.

What a change from the days when McGruff counseled children, and block parents had signs in their windows to indicate to neighborhood children that if the child had any trouble that the house was a safe place.

It is right that the state oversees businesses for safety, especially profit-making child care businesses, but a chill of police state oversight accompanies the action of a government agency, and especially the expectation of a neighbor, that we live in a country where neighborliness is a state-supervised human service.

To Michigan's credit, the governor directed that the agency work to correct this misapplication of the law, but I'd be surprised if the warning -- and the complaint to the state from another neighbor -- hasn't chillled that neighborhood's friendly atmosphere. 

The lace-curtain twitching neighbor gets the third Camazotz Award.

Law & Order (in)credibility

OK, so it's a television show, and they're almost all fiction, but a little continuity in the script would be nice.  I rag on Law & Order for their years-long representation of homeschooling parents as creeps, jerks and weirdos.  Just once I'd like to see the homeschooled kid give the cops the tip that cracks the case just because the kid was home and observantly looking out the window instead of sitting in school.  But, homeschooled prejudice aside, tonight's gaffe is just sloppy.

The (first?) murder victim's sister has arrived in town, and is suitably (for a change) distraught over her brother's death.  As the sister is describing her brother for the police officers, she says he joined the Marines to be like his father.  So far, so good.  But then the sister says her brother showed up on her doorstep because he'd been discharged, and he was having difficulties getting his "Army benefits."

Time out.  Marines who have ETSed (come to the normal end of service) do not get benefits from the Army.  If any benefits are to be given, the Veterans Administration would be the correct agency, but that information that may be obscure for civilian writers.  Still, it ought to be obvious to at least one person with authority on the L&O set that the Army doesn't disburse anything to Marines -- either the Marine Corps or the Navy does.  Maybe the Law & Order writers should spend more time watching NCIS.

Oh, well.  Enough late night venting.

Copyrighted materials

While my mind was wandering this morning, the eye that never sleeps (sometimes actually) noticed that the blurb on the toothpaste tube, Pepsodent during this shopping cycle, is copyrighted.  Intrigued, the inner homeschooler went looking, and found that the Cortizone 10 left over from the poison ivy incident, the Benadryl cream (bug bites), and the Blistex tube blurbs are similarly copyrighted.

The generic triple antibiotic ointment and the generic 2% allergy cream blurbs are not.

Now, I'm left wondering if it's because of the presence of trademarked names, or specialized ingredients, or ... unique application instructions?  Or maybe high priced lawyers?

In any case, it's a more interesting morning event than finding a spider in your shoe.

In etiquette of ahchoo, sneeze in sleeve will do

In etiquette of ahchoo, sneeze in sleeve will do, Kansas City Star

Last week, after Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius chided a reporter for sneezing into his hand at a news conference, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh pooh-poohed the practice.

“Elitist snobs advising us to sneeze on our arms,” Limbaugh called Sebelius and her ilk, who apparently want us all to become “hick hayseeds.” You know, like the Beverly Hillbillies and Gomer Pyle.

Beg pardon, Mr. Limbaugh, but I'd rather touch hand rails, elevator buttons, door knobs, grocery cart handles, packages in grocery stores or items in department stores that have been previously touched by people who sneeze in their sleeves (or tops of jackets, as has been my hands-'phobic' style since I was a kid), than by people who sneeze into their hands and have no immediate way to wash off the sneeze.

As we head into the 'flu and cold season, I would hope that setting loose a meme that might (even minimally) cut the rate of infection would be above political mockery -- that could be my kid coming down with a bug.

Must've been a slow news day.

Grocery stores won't take checks?

• Grocery stores taking check use off shoppers' lists

In my shopping with Whole Foods, a store I like, I already have to fit in that particular grocery run with something else, such as visiting the library, fabric shopping or an after-theater errand, because I live about 40 minutes away from the store.  Needing to get cash beforehand (I don't do cards) may make me re-think going there altogether. 

Our local-local store has a new line of free-range chicken, and I can get tasty flour from King Arthur to make my own bread (which is what I did before Whole Foods opened in Kansas City).  The only special items Whole Foods will have (for me) are probably grass-fed beef and Campo Lindo eggs.

Without checks, I'll have to plan more, make a trip to the bank, and then stick to a list.  All good habits, but (presently) not ones that I possess in any consistent quantities.  I hope what the company saves in processing fees makes up for what they'll lose from my choice to shop-where-it's-easier.

Threatening the President: No

There is no discussion about threatening the life of the country's president.  The subject is ... just plain out of bounds, and religion is not an excuse for such incitement.

“[I] Pray For Barack Obama To Die And Go To Hell”: The Story The Media Missed

Social worker at the door? What is the main reason for homeschooler concern about legal problems?

The past few days I have kept myself busy reading through the nine years of archives of the email list for the group, Association of HomeSchool Attorneys (AHSA).  I did this to find out the most common reasons for asking for help with legal problems concerning homeschooling, and I used the list as a sample of homeschoolers.

My reason for wanting to know what problems homeschoolers want legal help with stems from the record-keeping chapter I'm still writing for a blogged homeschool book for military families, Tossed by the Fates. 

Traditionally, one of the most common reasons given for keeping well-organized records of a child's education at home is in case the family is ever investigated for educational neglect, or finds a 'social worker at the door.' If this happens, it is said, the records will 'prove' that the parent is, indeed, providing a suitable education for the child.  Depending on state law, a well-organized record may or may not be a stand-alone defense (see your state law for exact requirements).

As I wrote that part of the chapter draft, the little editor-on-my-shoulder poked me with the sharp end of her blue pencil and asked how I knew that record keeping to stave off investigation for educational neglect really was the case.

Could not other reasons be:

• Staying on track
• A sense of order
• State requirement
• Raw material for 'high school' transcripts

From my own experience, I did not know whether preparedness for an investigation was a necessary reason to promote organized record keeping, so I went looking.

A big problem in digging up information to support my reasoning is that I have no access to prosecution records, court documents, or any database that tracks legal inquiries from homeschooling parents.  Given my lack of access, how could I collect any raw data?  My only resource was the email list for the AHSA, so that would be it.  I logged on to the list and read the messages, looking at the reasons for first inquiries.

In checking the reasons for first messages messages from new list members, it was not long before I could see the most common reason for needing assistance:  custody battles concerning children.  Yes, some members (13) initially posted with 'social worker at the door' queries, but the greatest number of requests for help came from custodial parents who were homeschooling but whose former spouse objected to the homeschooling.  So many new list members wanted help with custodial battles (as the reason for needing help was most often called) that in 2003 the AHSA list owner started a new list only for custody disputes.  Despite the new list (which attracted many list members), custody queries continued to show up on the original list.

After putting together the numbers, I went to an online graphing site, plugged in the numbers and, hey presto!, generated the charts at the end of this post.

I made one chart using the information I collected from the original AHSA list, and then I made another, adding the information from the AHSA custody list's front page.  I am not a member of the AHSA custody list, so I added up the total number of messages from the list calendar on the front page, and then divided the total by a completely-guessed-at average of five replies per original query for help.  I did not want to join yet another list and torture my eyes by reading through yet another list's archives.

• The information from the original AHSA list covers nine years:  2000 - 2009
• The information from the AHSA custody list covers six years:  2003 - 2009

A wild card in this representation of queries for help from homeschooling parents as a representative sample is that the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), the largest provider of legal assistance to homeschooling parents, does not accept custody dispute cases.  I do not know what effect this condition has on the number of people who arrive at AHSA's email list, but the HSLDA policy raises the question of whether it inflates the custody number compared to other categories.

• A caveat to that wild card is that the cases accepted by HSLDA is at their discretion, and the word on the street is that if a non-member family is approached by a local child protection agency then HSLDA will treat this as a pre-existing condition and decline to add that family to its membership.
• A caveat to the caveat is that HSLDA lawyers have stated anecdotally that they have helped non-members.  I presume the non-members only approach HSLDA when they have a legal problem.
• A caveat to asking HSLDA for help is that I do not remember any of the people who asked for help saying that HSLDA rejected their request for membership.  I was not thinking about this while I was counting, so it may have slipped by me. I am not so dedicated that I am going to read through nine years of archives again.

The quick and dirty breakdown of the queries for help is:

• Custody
  73 = 29%
• Social worker at the door
  13 =  5%
• Truancy
  8 = 3%
• Officials overstepping the law 
  6  = 2%
• Educational neglect, homeschooling w/o certification, officials contesting homeschooling
  4 = 1% each
• Bogus reports to child services
  1 = .3%  (that's 3/100s, not 3%)

The following charts show a representation of the number of messages, and after that is the 'on the fly' breakdown of the types of requests (I pigeonholed them as I went along, since I didn't know what to expect). 

In the charts, the categories are lumped together up until 'five queries' is reached (because that is where single issues for 'larger' numbers of queries begin).  The 'pie slices' of one, two, three and four queries are multiple subject categories, but adding them one by one would have made the chart unreadable.  A listing of the query subjects comes after the charts.  

AHSA list chart

AHSA list plus AHSA-Custody list chart

On both charts, the large light-purple segment represents custody queries.

List entries for nine years:  253 initial queries total  (not including the estimated 145 queries on the AHSA custody list)

73 queries

• Custody/divorce  35  (Aug. '03 custody list started)  38

15 queries

• General homeschool query

14 queries

• Special needs services denied by school

13 queries

• Social worker investigation

11 queries

• Complying with state-specific rules

9 queries

• Legislative

8 queries each

1. Special needs services imposed by school
2. Truancy

6 queries each

1. Officials overstepping the law
2. Unspecified request on behalf of a non-member of list

5 queries

• Foreign

4 queries each

1. Discrimination against homeschoolers
2. Educational neglect 
3. Homeschooling w/o certification is "illegal"   (CA - Eastin '02) 
4. Officials contesting homeschooling

3 queries each

1. Civil disobedience to challenge law  2 NH  1 Mass.
2. Late paperwork 
3. News stories critical of homeschooling 
4. Non-profit, establishing 
5. Public program questions

2 queries each

1. Complying with judicial ruling
2. Criminal case re: child 
3. Dual enrollment 
4. Job offer for attorney or legal assistant
5. Katrina 
6. Officials doing the paperwork shuffle

1 query each

1. Adjusting to public school
2. Age of compulsory attendance 
3. AHSA compared to HSLDA 
4. Alternative program pressured by state 
5. Bad school 
6. Child in custody 
7. Child labor laws 
8. Conflict with charter 
9. Conflict with reviewer 
10. Co-op obligations 
11. Daytime curfew 
12. Documenting transcripts 
13. Expert witness needed 
14. Family Defence Center 
15. FERPA 
16. Foster parenting 
17. Harassment via bogus reports to child services 
18. Homeless in shelter 
19. Homeschool group incorporation 
20. Homeschool group and IRS 
21. Homeschooling info requested as periphral to a loss of income lawsuit (if you have time to hmschl, you have time to work) 
22. Home School Legal .com 
23. HSLDA overstepping  (asked for all names from a state; that listing included non-member names) 
24. IDEA 
25. Immunizations 
26. Legality of compulsory education laws 
27. Military 
28. Minimum age for home alone 
29. Mixup of names in letter of intent 
30. Muslim lawyer needed 
31. Who is NHELD 
32. Obtaining child's 'permanent record' from school 
33. Obtaining standardized test 
34. Precedent 
35. Pvt. School liability for adjunct homeschoolers 
36. Pvt. Tutor option legal? 
37. Re-entering public school 
38. Religious conflict in Alabama (Jewish family) 
39. Religious exemption 
40. Religious school 
41. Reporting educational neglect 
42. Reporter query 
43. Research 
44. State residency during visit 
45. Social security payments 
46. Scholarship 
47. Supreme Court appeal 
48. Therapist request 
49. Websites with inaccurate hmschl information 
50. Working parent schedule

Bizarro gets homeschooling wrong, too

Bizarro is the latest syndicated comic strip to tackle 'homeschooling.'  Bizarro gets it as wrong as just about all the others I've seen, and some I hadn't until I searched just now. Using mass-schooling as a template for humor about homeschooling is klunky and inauthentic, maybe like using the culture of India as a template for Indians-in-teepees cartoons.

In today's comic, a homeschooling mom is asking her kids for their lunch money.  The son replies that his father stole it.  The boxed caption is about homeschooling going terribly awry.

I suppose in some cartoonish way, the strip is funny because almost all cartoon dads are bumblers, and many cartoon moms are hens that peck.  I'm assuming that in the Bizarro world, the mom ties up the finances with her apron strings, and the dad has to shake down the kids for pocket change.

But what mom, in any situation, gives her children 'lunch money' at breakfast only to take back the same bills or coins at lunch?  Even in a cartoon world, charging one's own children for their meals at home does not make much sense unless there is a back-story, maybe about teens who clear out the 'fridge as fast as Mom can unload the groceries.  Stone Soup or Zits might be able to pull it off.  Even then, dispensing cash and re-collecting it is too much work for Mom.  Occam's lunchtime this ain't -- it's not as if Mom's making a buck here.  Grokking humor shouldn't require so much contortion.

Dan Piraro (the man behind the comic) seems to think deeply about what's 'behind' concepts, as indicated by his blog.  But he missed the boat on the homeschooling strip.  What would be bizarrely humorous (making a sharp point), is if:

• The caption were, "Homeschooling becomes more like public school." 
• The caption were, "Socialization comes to homeschooling"
• Mom asked, "Where's your lunch?" and the boy replied, "Dad stole it."

Trying to apply the petty crime of the public school lunch money shakedown to a family is this cartoon's fatal flaw.  A work-at-home dad stealing a delicious lunch could be funny, but that would take a series-long set up for readers to immediate get that dad snitched the kids' food, and why.

And to those who are shaking their heads and saying, "lighten up, it's just a comic," no, it's not.  To quote the cartoonist's remarks at his blog on the subject of a topic apparently dear to his own heart, atheism, "As the funky DJ might say, 'Let's break it down, now.'"

Newspaper comics (like other social artifacts) are a distillation of 'what everyone knows' which is why they are successful in a newspaper whose aim is 'everyone.  This is especially important for a 'random subject cartoon' such as Bizarro because it doesn't have a running situation.  Bizarro seems to depends on what everyone presumes is common knowledge, but with a twist.  'Everyone' is expected to get this particular joke because 'everyone' knows that homeschooling is wacked out in the first place, and family members are always at odds with each other in the second. Therefore, of course, the bumbling cartoon dad will be bossed around by his sharp-tongued wife.  Think Hägar and Helga. 

In this Bizarro case, the dad is so whipped he has to steal pocket-change from his children.  The reason for the pocket change is flawed, but in the 2 seconds it takes to read the comic, the newspaper readers around the country nod in agreement about the dysfunctional homeschool family and another little brick seems to be laid in the wall.

Homeschooling is as fair a cartoon target as any other set of human interactions.  I just wish the cartoonists would get the relationships right.  Too bad for cartooning that Bill Waterson has such high professional standards.

Confessions of a media dupe

My reply (the previous blog post here) to the posting on an email list of an Infowars site announcement that outed the government roundup of all children, and their subsequent forcible inoculation, drew fire.

A brave soul:

• Suggested I lacked a basic understanding of the United States Constitution
• Implied that I lack a sense of personal responsibility 
• Told me we do not live in Germany 
• Gave me the news that this is the land of the free 
• Said that if he does not have the right to make his own destiny, then all soldiers who fought for this country have fought in vain. 
• Referred to scores of world wide investigators documenting the tragedy of vaccination
• Counseled me to spend at least ten minutes on the internet 
• Questioned why the government bought flu vaccine that hadn't been tested 
• Refreshed my memory of the Thalidomide tragedy 
• Objected to me objecting about a simple warning from one homeschooling family to others
• Opined that I thoughtlessly accept government propaganda
• Has the opinion that my speaking up is scary and dangerous, and that I drink Kool-Aid 
• Shared that he was capable of thinking on his own
• Commanded that I educate myself so I could make informed decisions 
• Reiterated my need to take personal responsibility 
• Proclaimed his contribution to the military

It was a total takedown.  Two other list members thanked him.  Coffee and punch in the lobby.

_______________________________________________________________________________

The main points that I see in his reply are:

• A distrust of civilian government, offset by a respect for the military
• A greater dislike of modern medicine than of natural selection 
• A dislike of 'organized' news and a preference for individual voices (except those whose views are closer to those of 'organized' media)

The boil-down of all that seems to be a preference for the individual rather than the group, with the exception of the military.

This opinion on a homeschooling list -- a preference for the individual over the group -- is not surprising.  After all, each of us parents who homeschool have taken personal responsibility for the (usually delegated) education of our children.  With the continued growth of homeschooling and the resultant influx into homeschool support group of parents with more mainstream ideas, more 'group dynamics' people have shifted the homeschooling center from strongly individualistic to moderately individualistic, but a preference for the individual dynamic is still dominant.

The questioning that I did on the list, though, wasn't about how homeschooling parents, as a group, ought to capitulate to authority and that email lists should put the clamps on free and unfettered discussion among free-thinking, personally-responsible individuals.  Nor was it about the safety or effectiveness of vaccinations, or about how the swine flu vaccine is safe as mother's milk and not the horribly dangerous and utterly ineffective poison that the mainstream will not admit to.

My questioning was about a website sensationally objecting to the government doing any planning.

Infowars stated:

One of the most shocking modules of the conference deals with "School/University Pandemic Planning" and strongly implies that authorities will usurp parental rights over children in the event of a swine flu pandemic.

A YouTube … person … (I'm unfamiliar with this narrator) whose video is linked to from the Infowars site interprets the plan to instruct teachers in schools how to deal with sick students or colleagues as a plan to put flu-stricken children in internment/resettlement camps:

Plans to take children from schools for mass vaccinations and quarantines

I'm assuming the children will be flown there in black helicopters.

What the PDF says (about schools and children)  is:

School/University Pandemic Planning

Train teachers to screen for symptoms & know what to do when students/teachers fall ill
Transport ill students
Identify when to reduce or close down your school
Effectively transform school facilities into shelters
Continue learning through alternative routes like the web telephone, mail, radio and TV
Communicate effectively with staff, parents and students

The point of the training is how school and university officials should plan to deal responsibly with a large number of students or teachers who fall ill while at school. 

• Should classes continue? 
• Should an alternative schooling plan be in place ahead of time? 
• If a person becomes seriously ill at school, should that person be sent to the nurse's office, sent home/back to dorm, or sent to a hospital?

As for the morgue operations, if, heaven forfend, something like the flu pandemic of 1918 strikes, and if many people die, and if you do not, do you want someone, somewhere, to know how to deal with the aftermath, or would you rather have them just wing it, or maybe leave you to clean it up yourself?

1918 Flu Pandemic

1918 flu epidemic: the Oakland Municipal Auditorium in use as a temporary hospital.  The photograph depicts volunteer nurses from the American Red Cross tending influenza sufferers in the Oakland Auditorium, Oakland, California, during the influenza pandemic of 1918. Wikimedia Commons,  Photo by Edward A. "Doc" Rogers. From the Joseph R. Knowland collection at the Oakland History Room, Oakland Public Library.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1918_flu_in_Oakland.jpg

People concerned with public health are planning what to do if worse comes to worst regarding the H1N1 strain of influenza, and Infowars sensationalistically re-interpreted that as government plans to round people up and, what?, kill them, dispose of the bodies and steal the children?  In any case, the International Swine Flu conference, wasn't a government conference.  It was marketed by the New Fields Exhibitions company.

In the view of some, that kind of warning is sensible, and to point out the mistakes in interpretation is scary.  I could parrot Barney Frank.

Forced inoculations: Authorities Prepare To Seize Kids During Swine Flu Pandemic

From an email list:  Authorities Prepare To Seize Kids During Swine Flu Pandemic, at Infowars.com

Authorities are preparing to seize children from schools, set up quarantines and morgues, conduct mass vaccinations, and deal with riots and unrest, according to an international swine flu summit recently held in Washington DC which was attended by distinguished scientists, industry leaders and top health officials from all over the globe.

"Authorities" doing this sort of thing is pretty much standard operating procedure about a situation that could affect large numbers of people in a bad way.

When I lived in Europe (U.S. military) during the Cold War, the threat of an invasion was as real as anyone knew it could be without actually seeing tanks pushing down the East German fences (The Wall was in Berlin).

From 1971, when I first lived in Germany, until 1999, when we moved to the United States to care for my mom, while we lived in Europe we were required to have as much food, water and clothing/hygienic supplies as each one of us could carry, as well as our "NEO cards" to turn in along the way until we reached safety.  This was our NEO Kit.

Noncombatant Evacuation Operations (NEO)
(USAREUR is the Army in Europe, USAFE is the Air Force, and USNAVEUR is the Navy.  POV is a car -- "privately owned vehicle" as compared with GOV, a gov't owned vehicle)

Section IV NEO FORMS AND CHECKLISTS
15. NEO Kit
16. POV Registration Certificate
17. Individual Family Report
18. Noncombatant Evacuation Processing Record

At one point, my family lived 12 miles from the East German border in the 'traditional' invasion route through the Fulda Gap.  One morning 'we' had a scare of 'tank noises on the border' that turned out to be just the noise of tanks being moved.  Only watchers on the Border heard the noises, so it wasn't as if the tanks woke us up such as American tanks might do while rolling through our village during REFORGER.  Still, my husband's office was on alert until 'authorities' figured out who was making the noises.

If 'anything happened' other than noises, we family members were told we would be given strip maps to debarkation points/airports (although the reality in case of a full-bore invasion was 'about a 7-second life expectancy' for those of us on the Border)  Ca. 1957 when I was a child, we even had one practice "evacuation" at a SAC base, Ellsworth, in South Dakota where we lived (relatively) near Mt. Rushmore.  On evacuation day, the sirens went off and all the families got their picnic lunches in the car and drove off into the Black Hills.  According to my mom, it was a bit of a mess (I remember the traffic jam), and no commander at Ellsworth evacuated an entire housing area again, not even during the Cuban missile crisis a few years later.  How fast could you drive away from a direct nuclear attack?

It is the responsibility of our government to make plan for disasters -- that's one of the things we pay them for.  I'd rather have a plan in place (this is one area in which I'd want competent planners on the job -- the aftermath of Katrina was another 'bit of a mess'), rather than for the government to just leave everything up to anarchy with people shooting it out in neighborhoods.   Self-sufficiency is admirable, but our society is not now centered on the gentleman farmer in a landed aristocracy, and back yard tomatoes only get you so far.  (sites such as 72 Hours provide a plan)

Disaster planning is nothing to sneeze at, and if worse came to worst (god willing and the creek don't rise, this flu season will be just another 'scenario' such as Y2K), having someone who knows something about "quarantines and morgues" (in the Army, part of that is the job of the graves registration unit) would be something anyone with a 'need' would probably be grateful for.

As for the 'forced inoculations' I don't have a problem with vaccination, although as a small child in school I often objected loudly and with energy.  When I was in 3rd grade, ca. 1958, a teacher was diagnosed with active TB and the entire school, teachers and kids, were given the pre-TINE TB test in the school gym.

The only method of vaccination I was heartily in favor of (as a child) was the method for administering the (then) brand new Sabin polio vaccine.  After school one day, entire families trooped up to the school's new cafeteria to get their doses ... on a sugar cube.  What looked to me like cookie sheets of sugar cubes with a pink(?) drop on the top were laid out on the cafeteria tables.   It was probably that same year that my class visited a girl in an iron lung.  She'd been stricken with polio and could no longer breathe on her own.  The visit was probably a purposeful move to convince us of the need for vaccination, and also probably an effective one.  Who hears about wards full of polio victims in iron lung wards any more?

Otherwise, US Air Force kids at the school I went to got their shots at school -- the nurses trundled a cart through the hallway and those of us who needed shots, lined up in the hallway, shot records in hand.

Public inoculations are nothing new.

I understand that many people have heartfelt reasons for questioning the level of present inoculations, the manufacturing processes, or the trade-off of individual side effects against 'herd immunity,' and I'm not quibbling about discussions to answer those questions.  But what, I wonder, is the point of scaring readers because our various levels of government are planning ahead and actually doing a job that we pay them to do?  What's the point?

Nazis, health care and shouting 'fire!'

The Truth About Nazis, by AKMuckraker

I remember as a child I was not allowed to watch Hogan's Heroes. It wasn't a joke in my house. There was nothing funny about prisoner of war camps. There were no handsome well-fed prisoners with secret tunnels under their bunks, and pirate radio equipment who always managed to play their captors for the fool. There were frightened, emaciated young men whose minds and bodies were broken an ocean away from home, who were shot on fences , and who ate cats, and watched their friends die. There was nothing to laugh about. Those were Nazis.

My parents were in the Pacific theater of operations during WWII, Mom in China and Dad in the Philippines and New Guinea.  The 'war stories' I grew up with were about my luck for not having to live in a town where wagons loaded with 'honeypots' were trundled down the street, and admonitions to be happy I wasn't a starving orphan waiting with a pail by the garbage can to scrounge whatever was left from someone else's father's supper.  Like AKMuckraker, I never heard about the really bad stories such as evacuations as the communist troops overran China, or the crashes of air crews staffed by friends that my photographer-father had to document; I only found out about those later.  Still, I don't feel slighted that my childhood memories don't have those additions and I also don't feel slighted that neither of my parents was imprisoned and tortured by starvation.

The attempt to make health care more reasonably available to more citizens of the country than can presently afford it is not comparable to the aims and methods of the men who became monsters in Germany. 

I am tired of people comparing Obama to Hitler. I am tired of seeing signs with swastikas and Nazi symbols at health care rallies. I am tired of people saying that a health care plan intended to uplift millions of Americans to give them dignity, and choice and the ability to care for their families, is like Naziism. I am tired of Rush Limbaugh.

In the 1930s and 1940s, no one in my family was stolen from her ordinary life.  No was made to breathe gases produced by the combination of Zyklon B and air.  No one met Josef Mengele. Those are the evils the charge of being "Nazis" plays into, not our disagreement with the perceived national aspirations of a Bürohengst ("office stallion," aka "paper pusher").  "Nazis" brings up the picture of death camps, crematoria and mass graves, not office workers on phones and stacks of paper for payment claims.

At the Town Halls, Trivializing Evil by Michael Gerson

These lessons are relevant to politics. But they are trivialized when applied to Obama's health insurance reform plan or the conduct of disorderly town-hall protesters. The burning of the Reichstag and Kristallnacht are not arguments against a single-payer health plan or against the Patriot Act.

Saying that working to provide more health care is equivalent to death panels of moustachioed men separating the Jew workers from the useless Jews is like falsely shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater:   Sound and fury endlessly linked to. 

"Results 1 - 10 of about 6,120,000 for obama nazi."   

That's not discussion.  That's hysterics.