Tag: Regrettable Acts

Bullying With Bureaucracy’s Tools

Education, Homeschooling

Here’s a good one  (“good” in the sense of fucking evil bastardy):

Madison Bratcher, the mother of a girl who was enrolled in the Bridgeport Independent School District (BISD), received an odd reaction from her daughter’s school after withdrawing her.
“Her daughter was bullied, exposed to inappropriate sexual talk by other students, and mistreated in classes and on the bus. Bratcher said she raised these issues with her daughter’s school, but they were not addressed,” according to a report from The Texan.
“All of these incidents show that Bridgeport doesn’t have the best interest of students at heart,” Bratcher told the news outlet.
Bratcher and her husband made the decision to homeschool McKinley, their daughter, who is in the sixth grade. They sent an email to the school notifying them that they were removing her from the school.

Which, according to Texas state law, is all you need to do if you want to homeschool your kid.  The response from the school?

The parents did not receive a reply to their email. Later, Bratcher received a phone call from the school informing her that registration was now open. She told the individual that she would not be enrolling her daughter and would be homeschooling her instead. School officials called twice more even after being told that Bratcher was educating her daughter at home.
On the third phone call, an official told her that she needed to fill out some forms indicating her intent to withdraw her daughter. This person also asked probing questions about what program Bratcher would be using to educate McKinley. “At this point, Bratcher said she became very uncomfortable and asked the school to send her the forms via email.”

And as for the content of the “forms”:

The forms required her to acknowledge “dangers, concerns, and disadvantages” of homeschooling. One of the forms also said the district could investigate a family if it has “reasonable cause … to believe that the assurance” given that the child would pursue a bona fide program of homeschooling is not true.

All of which is total bullshit, of course — the “investigation” procedure does not exist, is not backed by any Texas law or regulation, and is pure intimidation.

This all happened at the school level, apparently, because when Our Intrepid Mom got hold of the school district brass, she got a groveling apology, and an assurance that the “forms” were not authorized by the district.  (One hopes that this would result in someone getting fired for cause, but I wouldn’t put money on it.)

Why would the school stoop to this level?  Ah… follow the money.  Each student pulled from a state school means reduced state funding.

Texas residents, take note.  Other states’ residents:  find out the steps required by the state before you pull your kid.

Friends & Family

Advice, Friends and Family

One of the first things that lottery winners learn is that they suddenly discover all sorts of friends and family members that they never knew they had.

I’m not one of those people.  In the event that I were to win a lottery, I know exactly who my close friends and family members are (they number fewer than twenty), and if there were any money that was available to be shared, they’d get 80% of it (after my off-the-top 20%, depending on the size of the pot — the smaller the pot, the larger my percentage).  But even that’s not the end of it.  Because — and this is made quite clear in all the rules and literature about this kind of thing — any lottery winnings are the sole possession of the individual whose name is on the winning ticket.  Nobody else is “owed” anything.

And here’s the little tale of avarice and entitlement that made me think about this in the first place:

Alex Robertson was one of a dozen bus drivers from Corby, Northants., to scoop a share of £38million on the EuroMillions.  Mr Robertson’s share, which he won a decade ago, was worth £3.1million – but it sparked a feud between him and his sons, who claimed he refused to share any of the cash with them.

…which was his right.  £3.1million was back then the equivalent of about $4.7 million — hardly what we would call “screw you” money — so apart from the legal issue, he was perfectly within his rights not to share the money with anyone else.  Just to make the point even clearer:  his sons were in their early 30s when he won the lottery, and so not his dependent children, by any stretch.

And here’s where the fun begins.  His bratty kids started to go after him:

Alex Jnr admitted: “We ended up taking hammers to his two new 4x4s. We walked up his driveway at 11 o’clock at night and put two claw hammers through the windows of the car.  We then reported ourselves to the police.”

William was later charged with harassing his Lotto-winning dad by sending him threatening text messages.

And the whining:

Alex Jr. told The Sun at the time: “This lottery win was the worst thing that ever happened to us — it ripped our families apart.”

No, you self-entitled, unspeakable little shit:  you ripped the families apart by somehow thinking that your hardworking bus driver of a dad had to share his good fortune with you.  Did you ever buy your own lottery tickets?  (Doubt it, and even so, it’s irrelevant.)

Anyway, all’s well that ends well.  Robinson Sr. lives in Spain, far away from his toxic offspring, and I just hope that he’s willed the remainder of his estate to a worthwhile charity, and not to the Fuckhead Twins.

 

New Name

Health, LGBTOSTFU

Seeing as we’re renaming every damn thing — women to womyn, Latino to Latinx, his/her to xis/xir, Wuhan virus to Corona virus, and of course homosexual to gay, I think we took a hard look at this monkeypox thing, and courtesy of Insty, I think I’ve come up with the (data- / reality-based) proper name.

First, the data:

All patients identified as men who have sex with men and there was a median age of 41.  90% of the patients who responded to the questions on sexual activity (47/52) reported at least one new sexual partner during the three weeks prior to symptoms, and almost all (49/52) reported inconsistent condom use in this same time period.  Over half of the patients (29/52) had more than five sexual partners in the 12 weeks prior to their monkeypox diagnosis.”  [my emphasis]

So, ladies and gentlemen, as monkeypox has in fact got pretty much nothing to do with monkeys, herewith its new name:

HOMOPOX

Please adjust your grammar / spelling correction systems accordingly.

Where The States Stand

Ethics, Legal Stuff, Politics

…on the abortion issue, that is.

I have to say, I think South Carolina’s is the most commonsense:

In 2021, Republican Gov. Henry McMaster signed a bill prohibiting most abortions from being performed after a fetal heartbeat is detected, with exceptions for medical emergencies, fetal anomalies, rape, and incest.

The Socialists are all about “let the people speak” until the people actually say something they disagree with, in which case it’s Jackboot Time and compulsion then becomes the order of the day.

Personally, I hate the idea of abortion — most especially when it’s used as contraception — but at the same time I don’t really have a problem with abortifacients like RU-486 (the “morning after” pill) provided that it is used the morning after and not five months into the pregnancy as some silly women have tried, with disastrous consequences.

Also, I’m uncomfortable with government charging people with murder for having an abortion, because that seems to be a swing of the pendulum too far.

Of course, as always, the wealthier women will always be able to procure an abortion simply by traveling to where they’re available, whereas the poorer women won’t.  On the other hand, if the fear of pregnancy does evoke even a little bit of personal responsibility — as opposed to the hook-up culture and utter licentiousness of our oh-so modern society — then making abortion difficult to obtain may have even a little social benefit.  In the meantime [Dr. Kim sez] :

If there was a single aspect of the human condition that I could solve, unplanned / unwanted pregnancy would be it.

On the lighter side:

Yeah, Sure

Legal Stuff, The Gun Thing

Daughter’s fiance was in hospital after some minor surgery, so yesterday I went to see how the patient was doing (fine, but that’s not why I’m writing this).

As I breezed past the stupid 30.06 sign posted on the door (TX state law forbidding guns on the premises), I checked to make sure my 1911 was well concealed.

Why did I disobey the law?  Take a flying guess.

Police said at a Thursday morning news conference that a surgery patient targeted a specific doctor at Tulsa’s St. Francis Hospital campus because his back continued to hurt after an operation.

That’s fucked up, but at the same time, the mook shot the doctor and three other innocent people before offing himself.

A long time ago, I made myself a vow never to be a helpless victim.

Quote Of The Day

QOTD

From Elle Reynolds:

“Guns aren’t radically deadlier than they were 50 years ago, but our sick culture is.”

Preach it, sister:

While humanity has been fallen since Eden, the past 50 years have seen countless indicators of exponential cultural decline, not the least of which have been falling marriage rates and skyrocketing numbers of children who are denied the chance to live with both their mother and father. We’re also seeing a pandemic of mental illness, which the years of mental angst and isolation caused by Covid school closures will certainly only worsen.

Americans are losing interest in the purpose and community that faith and church offer, losing respect for the sanctity of human life, and losing sight of the notion that a higher moral good exists than immediate self-gratification. Instead, we live under a cultural ethic that idolizes the indulgence of selfish desires even up to the point of taking the life of another.

Yup.