HooRAHHH! Here is your Diploma...NOT!

Picture Courtesy of Galesburg High School web site

No matter how proud you are of your son or daughter for making it all the way to finally getting that diploma there is always just one more road block. Remember those two finger claps of years gone by while you attended school? Anything louder than that during your high school graduation ceremony and they pull your diploma in Galesburg, IL!

I could not make this up if I wanted too but the New York Times has this to say about it...

Diplomas Denied Over Graduation Cheers
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 3, 2007

GALESBURG, Ill., June 2 — A high school that had warned against undignified behavior at its graduation ceremony denied diplomas to five students after enthusiastic friends or family members cheered for them during the commencement program.

On May 27, Galesburg High School students and their parents were asked to sign a contract promising to act in dignified way. Violators were warned they could be denied their diplomas and barred from an after-graduation party.

Many schools ask spectators to hold applause and cheers until the ceremonies end but few rigidly enforce the policy.

“It was like one of the worst days of my life,” said Caisha Gayles, one of the five students, who officially graduated, but does not have her diploma to frame and hang on her wall. “You walk across the stage and then you can’t get your diploma because of other people cheering for you. It was devastating.”

The school said the five students can still get their diplomas by completing eight hours of public service, answering phones, sorting books or doing other work for the district.

School officials in Galesburg, a city of 34,000 in northwestern Illinois, said the policy was adopted after hoots, hollers and even air horns drowned out much of the ceremony in 2005 and nearly touched off fights in the audience when the unruly were asked to quiet down. - New York Times

Contrary to popular belief, not all kids have a “Disney Channel Sitcom” educational experience. Yes, some children have a very hard time and for the ones that stick it through with those D grades it makes their friends and family damn proud.

If “Buffy and Biff” who sailed through with straight A’s parents want to do the two finger clap then you go right the hell ahead. If my kid struggled all along but stuck with it then I will cheer loud and proud! My kid just completed the toughest event of their young life and getting that High School Diploma is something to be very thankful for. If this were a sporting event then my child just made the first cut and made the team.

Who the hell is that anal among parents that doesn’t see the trees for the forest? Who amongst educators does not get the happiness of this lifetime achievement? Getting that diploma is the true beginning from childhood to being a functioning adult.

Would it hurt the ceremony to pause a damn minute or two to give each of the kids the encouragement they deserve from their families and friends while accepting the award of twelve years or more of continued determination to learn and make the grade. In a society that constantly bitches about kids dropping out, these folks are screwing them over just one last time simply because they hold the piece of paper that states to our society that you made the cut.

How is the kid getting the diploma responsible for this? Well, if you think about it they are. Yup, if gramps or grams with all the arthritis and bad hips gets to excited then pull that kids diploma. Mom or Dad that worked several jobs to pay for tutors and saved for college and a better future should be silent. Parents are to be seen and not heard from.

NOT!

We are just going to put this one in the idiot box and forward it to every blog we can think of. Life is hard enough for our young adults and then you get this educational Nazi idiocy movement. I refuse to “Achtung Mine Furor” on this one.

Some people are just idiots (Terminology changed due to younger readers) because they have a position that lets them be that way. Give you a clue, there are bigger idiots (Terminology changed due to younger readers) like me that care and City Councilors that care even more. Especially, when nice folks that are not idiots (Terminolgy...you know the drill) reading and idiot blog like mine simply email the real folks in charge to complain and demand justice… Hint, hint, hint…

If this post inspired you or ticked you off, please forward this post to someone else that is an idiot...

Papamoka

GALESBURG, Illinois official municipal site... hint, hint, hint...

UPDATE: The school has given the kids their diplomas.

Cross posted at Bring It ON!

Howie Carr the Political Racist Columnist

If you have ever been graced with the reading of the Boston Herald they have some really great reporters and columnists that provide true journalism with a typical Boston twist. Much like all papers there are the people on the staff that dare to call themselves reporters or a columnist and are simply below the bar or severely lacking with the endowment or gift of the respected titles.

Back in the day of Billy Bulger and his iron clad hold on the state senate president’s office Howie Carr served a purpose as a much loved columnist to the Boston Herald paper and the people that spat out the grotesque and flagrant actions of a legislative body without an ounce of honest spirit in it. Billy Bulger is long gone and yet Howie Carr is still rambling on. Reaching for the stars and trying his damn well best to paint anyone even remotely liberal as a piece of crap.

His method of attack on anyone is simply to use his column as a bully pulpit and bash the intelligence of anyone he cares to bash. Democrats hold a favorite spot in his heart to publish away as incompetent infidels to his picture perfect idea of society. This week it’s our distinguished Senator John Kerry. Even better he was able to toss a stone among the many at Don Imus simply because John Kerry thought that the punishment did not fit the crime.

Earth to Kerry: Shut up, already
By Howie Carr
Boston Herald Columnist
Friday, April 20, 2007 - Updated: 01:46 AM EST
John Kerry - a day late and a dollar short, again.

Can we have an intervention, please? Stop this preening fool before he inserts foot in mouth again. The man has a disease. For Liveshot, one camera is too many, and a thousand are not enough.

Just consider the past couple of weeks. I know, he’s been out pushing a book, “This Moment on Earth.” But just because someone shoves a microphone into his face doesn’t mean he has to take the bait. Sometimes, you have to know when to leave something alone.

What’s the old saying? Sometimes it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.

So he’s out there hawking product when the story breaks about Hillary Clinton and Barry Obama raising record amounts of campaign cash in the first quarter. On top of that is the lingering John Edwards sympathy factor. Almost by the day, Kerry is an ever-more distant memory in the rearview mirror of history.

Liveshot’s reaction? He tells the first interviewer he runs into that perhaps he will be running for president again. Or maybe not.

See, he was running for president before he was not running for president before he was running for president before he was not.

Then there was his “debate” in D.C. with Newt Gingrich. Gingrich said nice things about Liveshot, almost hugged him, and then promptly collapsed in the Republican presidential polls. You might say Newt “pulled a Kerry.”

Next, along comes Don Imus, on whose abysmal talk show Kerry once uttered yet another botched joke about the Italian military, (and wasn’t Kerry fortunate his slur didn’t make anyone’s top 10 list of Imus embarrassments last week?).

Kerry’s people say he issued a statement last week denouncing the I-man’s racist crack. But like all the other Beautiful People, Kerry (for once) wasn’t exactly rushing out to the microphones to tell the TV audiences that maybe his pal the I-man should put his brown shirts away.

End of story?Not quite. This week, with Imus dead and buried, guess who stepped up and stepped into it?

In New York, Kerry was asked about it by a TV reporter, and he opined that the punishment should fit the crime.

After all, it was only a botched joke. – The Boston Herald

Is it any more possible to wear your self espoused conservative die hard right wing mentality agenda and put it in print any more clearly than what Howie Carr (Wreck) does and get away with it. Can he just preach the hate and hypocrisy of his own article somewhere else? Canada could use a great liberal bashing columnist. No, we can’t do that to Canada, they might retaliate with someone twice as worse and extremely liberal. England could use a good right wing columnist like Howie. Any where but here works for me.

It is high time we point out the people that want to sell hate in no matter what form it is presented. Reporters preaching hate of any individual should receive the same treatment as Don Imus. They should be trashed and public opinion should be moved to force them out of a job. We should be pointing at the haters amongst us and casting them out of our society at large.

We should all take every sentence that every single writer in America writes and it should be reviewed by a legal court to decide what is offensive, racist, politically incorrect and shameful. We should start the investigations with Howie Carr of the Boston Herald. Once we have him canned lets move on to George Will. Then we can go after that old bugger from the New Yorker that has that snooty attitude toward the lesser educated amongst us. Frank Rich has to go next because he is just too extreme with his liberalism and self righteous attitude with every work he presents for print in the New York Times. Rush Limbaugh, jackpot of jack asses has got to go to the unemployment office and stop at the Target Pharmacy, Walgreen Pharmacy, CVS Pharmacy, Brooks Pharmacy and one or two Mom and Pop Pharmacies after we get rid of his racist commentary against anyone that does no tow the strict line of rich folks against poor folks.

Any one at Fox News or works for the network should just pack your desk. Same goes for the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Houston Chronicle, Palm Beach Post, Boston Herald, all hell shut all the newspapers down.

Talk radio, umm, ya they are gone too. They talk about to many things that make people think. That isn’t good for a free America. Magazines other than the ones that do nothing but nice pictures of fuzzy bunnies and puppies, and babies are okay. While we are at it, the flag needs to be redesigned too! Any suggestions from anyone other than the stars and stripes forever will be appreciated?

While we are revising the Constitution and the freedom of the press somebody just might want to make a call into the White House and see if the President can go over to the Smithsonian with his burnt umber crayon and just draw a line through the first and second amendment. Then again, why stop at two amendments?

As much as one amendment seems to conflict with the other, neither can exist without the other.

Question for the Readers of Papamoka Straight Talk... Where do you stand on the freedom of the press dealing with and reporting on the Virginia Tech Massacre? Second question... What do you think about the second amendment and the right to bare arms?

Papamoka

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Virginia Tech Murders and Massacre

With all the hype from the main stream media they are forgetting the children murdered by this idiot and madman. Probing into why he did what he did is redundant if you splash his picture over and over all over the media. What about the kids that died? What about their damn pictures on NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC or FOX? What about them and the future they ultimately had posted and talked about on the networks?

With this latest media hype on the death of these college kids is a substantial critical price in boasting all the unknown facts of their killer. Why the media chooses to make the murderer the headline is beyond me? Nobody should be talking about this monster and hoping to even remotely understand what was in his mind and why he committed this horrible crime against the students of Virginia Tech. The kid was freaking nuts and totally out of control. His desire for attention is so graciously being granted every single time his face is slammed up on the television by all of the major networks.

I don’t even own a hand gun or a rifle so I have no dog to hunt in the argument of gun owners rights. I am however a firm believer in the second amendment to the Constitution. This murderer followed the laws of the land to obtain his fire arms used in this crime. He broke no laws in getting the guns as far as I know and what the main stream media reported. This crime against America is not about gun ownership. If he wanted to get a gun to do this horrific crime then he could have had access to them from a multitude of avenues available across America and in every city that are illegal.

One of my friends stated in deference to what happened that if the rest of the students had fire arms then they probably would have taken him out before he fired his third shot! That is a thought to think about.

The main stream media should let the families of the dead grieve as they will need to do and leave it at that. Stop glorifying the murderer of these poor children of Virginia Tech. If it was attention he wanted then he got it with more than I can stomach from the Main Stream Media!

NBC was lacking clear judgment when they repeatedly aired this monsters rant. Their decision over at NBC to air the video that the monster mailed off to them in-between his killing rampage just shows a total lack of respect for all the innocent lives lost at Virginia Tech.

The following is a list of known victims from The Virginia Tech website...

Virginia Tech – In Memoriam

We Remember

Ross Abdallah Alameddine
James Christopher Bishop
Brian Roy Bluhm
Ryan Christopher Clark
Austin Michelle Cloyd
Jocelyne Couture-Nowak
Kevin P. Granata
Matthew Gregory Gwaltney
Caitlin Millar Hammaren
Jeremy Michael Herbstritt
Emily Jane Hilscher
Jarrett Lee Lane
Matthew Joseph La Porte
Henry J. Lee
Liviu Librescu
Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan
Lauren Ashley McCain
Daniel Patrick O'Neil
J. Ortiz-Ortiz
Minal Hiralal Panchal
Daniel Alejandro Perez
Erin Nicole Peterson
Michael Steven Pohle, Jr.
Julia Kathleen Pryde
Mary Karen Read
Reema Joseph Samaha
Waleed Mohamed Shaalan
Leslie Geraldine Sherman
Maxine Shelly Turner
Nicole White

The preceding victims have been positively identified, and their next of kin notified. Names of all 32 victims will be added as they become available. – Virginia Tech

I am thankful to the Virginia Tech site for not listing the murderer amongst the victims. My thoughts and prayers will be with the many families and friends that lost a loved one at Virginia Tech.

Papamoka

Books on Virginia Tech... My apologies to the families for having to pay the bills...

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Permanent Link to Reflections On A Massacre

This post has been offered by my very good friend Michael Linn Jones from the Gun Toting Liberal for this web site. Thank you Mike!

Written By: Michael Linn Jones

Permanent Link to Reflections On A Massacre

It has been roughly 24 hours since the slaughter ended at Virginia Tech. Details of the mass murderer are coming out in dribs and drabs, but at the time of this writing it is becoming apparent that he had a grudge. Whether triggered by a romantic failure, a dispute over grades, or just an overflowing disgust with those things American, Virginia Tech was a scene of terror. For whatever the cause, terror is what it turned into.

I noticed that while the bodies of those poor kids had not even been removed from the scene of their horrible death, Brian Ross of ABC had an article out about how the assailant “could” have used high capacity magazines, and that such was due to the failure of Congress to reimpose the assault weapons ban. It would not be beyond the impossible to assume that the article was ready and waiting for a day such as yesterday. That is not journalism, but pushing an agenda at a very coarse point of a already horrible day.

President Bush has visited Virginia Tech, and ordered flags at half mast. Flowers are going to abound in areas so as to allow people to genuinely grieve. Their world has been shattered, and as for those who lost loved ones, words are difficult to produce to descirbe their anguish, or to alleviate their sorrow.

Many other things will happen: concerts, speeches, religious services, memorials, days of remembrance, and the ever increasing anniversaries of that day; with each succeeding year the event will convert from a glowing hot memory of today to the colder climes of history. The heat of it will only reside within those who sent their loved ones to a place of learning only to bring them home in a coffin. It is sad indeed to see a parent bury a child.

The closure will come, as best it can. For some it will never even visit, but remain aloof and distant, like a mirage of hope. The hurt never goes away and despite all the technology available, it must be dealt with in private.

There is something unseemly in using this massacre as a vehicle for an agenda; any agenda. This is America; we’re full of agendas and it is safe to say they will never go away. But they can wait a week or so.

The unkindest thought that has crossed my mind comes more in the form of a question, and is not part of any agenda. This question, which arose in my mind late last night is this: should we grieve more for the families of these victims of lunacy more than we should the families of those dying and being maimed in Iraq and Afghanistan?
It is ironic, and also sick, that our lost soldiers and lost students share one common thing: they were targets of people who hate the United States and the American people.

Like after 9/11, we must come to terms with the fact that hatred is a powerful force in the world, and it oozes through cultures without regard to borders. What the scumbag did yesterday in Blacksburg is no different than what the scumbags did on 9/11, or what the scumbag did in Oklahoma City. They not only wanted to end as many lives as they could, but they wanted (and still want, in great numbers) to end the lives of everyone else through fear.

In other words, one’s heart may still beat and the lungs may pull air, but the heart is stilled through fear. The aim is to make us as rabbits in a thunderstorm, too frightened to move. Or think.

In time, a memorial to these people at Virginia Tech will be erected. That is right, and proper. Yet if you want to contribute to a memorial to them yourself, or to those of 9/11 or Oklahoma City, then LIVE. Without fear? No, of course not. But live DESPITE whatever fears you have. That is courage, and courage is what will defeat terrorism, in whatever form it takes.

May these poor people find eternal rest. May God have mercy and welcome their souls with open arms.

But no rest for the living. We have challenges to meet; to overcome. Freedom is truly not a gift; it must be fought for by each generation. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, we are perhaps not at the beginning of the end, but rather the end of the beginning.

We will never lose the struggle for freedom on our own shore unless we lose it in our own hearts.
Michael Linn Jones

Personal Note to my friend, thank you for offering me your talent for this post. It is an amazing and thoughtful piece.

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Virginia Tech Massacre Hits Home in Mass.

Picture Courtesy of The Boston Herald

My heart and soul are praying for all the parents that have already received the call that their baby was a victim of the madman at Virginia Tech. There is no way to express my sorrow to the many Mothers and Fathers and the rest of the families or friends of the victims for what happened at Virginia Tech.

I’m shocked, disgusted, outraged, and fearful for our nation’s youth. America is no longer that safe haven where apple pies and a Chevrolet are the norm. Sending our sons and daughters away to college is never going to be the same again. What was once a right of passage for a young adult became many parents all across America’s nightmare? I will be praying for all of the families of this devastating event in our nation’s history and praying that it can never happen again.

The Boston Herald has this to say about the Mother in Saugus that lost her son…

Saugus mother mourns son,
By Joe Dwinell, Jessica Van Sack, Laurel J. Sweet, Jessica Heslam/ Dave Wedge, Michael Givens and Anita DavisTuesday, April 17, 2007

The bloodiest shooting rampage in the nation’s history has claimed the life of a promising young Saugus man, a sophomore gunned down in his morning French class at Virginia Tech.

“I just got word he was of the ones killed in the classroom,” said a sobbing Lynnette Alameddine moments after a chaplain called with word that her 20-year-old son, Ross Alameddine, was among the dead. She was too grief-stricken to speak further.

Earlier last night, the tormented Saugus mother was waiting by her phone. She spent hours calling police and hospitals, which she said were unresponsive to her frantic pleas for information. – The Boston Herald

I’ll be thinking of the families over the weeks to come. This is not and should not be a political issue for people to talk about now. Many families have lost so much and for no logical reason.

It would be wise for the mainstream media to not so quickly lay blame and I am just as guilty of it from my previous post. That was my gut reaction and I apologize to anyone offended.

What is your gut reaction to this horrible event?

Papamoka

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Virginia Tech Massacre

Picture courtesy of MSNBC

With the madness of one individual comes the endless horror of parents scrambling to find out if their babies are okay. I honestly hope and pray for the families of all that lost a child at Virginia Tech today. My prayers are with the families and for the innocence lost.

I am a firm believer in the second amendment but it is times like these that challenge my beliefs. All it takes is one gun to kill and yet no matter how many laws our nation passes to protect the innocent their will always be one nut job that will break those laws and commit such a horrendous crime. The Washington Post has this piece on todays tradgedy...

Students Recount Shootings
By Joe Holley
Washington Post Staff WriterMonday, April 16, 2007; 3:10 PM

Kristen Bensley, 18, a freshman who lives on the third floor of West Ambler Johnston Hall, just below the floor where the first shooting at Virginia Tech occurred this morning, learned of the violence when her resident adviser knocked on her door and instructed her and her roommate not to leave their room. Bensley, from Bel Air, Md., said police cars lined the road outside her room, and an amplified announcement blared across the campus urging students to remain indoors.

She, like many other students locked down in their rooms in Blacksburg, spent their morning receiving e-mails, contacting loved ones to let them know she was safe and watching the news about their own campus on national television. They traded rumors and bad news and eventually shared their grief.

"I have a few friends on the fourth floor," Bensley said. "They were all evacuated, and they weren't allowed to go back there."

Dustin Lynch, 19, sophomore, from Churchville, Md., north of Baltimore, was out on Drill Field at the time of the shootings, raising money for philanthropy with fellow fraternity brothers from Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. He saw police officers carrying unresponsive students out of Norris Hall, a classroom building where most of the shootings took place. He also saw many students evacuated from the building.

"I had seen a bunch of cop cars and heard a lot of sirens," he said. "They were already booking it around Drill Field. I saw them all converge on this one building. The next thing I know, I see different spurts, it looked like different classrooms had gotten out. Hundreds of kids were running out with their hands up showing that they were harmless. There was a small wall that they had to jump over in the grass, and everybody was just running frantically in different groups. After most of the groups got out, I saw a lot of ambulances, probably three or four ambulances, go up as close to the buildings as they could.” – The Washington Post

In our society we prefer prescription drugs for our children to mask the sense of reality and when the prescriptions run out this is and probably will be yet one more incident of a child that has grown into an adult that did not know how to deal with life. That is just my assumption and I have no facts to back that up. I am simply stating as fact that so many of our children have been drugged up to not experience what real life is and when the medications are gone as an adult and post teen level progression into the real world they can not deal with that reality.

I absolutely hate to bring this discussion up but it is what it is. Parents across America are drugging the kids up because mental health professionals have declared war on kids that do not fit in the normal box. If you walk your child into a mental health clinic then that child will walk out of there with a prescription to not have to deal with reality. It’s the sixties generation of free love and free drugs gone mad.

If you think I am wrong then please say so. Do yourself a favor and call your local school nurse and ask her how many medications related to so called psychologically troubled children that need medication to function are dispersed every day in the school environment?. Let me know what you think after that phone call.

What happens to these children when they are fed up on being drugged? Reality is not a friend to anyone and if you can think of someone that has stopped their medication abruptly then you know what situations happen.

In the sixties and seventies this story about what happened today at Virginia Tech never happened. Reality and letting children grow up and function as a human being was meant to be and resulted in grown men and woman that functioned based on past life experience. It’s hard to do that if you are on a constant high from the age of six till eighteen when the med supply stops. That big learning gap on life was missed by many of our children today because the meds junior was on made everything fuzzy so junior was easy to deal with for mom and dad.

What do you think about this travesty of life?

Papamoka

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