An open letter to the auto industry

The entire auto industry follows a sales model that is as unpleasant as possible, and is exceeded in discomfort only by root canals and colonoscopy. You take what should be fun, buying a car, and make it into a high pressure pin in the ass.

I have been thinking about getting a new truck since December. I began my search by going to the websites of Toyota and Nissan. In order to search for the vehicle you want, you must enter your contact information. I give them an email address reserved for businesses, and my google voice number. Since that time, several dealers will not leave me alone. One of them has called my voice number over 50 times and sent me 35 emails. This dealer doesn’t even have the vehicle I want, and are trying to sell me one that I don’t want. 
I searched for a particular vehicle because that is the one I want. Trying to pressure me into buying something I don’t want doesn’t make me want to buy from you, it just pisses me off. I came looking for a particular vehicle. I came to you. You don’t have to pressure me to buy, but if you don’t have what I want, I am not buying from you. I know what I want. You either have it, or you don’t.

Biased reporting

The report is that a police officer ‘slammed’  a student to the ground, and it is caught on film.  The news report is worded in such a way to make you believe that the student was an innocent child and the victim of excessive force by the cop. What they don’t do is tell you the entire story. Here is the rest of the story:

The incident began in the gym where one of the students, the 15-year-old, was arguing with his girlfriend and it was during that argument that the girlfriend made threats toward him and the 16-year-old, the report stated. Staff tried to simmer down the 15-year-old, but he refused to listen and kept causing a disruption, deputies said.
Moments later, [the SRO] was called to the gym because the 16-year-old was acting aggressively, he wrote in the report. The student mouthed off to Assistant Principal Ryan Mahaney and threw down his backpack, according to the report…
 [The SRO stated] that moments before he responded to the gym, the 16-year-old student had taken a “fighting stance” toward [the vice principal] several times and ignored [the vice principal’s] orders to go to the office… [The vice principal] also told [the SRO] that [the student] repeatedly told the vice principal, “I am going to (expletive deleted) you up!” 

This is what high schools look like now. Violence, drugs, sex. There are students in school with convictions for selling drugs, armed robbery, rape, and a host of other crimes. They are violent criminals, and your kids are forced to attend school with them. The adults who try to manage it and protect the remaining students from the criminal few are the ones who are blamed. Just like in the case of  Trayvon “Saint Skittles” Martin, the press tries to paint a picture of innocent black teens who are attacked by cops and citizens for no reason at all, because racism. 
The truth is far different, and most people know that. This is why the press is not trusted, and why the term “fake  news” has become so popular. 
I began the school year with 130 students. Some have entered, some have left. I have students who have been expelled for dealing drugs, sexual battery, possession of a firearm on campus, theft of mover $300, burglary, aggravated battery, and armed robbery. More than once. They simply wait out the rest of the school year, and return the next fall. We have high school students with criminal records on campus, some of them as old as 21. Last year, there was a 20 year old convicted rapist sitting in class with 14 year old girls, because he was a freshman. The school was finally able to kick him out on his 21st birthday.

The opioid epidemic is Obama’s fault

The title of this post seems a bit over the top. How could Obama and the Democrats possibly be blamed for the epidemic of drug overdoses that is sweeping the nation?

The roots of this problem lie with Obamacare- the Affordable Care Act and a company called Press Ganey. The little known company sends surveys out to patients of medical providers, and uses the patient’s satisfaction to rate doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers. Over the past decade, the government has fully embraced the “patient is always right” model–these surveys focus on areas like waiting times, pain management and communication skills–betting that increased customer satisfaction will improve the quality of care and reduce costs.  I have seen patients lower a hospital’s scores because they didn’t have HBO on the televisions in the Emergency Room.

The government, due to Obamacare, has tied reimbursement of facilities to their Press Ganey scores. As a result, the focus in healthcare is in making the patient happy, but not necessarily on making the patient healthy. So doctors prescribe narcotics because patients want them, not because they need them. As they become addicted to these painkillers, the patients return again and again for their fix, all the while improving the doctor’s satisfaction scores.

But giving patients exactly what they want, versus what the doctor thinks is right, can be very bad medicine. Researchers using data from nearly 52,000 adults found that the most satisfied patients spent the most on health care and prescription drugs. They were 12% more likely to be admitted to the hospital and accounted for 9% more in total health care costs. They were also the ones more likely to die.

All of those facts mean nothing. All that matters is making the patient happy. Thanks Democrats, the plan you voted for is killing America.

Neighborhood watch

Our neighborhood has 99 homes in it. The neighborhood is mostly upper middle class people in their 30’s through their 50’s. Many of the people who live here have children. Professionally, the people here have ordinary jobs: Cops, teachers, real estate sales, a couple of business owners.

A couple of years ago, my neighborhood started a neighborhood watch, complete with a page on the book of faces. The watch is not an official one with police involvement, it is being run by the Homeowners’ Association. When I was asked to join, I declined with visions of George Zimmerman and the “wannabe” label attached to him because he was part of the neighborhood watch dancing in my head. My wife joined the social media page because it is good to be informed.

The neighborhood is just about 2,000 feet from a school. This means that, being more than 1,000 feet from a school, our neighborhood is also a place where sex offenders can live. Of those 99 homes, there were two of them. Until last week.

One of the police officers who lives here posted a link to an FDLE sexual predator flyer for a third offender who moved into our neighborhood. Nearly ll of the people who responded were thanking the cop for letting everyone know. Except one woman, who said that the people posting should avoid spreading rumors, and further said that since we didn’t have all of the facts, we remember that it isn’t our place to judge.

She apparently complained to the HOA, because the entire thread was deleted because, in the words of the HOA, the neighborhood watch FB page is not the place to engage in hurtful gossip. She also said  that since his crime was more than 20 years ago, we should give him a second chance.

I disagree in multiple ways. This is not gossip, nor is it a rumor. Verdict is a word meaning “truth” and once a person has been convicted of a crime, including molesting a child, it is a legal fact that the person is a convicted child molester. Letting your neighbors know that a convicted child molester is living in your neighborhood is not spreading rumors, it is spreading factual information about a convicted felon who is living in your neighborhood. This is the very reason why you have a neighborhood watch. If the board of the HOA wants to give him a second chance, perhaps they should hire him to be their baby sitter.

Incidentally, convicted sex criminal number two, who was convicted of molesting a child under 16 10 years ago while he was 30 years old, was arrested last night for talking to small children at a local big box store.

This is what I am working with

Teachers get rated on whether or not they are teaching their students anything, as determined by the students’ scores on standardized tests in that subject. How can I teach you biology, chemistry, or physics if you are functionally illiterate? Here is a sample of a handwritten homework assignment that one of my students turned in. The student who wrote this is 15 years old and in the 10th grade:

The Chorus Line

This year’s anti gun chorus is singing. The tune this time? They are claiming that 2018, even though it is only 26 days old, has seen 11 school shootings. They are lying. The lie is being repeated by news outlets all over the nation. It’s almost like this is an organized disinformation campaign.

Here are the 11 shootings that are being claimed:

First, the ones that resulted in no injuries:

1 A bus in Iowa was hit by a BB gun on January 6th.

2 The window of a college building on the San Bernardino campus of Cal State was hit by a bullet believed to have come from the foothills of the city- more than half a mile away.

3 A bullet hit a window at a Seattle high school. No one was hit, no shooter was seen, no shots were heard.

4 A student in a criminal justice class fired a shot through the wall of a simulated firing range after the instructor left a live firearm inside a simulated firing range.

5 Unknown people traded gunfire in a COLLEGE parking lot. One bullet hit a nearby dorm. No one was injured by the gunfire.

6 One high school was injured while diving for cover when a group of students he was with exchanged gunfire with unknown parties. Appears to be gang related. No one was injured by the gunfire. The high school is an “alternative” school for so-called “at risk” youth. (Meaning criminals in training and gang members)

Then there were the suicides where the only person injured was the shooter:

7 A 14 year old boy shot himself in a Tuscon school’s bathroom.

8 A 31 year old man pulled into a school parking lot and committed suicide in his car.

There are the ones involving someone other than the shooter being shot:

9 A student at Wake Forest COLLEGE was killed after being shot during a fight at a sorority party. Alcohol was involved. Some of those involved were minors, not students of the college, and IMO there was some gang affiliation here.

10 Two were killed and 18 wounded when a 15 year old fired shots at Marshall County High school in Kentucky. Two were killed and 14 wounded by bullets, the rest of the people injured were injured trying to escape.

11 A 15 year old with a troubled history shot and killed a girl in the cafeteria before school. The boy had a troubled past. It seems that he had previously made threats, and the school did exactly nothing.

So there you have it: 11 so called school shootings. One of them involved a BB gun, not a firearm. One didn’t involve a school at all, as it had been closed permanently months before. One involved a police training accident. In all, no one was shot in six of the incidents. Many of the incidents were colleges not schools. 
A further two of them were suicides.

In fact, only two of the shootings involved actual “schools” and actual shootings. Of those two, one of them was carried out by a student who had a troubled past and probably should have been in jail. When you have to lie or mislead to make your point, your point probably isn’t worth making.

Goose, gander

With all of the talk about Trump’s crude remarks, I want to bring back a few of Obama’s own crude language:

Thanking Ellen DeGeneres for being a good sport about her televised push-up contest against the First Lady in February of 2012, Obama said Ellen “is a gay friend who accepts a little bit of teasing about Michelle beating her in push-ups. I think she claims Michelle didn’t go all the way down.” Obama let the line hang naughtily, provoking laughter from the crowd.

Then there is the article about a few more of Obama’s gaffes:

“No, no. I have been practicing…I bowled a 129. It’s like — it was like Special Olympics, or something.”

“I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.”

“The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn’t. But she is a typical white person…”

“That’s just how white folks will do you. It wasn’t merely the cruelty involved; I was learning that black people could be mean and then some. It was a particular brand of arrogance, an obtuseness in otherwise sane people that brought forth our bitter laughter. It was as if whites didn’t know that they were being cruel in the first place. Or at least thought you deserving of their scorn.”

Draw your own conclusions as to why Trump is facing more criticism.