From the NY Daily News 11/19/2012:
“We will not accept a ceasefire until the occupation meets our conditions,” said Izzat Rishaq, a senior Hamas official. Ziad Nakhleh, deputy leader of Islamic Jihad, told the Al Hayat daily it was time to teach Israel a lesson. “We don’t fear them. The resistance is too strong and capable of confronting them,” said Nakhleh. “We hit the belly of Israel.”
It’s the kind of chutzpah you expect from a sabra.
What stopped Sandy: How FEMA’s regulations saved Windansea | The Asbury Park Press NJ | app.com.
Ain’t it always this way? The union workers give back money and it goes to non-union people with “critically important” jobs. Just Bite Me already.
Philly’s ‘broke’ school district boosts salaries of 25 nonunion workers.
Sure, some people will complain about the supposed invasion of privacy in the Northside school district, where students have to carry around a microchip so their movements can be tracked by RFID readers in the ceiling (I’m NOT making this up). But the good news is that the district could make some extra money by selling the captured data to Google.
Think of the ways this system could be leveraged to “improve the user experience” — If you spend too much time standing in front of the Fritos machine, Google could text you with a suggestion that you buy some healthy snacks. Or, if you try to cut Mr Bland’s geography class, you’ll get a robocall reminding you that you’re in danger of failing. If you keep going to the bathroom, you’ll see helpful ads for urologists the next time you check your Gmail.
Schools’ tracking devices cause controversy – Houston Chronicle.
“We are living in a dishonest culture and the media is totally corrupt. There are entire media operations that exist solely to promote ideology. It’s a bad situation that is getting worse.” — Bill O’Reilly
via Bill O’Reilly: The O’Reilly Factor – Tuesday, November 13, 2012.
At the Bronx High School for Medical Science, some juniors will go without any math or English courses for a semester or two and have to make up those credits later.
Students have gone to the principal to beg for English and math classes. One even asked his wrestling coach, who teaches math and science at another school, if the coach could teach him trigonometry.
A current staff member said, “we don’t have a teacher for everything,” but insisted the students would get math and possibly English next semester.
Megan Hester of the prestigious Annenberg Institute for School Reform, said the school may have been forced to make a “devil’s bargain” between funding their popular honors program and providing basic courses to non-honors students.
She noted that an Annenberg analysis shows that only 1 in 10 high school graduates in the Claremont neighborhood where Medical Science is located meet the state’s college-readiness benchmarks.
Marge Feinberg, speaking for Mayor Bloomberg’s Department of Education, said “The budget and human resource allocation for the school does not reflect a shortfall,” and the allocations are “adequate to meet the needs of students.”
Just pathetic. It will take decades to repair the damage that Bloomberg has done to the city’s public school system.
Bronx High School Students Go Entire Semester With No Math or English – DNAinfo.com New York.
In a scoop worthy of the Twilight Zone, the Daily News reports “Huge, gold-framed self-portrait hangs in Jill Kelley’s mansion . . . It was unclear who painted the portrait of Jill and Scott Kelley. Their Tampa home is in foreclosure, court records show.”
How can it be a “self-portrait” of Jill and Scott if we don’t know who painted it?
Denny’s franchisee John Metz raised a big stink earlier this month when he said he’d impose a 5% surcharge to pay for Obamacare. As a result, other Denny’s franchisees were getting angry phone calls and threats of boycott. They were not happy campers, so the head of Denny’s distanced the corporation from Metz’s action and prevailed on him to retract.
But Judith Thorman, the International Franchise Association’s senior vice president for government relations and public policy, is sticking by Metz: “I hope people still have ability in this country to speak out on the impact of public policy issues on their businesses . . . That’s all they’re really trying to do is to say this policy will have a dramatic economic impact. We may not all agree, but I think it’s good if everyone comes forward with their opinion, and that we have a dialogue on it.”
Bless her heart.
In the interest of furthering a dialogue on a public policy issue important to franchise owners, we sent the following message to Ms. Thorman:
Dear Ms Thorman,
I publish a small blog called BITEME.ME (http://www.biteme.me). I read that you believe “it’s good if everyone comes forward with their opinion, and that we have a dialogue on it.” Good for you! I’d like to begin by asking where your members stand on reducing the minimum wage. Wouldn’t you agree that it would reduce unemployment and have a positive impact on your industry?
Thanking you in advance,
Ploni ben Ploni, Editor
BITEME.ME
John Metz Denny’s Obamacare Surcharge Stirs Big Mess For Restaurant Chain.
‘ The study of more than 700 people focused on the AKT1 gene. It’s involved in dopamine signaling, which is known to be abnormal in psychosis. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in mental health.
‘ “We found that cannabis users who carry a particular variant in the AKT1 gene had a twofold increased probability of a psychotic disorder and this increased up to sevenfold if they used cannabis daily,” wrote Dr. Marta Di Forti, of King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry in England, and colleagues. “Our findings help to explain why one cannabis user develops psychosis while his friends continue smoking without problems.” ‘
Bummer.
Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform and author of the infamous no-new-taxes pledge, is losing acolytes. Which is good, mainly because Norquist is an idiot (he wants government to be so small that “we can drown it in the bathtub”).
On the other hand, now that old Grover is kaput, who is going to stop Democrats from trying to spend their way out of every problem?
Grover Norquist, Author of Antitax Pledge, Faces Big Test – NYTimes.com.