Slaving Over a Hot Keyboard on Labor Day

I think I've decided that I won't blog on Sundays, unless something really big comes up. Some bloggers are taking Labor Day off, but if you look at my blogroll, quite a few are blogging. And, frankly, I got a couple of opinions I gotta get off my chest, plus some interesting links for my readers.

There seems to be some bad juju around 113th and Sycamore here in little ole SKC. First, a man runs from a car wreck, drops stuff, and finally, shows a gun to KCPD. The officers, having spent way more time at the firing range than this guy, shoot him fatally. Later, a man tries to run from the repo man, and crashes his car into a house, shearing off the gas meter. No one hurt on that one, but maybe we need an exorcism or something around that immediate neighborhood.

The Obama speech hot mess: much ado about nothing! Shocking to my friends who know me as a staunch conservative, and occasionally I've wondered myself: Am I getting a little soft in the head? But I looked at the text of the speech, and I looked at the previously released materials. (They were edited after the flapdoodle started.) and frankly, I see the President of the United States encouraging responsibility, discipline, and accountability to kids in our country. The materials were badly written by educators (apology in advance to Jean and Carolyn for the next sentence) who, honestly, are not collectively the sharpest knives in the drawer. In fact, I have much more respect for front line teachers like my two friends named above, than the bozos in the Department of Education. I bet either one of them would have done a better job writing this material. Links for you: the speech text and the teaching materials. (The latter not a direct link; scroll down this radio talker's page until you get to the right spot--it's under an entry about San Antonio schools.)

I almost fell out of my chair when I read Tony's Kansas City's entry about talking with Kansas City council member Cindy Circo. That she would even talk to him after what she said about bloggers during the council committee meeting last Tuesday--clearly she had no idea who he was. And Tony, sensing opportunity, took advantage. I bet she knows who he is now! Her message to him was that her constituents weren't calling her about the MAST take over; therefore, it must not be an important issue to them. Well, do we as voters need to spoon feed our reps on what is important? And doesn't the media coverage of the Save MAST effort count for something? I've talked to my reps; they know where I stand. Sometimes representative government gives me a headache.

Finally, I was curious about Labor Day, so I gave Google some exercise. I found this interesting piece from the Department of Labor among many others. It's an example of one person's idea gaining momentum, until it became a full fledged holiday. So parade and festival on one and all!