Williams, Religion & Ind. Education
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Gary [email protected]
I liked Brian Williams. I watched the NBC evening news.
Astute readers may have noticed those two sentences used the past tense.
Apparently, his exploits weren’t quite exciting enough for him. He had to embellish his accomplishments.
He said he was in a helicopter that was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade. He wasn’t. He said a missile was six miles away during a broadcast, and then when he recounted the incident on Jon Stewart’s show he said it was 1,500 feet below him.
He said he saw bodies floating down Canal Street during Hurricane Katrina, but New Orleans city officials say Canal Street only had a few inches of water on it. The French Quarter really didn’t flood.
Seems as if you really can’t believe what he says. This is a serious problem for a news guy.
I can’t even look at him now. I’m done with him.
I don’t care if NBC brings him back. I don’t care if he had to give up six months of his $10 million-a-year salary. I don’t care how much he apologizes.
I can’t take him seriously anymore.
*****
President Barack Obama caused quite a stir at the 63rd Annual Prayer Breakfast.
Most controversial was this portion of his speech:
“And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”
Seems that we need to get off our “high horse” because in 1095 Christians did bad things.
Well, I’ll be darned, after all these years I come to find out that two wrongs DO make a right.
Why did my mom and dad tell me otherwise all those years?
But his comments did make me curious. And since I am absolutely not a big medieval history buff, I looked at a few articles on the Crusades.
Without getting into some prolonged history lesson, it seems historians view the Crusades one of three ways:
Aggressive, papal-led expansion attempts by Western Christians, part of a centuries-long conflict on European frontiers, or a defensive war against Islamic conquest.
I don’t pretend to know which is correct. Most likely, it’s some blend of all three.
But I did run across a piece by Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr. He’s the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the largest seminaries in the world.
He said this:
Honesty is hard to come by when it comes to distant history, and that is why we should be rigorously critical when it comes to the very real and horrifying reality that terrible acts have been perpetrated in the name of Christianity. At the same time, historical honesty and humility demands that we acknowledge that in the age of armed conflict between Christian kingdoms (as they claimed to be) and Muslim armies, even the stoutest secular critics of Christianity must recognize that our current age would be very different if Muslim armies had won, for example, when the forces of the Ottoman Empire were stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683.
I guess I just found it odd that the President decided to call out Christ by name for deeds done 900, 200 or 100 years ago, yet he did not call out Muhammad by name for deeds done last week.
I mean, the only reason we’re talking about this at all is because of the current slaughter of innocents by radical Islamists, right?
*****
Boy, do our state lawmakers make Indiana look stupid.
On Washingtonpost.com this week appeared the headline, “It’s a mess in Indiana.”
The story also contained the phrase “true political disaster.”
The Post was writing, of course, about – in its words – “what passes for education policy making in the state.”
Specifically, the story was referring to efforts by the state legislature to strip State Education Superintendent Glenda Ritz of her chairmanship of the State Board of Education.
The Indiana House approved a bill Monday, 58 to 40, that would remove Ritz from that position.
The bill now moves to the Senate where it likely will pass. If it becomes law, the board members, appointed by the governor, will choose their own leader.
All this amid the furor over the state’s new ISTEP test for third-graders that went from a five-hour test to a 12.5-hour test.
This because the state adopted federal Common Core standards in 2010, and then Gov. Mike Pence backed legislation in 2014 back out of Common Core.
So the state had to come up with a new test, but the new test had to be compliant enough to make sure the state still got federal money under No Child Left Behind.
Pence claims Ritz didn’t tell him how long the new test was going to be. He says it’s too long and wants it cut in half.
Ritz says Pence doesn’t have the authority to do that and that the test has to be that long anyway if the state wants to keep the federal money after Pence’s mandated changes.
Did you get all that? Yeah, and this is the “dumbed down for purposes of this column” version.
My sense of this is that there is plenty of blame to go around with regard to Indiana education policy – Ritz, Pence, the federal government – you name it.
Just a couple of observations here:
Stripping the duly elected state education superintendent of her chairmanship because you don’t agree with her smacks of bare-knuckled partisan politics.
And I don’t know what these folks down in Indianapolis are trying to prove, but they better start focusing on their constituents – and, more importantly, their constituents’ school-age children.
*****
Finally, this tidbit from the Washington Times:
President Obama’s temporary deportation amnesty will make it easier for illegal immigrants to improperly register and vote in elections, state elections officials testified to Congress on Thursday, saying that the driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers they will be granted create a major voting loophole.
While stressing that it remains illegal for noncitizens to vote, secretaries of state from Ohio and Kansas said they won’t have the tools to sniff out illegal immigrants who register anyway, ignoring stiff penalties to fill out the registration forms that are easily available at shopping malls, motor vehicle bureaus and in curbside registration drives.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach said some motor vehicle bureau workers automatically ask customers if they want to register to vote, which some noncitizens in the past have cited as their reason for breaking the law to register.
“It’s a guarantee it will happen,” Mr. Kobach said.
I guess that just kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it?[[In-content Ad]]
I liked Brian Williams. I watched the NBC evening news.
Astute readers may have noticed those two sentences used the past tense.
Apparently, his exploits weren’t quite exciting enough for him. He had to embellish his accomplishments.
He said he was in a helicopter that was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade. He wasn’t. He said a missile was six miles away during a broadcast, and then when he recounted the incident on Jon Stewart’s show he said it was 1,500 feet below him.
He said he saw bodies floating down Canal Street during Hurricane Katrina, but New Orleans city officials say Canal Street only had a few inches of water on it. The French Quarter really didn’t flood.
Seems as if you really can’t believe what he says. This is a serious problem for a news guy.
I can’t even look at him now. I’m done with him.
I don’t care if NBC brings him back. I don’t care if he had to give up six months of his $10 million-a-year salary. I don’t care how much he apologizes.
I can’t take him seriously anymore.
*****
President Barack Obama caused quite a stir at the 63rd Annual Prayer Breakfast.
Most controversial was this portion of his speech:
“And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”
Seems that we need to get off our “high horse” because in 1095 Christians did bad things.
Well, I’ll be darned, after all these years I come to find out that two wrongs DO make a right.
Why did my mom and dad tell me otherwise all those years?
But his comments did make me curious. And since I am absolutely not a big medieval history buff, I looked at a few articles on the Crusades.
Without getting into some prolonged history lesson, it seems historians view the Crusades one of three ways:
Aggressive, papal-led expansion attempts by Western Christians, part of a centuries-long conflict on European frontiers, or a defensive war against Islamic conquest.
I don’t pretend to know which is correct. Most likely, it’s some blend of all three.
But I did run across a piece by Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr. He’s the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the largest seminaries in the world.
He said this:
Honesty is hard to come by when it comes to distant history, and that is why we should be rigorously critical when it comes to the very real and horrifying reality that terrible acts have been perpetrated in the name of Christianity. At the same time, historical honesty and humility demands that we acknowledge that in the age of armed conflict between Christian kingdoms (as they claimed to be) and Muslim armies, even the stoutest secular critics of Christianity must recognize that our current age would be very different if Muslim armies had won, for example, when the forces of the Ottoman Empire were stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683.
I guess I just found it odd that the President decided to call out Christ by name for deeds done 900, 200 or 100 years ago, yet he did not call out Muhammad by name for deeds done last week.
I mean, the only reason we’re talking about this at all is because of the current slaughter of innocents by radical Islamists, right?
*****
Boy, do our state lawmakers make Indiana look stupid.
On Washingtonpost.com this week appeared the headline, “It’s a mess in Indiana.”
The story also contained the phrase “true political disaster.”
The Post was writing, of course, about – in its words – “what passes for education policy making in the state.”
Specifically, the story was referring to efforts by the state legislature to strip State Education Superintendent Glenda Ritz of her chairmanship of the State Board of Education.
The Indiana House approved a bill Monday, 58 to 40, that would remove Ritz from that position.
The bill now moves to the Senate where it likely will pass. If it becomes law, the board members, appointed by the governor, will choose their own leader.
All this amid the furor over the state’s new ISTEP test for third-graders that went from a five-hour test to a 12.5-hour test.
This because the state adopted federal Common Core standards in 2010, and then Gov. Mike Pence backed legislation in 2014 back out of Common Core.
So the state had to come up with a new test, but the new test had to be compliant enough to make sure the state still got federal money under No Child Left Behind.
Pence claims Ritz didn’t tell him how long the new test was going to be. He says it’s too long and wants it cut in half.
Ritz says Pence doesn’t have the authority to do that and that the test has to be that long anyway if the state wants to keep the federal money after Pence’s mandated changes.
Did you get all that? Yeah, and this is the “dumbed down for purposes of this column” version.
My sense of this is that there is plenty of blame to go around with regard to Indiana education policy – Ritz, Pence, the federal government – you name it.
Just a couple of observations here:
Stripping the duly elected state education superintendent of her chairmanship because you don’t agree with her smacks of bare-knuckled partisan politics.
And I don’t know what these folks down in Indianapolis are trying to prove, but they better start focusing on their constituents – and, more importantly, their constituents’ school-age children.
*****
Finally, this tidbit from the Washington Times:
President Obama’s temporary deportation amnesty will make it easier for illegal immigrants to improperly register and vote in elections, state elections officials testified to Congress on Thursday, saying that the driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers they will be granted create a major voting loophole.
While stressing that it remains illegal for noncitizens to vote, secretaries of state from Ohio and Kansas said they won’t have the tools to sniff out illegal immigrants who register anyway, ignoring stiff penalties to fill out the registration forms that are easily available at shopping malls, motor vehicle bureaus and in curbside registration drives.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach said some motor vehicle bureau workers automatically ask customers if they want to register to vote, which some noncitizens in the past have cited as their reason for breaking the law to register.
“It’s a guarantee it will happen,” Mr. Kobach said.
I guess that just kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it?[[In-content Ad]]
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