Thursday, May 29, 2008

I Can Not Believe...

  • That Morris Talansky gave PM Olmert $100,000 worth of "cash-stuffed envelopes" but "didn't expect any favors in return". Talansky told an Israeli court that Olmert preferred cash "for reasons connected to Likud fund-raising regulations" but that he didn't really understand those reasons. (Umm, Mr. Talansky, would you like me to get my 9 year old to explain it to you? It's because bribing a government official is i-l-l-e-g-a-l.)
  • That Joe Lieberman, Connecticut's "Orthodox" Jewish Senator, is participating in a conference hosted by Reverend John Hagee, who has said that "God sent Adolph Hitler to help the Jews reach the promised land." (Hagee has also called the Roman Catholic Church "the great whore".) John McCain has rejected Hagee, but Lieberman cheerfully claims that Hagee is a defender of Israel and "a vital force in supporting the war against terrorism". (huh?)
  • That a kindergarten teacher in Florida "punished" a 5 year old autistic boy by having him stand in front of the class while the other students made a list of what they didn't like about him: "After informing him that they found him "disgusting" and "annoying", the class was instructed to vote on whether or not Alex should be allowed to stay in the class. By a 14 to 2 margin, they voted him out." Even more incredibly, "an investigation by the state attorney's office concluded that Alex's treatment did not meet the criteria for emotional child abuse and no charges have been filed."

Am I stupid, or is the world being run by people who have no business running it?

12 comments:

Leora said...

No comment on the first two (politics, politics, politics, what else is new), but I also read about that autistic boy being punished and also thought HOW CAN THIS WOMAN BE A TEACHER? From teachers I expect more.

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

No comment on the first 2, like Leora said "(politics, politics, politics, what else is new)"

But wow I can not believe a teacher would have such cruelty, its horrible. The Florida court system is messed up if they don't think that qualifies as abuse. If this story indicates the way the child is treated then no wonder why he is autistic, cause everyone is being mean to him.

Anonymous said...

Re the teacher - you could have recycled your "Justifiable Homicide" header of a few days ago.

Leora said...

One more comment--I mentioned the story about the teacher to a friend who has a child with learning disabilities. She said that happened to him a lot last year in public school (maybe not involving the whole class, but the teacher insulting the child in front of the class: "you're not doing your homework because you're lazy").

Sad. He now goes to a different school, a special needs school.

Anonymous said...

As a teacher I believe that we should never, ever, humuliate a kid.
We have this trend here too, which I refuse, to ask kids to judge one another's performance and comment on it.
As long as I live I'll never do it. I am the adult in the class and the one to "judge", even if I don't quite like the term. There are countless traditions (Judaism being one of course) of teacher/student relationship and I think that's the way it should be.
Judgement by teachers can be bad enough, I think it may even be worse coming from peers (who should be natural "allies") AND under the supervision of the teacher.

Jack Steiner said...

If I was the parent of that student it would take great restraint not to tar and feather the teacher.

Simply unbelievable.

SuperRaizy said...

It's funny that none of the commenters were at all surprised that the politicians mentioned above behaved so inappropriately. Maybe it's time we started expecting the same (or a higher) standard of behavior from society's leaders as we do from the common folk.

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

To tell you the truth I didn't even look at those other 2 links. The children part is what interests me, so..

Anonymous said...
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Just like a guy said...

Oh goodie; I get to be the first to write about the politics.
What did John Hagee say? The G-d sent the Holocaust? Is this wrong? Who do you think sent the Holocaust? I personally doubt that Hashem made a Holocaust so that the state of Israel could be founded, but that's just my opinion.
Hashem certainly had his reasons why the Holocaust happened. I don't know what they are, and I really don't ever want to know how He could do that to his people; be that as it may, to say that He cause it is to deny the very concept of Hashgacha Pratis, which most people aren't really interested in doing nowadays (unless their name is Rambam or something).

Anonymous said...

Actually the story of the autistic boy isn't so simple. The teacher didn't vote him out,she was trying to get him to apologize. He chose to leave.
That was my read.Still not a good idea,but it wasn't as bad.
look at http://www.slate.com/id/2192480/
where you can read the incident report.

Bas~Melech said...

The world is being run by G-d, and these events are here to remind us of that.

I know that sounds cliche, but really -- by all rules of logic, the kind of things that the "people in charge" these days do are either impossible or would have resulted in society's self-destruction years ago. The only explanation is that world leaders are puppets in Hashem's hands. Frightening and reassuring at once.