- It might not be what Donte Stallworth deserves, but at least someone with authority over him is going to dish out an appropriate punishment for him getting drunk, getting behind the wheel and killing a guy who was just crossing the street to catch a bus home from work in Miami Beach. The legal system might have whiffed on the case and let Stallworth off the hook with a 30-day jail sentence, revocation of his driver’s license and a few years probation, but NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is showing that he understands the seriousness of Stallworth’s offense. Goodell has suspended Stallworth indefinitely, a tactic also used on strip club rain-maker and police favorite Pacman Jones during his last run of disciplinary troubles with the NFL. Basically, Stallworth is suspended until the commissioner feels that he has been sufficiently punished for his crime, has learned his lesson and has truly changed. By all accounts, it’s all but certain to be a minimum of one season and could be more. Goodell won't meet with Stallworth until after his jail time is served, which is actually just about to happen. Once Stallworth spends his time in the hole, he’ll sit down with the commish and hear firsthand what an idiot he is. It’s a bad omen for Stallworth that Goodell has already called his actions “indefensible” and stated that he wants to use the incident to reinforce the unacceptability of drunk driving to all league personnel, players and otherwise. That tells me that he’s planning to make an example out of Stallworth and that means a lengthy suspension. Personally I’m thrilled to see it because Stallworth basically bought his way out of jail time by reaching a hefty financial settlement with the family of his victim. The courts may have given him a lenient sentence because he was a wealthy professional athlete with the resources to buy off, er, compensate the victim’s family, but thankfully Roger Goodell isn’t swayed by that settlement and plans to keep D. Stallworth off the field for a long time…..
- Uh-oh! The Ayatollah isn’t happy and now the people of Iran are being threatened by their supreme leader to cut out the rioting and protests of the country’s fraudulent election - or else. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is warning the thousands of people who have been protesting last week's presidential vote to maintain self-restraint or face a stiff reaction from authorities. Right, because they’re just going to roll over and quit after six days chocked fill of riots, protests and demonstrations because they believe their president rigged an election to maintain his Vulcan death grip of power over the country. The Ayatollah (of Rock and Roll-ah?) has decided that the election was on the up-and-up, but members of the opposition are equally certain that it was not and they’ve staged noisy demonstrations every day since the election to protest what they believe was a rigged election. The supreme leader declared last week's presidential election a "definitive victory" for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and dismissed any claims of vote rigging. “Any extremist move will fan up another extremist move,” said Khamenei. "If the political elite want to ignore law and break the law and take wrong measures which are harmful willy nilly, they will be held accountable for all the violence and blood and rioting." Willy nilly? How the frak does someone who calls himself the supreme leader of any country use the term willy nilly? Who’s your grammatical role model, W.? Also, stop urging those claiming corruption to settle for a vote recount that they would not be allowed to witness and which would be rigged, er, end up with the same result as the first vote. In other words, let them riot. Maybe the Guardian Council, which supervises the country's elections, will be influenced by the riots when they meet on Saturday. Thankfully, opposition groups have planned plenty more riots/protests tomorrow, one for each opposition candidate in the election. It should also be noted that Khamenei is trying to hang his hat on the 85 percent voter turnout of about 40 million people as the real story, but no one is buying that. He may feel that critics "wanted to indicate that as a doubtful victory; some even wanted to show that this is a national defeat. They wanted to give you bad taste in the mouth," but the only ones giving people a bad taste in their mouths are Ahmadinejad and his vote-riggers, er, administration officials and cohorts……
- When presiding over an underachieving school that doesn’t quite measure up to government standards, school officials face some tough choices. On the one hand, they could view the lackluster test scores of their students on standardized tests as an indictment of the school and take the necessary steps to up the level of education those students are receiving. Or, you could put the blame on the testing system itself, cite fundamental flaws in the way the test is structured and administered and demand that the state change on its end of the process. A third, less popular option is to do what a former Atlanta-area principal and assistant principal did when their students bombed out on standardized tests: score-fixing. Former Atherton Elementary principal James Berry and assistant principal Doretha Alexander were arrested Friday in connection with an investigation into whether student test scores were altered to improve school performance. They face charges of altering public documents, charges that stem from an audit that found a high number of eraser marks on tests from four Georgia schools, including Atherton. Hmm, eraser marks all over tests in high numbers? Tell me more. According to state officials, the higher scores helped the schools meet federal standards. But how much could changing the answers on tests really….wait, what’s that? The state said the scores improved significantly by the changes? Oh. And just how many answers were altered, you might ask. Well, the state found on average, answers were altered 21 times per student, the majority of the changes making them correct. The majority? What, did those altering the tests purposely get a few wrong just to make it appear that the changes were made by students and not by self-serving administrators looking to make themselves look better, or were the people fixing the answers just not that much smarter than the elementary school students they teach? To be fair, Atherton isn’t the only school being put under the microscope for alleged cheating. Other metro Atlanta schools being investigated are Deerwood Academy in Atlanta, and Parklane Elementary in Fulton County. As for the Atherton crew, Berry resigned last week, while Alexander was reassigned by district officials. The test they are accused of rigging is the 5th grade CRCT math re-test. I’m no expert in 5th grade math tests, but if your students are doing that poorly on it, perhaps it’s time to put down the eraser, stop fixing their answers and do a better job of teaching them…….not teaching them how to cheat, just teaching them……..
- So what to do when the biggest day of your life is coming up quickly and there just isn’t enough money for the wedding of your dreams? I think the first answer that comes to all of our minds, if we’re honest, is to whore out the big day for advertisitg dollars. Okay, so using the term “whoring” in conjunction with a wedding story might not be the most tasteful move, but it’s an obvious link in my mind. Stacey Libby and Jim MacNevin of Keene, N.H. are preparing for their wedding and knowing that ceremonies and receptions can cost thousands of dollars, Libby decided to turn to that most dignified, classy of all online auction sites, eBay, to ease the financial burden. In order to have the fairy tale wedding she's always dreamed of, Libby decided to try to get a sponsor and is letting people bid on the rights to her day. Better still, she did this without telling MacNevin about what she was up to. “He didn't even know about it until you (a reporter) called, and I was, like, 'Oh well, just so you know, I put our wedding on eBay,'" Libby said. So what, you were just going to let him go pick up his tux and see the “Kuality Kar Care” logo on the back, make it to the reception and see the giant Gatorade cooler and the Sony baseball cap he was to wear and find out then? Libby should be thankful that she has an understanding fiancé, because MacNevin is actually cool with the choice to sell out. "Anything goes for me," he said. "As long as she's happy, it doesn't matter." As for Libby, she does have her standars for the wedding, even as a shameless sellout. Whether a business pays for all or part of the wedding, Libby will pick the colors for the wedding and also her dress. "I'm not willing for someone to say, 'Wear this dress made out of recycled bottles,'" she said. "I'm not sure I want to go that far." Why not? You’ve already bid farewell to your dignity and self-respect by pimping out your big day for advertising dollars, so go all the way. Look, I’m happy that you two are enjoying your big day together after having an on-again, off-again relationship ever since high school. After apart for seven years, these two found their way back to one another and that’s awesome. However, I think that toning down your wedding plans and making it affordable without a sponsor is a better call. That way, you not only have a new life with the person you love, but also your integrity and dignity……..
- Part of the fun with Twitter is how the technology allows people who aren’t that bright to have a public forum in which to hang themselves, metaphorically speaking, with their own stupidity. Give an idiot a place to speak his or her mind and you never know what sort of profoundly idiotic wisdom you will hear. Take Mukilteo (Wash.) city council member Jennifer Gregerson, who loves using her iPhone to message on Twitter about both her personal life and the business of the council. For the most part, her tweets are mundane and uninteresting, so much so that she may actually have a negative number of followers. However, Gregerson managed to put herself into some deep sh*t with a recent post about how the Mukilteo City Council conducts official business. During a city council meeting on a controversial plan to annex 11,500 residents living south of the city limits, Gregerson sent out over two dozen tweets on the proceedings. No word on whether she actually took part in the proceedings or just sent out Twitter updates all meeting long, but hopefully she managed to chime in once or twice. The problem didn’t actually come from any of her in-meeting tweets, but rather something she posted after the meeting. "City staff and some council now Debriefing and relaxing at ivars for late night happy hour. Time for dinner, I think!" Gregerson wrote. So where’s the problem? Well, key in on the word "Debriefing." See, “Debriefing” among four city council members constitutes a quorum, i.e. an official meeting. As such, it would fall under the purview of the state’s Open Meetings Act, which forbids elected officials from discussing business in a meeting that’s not open to the public. Now I don’t know what sort of establisment “ivars” is, but how do we know it’s not open to the public? Maybe Gregerson and her council compadres stood up and announced to the other patrons what they were doing and invited them to join in. We know that at least one Mukilteo resident Christine knew what was going on, because Awad Schmalz saw the four council members there and she’s filing a formal complaint. “I've lived in other cities in the U.S. and I've never seen anything quite so blatant as sitting in your local restaurant one goes and sitting there like that,” said Awad Schmalz. Another council member, Kevin Stoltz, walked into the Ivar’s, saw the gathering and immediately left. “I am concerned by it because I think, as elected officials, we have a duty not to project a perception that we're conducting the city's business behind closed doors,” said Stoltz. But there were no closed doors! For her part, Gregerson tried to explain that she simply used a poor choice of words and that no official business was dealt with at the meal. “It probably would have been to say decompress or say that we were relaxing,” she explained. She went on to say that she made sure no more than two council members sat next to each other at the table, which I’m sure clears everything up. Either way, the state Attorney General’s office is investigating. Like I said, if nothing else, Twitter is making our lives more interesting by giving open forums to morons who can’t help but hang themselves with the rope they’re being given………
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