CNN: We’re down with the gangstas

Teachers packing heat at school

Well, I can’t really complain about the story itself, except to say that I’m damned pleased that I’ve finished high school already, and did so in Australia, and also that there is no way – even before the guns – that anyone is going to learn productively in an environment like that. However, I’m not overly enamoured with their headline, are they trying to be funny? Making light of a terrible story of social disintegration. Are they trying to soften that blow and put a positive spin on it? Has the work experience kid taken over from the sub-editor? Is it to ensure it gets on the ‘most read’ list above other stories? (Such as blatant Israeli lies; about violations of those quaint old things called the Geneva Conventions). Anyway, poor kids, and poor quality sub editors…

 

CNN: McCain has better judgement?

McCain questions Obama’s ability to be commander in chief

Is McCain really in a position to question Obama’s judgement? The article quotes McCain as saying: “And in matters of national security, good judgment will be at a premium in the term of the next president”. Quite apart from the fact that good judgement has rarely been displayed by presidents, is McCain really in a position to say what good judgement is? Given that McCain’s claims of torture during his internment in Viet Nam have never been proven – indeed several POWs from the camp where he claims he was tortured – The Plantation – state that it never happened, they were never tortured there, and it was a release camp. Further more, despite his claims of mistreatment, he recieved medical care from Soviet and Viet Namese doctors – that’s right, unlike any other POW McCain received medical treatment from qualified doctors. None of these annoying irregularities has stopped McCain from playing the “war hero” role, and stating time and time again he was tortured, and has foreign policy experience, et cetera. Quite how spending 5 years feeding military information to the Viet Namese while a POW counts as valuable foreign policy experience, I’m not sure. But that hardly matters, as a Cuban psychologist who spoke to McCain came to the conculsion McCain was a “psychopath”, yet it is he who question’s Obama’s judgement?

More on McCain here