Casey speaks

For background on the video below, please go here.




"Look for the good days, keep your chin up and school ain't gonna last forever."


Thank goodness for that.

H/T: Hot Air

Of wrestling, bullying and the nuclear option

We hesitated in posting the following video as we try to hold postings of two kids knocking each other around with one ultimately getting the better of it to only one or two a month.

The video first and then the accompanying story. (If embed no worky, please go to the link provided below)

THE virus-like spread of a video showing a bullying attack and retaliation in a western Sydney middle school may be glorifying and even encouraging violence in the schoolyard, a leading bullying expert has warned.

The video, watched by thousands of people on Facebook and YouTube, shows a slightly built 12-year-old student antagonising a larger 16-year-old, punching him in the face as a friend records it on his mobile phone and at least four other students watch.

Advertisement: Story continues below Suddenly the 16-year-old grabs the other boy and throws him head-first on to the concrete. There is a cracking sound as the 12-year-old's ankle connects with a timber bench.

The school, Chifley College's Dunheved campus at St Marys North, has suspended both students and called police after seeing footage of the fight, which took place on school grounds about 10.30am on Monday.

(italics, ours)

How is that going to encourage bullying? That would appear to be the ulimate PSA against bullying as agree or not with the retaliation tactics, we imagine the bully will be thinking long and hard before he starts smacking around anyone ever again.

Before our round of questions, while watching this we had a confirming observation. While back at Seminary, our roommate for 3 years there was a wrestler and often we would work out with him serving as a sparring partner. Besting him by a good 30 pounds and about 5 inches, it was a great workout for him and an absolutely grueling workout for us. We've at least tried them all and there are no more gut-wrenching, cookie toss-inducing sports than wrestling and boxing (OK, never tried rowing but we've heard stories).

Now, when we were out doing, um, community outreach in town or in Queens or in the City itself, one of the things you were always mindful of in these scenarios was what you were going to do if things went south and the locals turned against you. It was never at the forefront of your mind but a spilled drink or a cross look might turn the evening's proceedings towards some unseemly outcomes and if it did go down, you were looking for the most obvious and efficient way of defending yourself. And a handful of times, it did go down and for the most part it was a lot of pushing and shoving or a few wild haymakers that were strewn about. None of this ever scared us but the one person that we never, never... wanted to have to deal with in a situation like this was a wrestler. In a close quarter scenario, where if you got yourself off-balance and were left vulnerable, we cringed at the thought of getting "fireman"-ed and tossed onto a table or the floor like a rag doll not in an unsimilar fashion to the lad above. Those are the memories that came flooding back to us while watching this video.

O.K. Now for the questions? Bullying is pretty much the "it" topic of the day and just recently the President made some strong remarks regarding bullying so unlike unrest in the Mideast, a flagging economy and an incoherent energy policy in wake of $100+/barrel oil prices, we know it must be a big deal.

As a parent, what are you supposed to do when you know your child is the object of bullying?

Do you go to the school administration to get them to step in? Now, that would seem like an invitation for more ass-kickings.

Do you tell your child to restrain himself and act in the best of Christ-like passiveness? Or do you teach your child proper self-defense techniques so that the bully will know your child is no longer an easy mark without having to necessarily resort to the nuclear option as the boy did so in the video above.

We'd love to read everyone's opinions in the the comment section. And, please, no CW - we want to hear what you would do or did do and how it turned out.

And do remember... stay away from those wrestlers.

Honduras update (UPDATED)

(please scroll down for update. thanks)

With all this excitement going down stateside, we don't want to forget about a neighbor to the south. Previous posts on Honduras, here.

At what point do you think the State Department might have enough egg on its face to call it quits with respect to their embarrassingly political handling of Honduras? They’re calling for another carton.

Honduras will inaugurate president-elect Porfirio Lobo this week, two months after one of the world's most recently famous little countries held a successful democratic election. So we are left to wonder why the United States State Department is still trying to hammer anyone there who dared to participate last summer in the constitutional removal of President Manuel Zelaya from office.

What’s truly amazing is that this fiasco looks to have a happy ending even after the bullying and meddling of super-powers like the U.S. and regional bad actors like Cuba and Venezuela. In a move that for this part of the globe looks damn-near Washingtonian, the interim President and member of the disgraced Zelaya’s own party, Roberto Micheletti, will step down from power so that Lobo can assume the office of president just as Micheletti promised when this whole thing blew up last June.

A smooth transfer of power should be something to be celebrated yet a spiteful State Dept. has refused to re-instate the visas of Micheletti, his cabinet and advisors and the entirety of the Honduran Supreme Court and, last week, the State Dept. continued its spite-fest by yanking even more visas from members of the interim government.

The bullying doesn’t end there as Lobo, under pressure from our government, has agreed to let Zelaya, despite the legal charges against him, go to the Dominican Republic where he will no doubt consort with the likes of Chavez and Brothers Castro to foment discontent towards and within Honduras.

What a tremendous example we have set for burgeoning and struggling deomcracies in the hemishere who will now think twice before turning to the great United States for assistance.


(UPDATE #1):Don’t think for a moment the citizens of Honduras have forgotten about this country’s attempts to interfere with that country’s ouster of Zelaya and the subsequent elections that saw a peaceful transfer of power in the executive branch to a different political party.

Mr. Zelaya's ouster, widely condemned as a coup, plunged Latin America into a diplomatic crisis. No country recognized the new government, the Organization of American States suspended Honduras, and governments and international financial institutions canceled aid. But neither sanctions nor intense diplomatic negotiations were enough to return Mr. Zelaya, a close ally of Venezuela's populist President Hugo Chávez, to power.

The crowd attending Mr. Lobo's inaugural booed mentions of the OAS, U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens, and Costa Rican President Óscar Arias, all of whom tried to arrange for Mr. Zelaya's return to power.

The Honduran crisis also created tensions between the U.S. and Brazil, Latin America's emerging heavyweight. Brazil strongly criticized what it said was U.S. reluctance to apply tougher sanctions against Honduras, which depends on U.S. trade and remittances from Hondurans living in the U.S.

(italics, ours)

Terrific. At the end of the day we wind up pissing off everybody.

The more we think about this, the more we cannot believe that with the deck stacked against Honduras as it was, this potential meltdown is going to have a happy ending. Props to the interim president, Roberto Micheletti, who stayed the course by not giving into overwhelming and near-unanimous pressure from without to re-instate Zelaya and who kept his word by holding elections and stepping down when Lobo won the election. That Washingtonian moment of holding a nation together and graciously and lawfully stepping down when the time came will represent Honduras’ finest hour.

God bless the people and country of Honduras for showing courage and a commitment to the ideals of sovereignty and democracy.

Exit thought: Iran got all the ink with respect to the administration’s handling of the two international crisis but this was far worse as the response to Iran was a sin of omission rather than the sin of commission that was Honduras.

Exit question: For the lefties that write history and love to paint America as the meddling and imperialist bad guy, how will they write the Honduras chapter? Democratic president aligning with the hemisphere’s socialist goons in order to keep another socialist goon in power and ultimately losing out when Honduras elects a conservative to the office of president. That ought to be good read.

When one completely childish, reactionary and amateurish challenge deserves another.

Believe it. Nothing would have us whip out our check book and fire some cashe McCain’s way quicker than this.

Nearly 10,000 of the biggest donors to Republican candidates and causes across the country will probably receive a foreboding “warning” letter in the mail next week.

The warning letter is intended as a first step, alerting donors who might be considering giving to right-wing groups to a variety of potential dangers, including legal trouble, public exposure and watchdog groups digging through their lives.

This is funny. It really is. We welcome, though, more of this lefty piss-antism and we sincerely regret we lack the appropriate amount of scratch to crack the “Book of 10,000” where, if we were lucky enough to receive this letter, we would issue a public challenge to Matzzie to meet us out by the bike racks after school for his well-deserved ass-kicking.

Iowahawk has tracked down the letter that Accountable America will be issuing shortly.