Crazy Kids

 For about six months, I've been randomly reviewing some videos (mostly from news organizations) of teachers who've quit.  I would guess I'm up to about sixty of these that I've watched.

The story mostly goes this way.....teacher 'Joe' has done this stuff for 20 years....each year it gets rougher with ten-percent of the kids in some wild threatening mentality (to the classmates and the teacher)....teacher finally having enough and just quitting.  On the backside of this....the school board then reflects on the problem of recruiting new teachers, but admitting there's no problem because the university system is pumping out teachers left and right.

Cops now getting involved?  Well....you notice that from time to time....that cops are getting some call to pick up 'Woody' (the 13-year old nutcase) and parents have to come down to some station to pick up the kid....getting all  hyped-up that he was removed from school (mostly blaming the school director or some teacher).

Freak show?  Well.....yeah.  It's like you paid some traveling circus to bring out the 'wild-man' from Borneo (the 13-year old nutcase), and he (or she) gives you a pretty good case for putting them into some mental ward for juveniles.  

The chief problem you see after enough of these....the 90-percent of kids in the school were supposed to be learning from this 7-hour day...but they fell behind because they were captivated by the 'wild-man' from Borneo act.  You get two or three of those a day,  and after a while....you marginally advance in learning because of the 'show' you watch at school.

The only way out of this?  Remove the school barrier and just have prosecutors/judges/LE lined up to handle the crazy kids.  If they need to be taken to some juvenile center for filling sandbags, or haul hay for 12 hours a day....so be it.

The odd end of this whole mess?  The 'wild-man' from Borneo will be sitting there at age 40, with the intelligence level of a 5th-grader....flipping burgers, and wondering where he screwed up.

1860 Election In Oregon

 The 1860 Presidential election had three parties in the running, for Oregon.....Republican (Lincoln), Democrat (Douglas), and Southern Democrat (Breckinridge).

There were roughly 15,000 votes across the state in this election.

Lincoln won....marginally by 250 votes (getting 5,344 votes).  Breckinridge came in second with 5.074.  So it was fairly close.

County-wise?  Lincoln took most of the coastal counties and more populated regions of the state.  Breckinridge took most of the eastern part of the state and SW section.  

The Constitutional Union Party did make an effort in running but barely took 250-odd votes.

So as 1864 came around?  Lincoln won with 53-percent of the vote (roughly 3,000 more people voting in 1864 than in 1860).

Lincoln's prime areas?  NW and SW parts of the state.  Democratic strength was in the central and eastern areas of the state.  

The President Douglas/1860 Election Win Scenario

 As the summer convention business heated up for the Democratic Party....it came to a point where no candidate could emerge out of the first convention.  Stephen Douglas, who had things lined up....failed.

A second convention was held roughly a month later, and Douglas secured the 'win', but out of this convention....a number of southern Democrats left and gathered at a near-by hotel, and decided to form a new party (the Southern Democratic Party).

This created a problem in the various states for the 1860 November election, and Douglas lost in a miserable way (division of votes).

But lets go back to the 2nd convention and say it failed, and no party division occurred.  

Douglass would have likely won the election....defeating Lincoln.

So here's the odd part of history.....Douglass would have arrived in DC, and become President, but likely met an untimely end (3 June 1861).  Typhoid Fever got him in the end.  

VP?  Herschel Johnson, former governor of Georgia.  He would have moved up and likely been the Democratic candidate in 1864's election....likely winning it and serving out to 1869.  

The 1860 Election In Tennessee

 Part of a series I'm doing....looking back at a history that we rarely discuss.

For the record, Tennessee was one of those states that didn't allow Lincoln on the ballot.

So there were three candidates: Breckenridge (Southern Democratic Party, the break-a-way group from the Democratic Party, Douglas (Democratic Party), and Bell (former Whig-Party-evolved into the Constitutional Union Party).  

Winner of the 1860 Tennessee vote?  John Bell won with 47-percent of the vote.  2nd place went to Breckinridge with 45-percent of the vote.  Douglas  took a dismal 7-percent.

There's only ONE single county in the state (far western region) where Douglass won the county vote.  

It's mostly a 50-50 situation on remaining counties between Bell and Breckinridge.  The strongest areas for Bell?  Along the North Carolina border.  

146,000 men showed up and voted in this election.

What happened in 1864?  Tennessee was not part of the Confederacy and was allowed to vote in the 1864 election. Candidates?  Lincoln and McClellan (the former general, who ran as a Democrat).  

Here's the odd part of the 1864 election....most ballot boxes around the state were destroyed by Confederates in the state.  What is generally believed....Lincoln had around 30,000 votes, while McClellan took 5,000.  This number?  Well....it's mostly created out of thin air by the Chicago Tribune newspaper.....so in a factual way, nothing about the results in the state for 1864 is believed.  I would add....the round-number business makes this also a bit of a joke. 

Yeah, pretty comical but that's history for you.  

My Idea

 The Biden Administration is telling banks....when new migrants show up and ask for loans.....the banks need to approve these (with minimum questions).

I sat and pondered over this.

So here is my plan.  I intend to dress up in ragged clothing.....getting a Mexican straw hat, and show up near the Texas-Mexico border (note, stay on the Texas side).  I will adapt a Peruvian name....Alejandro. I'll memorize forty phrases....most making little to no sense.  I'll act delightfully stupid and intellectually limited.  

The Border Patrol guys will give me some slip of paper....noting my name of Alejandro.  

Then I will get transported to NY City, and quietly walk into a NY bank....asking for a $20,000 loan.

Once I have the $20,000 in my hand....I'll take a cab to JFK Airport and fly home....thus disappearing.

A week will pass, and I will put on my Peruvian outfit once again....go to the Texas border, and rename myself as Carlos.  Same path.....this time maybe getting to Chicago, and getting $20,000 from a Chicago bank.

I'll repeat this for a year....making a grand total of $1.04-million.  I'll burn the Peruvian suit and fake IDs, and just quietly live out my life as the 'fake-Peruvian-American'.  

I think it'd make a great movie script, but I'd want Nicolas Cage to play me.  

1860 Election in Alabama

 I went back this past week and looked over the 1860 national election....in my home-state (Alabama).  It's an interesting 'twist'.

So fact 1:  Lincoln didn't get on the voting roll.  What you did get was Constitutional Union Party (the remains of the Whig Party), who ran a campaign for John Bell.  Oddly enough....in five counties (in the far south of the state....Bell won over the other two competitors (Breckinridge from the Southern Democrat Party and Douglas from the Democratic Party).

Fact 2: Douglas (Democratic Party) mostly wins in 4 counties in the far north of the state (including my county of Lauderdale).

Fact 3: Breckinridge takes 54-percent of the total state vote (entire state vote for the 3 candidates....just over 90,000).

Fact 4: Oddly enough, Greene County (deep into the cotton belt on the western part of the state, and with a low population of whites (to slaves)....votes primarily for the Constitutional Union Party (John Bell).  I doubt if anyone has ever sat down to analyze the voting in this one county and how odd it is to have a right-of-center party carry the county.

Fact 5: If you review the entire state for votes....the Constitutional Union guy took 31-percent of the votes.  Almost one out of three....didn't vote for the Democrat or the Southern Democratic Party candidate.  

It would be eight years after this point before Alabama would have a 'vote' in the Presidential election.  

Candidates for 1868 in Alabama?  Grant for the Republican Party (getting 51-percent of the vote) against Seymour of the Democratic Party.  I should note....50,000 more Alabama citizens voted in 1868, than in 1860.  Grant's votes?  Oddly, they came from the center of the state where the major slave plantations existed before 1860.  Seymour took the bulk of county votes south and north of the center 'ring'.  

Oddly enough out of this Grant vote trend....Winston County in the north (by itself) took a 70-percent Grant win.  How this happened?  There's a fair amount of new immigrants into the region after the war, and I suspect that Grant gained via that method (probably figure into the extra 50,000 new voters).  

Should You Have To Show 'Masterly' Of Math, Reading And Writing To Graduate High School?

 The state of Oregon sat down and thought about it, and finally in the past week....said 'no'.  

Their logic?  Well....kids of 'color' (meaning Hispanic/Black)...can't get their act together on the topics of writing, reading and math in school.  So the consequence falls into play....you shouldn't be tested for graduation purposes.  You just get a certificate of completion, a hand-shake, and out the door you go.  

Your potential employer?  I would imagine Oregon business operations will quietly and quickly develop a 25-question test for you....as you seek to be employed.  Questions like.....the population of X-town was 10,000 in 1999, and they've lost 10-percent of their population over the past 23 years...what number does the current population relate to?

What's really going on?  I would take a guess, and suggest three issues: (1) too many marginal teachers employed in the state and unable to 'teach'. (2) A fair number of kids are products of alcohol/drug issue parents, and unable to concentrate at the level required for high school.  (3) Most residents not wanting assign responsibility to teachers or students. 

But here's the bigger issue....if you have 15,000 kids a year from Oregon who can't perform beyond the 8th grade level of math,  reading and writing....showing up at colleges in the state....how do you explain to them that level of knowledge is not enough to 'enter'?  Do you deny the 15,000 entry?  Do you add a 5th/6th year onto college....teaching them the masterly stuff they were supposed to learn in high school?  

Then you wonder....if you got so many young people lacking....should you go and force the over-65 age Oregonian folks to 'man-up' and work ten to fifteen extra years because they are the best and brightest in the state at present?

It's a weird problem and you just wonder....did some alien-UFO folks land and just insert stupidity into a huge population of Oregonian people?