K-TIMe | KTIM 89.1 FM Music Sports Talk Radio | La Grange, Texas

LMS Students Hear Powerful Anti-Bullying Message

KTIMe — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 08:51:54 +0000

Fayette County Record

By: Jeff Wick

La Grange ISD students get a steady diet of anti-bullying messages during the course of any school year.

But none has ever been so powerful as the program presented to La Grange middle school students last Friday.

All four La Grange Lions Clubs joined together to fund a presentation by Jacki James, a Georgetown ISD teacher whose son Peyton committed suicide two years ago at the age of 13 following relentless bullying.

James began her program by asking the more than 300 middle school students, who had gathered in the gym, to raise their hand if they had ever been called:

• “weird”

• “stupid”

• “loser”

• or something worse than that.

“I’d say about 85-percent of you raised your hand and I’d guess the other 15-percent of you just don’t want to share it,” James said.

“At some point we’ve all been called something that makes us feel bad. Peyton dealt with that kind of language for seven years, just about every day.”

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Americans now live in two worlds, each with its own reality

KTIMe — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 08:38:24 +0000

By Philip Bump Washington Post

It is not true that the 2016 presidential election is being rigged in any meaningful sense of that word. If you extend a definition of “rigged” to include such loose concepts as “members of the political establishment hoping outsiders are unsuccessful” or “campaign operatives using common political practices to improve the chances of electoral success,” then, maybe. But that’s not the way that Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, means it.

In Trump’s estimation, the campaign is rigged in the traditional sense of the expression: nefarious forces are seeking to commit voter fraud in Pennsylvania, the media is conspiring with a wealthy Mexican to make up lies about him, Hillary Clinton is doing the bidding of a cabal of international bankers. On Saturday, he implied that Clinton had been given the questions during the first debate, a laughable conspiracy theory that flourished briefly in the wake of her strong performance on the stage that night. But for Trump, sinking in the polls faster than Clinton is rising, any conspiracy theory that undercuts his opponent is one worth sharing.

His allies and supporters — like Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and David Clarke, a member of law enforcement in Wisconsin — agree.

The accusations outlined above are false. In-person voter fraud is essentially nonexistent; the idea that New York Times reporters are acting at the behest of a partial stakeholder in their employer is ridiculous; accusations that Clinton is seeking to undermine the United States to the benefit of international bankers is a strain of thought evolved from the worst anti-Semitic claims.

But many Trump supporters think I’m wrong — or intentionally lying as part of that same conspiracy. The beauty of a conspiracy theory is precisely that everything proves it: evidence and the lack of evidence, the latter proving the coverup. At a rally in Cincinnati, Trump fans told reporters from the Boston Globe that they were willing to stake out polling places to root out fraud, that the media was rotten, that the election was rigged.

It’s unclear whether Trump is reinforcing existing skepticism about institutions such as the media and the government or whether he’s creating new strains. It’s probably both. As Wonkblog’s Chris Ingraham noted Saturday, the lack of confidence in traditional institutions has spiked since 2008 — at least among Republicans.

Trump has repeatedly argued that facets of those institutions, like the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve, are part of the same broad-ranging effort to cause him to lose the election. A new survey from Marketplace and Edison Research indicates that a quarter of Americans agree with him. That’s split heavily along political lines, though. Only about 1 in 20 Clinton supporters distrust economic data such as unemployment rates and jobs numbers. Almost half of Trump supporters distrust that data.

That dichotomy suggests that Americans live in worlds rooted in different core truths — and that’s what Americans believe is happening. Pew Research asked Clinton and Trump supporters whether they thought that the two political sides agreed generally on basic facts, disagreeing only on how to address the country’s problems, or whether each side relied on different basic facts entirely.

More than 80 percent of respondents said it was the latter.

That’s the gulf that Trump is both widening and exploiting. It’s not hard to figure out why he’s happily passing around bad information at this point: The media is reporting on a number of accusations that his 2005 hot-mic comments about groping women were a reflection of what he actually did and not just “locker room talk.” The best way to get people to ignore those accusations is to double-down on their existing skepticism about the media and, ideally, to loop his opponent into that same grand conspiracy. It’s not clear how this is a scenario that will propel him to victory in November, but it is clearly a strategy that might, at least, allow him to save face.

The rift in the electorate, though, may end up being a much harder problem to plaster over.

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Jia Jia The Panda Euthanized After Prolonged Ill Health

KTIMe — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 08:08:50 +0000

(CNN)The world’s oldest panda in captivity died Sunday in Hong Kong’s Ocean Park.

Jia Jia was 38, and had lived at the zoo for the past 17 years.

In a statement, Ocean Park said the panda had been “rapidly deteriorating” in recent weeks, with greatly reduced food consumption and a marked decrease in weight.

Her condition took a turn for the worse on Sunday, leaving her unable to do anything but lay down for the majority of the day. To prevent further suffering, the zoo decided to euthanize Jia Jia, and veterinarians performed the procedure at 6 p.m. local time (6 a.m. ET).

Ancient panda

Dubbed the “Grandma panda,” and the equivalent of 114-years-old in human terms, Jia Jia had reportedly been suffering from multiple geriatric diseases including high blood pressure, arthritis and cataracts on both eyes.

She broke a world record last year on her 37th birthday, becoming the oldest panda living in captivity.

The average life expectancy of a giant panda is below 20 years in the wild, and just over 20 years under human care, according to Wang Chengdong, director of veterinary services at the Wolong National Nature Reserve in China’s Sichuan province.

“Jia Jia’s longevity is a result of Ocean Park’s ongoing efforts in providing best-practice of care to the giant pandas,” he said.

Born in the wild, Jia Jia was rescued in 1980 and kept at Wolong for over a decade before being given as part of a pair to the Hong Kong government by China in 1999.

Her mate, An An, is now the world’s second oldest male giant panda in captivity, at 30-years-old.

Jia Jia and An An became an instant sensation on their arrival in Hong Kong, with more than 29 million guests visiting them over the years, according to Ocean Park.

“(She) was a member of our family who spent 17 wonderful years with the Hong Kong people, and she will be deeply missed,” park chairman Leo Kung said.

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