Can this be happening in hip Ann Arbor? Surveillance cameras on kids at Pioneer High School? Sure it can because the AAPS administration is clueless. Let’s not talk about the financial, ecological and demographic fiasco that is the new high school and the concocted lies and painted smiles that backed it up.

But let’s do talk about how the administration can actually think it’s okay, in this day and age, in a town that was once fairly progressive, to set up Big Brother cameras to watch over kids in high schools. Student Safety is the local politics version of National Security: the excuse to remove privacy from your life.

Besides, the community is clueless. Cameras were put in Huron quite a while back.

Besies, the district is “getting a good deal” (only about $80,000). When the same contractor who did up Huron, the district had some equipment left over. Instead of having the contractor buy it back, it’s now the explanation of why we’re getting such a good deal.

Clueless. And just plain bad.

Recently while checking out at the grocery store, the cashier began a nearly sub-vocal, somehow laid-back diatribe about how one shouldn’t vote for a person simply because they’re black or a woman. Hmm. So that’s what this guy, and all the people he is representative of, think. A nice example of how folks lie to themselves to be able to vote against the thing that scares them but feel they can’t, in polite company, air. With all the important issues hitting this society over the head with a baseball bat, he chooses to explain away to himself and a stranger his multi-sided bigotry. Aside: Alluding so subtly to what I assumed were this guy’s political leanings, I replied that people shouldn’t vote for someone simply because they are complete and utter idiot either. Not sure he got the reference.

So, will Americans vote for a black man or a white woman first? Or a white religious man? No surprise if it’s the white religious man. After all they voted for the afore-mentioned idiot. Twice. And in large numbers. But if Americans, with their tradition of prejudices, surprise us by electing either of the first two and if there is any way to separate the personal from the historical and look at the winner as icon, which of those two will they let have power first?