We Need to Repeal the Last Thirty Years

of economic policies beginning when the Reagan administration was so in love with the crackpot economic theories of Milton Friedman. People are slowly waking up that they have been had by our elected officials, who are in bed with the elites who really and truly want a hereditary aristocracy in this country with everybody else being slaves to this aristocracy.

Well, we were warned where those policies were headed:



Perot wouldn't have been the right person to lead the country, but look at where the hell we are at now.

Obama Should Call a Special Session of Congress

if it is indeed true that at least one representative is willing to write legislation adding a "Tier V" to the federal EUI. We KNOW it would pass the House; there should be pressure also on the Senate to actually craft it and put it up to a vote--BEFORE they, too, take off for a goddamned month.

Thanks to Our Society's Twisted Belief

that being "thin" is better and "healthier" and certainly more fashionable, the fashion industry absolutely refuses to create suitable clothing for "large" or "bigger" women, as this article notes.

I fucking hate the term "plus-size." What does that even indicate? Is the opposite "minus-size"? Besides, the reason women are getting "bigger" is because the demographic is getting older; you know, they hit menopause and they simply don't look like they did when they were twenty. It's time for our society to get a fucking clue.

Note men never have this problem.

In the Old Days, Mountaineers

may have been selfish to be apart from their families, but at least they had the excuse of trying to be the "first" to climb Everest or K2 or whatever. Nowadays mountaineers are just as selfish and leave their families just as much, but there is no damned excuse really to engage in such stupid behavior.

Nothing will stop the insane pursuit of something as risky as mountaineering. Perhaps, though, when they die on the mountains, this is a way for nature to get rid of the idiots in our midst. Unfortunately innocent people suffer as a result of their idiocy.

Obama Went to Detroit

to brag about what he did to--er, for--the auto industry there.

Detroit used to be a shining example of American industry, but now it has turned into a sinkhole of poverty and despair.

Ed to Democrats: Shit or Get Off the Pot

Congress taking off for vacation instead of helping those of us without anything is inexcusable:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Arne Blathers About RTTT

and about how his version of education "reform" is the "civil rights" issue of our time, yet because he has organized his RTTT blackmail scheme like a basketball playoff, many children in desperate need of help will not get it.

After all, Race to the Top ISN'T about the kids; it's about undercutting teacher protections in order to receive the blackmail money.

News

A veteran journalist gives the inside scoop on what went on during the Polanski deal in the 1970s.

Interesting interview regardless of what you think of the matter.
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Molly Hagerty's two minutes of fame are finally up as no charges will be brought in connection with former vice president Al Gore.

There was simply no evidence to proceed. She flunked a polygraph test, and there was no forensic evidence to support her contention.
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When Ben Roethlisberger first signed on with the NFL, little did he know he would not just be famous, but also infamous.
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The right-wing Wyly brothers weren't so wily after all, according to charges made by the SEC.
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I wish all our Democrats in Washington would do this:




None of this "reaching across the aisle" nonsense but actually calling the GOP out for their obstructionist tactics.

Weiner didn't go "ballistic"; he merely put the GOP in their place.

Another Ed Show Clip

about how in the hell this country got so fucked up with the vast transfer of wealth upward.

Short answer: It began during the Reagan administration and its love affair with neoliberal economic policies formulated by that crackpot Milton Friedman:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Ed Schultz Let Those Lazy Shits Have It Tonight

I am, of course, referring to Congress, which can't be bothered with dealing with the UI exhaustees and would prefer to "work" on getting re-elected:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Although the Unemployed Have Little or No Money

or other resources, they still have the right to vote, at least for now. But will they exercise the franchise to oust politicians indifferent or downright hostile to their situation?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Why is Our World So Screwed Up?

When entertainers, billionaires, and political elites call the shots on policy, everybody else is truly fucked.

When know-nothings formulate education policy, for example, you KNOW things are bad.

But our society worships these people. It's sick.

It's No Surprise

Michelle Rhee's latest antics are happening right at the White House's own backyard and are being cheered by these privatizers. What is going on in the D.C. Public Schools will happen nationally. Teachers be damned; there are just too many of them. And what will happen when people refuse to get into this shithole field? Well, the laws will change in the states so that noncertified, basically uneducated people will be "teachers," just as many are in third world countries.

After all, education is a waste of time and money for these "losers" in the inner cities; these students don't need real teachers.

Recommended by Joel Klein, who led the assault on the New York City public schools, Rhee was appointed Chancellor in 2007 by DC Mayor Adrian Fenty because of her well-known opposition to job security and other rights won by teachers over decades of struggle. Upon being selected to head the DC school district, Rhee declared that poverty and decaying neighborhoods were no barrier to educational success, only poor teachers were.

This is the same rubbish peddled by Obama and Duncan, under conditions in which they are slashing the resources available to teach students and are doing nothing to end the crushing level of poverty and social inequality that plague America’s cities and schools.

Washington, DC is one of the most socially polarized cities in the nation. About two-thirds of the children in the district’s public and public charter schools are eligible for a free or reduced price lunch because they come from low-income families. DC’s child poverty rate is 32 percent. The current unemployment rate in the city is 12 percent; and the official poverty rate rose 18.9 percent in 2009, up from 16.9 percent the previous year.

Like school districts across the nation, Washington, DC students and teachers have faced years of budget cuts, school closings and layoffs. Last year, hundreds of students walked out of classes and joined protests against teacher layoffs and other cutbacks.

Teachers, of course, are the scapegoats. Meanwhile, the administrators will leech off the taxpayers and do better than ever.

The Way I See It,

this new "normal" is 4 out of 5 people face destitution, but I know what the WSWS is talking about here, and that is income loss. Some 20 percent of people in a study sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation experienced a loss in income of 25 percent or more in the last year.

Hell, the last TWO years I have experienced a huge drop. I was making over $45,000 a year, hardly a princely salary, as a teacher, then went to about $21,000 a year in unemployment compensation, and now I am right down to zero. I am not just running on empty, I am running on fumes. I have found no employment during this time. Of course, our Congress's priorities are on their lengthy vacations rather than helping destitute Americans. These politicians are about to go on yet ANOTHER break for a month or more.

By the way, thanks to participating on a discussion board on unemployment, I was put in contact with a reporter from the New York Times, Mike Luo, who is writing an article about people who have exhausted all of their UI benefits. I interviewed with him for perhaps a half-hour or 45 minutes last night in addition to having corresponded with him by email. He has been interviewing other people and said he will likely concentrate on a person in Vermont whose situation is truly dire. He may mention some other people in similar situations in his article, but even if I don't make "the cut," I still want to get the dead-tree version of the newspaper article.

About Mike Luo:
bio

From the WSWS:

"Putting this trend in terms of population,” the report states, “approximately 46 million Americans were counted as insecure in 2007, up from 28 million in 1985.” The head of the research team that prepared the report, Yale University Professor Jacob Hacker, told an interviewer, “What we’re seeing, basically, is what we’re calling ‘the new normal.’ We’re slowly ratcheting up this level of economic insecurity.”

The research group has devised what it calls the Economic Security Index (ESI), which measures the share of Americans in a given year who experience at least a 25 percent decline in their available household income and who lack a financial safety net to replace the lost income. Such a sudden income drop—usually due to the loss of employment, high medical expenses, or a combination of the two—often leaves people facing destitution.

The report does not include 2010, when long-term joblessness has become endemic. The ESI for this year will doubtless be considerably higher than for 2009.

Of course this is another result of the massive upward transfer of wealth aided and abetted by our elected officials.

The report is here.

It's Probably Long Overdue for a

reality check, but our "elected" officials are too concerned with their vacations to look at reality.

To call high unemployment a "catastrophe" is understating it a bit.

It is time to reassert that full employment is the primary measure of our economy: "Continuous and useful employment for those willing and seeking to work." Mass unemployment is an unacceptable failure. We will not learn to live with it. We will keep pushing until we eliminate it. Government will strive to create the conditions for the private market to create the jobs we need. But it will act as an employer of last resort for those unable to find work over a long period of time.

That's not what Congress really wants because these people really believe in the neoliberal hogwash that the rich should have everything.

Of Course the GOP

is out to screw the economy and everybody who is not rich, but that won't stop far too many voters this fall from voting against their own best interests.

Years of propaganda have worked like a charm for the GOP. It doesn't help Obama squandered a lot of political capital.

Talk is Cheap, Senator Schumer

Ditto for Senator Stabenow. All this talk about adding more weeks to EUI, which should have happened a long time ago, will just disappear along with these politicians when they take yet ANOTHER break. The House takes off after Friday, with the Senate leaving the next week.

Then when these hardworking politicians return from six weeks of a working vacation, they will labor for two weeks before they take off again.

Must be nice.

Last year, Congress enacted several pieces of legislation that ultimately gave the unemployed in some states 99 weeks of benefits. With nearly 15 million unemployed competing for just three million jobs available, 99 weeks isn't enough time for some people to find work. Hundreds of thousands had already joined the ranks of the "99ers" in April. The Washington Post reported recently that the total had reached 1.4 million

Like the Very Rich, Corporations

are sitting on shitloads of money, and they have absolutely NO intention of hiring additional workers, which makes the economy even worse since fewer workers means less money infused into the economy.

The stockpiling of cash is troubling to some, who say that if companies keep hoarding money instead of investing in new facilities and products, it will put a lid on what the economy really needs to get going: new jobs. "Managers are being overly conservative until they're positive the crisis is over," says Kathleen Kahle, professor of finance at the University of Arizona. "They don't want to invest and add jobs, so they're delaying and don't want to be the first movers."

Meanwhile, there's concern companies have starved expansion so long, and focused merely on cutting costs to boost short-term profit, many might have difficultly boosting their top lines. "Reducing costs is a one-trick pony," says George Christy, principal of financial advisory firm Oakdale Advisors and author of Free Cash Flow. "You can only hold down headcount so much without hurting the quality of your products."

Detroit Public Schools Administrators

are hellbent on destroying the system in favor of charters and privatization.

Remember, Detroit is the hometown of privatization czar Eli Broad.

In a series of “Letters of Agreement,” attached to the union’s contract ratified in December 2009, DFT President Keith Johnson has signed off on a host of “reforms” consistent with the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” education initiative: the unimpeded spread of charter schools, the lengthening of the school day and year, peer review and evaluations based on the narrowest of criteria, the overemphasis of standardized test scores, merit pay and other attacks on teachers.

It should be noted that at the time of the contract’s ratification, the central issue was the imposition of the so-called “Termination Incentive Plan,” consisting of a $10,000 pay cut over two years, a plan designed to compel older teachers to retire. So, while the complicity of the DFT-AFT leadership with education “reforms” being carried out by Robert Bobb was well known among teachers, the full content of the union’s capitulation contained in the “Letters of Agreement” was not discussed—if, in fact, it was even available at the time of the ratification vote.

The establishment of these “Priority Schools,” certainly in the numbers announced by Johnson, marks the beginning of the end of the DPS as a cohesive public schools system. Bobb and Johnson, at the behest of their handlers in Washington, namely the Obama administration, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and AFT President Randi Weingartner, are imposing a free market competitive business model on the public schools of Detroit.

Debating "Extending" Unemployment Benefits

that weren't even extended in the first place is the height of congressional insanity, but the real reason this insanity was allowed to happen in the first place is because the United States Senate's parliamentary rules gave Republicans the excuse to play politics. Democrats like Reid refuse to let the GOP hang themselves and get the "cloture" rules changed. They, too, played politics by trying to hang the GOP with obstruction.

Yet neither side did SHIT to really extend unemployment benefits in the first place. Millions and millions are going to join those of us who have already exhausted all of our UI, and there won't be any fucking help after the elections.

The elites created this mess, and they will turn this country into a third world mess with their cruel behavior while bribing our elected officials to bail them out when they fuck up.

Good News, Bad News

The good news is Jeb Bush has taken himself out of the running for president in 2012.

The bad news is he will continue to have his filthy hands in education.

Cartoon of the Day

Obituaries

Hard-playing NFL player Jack Tatum, once called the "assassin," has himself been felled albeit by natural causes. He was 61 and died of a heart attack.

On Aug. 12, 1978, Stingley, playing for the New England Patriots, ran head-on into the hard-hitting Tatum on a crossing pattern. The blow severed Stingley’s fourth and fifth veterbrae and left the receiver paralyzed.


Tatum said he tried to visit Stingley at an Oakland hospital shortly after the collision but was turned away by Stingley’s family members.


Stingley died in 2007.

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Actress and ex-wife of Mike Wallace, Buff Cobb, died July 12 at the age of 82. She passed away in a New Hampshire nursing home.

Her real name was Patrizia Cobb Chapman.
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Nevada Lucked Out

in being "out of the running" to receive Duncan's blackmail money.

The "finalists" in this scheme to wreck public education are Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.

If You Want to Know Why Hiring Has Been So Anemic,

well, here is your answer: more and more profits:

“Because of high unemployment, management is using its leverage to get more hours out of workers,” said Robert C. Pozen, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and the former president of Fidelity Investments. “What’s worrisome is that American business has gotten used to being a lot leaner, and it could take a while before they start hiring again.”

And some of those businesses, including Harley-Davidson, are preparing for a future where they can prosper even if sales do not recover. Harley’s goal is to permanently be in a position to generate strong profits on a lower revenue base.

In some ways, the ability to raise profits in the face of declining sales is a triumph of productivity that makes the United States more globally competitive. The problem is that companies are not investing those earnings, instead letting cash pile up to levels not reached in nearly half a century.

“As long as corporations are reinvesting, the economy can grow,” said Ethan Harris, chief economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “But if they’re taking those profits and saving them, rather than buying new equipment, it hurts overall growth. The longer this goes on, the more you worry about income being diverted to a sector that’s not spending.”

Don't Worry About Duncan and Obama

giving up their neoliberal attitudes in pushing for the destruction of public education; in fact, they are going to go around the country peddling their wildly unpopular Race to the Top bullshit:

President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan will deliver major speeches this week on their $4.35 billion Race to the Top school reform program, pushing back against complaints that it promotes unproven methods and ignores long-standing inequities in public education.


Speaking at the National Press Club on Tuesday, Duncan is expected to name a list of state finalists for the controversial grant program’s second round of funding and to explain why Race to the Top — the crown jewel of the administration’s education agenda — must continue. And on Thursday, Obama will talk about education at the annual gathering of the National Urban League, one of seven civil rights organizations that blasted Race to the Top in a report made public Monday.

The Sherrod Debacle

pretty much exposed the reality of what it is going on in American politics and in the media.

Fox makes up a tale about a government servant, and the White House falls for the lie hook, line, and sinker without the official being allowed to present her side. Then, when the truth comes out, the administration tries to play CYA.

The fact this White House goes out of its way to appease the right is reason enough to not want Obama as the Democratic nominee in 2012. Democrats need to be Democrats and not servants to the same elite the GOP serves.

If I Were Dictator,

I would abolish the United States Senate as being an absolutely useless body which creates all kinds of arcane rules that do nothing but hinder needed legislation. It is outrageous it ever got to this point where stalemate was the rule rather than the exception.

If the GOP wants a filibuster, return to the old system where they had to talk a bill to death, not this chickenshit stuff they have now.

"The use of the filibuster and the way it's led to backroom deals has created the impression in the heartland that the Senate is dysfunctional," said Jack Conway, a Democratic candidate facing Republican Rand Paul in Kentucky. "They don't understand why Washington can't address the issues people care about. People in Kentucky wanted people focused on jobs -- 14 months [of the health care debate] laid bare how broken the system was."

Conway was joined in his backing of filibuster reform by the three other Senate candidates who HuffPost interviewed for this story: Paul Hodes of New Hampshire, Elaine Marshall of North Carolina and Roxanne Conlin of Iowa. Sitting Senators Al Franken (D-Minn.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) also said they supported reform.

"It's not constitutional. It's not statutory. It's a rule," said Hodes, adding that he wasn't certain what the new rule should look like exactly, but the current ones needed to be reformed. "Everywhere I go, they say, 'Make 'em bring out the cots and the telephone books.' People are eager for real backbone and some toughness from Democrats."

Unfortunately, Democrats have squandered this shit and haven't put the GOP on the defensive. If, God forbid, the GOP gets in the majority next term, it's going to be an even bigger mess.

I'd just as soon see the Senate done away with.

Robert Reich, In His Closing Remarks of This Post,

nails what is the real problem with this economy:

The reality is this: Big American companies may never rehire large numbers of workers. And they won’t even begin to think about hiring until they know American consumers will buy their products. The problem is, American consumers won’t start buying again until they know they have reliable paychecks.

No end in sight, either, out of this mess.

While Arne Duncan Goes Around the Country

blathering about his notion of education "reform," i.e., privatization and charters, as being the "civil rights issue of our time," civil rights groups beg to differ with his sledgehammer approach:

It is most politely written, but a 17-page framework for education reform being released Monday by a coalition of civil rights groups amounts to a thrashing of President Obama’s education policies and it offers a prescription for how to set things right.

You won’t see these sentences in the piece: “Dear President Obama, you say you believe in an equal education for all students, but you are embarking on education policies that will never achieve that goal and that can do harm to America’s school children, especially its neediest. Stop before it is too late.”

More

And if you want to read the report itself, here it is.

News, Etc.

It's hard to put blame on either one of these two when they canceled each other out:

A suspected drunken driver Saturday evening was traveling on Sun Valley Boulevard in a 2007 Chrysler Sebring, while another alleged impaired driver was riding along side her in the bike lane on a scooter.

After the car crashed into the scooter just before 6:30 p.m., both drivers were arrested for driving under the influence.

Since there is so little going on of note, I thought I'd share that tidbit.
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Who Says Crime Doesn't Pay?

It does if you are a Wall Street bankster.

It's Bad Enough

to be in your mid to late forties and can't find work, but just wait until you hit 55 or over. It's REALLY bad then because you can't collect Social Security or Medicare yet deemed not to have the "energy level" to do part-time work.

Political Crap

While Dean may be correct Fox News is racist, the REAL issue in the Sherrod debacle is the White House seemed to have caved in an effort to pander to the right and to "independents" and were made to appear weak.
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Oh, please. Nevadans aren't THAT stupid they are going to put in a complete dipshit in the United States Senate. The media needs to quit making a horse race out of something that was over and done with when the GOP picked Angle to run against Reid.
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Senator Charles Schumer of New York is ready to craft legislation that would add more weeks for those of us out here who have exhausted all unemployment benefits and face complete destitution, but he needs at least one Republican to sign on. If it means Democrats have to use the stimulus money, so be it. We have a jobs crisis out here, and something must be done.

News

Spain's Alberto Contador, who won the Tour de France last year, has taken the title again this year, edging out runner-up Andy Schleck by 39 seconds.

I watched the Tour off and on this year, and it was fairly exciting. I think when Schleck lost his chain in one of the stages, that did it for him. He was done despite making a good effort.

But the real news was the fact Lance Armstrong finished way back in the pack, finishing 23rd and some 40 minutes behind Contador. It is supposed to be his last time competing in the race. Armstrong is 38 years old.

The real excitement, however, will be off the bike when Armstrong must once again face those doping and fraud allegations, this time with federal prosecutors looking into them:

When he returns to the United States, Armstrong has something less pleasant to face. Federal prosecutors are looking into whether Armstrong and his associates were involved in systematic doping, fraud or various financial crimes while with the Postal Service team. A grand jury has been convened in the case.

During the Tour, those prosecutors served grand jury subpoenas in connection with a possible case, including handing one to 2004 Olympic gold medal winner Tyler Hamilton. Hamilton’s lawyer, Chris Manderson, told ESPN.com that Hamilton would cooperate with the investigation.

“I’m not worried at all,” said Armstrong of the investigation just days before he hired a criminal defense lawyer for the federal inquiry.

I'd like to think he competed clean, but I know better.

The Floyd Landis Nightline interview can be found here.

We Who Have Followed the Shenanigans With Our Elected Officials

know there has been a thirty-year class war waged in the U.S., and it isn't by the masses against the elites, but vice versa. And it is the middle class that has taken the biggest hit.

The deterioration of the middle class has accelerated in recent years.

Our elected officials made this mess, and they seem clueless to do anything about it. Or else too corrupt to do anything about it, more likely.

As If Employers

don't already have an arsenal of techniques to screen potential candidates out.

There is so much employers pull that ought to be illegal. This is certainly one thing:

Ohm became interested in this problem in the course of researching the ease with which we can learn the identities of people from supposedly anonymous personal data like movie preferences and health information. When Netflix, for example, released 100 million purportedly anonymous records revealing how almost 500,000 users had rated movies from 1999 to 2005, researchers were able to identify people in the database by name with a high degree of accuracy if they knew even only a little bit about their movie-watching preferences, obtained from public data posted on other ratings sites.

Ohm says he worries that employers would be able to use social-network-aggregator services to identify people’s book and movie preferences and even Internet-search terms, and then fire or refuse to hire them on that basis. A handful of states — including New York, California, Colorado and North Dakota — broadly prohibit employers from discriminating against employees for legal off-duty conduct like smoking. Ohm suggests that these laws could be extended to prevent certain categories of employers from refusing to hire people based on Facebook pictures, status updates and other legal but embarrassing personal information. (In practice, these laws might be hard to enforce, since employers might not disclose the real reason for their hiring decisions, so employers, like credit-reporting agents, might also be required by law to disclose to job candidates the negative information in their digital files.)

For cryin' out loud. There won't anybody left to hire by the time these jerks get done "researching" their online history.

Sharron Angle

apologizes to all of us hobos and bums when she said we were "spoiled," yet she still peddles her silly right-wing nonsense about the economy.

Partial UI is already possible if one takes a part-time job or temporary job, just as long as the person continues to file weekly claims and is seeking regular full-time work; unfortunately in this economy, the most unskilled jobs generally have the most applicants, so drawing partial benefits doesn't apply to many people.

Nevada's Failure to Diversify Its Economy,

despite all of the talk I heard from business leaders for over 25 years that the state needed to get more varied business into the state and more emphasis put on higher education, is the reason the state is on life support and high unemployment is not going to be reversed for a long time to come.

What Often Happens to the Long-Term Jobless

is they find they are treated like lepers by friends, family, to say nothing of prospective employers. Since having a job is a part of so many people's identity, they feel worthless and depressed. Naturally having no job means their savings is tapped out, and when the unemployment insurance runs out, they face homelessness.

From the Pew study:

Long-term unemployment takes a much deeper toll than short-term unemployment on a person's finances, emotional well-being and career prospects, according to a new Pew Research Center survey that explores the attitudes and experiences of workers who have lost jobs during the Great Recession.

Of those who have experienced an unemployment spell of at least six months, more than four-in-ten (44%) report that the recession has caused "major changes" in their lives. By comparison, fewer than a third (31%) of those who had been unemployed less than six months and 20% of adults who were not unemployed during the recession say they were similarly affected.

News

Bobby Fischer may be dead, but like other notable or notorious people, his estate is being fought over by a variety of people.
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Michelle Rhee strikes again.

More:

George Parker, the president of the Washington Teachers’ Union, said the union would challenge the firings. The union has taken issue with the evaluation system Ms. Rhee used, saying that it was designed more for punishing teachers than helping them improve.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, also criticized the evaluation system and what she called the chancellor’s “destructive cycle of hire, fire, repeat.”

“Evaluations should include a component of student learning, of course, but there also has to be teacher development and support,” Ms. Weingarten said. “It can’t just be a ‘gotcha’ system, like the one in D.C.”

Age discrimination writ large.
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It's About Time Somebody

exposed the myths about unemployment and explain just what is meant by the "five workers for every opening" statement:

Today, however, unemployment insurance isn't providing breathing room -- it's providing a lifeline. There are now roughly five unemployed workers for every available job. That doesn't mean there are five applicants for every job opening; there may be scores of applications for every posting, as people apply for many jobs. Instead, it means there literally aren't jobs for four out of every five unemployed workers. This is why nearly half of the unemployed have been out of work for more than six months, the maximum duration of state unemployment benefits.

In this environment, allowing extended unemployment benefits to expire would indeed make workers who have exhausted their aid more desperate to find work. But it wouldn't make them more likely to find work, because the jobs don't exist.

After all, there are people who have exhausted ALL unemployment benefits and STILL can't find work in this economy.

As If We Need Any More Evidence

we are heading towards a double-dip recession, or, in my view, more of a depression.

Our leaders seem not to care as long as wages and living standards plunge to Indian or Chinese levels.

As an aside, Nevada congressman Dean Heller, he of the "hobo" remark fame, actually crossed party lines and voted to extend the deadline on federal unemployment extensions.

Heller must have gotten an earful from constituents.

Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the country.

Obituaries--Daniel Schorr

Famed broadcast journalist Daniel Schorr, 93, has died. He was with CBS News for many, many years and was prominent during the Watergate scandal.

Schorr later joined CNN and then NPR and remained active almost to the end. He died in a Washington hospital early today.

This is interesting:

Schorr was born in the Bronx in 1916, the son of Belorussian immigrants. He got his first scoop at age 12, when he saw the body of a woman who had jumped or fallen from the roof of his apartment building. He called the police — and the Bronx Home News, which paid him $5 for the information.

"It was the first time I'd ever seen a dead person in my life," he told NPR's Robert Siegel in a 2006 interview on All Things Considered marking Schorr's 90th birthday.

"Why didn't I react more emotionally to that? It was the essential journalist who manages to absent himself from the situation and simply report it without feeling it," Schorr said.

As the Video at the Link Makes Clear

Sharron Angle can run, but she can't hide.

Obituaries--Kenny Guinn

Some sad news: Former Nevada governor Kenny Guinn has died, apparently when he fell off a roof this morning and then had a heart attack.

Guinn was basically a nonpartisan Republican, but I remember the Nevada media relentlessly pushing his candidacy. I didn't care for the fact he was being engineered to win. Despite my initial misgivings, Guinn turned out to be an excellent governor who I will always hold in high regard when he went up against the nutjobs in his political party over the "tax" issue and stood up for the children and educators of Nevada.

Some background:

A native of Garland, Ark., Guinn served as superintendent of the Clark County School District from 1969 through 1978, when he was named an executive of Nevada Savings and Loan. In the late 1980s he was president and chairman of PriMerit Bank.

From 1988 through 1997, he held top positions at Southwest Gas, including roles as its chairman and CEO. He also served in 1994 and 1995 as interim president of UNLV.

In 2005 Guinn was named one of the five best governors in the country by Time magazine:

More often than not, incurring the wrath of your own party is a recipe for failure in politics. But in 2003, when Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn fought for the largest tax increase in state history, he not only infuriated his core Republican supporters but also sparked a bitter legal battle and a short-lived recall campaign against him. So it is a testament to Guinn's savvy and leadership that instead of being wounded in the civil war, he actually came out stronger, eventually broadening his public support and raising his standing among good-government watchdogs, TIME reports. "The state will be better off for years to come," says Alan Ehrenhalt, executive editor of Governing magazine. As Guinn enters the final year of his busy two terms in office, his signature achievement remains the $830 million tax hike, a still controversial but realistic step to shore up the overstretched budget of the nation's fastest-growing state. "People say, Well, growth ought to pay for growth but I'm here to tell you, it doesn't," says Guinn, 69.

Guinn held no elective office prior to being governor although he had extensive experience in executive and administrative positions in both private and public sectors. This background served him well as governor.

News

Lance Armstrong has hired a criminal defense attorney in connection with the federal case.

His days of glory are over, I'm afraid.
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A horrible bus crash in Fresno cost six people their lives while several others are injured.
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Another Ed Myth Bites the Dust

It seems that for all the talk about "national standards," there is no evidence they improve "achievement" in public education.

Facts won't stop the reformers, however. They aren't interested in them.

As Far as I am Concerned,

Shirley Sherrod should run for president in 2012 instead of Obama; she has a lot more courage and is far more willing to tell it like it is than the current president with his "kumbaya" politics. Evidently, "reaching across the aisle" also applies to believing any bunch of horseshit the opposition puts forward, even blatant lies as what happened to Sherrod.

Just What is This "Austerity" Nonsense?

In my own view, "austerity" is something governments bought and paid for by the rich elite force upon the masses to clean up the messes created by those elites.

The key is to con the masses that this is for "their own good."

While the Exhaustee Situation

was not addressed in the "extension" legislation passed by the Senate, Ed Schultz, as noted below, did mention there was a plan in the works to deal with them in separate legislation.

The fly in the ointment is Senator Reid and whether he is willing to allow the GOP to hang themselves if they decide to kill "cloture" or whatever that fucking stupid procedure hurdle is and invoke the nuclear option. If jobless Americans aren't worth bringing down the GOP, then I don't know what in the hell is.

It's desperate out here in the world. Until there are enough jobs to go around, aid has got to come.

More About EUI

from tonight's Ed Show:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here is Another Good Piece by Lois Weiner

explaining the neoliberal assault on public education, which is a worldwide phenomenon.

The Senate Finally Got Around

to pushing back the cutoff date for filing for extended unemployment benefits to November 30. The vote was 59 to 39, when not one damned person should have voted against it.

Not one thing for the exhaustees like yours truly, but it is rumored Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan is working on such a bill.

It is desperately needed out here.

In the meantime, I sent in my resumes to the person who handles the Experience Works program for people over 55 years of age. We will see if she gets back to me on this or if there is a long waiting list to be placed.

Ex Marks the Spot

Nevada governor Jim Gibbons and Dawn Gibbons have now been pronounced ex-husband and ex-wife.

The "ex-husband" status for Jimbo follows his "ex-governor" status after having been handily defeated in the GOP primary by ex-judge Brian Sandoval.

Details:

The divorce between Gov. Jim Gibbons and his estranged wife, Dawn, is final.

They met during a huring today to work out some details and Judge Frances Doherty signed the final divorce decree.

Gov. Gibbons said he was glad it was over, but said, "no one's happy about this.

"The only thing that makes me happy is I can stop paying attorney's fees," Gov. Gibbons said.

Dawn Gibbons said it will provide closure.

"I'm glad to start over and focus on the positive," she said after the hearing.

And they, and Nevadans, will live happily ever after.

Or at least Dawn will. She has moved to Las Vegas and has a new job.
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News

You'd think this now former government official would get this treatment under a Republican administration, but no: This poor woman gets forced out by a so-called Democratic one.

This case is REALLY stupid:

Shirley Sherrod, the former Georgia director of Rural Development, said she received a phone call from the USDA's deputy undersecretary Cheryl Cook on Monday while she was in a car. Cook told her that the White House wanted her to call it quits.

"They called me twice," Sherrod told the Associated Press. "The last time they asked me to pull over the side of the road and submit my resignation on my Blackberry, and that's what I did."

The controversy began after several media organizations posted a 38-second video clip of Sherrod speaking to a local Georgia chapter of the NAACP. She tells the group that she did not give a white farmer "the full force of what I could do" after he asked for assistance.

It is ridiculous and despicable what the Obama administration did to her. But not surprising when this administration goes out of its way to "court" the right, a segment of the population which wouldn't deign to have anything to do with it.

Glenn Greenwald has an excellent piece about this despicable episode.

Sherrod should get some kind of medal for enduring this garbage.

Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack plays the fall guy in this debacle and says he's sorry and Sherrod has a job if she wants it:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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If it is definitively proven Lance Armstrong has cheated all those years while competing in the Tour de France, it will be the biggest fall from grace of any athlete in history.

And evidence is growing that he did, but it won't be long before the whole truth gets out there.
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Bill Gates

is so heavily in bed with the Obama administration and its education "reform" proposals it should be more widely known to the public.

Unfortunately the media makes sure we know nothing about his involvement in the "standards" push, which in this case involves "college for all" except for the push outs these people create by putting in age-inappropriate curriculum.

Pensions, Etc.

As far as I am concerned, NO state should have EVER been allowed of "opt out" of Social Security to begin with. Maine is considering paying into Social Security for its public employees because of current pension problems.

These PERS pensions are "lucrative" only if you work many years in the system, at least twenty or thirty years; for most employees, they don't pay that much. And if you have paid into Social Security for many years but less than thirty, you get your Social Security reduced thanks to WEP/GPO.

This is not right. People who take state jobs in midlife are having their Social Security STOLEN merely because they opted for government service.

Here is a graphic of the states which "opt out" of Social Security:

"Stripped Down"

doesn't begin to describe the piss-poor excuse of a UI "extension" which it is obviously not.

We must pay for the fuck-up the banksters and other elites created; you know, "austerity" for the peons while the asshole rich do better than ever.

Tuesday’s vote was based largely on electoral calculations. Democrats hope that Obama’s attack on Republicans, whose opposition to the temporary extension was nearly unanimous, will resonate under conditions of the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression.

The longer-term prospects for those depending on extended jobless benefits remain grim. Whereas an earlier version of the bill would have expired at the end of the year, in the new Senate version benefits will dry up in November, soon after the midterm elections. With Republicans widely anticipated to add seats in the Senate, it is highly likely that extended jobless benefits will cease after the start of the 112th Congress next January, if not sooner.

The bill itself is a stripped-down version of similar “jobs bills” passed over the past two years. While it will retroactively reinstate benefits to millions of laid off workers, what has been left out of the legislation will result in increased hardship and poverty.

Third Worldom here we come.

Dean Baker

tries to explain why it is the unemployment situation is worse now than in the past and why our system of UI benefits is inadequate to deal with it.

I'd say, though, the real reason the situation is worse is because we offshored so many of our manufacturing and service jobs overseas, and there is little in the way left for workers in this country.

Our corporate "leaders" are so stupid, greedy, and shortsighted, they don't understand what Henry Ford knew a hundred years ago and that's you have to pay your workers enough money to buy the products you make. Nowadays we don't make anything; we undercut living standards here while the people making the things overseas don't make enough to buy the products. In the end the economy will collapse because nobody can buy what companies are selling.

News

For fun there are more tape recordings of the Mel and Oksana soap opera to divert one's attention from the idiotic Congress.
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Guess which college received more Pell Grants than anybody else? Hint: It was one of the colleges profiled in a recent PBS Frontline episode.
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The Worthless Senate

has just invoked cloture or whatever the parliamentary bullshit is called with regard to moving back cutoff dates for filing for extended unemployment benefits, which in turn is delaying the inevitable tossing out of millions of unemployed when the "extensions" run out in November, November 30 to be exact, right after the election. No way will millions of jobs be created by then.


And of course those of us who have exhausted ALL benefits are put on the back burner, at least right now.

People Are More Concerned

about WHAT Sharron Angle is rather than WHO she is, but that doesn't stop this paper trying to inform voters of her background.

She's completely in over her head.

Nothing, Of Course,

is on the table for exhaustees of extended UI, and I don't think anything should be passed if it is NOT addressed.

This article hinted about Titus and Berkley of Nevada supporting additional weeks, but so far nobody has written an amendment to do so.

We are so goddamned fucked.

Waiting until NOVEMBER to address those of us who have exhausted benefits, many for MONTHS, is a bunch of shit.

So Why Do Republicans in Congress

act like assholes when it comes to "extending" unemployment benefits?

Although this piece attempts to explain the dubious "got to be paid for" arguments by the Republicans, the fact is Republicans HATE UI because they really believe people who are on it are lazy bums who deserved to be thrown out of work.

It goes back to Reagan, who said to the effect UI was a "prepaid vacation for freeloaders."

link

As Many People Find Out,

the "retraining" game ends up helping the outfits doing the retraining than those who are being retrained.

Many if not most "graduates" are still unemployed after being retrained.

The problem is the lack of jobs, which our politicians have allowed to be sent to other countries.

Can This Candidate Be Saved?

Hell, no!

And I doubt it will even be close.

Well the President DID Use the Pulpit as a Bully Pulpit

this morning and hammered Congress over its inaction to pass extended unemployment benefits, including helping the exhaustees, one of whom was there with him who had been unemployed for two years.

Obama also mentioned the failure of Congress to pass anything because of "parliamentary maneuvers," important to note as the GOP is trying to hang the high unemployment rate on Democrats to help their chances in November.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Bill Gates' Involvement in Education

proves one thing, and that is just because somebody is spectacularly rich, it doesn't mean the person is an expert on everything or even anything other than having knowledge in a very narrow field and knowing how to game the system. Unfortunately, the Obama administration is full of Gates flunkies who are equally ignorant about schools and teaching.

I suspect the real reason Gates got into education in the first place is because he gets great big tax writeoffs for his "foundations."

News

The question I have regarding the current Armstrong/LeMond controversy is this: What is in it for Greg LeMond to make the allegations he is making against Lance Armstrong if they aren't true? He's putting himself up for worldwide ridicule if he's making up allegations. The "jealousy" explanation put forward by many Armstrong fans simply doesn't wash since LeMond will ALWAYS be remembered as the first American to win the Tour de France. He has his own claim to fame, so there is no reason at all why he would be jealous.

This is why I am becoming increasing convinced Armstrong hasn't been forthcoming regarding the long-rumored "doping" allegations.

link

We will find out soon enough what the real story is.
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Clue to Robert Reich

The country doesn't need more workers--it needs more jobs.

The country MUST reverse 30 years of economic policies which have created the mess we are in now. Thanks to "outsourcing" millions of service and manufacturing jobs, there is a massive jobs SHORTAGE.

Bring the jobs back and put in high tariffs so that companies will be disinclined to take jobs out of the country. After all, the "imports" we are getting for the most part are not REAL imports from other countries but are "American" products which greedy executives determined would be manufactured overseas for AMERICAN consumers and never mind the fact this ultimately undermines living standards here. If AMERICANS can no longer buy the products manufactured overseas for their consumption, then who the hell can? Certainly the Chinese cannot afford to buy the products they make for American/international companies.

The idiocy of our politicians and business "leaders" is astounding.

Interesting Reich made an appearance in the state with the nation's highest unemployment rate and continues to go through the charts with joblessness.

Hiring the Likes of Elizabeth Warren

to head a consumer agency is simply anathema to the neoliberals who have crafted the president's economic policy, such as it is, so she doesn't have a prayer in hell of being nominated, let alone being appointed.

She's very pro-consumer and outspoken over the current economic mess. We can't have anybody threatening the economic/corporate elite who control both political parties.

Although the WSWS NEVER Has a Good Thing to Say About a Democrat,

even one who pretends to be one, like our current president, the publication is right about his lukewarm support for extended UI benefits while giving the Wall Street banksters everything they want and more and in turn enrich themselves with their ill-gotten gains.

Obama’s embrace of populist demagogy is a transparent effort to position the Democrats for the upcoming congressional elections, under conditions where persistent long-term unemployment has discredited his administration and allowed the Republicans to posture, with equal falsity, as advocates of “job creation.” One news analysis described this cynical contest as follows: “As the election approaches, each party is battling to depict the other as more heartless.”

The disputes between the Democrats and Republicans, however bitter rhetorically, are arguments over what tactics and methods can best be used to serve the interests of the ruling elite. Both parties defend the profit system and the interests of the financial aristocracy, which are completely incompatible with the needs of working people.

Under conditions of the deepest slump since the Great Depression, the US government cannot carry out even the minimal measures to alleviate mass suffering that were commonplace in past recessions. According to one study, in previous recessions since World War II, extended unemployment benefits continued for an average of 23 months after the unemployment rate reached its peak. In the current slump, the peak official jobless rate was reached eight months ago—assuming that official unemployment figures accurately reflect reality—and extended benefits have already been cut off. And there is good reason to believe that the unemployment rate will resume its upward march in coming months, with the social “safety net” for the unemployed entirely shredded.

Both Obama’s speech and the response of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell—who claimed Sunday he would support extension of unemployment insurance if it was “paid for” by budget cuts elsewhere—suggest a certain nervousness in Washington over the growing social tensions in the United States.

It's out there, this outrage, and both parties better brace for it.

Obama

is going to try and pressure Congress to do the right thing by the unemployed, but right now I am not seeing ANYTHING addressing those of have exhausted all benefits despite hearing rumors people like Nevada's Shelley Berkley and Dina Titus planning to put in amendments to the legislation that would add more weeks.

Unless this is done, I really don't want to hear about the issue anymore. If Congress doesn't have the brains to understand this is not like other "recessions" and that the "trigger" of automatic benefits needs to be restored, they are totally hopeless.

In My Own Little Insulated World,

the unemployment rate is 100 percent, but in the "real" world, what is the true figure? Is it just under ten percent, is it 16 percent, is it 22 percent, or is it something else?

When we have the "official" figures, which are bad enough, politicians in their own little bubbles think the unemployment situation is better than it really is.

It's because the government uses a Nielson-type telephone survey instead of state figures on jobless claims or other data to arrive at the unemployment rate. And it is surely underestimating just how bad it is out here.

As the article notes, the official figures ignore those who have stopped looking for work after not being able to find it, and others are forced to take part-time jobs or jobs far below their skill set.

Obama is going to own this jobs mess despite not having started it because his priorities were completely screwed up wasting an entire year with health care "reform."

How Far the Mighty Have Fallen

Probably nobody is more deserving of condemnation and derision than actor Mel Gibson, and that goes beyond the latest accusations of domestic violence and those foul-mouthed tapes.

He's clearly got something wrong with him, but controversy has dogged this guy for years, as Rich notes:

Gibson is in such disgrace today that it’s hard to fathom all the fuss he and his biblical epic engendered back then. The commotion began with the revelation that his father, Hutton, was a prominent and vociferous Holocaust denier and that both father and son were proselytizers for a splinter sect of Roman Catholicism that rejected the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, including the lifting of the “Christ-killers” libel from the Jews. Jewish leaders and writers understandably worried that “The Passion” might be as anti-Semitic as the Passion plays of old. Gibson’s response was to hold publicity screenings for the right-wing media and political establishment, including a select Washington soiree attended by notables like Peggy Noonan, Kate O’Beirne and Linda Chavez. (The only nominal Jew admitted was Matt Drudge.) The attendees then used their various pulpits to assure the world that the movie was divine — and certainly nothing that should trouble Jews. “I can report it is free of anti-Semitism,” vouchsafed Robert Novak after his “private viewing.”

It was all downhill from there. Mel's saintly image soon became tarnished and now his reputation is truly shot to shit, thanks to his own words on tape.

The Republicans' Attitude Toward the Jobless

proves the doggerel or whatever right: Republicans whine and Republicans bitch/Our rich are too poor and our poor are too rich.

It's pretty hard to dig yourself out of a hole you find yourself into when it comes to keeping tax breaks for your wealthy benefactors and yourself while allowing millions to be cut off of UI.

The rich contribute to campaigns while the destitute do not. It's that simple with these simpletons.

News

The Armstrong-LeMond feud continues anew with Armstrong denying LeMond's allegations of a payoff.

Eventually we will know whether or not Armstrong cheated like so many other professional cyclists. The truth always comes out in the end.
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The Mail Tribune of Medford, Oregon, has the obit of the late John R.H. Holmes, mentioned over at the WordPress blog. He apparently moved to Reno shortly before he died at the age of 70, not 67 as reported earlier. I still thought he was older than that.

He was cremated and his ashes scattered in the Medford area.
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Investigations Into Teacher "Misconduct"

in Oregon are backlogged thanks to a bumper crop of complaints by parents and school districts. However, one has to say the "concern" over child abusers has gone way too far on applications; teachers dismissed on petty charges are lumped in with the criminals and child molesters and their careers are destroyed all because of one incompetent or vindictive principal.

It happens a lot more than you think.

Not That This Should Shock Anybody,

but the idea of cutting food stamps to pay for an education program instead of using money from the awful Race to the Top is par for the course for this neoliberal "Democratic" administration.

The story has been making the rounds on the ed blogs and message boards.

Pretty damned audacious, even from the Audacity of Hype.

While Congress Might Actually Get Off Its Ass

and pass the moving of the cutoff date for emergency unemployment compensation, those of us who have exhausted all benefits are despairing over how bad the job situation continues to be.

The piece has the usual horseshit arguments made by liars in the GOP and blue dogs about the "deficit" and that we unemployed are a bunch of lazy shits who are "gaming" the system by waiting until our benefits are about to run out before looking for work.

Well, even AmeriCorps "jobs," which are paid volunteer jobs, have scads of applicants. I applied for several last year in Nevada and in Oregon and received interviews, but this year I haven't even been called in for a single interview. Evidently a lot of new college grads or UI exhaustees have been going that route when all else fails.

Anyway here is a snip from the article of somebody who is near the end of her rope:

Ms. Sadler estimates that she used to spend six hours a day searching for work; now it is at least double that amount of time.

“There’s been times I’ve had to make myself stop looking for jobs because it was driving me nuts,” said Ms. Sadler, who admitted that she had contemplated suicide.

Every day has become a tense scramble, highlighting just how thin the governmental safety net for the jobless becomes beyond unemployment benefits. After Ms. Sadler was cut off from jobless benefits, she qualified for $200 a month in food stamps, but food stamps do not pay her bills, nor do they cover other necessities.

And did she try to retrain for a new "career"? Yes, she did, BUT:

Before she lost her job, she had enrolled in community college to study medical billing and coding. She finished the program in May, but most of the medical billing jobs she has applied for require experience. The framed certificate, and another one for data entry, on her bedroom wall are just decorations at this point.

Just like my two college degrees, now since I doubt I will ever be able to teach again (at least in public schools) thanks to that asshole principal from WCSD.

Now I have heard some rumors that there might be some fast tracking of a Tier V or additional weeks once the deadline "extensions" are passed, and I hope to hell it's true.

The Big Trend

over the past decades with abortion availability is that abortions were less and less performed in hospitals and more and more in clinics. This divorcing abortion from other medical procedures made it easier for the anti-abortion groups to harass, stalk, and even kill providers and marginalize the procedure even more from mainstream medicine.

Some doctors, though, want to change this state of affairs.

Because We Have a President

who either kowtows too much to the right (which would never support him anyway) in some misguided attempt to be "post-partisan" or to help Democrats get more voters or else he is a tool of the right wing, the presidency is actually more important than ever.

This linked piece is in response to this article by Eric Alterman which says in effect Obama ain't a progressive, but progressives or liberals or whatever you call them can't get elected president, at least for the time being.

The problem, of course, is not only is Obama not a progressive or a liberal, but one can make the argument he isn't and has never been a Democrat. What REAL Democrat would propose abolishing public education, continue with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, looking at destroying Social Security and Medicare, do little to jumpstart the economy, and pander to Wall Street? He is NOT making incremental changes to policies that would reach a liberal or "progressive" or Democratic Party goal but instead is dismantling programs that help people and were programs held dear to Democrats. What Obama has done is make the "Democratic" Party just a more benign version of the toxic neoliberalism spouted by Republicans.

This "Third Way" shit, which was nothing more than neoliberalism for "Democrats," should have died with the end of the Clinton presidency. Now it has returned, and the discredited and debunked political and economic philosophy is wrecking havoc everywhere it goes.

Don't say I didn't warn you about this guy when he first announced for the presidency. The way the corporate media were pushing him was a bad sign.

As If You Need Anymore Proof

the Middle Class is being exterminated out of existence in this country.

I squarely blame Congress for instigating this class war, and it's all based on ideology.

These are very interesting though not surprising statistics.

News

The Gulf Coast is a complete mess while BP claims to have capped the well causing the disaster.
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This Article

seeks to explain just why Congress is so fucked up in the head in dealing with the jobless and why they keep dragging their asses about extending UI.

The short explanation is it is an election year. At least that's the benign explanation. The not-so-benign is Congress doesn't care about the jobless.

When I Say It Takes an Act of God

to remove a principal, I mean an act of God against the principal himself or herself, not an act of God or negligence to somebody else.

To deny a principal tenure, let alone get rid of a principal, implies a superintendent or chancellor has screwed up with the promotion process.

And we know they never do anything wrong.

From the article:

Officials had to ask Maldonado-Rivera to agree to be put on two years' probation, which he did yesterday.

In a scathing report released Wednesday, Maldonado-Rivera acknowledged that he authorized a beach field trip as a reward for fund-raising.

He said he was unaware of deadly riptides at Long Beach and didn't realize there would be no lifeguards there that day. His attorney declined to comment.

The investigation also found students went on at least one other water-related trip without proper permission forms.

Was There Ever Any Doubt Harry Reid Would Be Re-elected?

When you have a number of well-placed Republicans in the state writing the Nevada Senate race off, you know Reid will win handily.

This latest poll, several months before the November election, shows Reid with a seven-point lead over opponent Sharron Angle.

I suspect Reid will win by 25 or 30 points when this is over with. Every time Angle opens her mouth, Reid increases his lead.

The Test

The Test

And if Congress is doing anything about it, it's aiding and abetting this dire situation.

Obama and Congress Fiddle

while America burns. And no more is it apparent than in their cruelty towards those of us who are jobless, especially those of us who are long-term jobless. They bitch and bellyache having to shell out crumbs for the long-term unemployed, even as their "legislation" really does nothing but move filing dates.

Meanwhile, Wall Street gets billions upon billions in bailouts, and corporate America sits on over a trillion dollars in cash, refusing to hire anybody.

WSWS:

More than three million unemployed workers will have lost jobless benefits by the end of this month. Some 2.5 million have already been cut off since the federal program for extending unemployment compensation beyond 26 weeks expired June 1.

An analysis published Thursday in USA Today estimated the number of those to be cut off by the end of July at 3 million. A separate study by the National Employment Law Project put the figure at 3.2 million.

Even if the long-delayed legislation is finally taken up July 20, the new date announced Wednesday by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, it would only authorize an extension of jobless benefits through the month of November. Once the congressional election is safely past, there is little doubt that both Democrats and Republicans will agree to terminate the extended benefits program altogether.

There is going to be major hell to pay.

Of Course This Opinion Piece

mentions "secrets" Republicans supposedly don't want voters to know, when in fact that may have once held true, they are now doing all of this in the open.

What IS new is so-called Democrats appeasing these people instead of taking the GOP to task for wrecking this economy.

The Prison of Ideas

The Prison of Ideas


This is a very good piece summarizing what in the hell has gone wrong with the Democratic Party over the past decades.

It used to be the party was the party of ideas rather than reaction. Now it's kumbaya politics and kissing the feet that kick them time and again.

Another Reason Teachers Should Protest

this billionaire asshole everywhere he goes: Now Gates wants to gut teacher pensions. After all, since public school teachers have "unions," when there are layoffs the last hired are the first to go under the despised "seniority" system.

Make sure older people have their pensions reduced, as mine was when I was wrongfully thrown out of Washoe County School District, and make sure the inexperienced bimbos get to keep their jobs, especially the ones willing to kiss ass to the principals, most of the latter having no business being in those jobs in the first place.

Corrupt administrators always find a way to get rid of teachers they don't like.

News

Roy Rogers' horse Trigger is worth much more dead than he ever was alive. A Nebraska television station paid $266,000 for the stuffed carcass.
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This post about how awful men are and especially how much light they make of Mel Gibson's absolutely vile, disgusting rants which were captured on tape by ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, is worth taking a look.

There really is a lot of hostility towards women, and it is not confined to Gibson's filth, either.

Also take a look at the comments following the Radar.com stories about Gibson.

The latest rant is here.
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A big fight has erupted between heirs to Lucille Ball and her second husband Gary Morton's widow over some of Ball's belongings going up for auction.

If I Were a Conspiracy Theorist,

I'd say major corporations are deliberately putting off hiring in order to tank the Democrats in the fall elections.

Well, stranger things have happened. Why not this?

Are the Unemployed

shit out of luck with this Congress? So far, it seems so. More from tonight's Ed Show:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

A Former Congressman

tries to talk some sense into the current Congress, but it's like pissing in the wind with that bunch.

The most these assholes will do is "extend" the filing date to the end of November, and then, when few of these people find jobs, cut 'em off just like they have done to me and millions of other exhaustees.

Who gives a shit, right, about the voters after the elections?

link

For Those Who Are Masochistic Enough

to want to know what zillionaire and education know-nothing Bill Gates had to say at the AFT convention in Seattle, here is a blow-by-blow account.

Again, why should anybody even care what this guy says, and why should anybody connected with public education take money from him and his wife?

There were some protests of the Gates appearance, however.

Video:



Anybody who would applaud this asshole is contributing to his or her career demise.

And still more about this debacle is here.

File Under "No Shit, Sherlock"

Of course the economy is going to continue to be weak, and expect voters not to be smart enough to connect the dots and will blame Democrats for the mess.

Then if the GOP gets a majority we will see impeachment shit, investigations, and all of that other shit while the nation careens to third worldom.

link

And if deflation is on the horizon, Katy bar the door.

Well, No Kidding

more people think the jobless situation is more important than the bogus "deficit" issue.

Republicans keep that bullshit they are more "fiscally responsible," when the facts show they clearly are not.

What they DO want though is a massive number of desperate people to drive down wages and salaries, a massive number enough to depress pay to Chinese-level wages.

News

Quite honestly I don't know why U.S. officials even bothered with the Polanski case given the questionable actions that happened over three decades ago by the court. It's pretty much indisputable that the judge presiding over the case, Laurence J. Rittenband, long since dead, engaged in behavior that cast doubt anything more could have been done legally.

Rittenband was a starstruck judge, and his attempt to make an "example" out of Polanski guaranteed this case was a loser for any district attorney dumb enough to pursue the case decades later:

Experts say the Swiss raise a number of issues about how Polanski, 76, was treated three decades ago by the U.S. justice system — and those issues could easily be referenced if U.S. authorities ask another country to arrest and extradite Polanski.

"Switzerland apparently decided, 'We will not extradite someone back into this legal morass," said Robert Weisberg, a Stanford law professor. "It could be that the effort to bring him back to L.A. was hopeless from the start because, however carefully the extradition papers were prepared, they still would rest on the original proceedings of 1978, which contained a host of perhaps irresolvable issues."

Loyola Law professor Stan Goldman agreed, saying U.S. authorities would need address these questions if they are serious about going forward with additional extradition efforts against the director.

It's time to let the damned thing go and focus on more pressing matters.
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Yes, I heard Mel Gibson's foul-mouthed, vile rants against his now former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, just as the rest of the world has. It isn't anything to make light of, and I hope Gibson's career is on the ropes, at least in the near term. But some people do make light of this and other awful events, and I guess there is an explanation for it.

In my view the guy has clearly "lost it" if he ever had it in the first place.
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God Almighty has endorsed Nevada's resident shithouse rat Sharron Angle for the United States Senate.
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As far as I am concerned, the executive director of Hot August Nights should have been fired as soon as the story was made public about HAN signing a six-year agreement to hold part of the event in Long Beach.

HAN was Nevada-created, period.
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