Many People Wrote Off the GOP

after Obama's win in 2008, but they were sadly mistaken given the fact Obama is weak and too willing to work with the people from the political party of which he REALLY belongs.

Because of Obama's ineptitude and sellout of Wall Street interests, the GOP has returned from the dead.

Thomas Frank:

One of the problems with liberalism in this country is that it’s headquartered in Washington and its leaders are a very comfortable class of people. Washington is one of the richest cities in the country, maybe the richest. It’s not a place that feels the crisis, that feels the economic downturn. By and large, the real estate market stayed OK. The city continued to boom. The contracts continued to flow. What we’re talking about here is the failure of modern liberalism. At one time it was a movement of working-class people. The idea that liberals wouldn’t feel economic pain was ridiculous. That’s who liberals were. No more.

They belong to the same economic class as the GOP officials. The rich have bought off the rich politicians.

I Am All in Favor of Sacking NCLB,

if the alternative is not a worse policy such as Race to the Top.

RTTT is far, far worse than NCLB and its ludicrous requirements of "proficiency" of ALL students by 2014 because it undercuts all teacher protections in the name of "reform" and does nothing to correct the underlying problems facing education--actually society--at all.

At least one principal agrees with me.

Not That It Will Do Any Good,

but there is going to be a "vigil" or some damned thing protesting the bigwigs at KGO and Cumulus Media for changing the venerable San Francisco talk show radio station to an all-news one, with the exception of lightweight and overpaid host Ronn Owens. I have no doubt Owens will be gone when his contract is up in a couple of years.

There is even an "Occupy KGO" Facebook page.

I just think it is a complete waste of time. Some of the hosts have found work elsewhere.

Etc.

If the poll is at all accurate, the American people really ARE that stupid as to think Obama is an "extremist," which translated means "extremist liberal." Unbelievable, but decades of media propaganda have gotten us to this dismal state of affairs.
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Space heaters are often used by poor individuals and families who can't afford the outrageous heating bills, thus subjecting themselves to possible injury and death from fires:

A house fire that killed three people in Columbus, Ohio the night of Christmas Eve was caused by a space heater, used by the family after gas was cut off from their home. The heater ignited the mattress they were sleeping on.

Another Crime Involving a Female Killer,

the Sisco-Harkness double murder, is scheduled to begin next March 5 and run for three weeks.

In a case compared to Betty Broderick's, Dana Chandler is accused of gunning down her ex-husband and his fiancee in 2002 while asleep in their bed by breaking into the fiancee's Topeka townhouse. The families of both victims knew Chandler was the killer, but screw-ups in the police investigation early on meant it would be years and years before Chandler would be arrested. She was arrested this past July in Duncan, Oklahoma.

The late Harold Dow reported on this case for 48 Hours back in 2009:

One of the Murder Cases I Have Been Following

is the one involving former Yreka, California, resident Jodi Arias, accused in the June 2008 shooting and stabbing death of her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander. There have been delays and delays, with the latest scheduled trial date set for February 1 and likely to be pushed back another year at least. She has been having trouble with her defense; she should have simply pleaded insanity and been done with it. Now she faces a possible death sentence, which translated means she will likely die in prison of old age considered capital punishment is such a travesty.

There is no doubt at all she committed the crime. Unlike Alexander's friends, I do hold him responsible in a way because he encouraged her by wanting to use her for sex, yet he didn't think she was suitable enough to be a possible wife. Arias was unstable to be sure, but Alexander was playing with fire. Of course he didn't deserve the hideous death, but his tragedy is a cautionary tale to guys who think they can use and discard women like so much dirty Kleenex.

Arias has some defenders:

On Tuesday, Arias' younger sister, Angela Arias, said her sister's statements during the "48 Hours" interview were lies, and that Alexander's death was an act of self-defense on her sister's part during an incidence of domestic violence.

"She was not under oath when she spoke on TV and yes, she lied," Angela Arias wrote on Facebook after The Huffington Post sent her a request for comment. "But, it was because she was so in love with that man she did not want people to know what a monster he really was. She wanted everyone to believe that he was as amazing as they thought he was."

Nope. And no she's not "crazy like a fox" as Nancy Grace and others seem to think. That interview on 48 Hours, plus the recollection of several of Alexander's friends, show Arias has some serious mental problems that aren't faked.

link

I Don't Think So

Robert Reich seems to think Joe Biden will step aside as VP and Hillary Clinton will take his spot.

I don't think it will happen. I think HRC is done. Besides, there is a lot of bad blood between Obama and her husband to seem plausible.

Of course is Biden remains, he won't be likely to run for president himself in 2016, assuming Obama is actually re-elected. Then it would be a wide open race just as 2008 was.

Fundamental Shifts in the Economy

helped cause the massive unemployment during the Great Depression, and our stupid shift from manufacturing to service is at least in part why our economy stinks so bad right now:

The parallels between the story of the origin of the Great Depression and that of our Long Slump are strong. Back then we were moving from agriculture to manufacturing. Today we are moving from manufacturing to a service economy. The decline in manufacturing jobs has been dramatic—from about a third of the workforce 60 years ago to less than a tenth of it today. The pace has quickened markedly during the past decade. There are two reasons for the decline. One is greater productivity—the same dynamic that revolutionized agriculture and forced a majority of American farmers to look for work elsewhere. The other is globalization, which has sent millions of jobs overseas, to low-wage countries or those that have been investing more in infrastructure or technology. (As Greenwald has pointed out, most of the job loss in the 1990s was related to productivity increases, not to globalization.) Whatever the specific cause, the inevitable result is precisely the same as it was 80 years ago: a decline in income and jobs. The millions of jobless former factory workers once employed in cities such as Youngstown and Birmingham and Gary and Detroit are the modern-day equivalent of the Depression’s doomed farmers.

"Globalization" was a deliberate attempt by the neolibs to destroy living standards in the United States.

The article is pretty good at drawing parallels between now and the Great Depression.

Video of the Day

Dumbassed cops is right:



It's a miracle the jogger is okay and not dead.

The Reason Our Washington Politicians in Both Political Parties

care not one whit about the vast numbers of people suffering economically these days lies in their own shell of obscene wealth:

While the Senate has long been known as a millionaires’ club, the transformation of the House is a relatively recent phenomenon. The median net worth of members of the House of Representatives, excluding home equity, has more than doubled over the last 25 years, from $280,000 in 1984 to $725,000 in 2009 in inflation-adjusted dollars. During that same period, the median net worth of an American family fell from $20,600 to $20,500.

Both the Washington Post and the New York Times gave front-page treatment to the data, derived from figures collected by the Center for Responsive Politics. The articles reflect nervousness in the corporate-controlled media over the degree to which the rising personal wealth of members of Congress is discrediting the institution.

Washington politicians and policies are the problem in this country.

Doo-Doo Economics

Yes, Virginia, it is true almost half of America lives in or near poverty.

And with that miserable statistic comes the inescapable fact our politicians WANT it that way.

So total taxes for the poorest 50% are 24 percent of their incomes (3% + 10% + 9% + 2%), as compared to 29 percent for the richest 1% (23% + 5% + 2% - 1%).

Other significant expenses for low-income people, based on the most conservative estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau, the National Center for Children in Poverty, the Carsey Institute, and the Economic Policy Institute, include food (10%), housing (27%), transportation (6%), health care (5%), child care (8%), and household expenditures (5%). Expenses for insurance and savings and entertainment, although important to most households, are not being included here.

It's a major scandal, and nothing will be done about it.

Etc.

Sorry if I don't believe this mother's claim about her "autistic" kid being "stuffed" in a duffel bag.

She's hankering for a lawyer to take her case so she can cash in.
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Republicans are guaranteed a Senate seat in Nebraska next year since so-called "Democrat" Ben Nelson is hanging it up.

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Obituary: Cheetah the chimpanzee who was featured in a number of Tarzan films during the Hollywood Golden Age, died of kidney failure during the week of December 19. He was estimated to be somewhere in his eighties.
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Idiot teacher doesn't have a leg to stand on. Private schools, especially the religious ones, can do pretty much what they want and fire teachers who don't subscribe to their beliefs.

She should try to work in public schools and get treated even worse.

The Media Should Be Held Responsible

for making Ron Paul such a phenomenon by refusing to take this guy seriously and not even looking at his background. Now that this crackpot has made headway in the race for the Republican nomination, his words or the words from his newsletter are coming back to haunt him. This is at least four years later than it should have been.

In short, he should have been vetted and then marginalized.

Just consider the current uproar over the racist political newsletters that were sent out under Paul’s name (and used to fund his political activities) in the early 1990s. The story is hardly new, but to many voters it feels new because — like Paul himself — it’s been ignored by the press all year.

This is a perk of being dismissed by the press as a fringe figure. In 1996, when he made his comeback bid for a House seat in Texas, Paul briefly had to confront the newsletters, but once he was elected and became an entrenched incumbent, the issue was largely dropped by the local press (old news) and ignored by the national media, who saw him as just a gadfly backbencher. And when he ran for president in 2008, it didn’t come up until very late in the cycle, when some staggering fundraising numbers briefly compelled the political world to notice him. But almost as soon as it exploded back then, the story went away, with the media regarding Paul’s relatively weak early primary showings as proof that his base of support was very loud and very narrow and that he wasn’t worth taking seriously.

And that, more or less, was how the media treated Paul’s current campaign until the past few weeks.

Paul shouldn't have been elected to the House, let alone be taken seriously at all as a presidential candidate. He should have had just as much chance of being president as yours truly.

"The American Dream" Has Always Been a Lie

for many people in this country, many of whom are people of color, but at least for a significant portion of the population (union families, college-educated families), the dream was a reality. This was true particularly in the post-WW II era of 1945-1975. However, thanks to the rise of neoliberalism in this country, the dream is turning into a cruel hoax.

The two main ladders of upward mobility, unions and college degrees, are either being dismantled or being put increasingly out of reach for more and more people. Now they are about to face the reality millions face in third world countries:

More than anything else, class now determines Americans' fates. The old inequalities — racism, sexism, homophobia — are increasingly antiquated [fig. 1]. Women are threatening to overwhelm men in the workplace, and the utter collapse of the black lower middle class in the age of Obama — a catastrophe for the African-American community — has little to do with prejudice and everything to do with brute economics. Who wins and who loses has become simplified, purified: those who own and those who don't. Meanwhile Great Britain, the source of the class system, has returned, plain and simple, to its old aristocratic masters [fig. 2]. Reverting to type, the overlords and the underclass seem little removed from their eighteenth-century predecessors. The overlords preach shared sacrifice from their palaces and the underclass riots [fig. 3] and the middle classes quietly judge. Everybody knows where he stands.

Not in America. In the United States, the emerging aristocracy remains staunchly convinced that it is not an aristocracy, that it's the result of hard work and talent. The permanent working poor refuse to accept that their poverty is permanent. The class system is clandestine.

link

The ultimate goal of neoliberalism/economic libertarianism is to install an aristocracy by means of public policy. The final nail in the coffin is when or if the estate tax is completely repealed.

Most people are still in the dark over what is going on. When there are fuel and food shortages, THAT is when people will finally take to the streets and riot. The "occupy movement" was destined to fail because our would-be aristocrats could easily co-opt or shut them down thanks in large part to the movement's nonviolent nature.

The Portland Public School Teachers Involved Here

made the mistake of assuming that the First Amendment applies to inviting speakers on campus, but they didn't realize principals can veto any and everything because they, not the teachers, are the dictators of their schools.

I mean that quite literally: principals, as you recall, aren't closely supervised and can do anything they want without any accountability.

Newsome apparently learned of the panel only after the occupiers had signed in with the school's secretary—and district procedure generally calls for principals to sign off when outside groups are brought in, especially to talk to kids younger than high school age, Shelby says, acknowledging the way it all went down was awkward.

"I would classify Occupy as a political group. If you're going to bring in an outside political group, that's okay," he says. "It'd be fine for them to talk to sixth- and seventh-graders. But I know if we had Occupy come in to talk to a middle school class and we didn't let parents know that was going to happen, there'd be a very good chance we'd have some very angry parents."

I asked him if the same rules would apply to a different political group, like, say, the Tea Party. "Absolutely."

Principals are really big on being notified of everything and being insistent on parental consent. This guy could be a good guy and not retaliate against the teachers; on the other hand, he could end up being a typical principal who is all about his image and to hell with the staff.

WSWS:

In the first week of December, a Portland Occupy education group invited by a sixth-grade teacher to speak to his class was ordered by a school official to leave shortly after their presentation had ended and discussion with the students had begun. A petition circulated to protest their removal and defend academic freedom has garnered wide support.

Fools. Unlike postsecondary schools, there is NO such thing as "academic freedom" in K-12 education. Teachers have to do what they are told--or else.

Any protest is likely to fail.

Etc.

A fugitive pastor is on the run, and authorities are looking for him.
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Well, the House Republicans decided to not look so bad against the jobless and Congress passed a two-month "extension" of UI, which of course isn't an extension at all but just a moving back of the filing dates.

Yep:

The measure, however, does nothing to create jobs or provide serious relief for millions of Americans who are being driven into poverty by mass unemployment and the indifference of the Obama administration and the entire political system to their plight. The very fact that it has become almost impossible to extend benefits to millions of long-term unemployed workers, in the midst of the worst crisis since the Great Depression, demonstrates the de facto dictatorship wielded by the financial oligarchy.

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Sick, sick, sick:

A Sacramento parolee convicted of sexually assaulting a chihuahua was sentenced this week to 10 years in prison and must now register as a sex offender.

The Test of the Year

If you are paying any attention at all to what is happening under the guise of education "reform," you too could score a 100 percent on it.

It's pretty scary stuff if you are at all concerned about the future of this country, and the problem is neither political party gives a damn about children, parents, or schools.

It's whatever nonsense Gates or Broad wants, not what is needed.

What's Christmas Without Bing?

I posted this clip several years ago when I was more in a Christmas mood than I am right now.

Sadly, Bing Crosby isn't remembered much these days, except for Christmas, one of the two things this performer was most closely associated with (apart from his career). The other was golf. Everybody, at least those who were around during the obituary banner year of 1977, knows how Crosby died, and that was of a heart attack in Spain following a round of golf (which he won).

It didn't help matters his disgruntled son Gary penned a book attacking his father as a nasty tyrant in Going My Own Way, turning him into a male version of Joan Crawford. Not that I fully believe the story, just as I mostly disbelieve the Joan Crawford "Mommie Dearest" caricature. Crosby was apparently strict with the kids from his first marriage, and Gary wasn't the easiest kid to raise, so there are two sides to this story. However, the last surviving son from Bing's first marriage, Phillip (he died several years ago), tended to discount the allegations made by his brother:

My dad was not the monster my lying brother said he was; he was strict, but my father never beat us black and blue, and my brother Gary was a vicious, no-good liar for saying so. I have nothing but fond memories of Dad, going to studios with him, family vacations at our cabin in Idaho, boating and fishing with him. To my dying day, I'll hate Gary for dragging Dad's name through the mud. He wrote Going My Own Way out of greed. He wanted to make money and knew that humiliating our father and blackening his name was the only way he could do it. He knew it would generate a lot of publicity. That was the only way he could get his ugly, no-talent face on television and in the newspapers. My dad was my hero. I loved him very much. He loved all of us too, including Gary. He was a great father.

I am sure envy played a role, just as I believed it played a role with Christina Crawford trashing her mother.

Anyway, Bing died a few weeks after Elvis, and eventually his widow Kathryn Grant Crosby remarried in 2000. Tragically it didn't end happily ever after. Both were in a serious auto accident over a year ago and her second husband was killed in the crash. He was 85 years old. One of her homes is located in Genoa, Nevada.

I thought I'd share those tidbits about Crosby.

Because the GOP Has Offered the Crappiest Field in Memory,

Iowa voters or would-be caucus goers have a hell of a decision to make.

This political promiscuity is a little embarrassing, for people who picture themselves in a state-sized Norman Rockwell painting: America’s sober, decisive First Voters. Now, many Iowans can’t stop changing their minds.

They are ready-made for Mitt Romney, but they don't know it yet.

Unlike Iowa, whereby voters have a rich sort of embarrassments, Virginia doesn't even get a choice on which idiot to pick:

After a scramble to gather the requisite number of signatures in his homestate, Newt Gingrich failed to make it on the ballot in the state of Virginia.
Texas Governor Rick Perry also failed to submit enough signatures to qualify for the Virginia ballot. Perry’s spokesman Ray Sullivan released a statement indicating that the campaign plans to review Virginia state law and decide whether or not to challenge the Virginia GOP’s ruling.

It makes one think the GOP is trying to deliberately throw the election.

Call Me a Cynic,

but the only reason principals are complaining about RTTT is because THEY would have to be held accountable:

NYS Teacher Evaluation Controversy from Rockville Centre Schools on Vimeo.

When it was only teachers who were subject to reforms, principals were just fine with them because then they could abuse their power even more than they already do, but when THEY were subject to actually being fired, they decided to raise a stink.

Can't have that. Principals are simply benevolent or malevolent dictators of their schools depending on their mood or temperament. How dare anybody challenge their sovereignty?

Not That Ron Paul Ever Had a Shot in the First Place,

but his latest "hits" seem to seal the deal.

Romney, for all his flaws and flip-flops, seems more and more a sure thing for the GOP nomination.

Everybody Knows Christmas Is Pagan in Origin,

and that the Christians stole the winter solstice celebration from the Druids or whoever it was, but in the end, who cares?

If you're religious, celebrate the Christian end of it, but if you're a born-again pagan like yours truly, enjoy the lights, Christmas trees, gifts, carols, and old movies.

Big deal.

Obituaries

The NYT decided to do something a little different this year regarding its annual
"greatest obituary hits" issue.

This past year was a big year for obituary writers. We started seeing more and more of the television icons of the past pass from the scene, which should make those of us who remember them feel just a wee bit older.

It wasn't 1977, a banner year for obit writers (including deaths of icons Elvis, Bing Crosby, Charlie Chaplin, Groucho Marx, and Joan Crawford just for starters), but it'll do.

Still Another Flattering Obituary of Christopher Hitchens

is up, this one from Black Agenda Report. It's good:

The bizarre levels of admiration on display for this man are symptomatic of a much larger problem. Once again we see that the endless aggression is not really opposed by most Americans, and they prove it by lionizing the likes of the late Hitchens. They too think that powerful white people have the right to lay waste to entire regions of the world and to the human beings within them. In fact, they don’t think that non-white people are really human beings with the rights they assume for themselves.

Hitchens may have been in the minority in publicly proclaiming the rightness of mass murder but that doesn’t mean he was alone. Now that he has passed away, it is clear that his ideas were loved by many people, who also hearken back to a time when white was openly declared right, and with ample doses of “vim and gusto” too.

Etc.

At least some states are doing what Congress refuses to do and that is raise the minimum wage.

Oregon's is going up to I think $8.80 an hour.

link
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This Christmas will be far from merry for many, many people in this country because Washington wants people to suffer.

According to a study by the McKinsey consulting firm, it took six months for the US economy to return to pre-recession job levels after the 1982 recession. After the 1991 recession, the recovery in jobs required 15 months. After the 2001 recession, it took 39 months.

Some 48 months have already passed since the current slump in the labor market began, and there are six million fewer people employed than in December 2007. McKinsey initially forecast that it would take 60 months before jobs regained the level of 2007, but at the current level of job creation, it would take 78 months to reach the level of 146 million workers employed before the onset of the recession—assuming that there is no further deepening of the economic slump.

Bad tidings, indeed.

No Fighting Over a Computer Now

I finally got my computer up and running at my brother's, thanks to getting a router. We had to get help for it by calling the help desk, but at least now there will be no more "fighting" over using his computer. I can also go back to uploading videos and stuff to my iPod where I was limited on my brother's.

That is why I didn't post earlier today. I also got some cheapassed computer stand for about twenty bucks which I put together. It does the job even though there isn't enough room on the keyboard tray for a mouse. Oh, well. You have to make do with whatever is dealt ya.

When Parasites Take Too Much Blood,

they can destroy their hosts, and when the economic elite takes too much money and resources, they destroy entire societies.

These elites bitch and moan they don't have enough money, money they didn't really earn in the first place but got "their" money through generous tax breaks, bribery of politicians, inheritance, or outright theft. They want the masses to pay even more so they can leech.

The end is near, but these filthy elites want to put off the inevitable as long as possible.

It may be time to bring back the guillotine.

Congress to the Unemployed: Drop Dead!

Our "elected" officials couldn't care less that UI benefits actually helps stimulate the economy. They'd rather the desperate simply die.

They WANT a class war because THEY are the ones creating it:

The president failed to add that there are officially 13.3 million unemployed in the US, of whom 5.7 million, or 43 percent, have been out of work for more than six months because of the callous indifference of his administration to their plight. In reality, there are millions more who should be counted among the ranks of the jobless, but they have simply given up hope, or never had any, of finding work.

The average duration of unemployment in the US is now 41 weeks, nearly three times what it was before the 2008 financial meltdown. Results of a survey released by the Kaiser Family Foundation this month found that only 22 percent of the long-term unemployed were currently receiving benefits.

Forty-one weeks is probably underestimating the problem. There are a lot of us out here who are UNDERemployed as well and can't get back on our feet financially.

The Wonders of Ratf*cking

You would think the GOP would have learned from Watergate all those years ago that what Donald Segretti memorably called "ratfucking" would go into disrepute. Not a chance. Even today there are websites allegedly catering to supporting an alternative to Obama, usually peddling Hillary Clinton for president despite her complete lack of interest in such an idea anymore.

Come to think of it, Obama's campaign and presidency are in and of themselves ratfucking operations.

Obituaries

Film director Yoshimitsu Morita, 81, of acute liver failure:

Morita's movies were distinctly Japanese, depicting the fragile beauty of the nation's human psyche and visual landscape while daringly poking fun at its ridiculous tendency for rigid bureaucracy and ritualistic hierarchy.

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Former Czech president Vaclav Havel, 75, died Sunday morning after a long illness.

A former chain-smoker who had a history of chronic respiratory problems dating back to his years in communist jails, Havel died Sunday morning at his weekend home in the northern Czech Republic, his assistant Sabina Tancevova said. His wife Dagmar and a nun who had been caring for him the last few months of his life were by his side, she said. He was 75.

"A great fighter for the freedom of nations and for democracy has died," said Lech Walesa, his fellow anti-communist activist who founded neighboring Poland's Solidarity movement. "His outstanding voice of wisdom will be missed."

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The Bankruptcy of School "Reform"

There are many problems with all of the efforts at school "privatization" and other idiotic "reforms" being peddled by people with mendacious motives. They take impoverished schools and school districts with high numbers of students from impoverished homes and use them as guinea pigs instead of attacking the problem with poverty.

Test scores, which don't mean anything anyway, won't ever be high because many of these students live in transient households that are not conducive to student learning. That won't stop the privatizers.

In the end, ALL public schools will be privatized because the "reformers" aren't about helping students achieve. It's about dismantling ALL public institutions because they are public.

link

It Takes "Democrats"

to destroy a program once created by Democrats to help people in need. That is because the party has been completely co-opted by neoliberal interests:

The Wyden-Ryan proposal makes further recommendations that would undermine Medicare. These include means testing, whereby “wealthier seniors would receive less help,” a fundamental change that would transform Medicare into a welfare-type program.

These proposals constitute yet another boondoggle for the insurance companies. Through the mechanism of “premium support,” funds would be taken from Medicare and handed over to the private insurers. The inevitable result would be substandard health care provision for America’s elderly and disabled population, resulting in rationing and denial of services, increased illness and suffering, and death.

Ron Wyden is such an idiot he doesn't remember that Medicare was put into existence BECAUSE private insurers WON'T pay for senior coverage. That is because seniors are the group most likely to need health care. They won't be able to afford coverage at all.

Idiot. Asshole. I will work to make sure he doesn't get another term.

But hey, you have a president who thinks Ronald Reagan was just such a great transformational president or whatever stupid term that is:



Our country is fucked.

Another Worthless Democerat

It is none other than Oregon's Ron Wyden, who seems to want to gut Medicare as much as any Republican:

What Wyden did was to give cover to the fundamental fallacy of right-wing attempts to dismantle Medicare: the claim that market competition is the key to reducing health care costs. We have overwhelming evidence on this — and it just isn’t true.

Just like neolib Obama.

Our Washington politicians are worthless and destructive.

Because of the Watering Down of Sanctions

that were once part of the FRCP Rule 11, bullshit lawsuits like the case where I was named were allowed to continue with the expressed purpose of getting an insurance payout. Congress was trying to change this, but so far nothing has happened.

The biggest outcry against the watering down of sanctions is of course by business, and then you have THAT problem of businesses wanting to get out of responsibility when they really DO screw up. But there ARE frivolous lawsuits and the attorneys who file them have NO sanctions against them whatsoever. If you are named as a defendant, there is NO way you can clear your name.

Frankennewt

A monster is on the loose in Washington and throughout the United States, but the Republican Party has decided to do very little about it:

In fact, Gingrich’s rise is the revenge of a Republican base that takes seriously the intense hostility to President Obama, the incendiary accusations against liberals and the Manichaean division of the world between an “us” and a “them” that his party has been peddling in the interest of electoral success.


The right-wing faithful knows Gingrich pioneered this style of politics, and they laugh at efforts to cast the former House speaker as something other than a “true conservative.” They know better.

The Good Die Very Young

Kim Jong-il, leader of North Korea and known as one of the world's most outstanding dictators, has died at the relatively young age of 69. Unlike Gadafy, he died of more or less natural causes. However, he is reported to have died on a train trip, so I expect the conspiracy theorists to be out in full force.

The Not-So-Good Die Not-So-Young

Another remembrance of the late and not really lamented though often demented Christopher Hitchens:

To come to the point, Christopher Hitchens could be a monster. He left his first wife while she was pregnant. He betrayed his close friend Sidney Blumenthal, who worked for the Clintons, by deposing, to a notary public no less, something that had been said at a private dinner – at the height of the Lewinsky business. One of Sidney's friends, coming to live in London, said: "The main problem with the British press is that Christopher Hitchens is insufficiently loathed."

A really nice guy, that Hitchens. He was a typical opportunist who had a small talent of stringing a series of words together that made some sense.

Just What I Have Been Waiting For

WSWS takes on the late, not-so-great, Christopher Hitchens. This is the best "appreciation" by far of this pundit:

Associated with the “state capitalist” International Socialists group in the UK in the 1970s and later the Nation magazine in the US, Hitchens was the sort of private school “leftist” that British society regularly turns out, essentially snobs and careerists, who ditch their former “comrades” as soon as the wind shifts or more tempting opportunities present themselves.

His autobiography is an exercise in shameless name-dropping and self-promotion. The journalist’s account of meeting Margaret Thatcher, newly elected Conservative Party leader, whose neo-colonial Malvinas War Hitchens would later endorse, is especially distasteful: “Almost as soon as we shook hands on immediate introduction, I felt that she [Thatcher] knew my name and perhaps connected it to the socialist weekly that had recently called her rather sexy [Hitchens’ own piece in the New Statesman]. While she struggled adorably with this moment of pretty confusion …” What is one to make of this?

In the late 1990s, by which time Hitchens had largely given up his leftist pretensions, the Washington Post bluntly portrayed the circles he belonged to in the US capital as “an elite subset of Washington society—the crowd of journalists, intellectuals, authors and policymakers, mostly in their thirties and forties, who regularly dine together and dine out on each other.” Another Post article at the time described “a rarefied world where the top pols and bureaucrats sup with the media and literary elite at exclusive dinner parties. It’s a cozy little club of confidential sources and off-the-record confidences.”

Man is this good. Too bad Hitchens isn't around to appreciate it.

Etc.

Liar Mike McQueary needs to quit while he is still behind.

He's not believable. There is no consistency, and the Paterno grand jury testimony, read into the record today, doesn't help matters one bit:

McQueary told him he'd seen Sandusky who was "fondling a young boy" in the showers of the Lasch Building.

"It was of sexual nature. I'm not sure exactly what it was. I didn't push Mike ... because he was obviously very upset," according to his testimony.

"I was in a little bit of a dilemma ... because Sandusky didn't work for me anymore," it continues.

Paterno testified that he told McQueary he would contact the appropriate people at Penn State.


"I have a tremendous amount of confidence in Mr. Curley, I thought he would handle it appropriately," according to testimony. "...I did tell Mike, you did what was right, you told me."

He continued to explain that he couldn't be precise about when he called athletic director
Tim Curley because it was a Saturday, and he probably didn't want to disrupt his weekend.

There is no evidence Paterno did anything wrong, and no evidence the superiors did, either, given what facts were presented to them at the time.

I guess a trial with everybody under oath will have to shake this thing clean.
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Now it is official, even if WCSD refuses to admit it: The phony baloney lawsuit was settled on November 21 and a stipulation for dismissal was filed with the court today.

I expressed outrage three days ago when I found out the lawyers had never notified me of a mediation date, and when I did find out and demanded to know how much money the plaintiffs got, the district had the goddamned gall to contact Google and force them to delete the email.

The Board of Trustees and the superintendent need to be run out of town on a rail. Without their approval, no settlement can occur.

Hunger and Homelessness Are Going Through the Roof

Obama is flitting around the country trying to pander to the 99 percent, but he is allowing and even encouraging more and more "austerity" measures to make the plight of the masses even worse. Of course this is designed to help his and Congress's real constituency, Wall Street.

The mayors’ report cites cuts in federal commodities and funding as a factor in the diminishing ability of emergency kitchens and food pantries to keep up with surging demand. It notes that 27 percent of the people needing emergency food assistance did not receive it.
The amount of food distributed has failed to keep pace. While demand for food aid shot up by 15 percent, the amount of food given out by cities increased by only 10 percent.

The inadequacy of resources has had a tangible effect: 86 percent of cities surveyed said that food pantries and emergency kitchens have had to reduce the amount of food given out to visitors. Eighty two percent said they had been forced to turn people away from food kitchens, and 68 percent said they had to tighten rules on how often families could visit food pantries.

Obituaries

It's time to take a look at some recent obituaries:


Acerbic writer and social critic Christopher Hitchens, only 62, has died after a bout with esophageal cancer. The direct cause was pneumonia.

Sometimes insightful, oftentimes vile, Hitchens was never dull.

Politically speaking, Hitchens was all over the map. His worst moments were his criticisms of Bill Clinton which seemed to be personally motivated. I suspect Hitchens was covering up for his envy of the then-president because Hitchens simply didn't have the looks or the brains Clinton did.

Envy is a powerful emotion, but it took Hitchens a long way in his career.

He was married to American writer Carol Blue and had three children.
_____

Ad writer Edie Stevenson, responsible for the 1970s ads for Life cereal featuring "Mikey," was 81 when she died.
_____

Film producer Bert Schneider, 78, died a few days ago. He helped produce the sixties road flick Easy Rider.
_____

Singer-songwriter Dobie Gray, 71, of complications from cancer surgery.

Mr. Gray, who sang and wrote songs in a range of styles including rhythm-and-blues, country, disco and gospel, had his first Top 20 hit in 1965 with “The ‘In’ Crowd,” an upbeat hymn to hipness that captured the social restlessness of the time. Written by Billy Page and based on an idea suggested by Mr. Gray, the song struck a special chord in the music industry and was performed by many others, including the Ramsey Lewis Trio (whose 1965 instrumental version was an even bigger hit than Mr. Gray’s), Petula Clark, the Mamas and the Papas, Lawrence Welk and the Chipmunks.

_____

Actor Alan Sues of Laugh-In fame, 85, of a heart atack.
_____

Blues guitarist Hubert Sumlin, 80, no cause given.

He is best remembered for his partnership with blues great Howlin' Wolf.
_____

Deliverance villain Bill McKinney, one of the main reasons I will never watch the film again, passed away early this month. He was 80 years old and suffered from the same cancer as Christopher Hitchens.

An adaptation of a James Dickey novel that was nominated for three Academy Awards, “Deliverance” tells the harrowing story of a canoe trip by a group of suburbanites in the backwoods of Georgia. Mr. McKinney’s character, identified in the script only as “Mountain Man,” and a companion capture two of the canoers, played by Jon Voight and Ned Beatty, at gunpoint. The mountain man then makes Mr. Beatty strip to his briefs and repeatedly shouts at him to “squeal like a pig.” Letting out squeals of his own, he sodomizes him. Burt Reynolds, playing another man on the trip, happens upon the scene and shoots Mr. McKinney with an arrow before he and his accomplice can attack Mr. Voight’s character as well.

Sometimes when you are bumped off in films, you are better known than if you had played some heroic part.

I Totally Agree With the Idea

there should be some kind of legal defense foundation for teachers who face termination charges because the current system leaves way too much to be desired. Laws are flouted by school districts in their attempts to terminate teachers on trumped-up or bogus charges, and unions are all too often in cahoots with the school districts in denying teachers their TRUE due process rights.

Actually an organization like this should have come into existence years ago; unfortunately, the trend now is to completely do away with teacher rights.

An Anniversary to Note

Today marks the ninth anniversary of this blog. This longevity can be attributed to either sheer perseverance or from sheer boredom of somebody who has refused to get a life.

The stats are impressive: the total post count is nearly 39,000 posts and millions of words including my own words and copy-and-paste. The readership level is much less impressive, seldom rising above a couple of hundred hits a day if one believes in Site Meter stats, which I don't because it undercounts and even deletes unique visitors or page views. I gave up on it a long, long time ago. That's why my readership stats are no longer publicly available. Because I wasn't a traditional liberal asskisser and wouldn't link to the big blogs and such in the early days when blogging started to catch fire, my readership never went up to the level it probably deserved, and therefore I couldn't make a living at blogging like ol' Kos and a few of the others.

That's the way it is. I never was an asskisser, and I have paid for it in a variety of ways.

This blog will likely make it to next December 15, if I make it that long.

Note: The archives show my first post was on December 17, 2002, but I know that the archives had screwed up some time back. My very first post was about Trent Lott and why I thought he should stay in the Senate.

The 48 Percenters

Those lucky duckies who are just bleeding the beleaguered job-creating one percent dry are now at 48 percent of the population because they fall near, at, or below the poverty line.

The stats are from the Census Bureau:

About 97.3 million Americans fall into a low-income category, commonly defined as those earning between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level, based on a new supplemental measure by the Census Bureau that is designed to provide a fuller picture of poverty. Together with the 49.1 million who fall below the poverty line and are counted as poor, they number 146.4 million, or 48 percent of the U.S. population. That's up by 4 million from 2009, the earliest numbers for the newly developed poverty measure.

The new measure of poverty takes into account medical, commuting and other living costs. Doing that helped push the number of people below 200 percent of the poverty level up from 104 million, or 1 in 3 Americans, that was officially reported in September.

Broken down by age, children were most likely to be poor or low-income — about 57 percent — followed by seniors over 65. By race and ethnicity, Hispanics topped the list at 73 percent, followed by blacks, Asians and non-Hispanic whites.

The neolibs will argue that the U.S. isn't a third world country because few people are begging in the streets like they do in Calcutta or Kolkata or whatever in the hell it is called now (I am SO sick of all of this changing names of cities and countries--I can't even keep up with it anymore).

Gotta lower the living standards even more.

Etc.

Supposedly John Edwards has decided to turn his life over completely to a sociopath and wants her to move into the house he once shared with his late estranged wife Elizabeth. As if he couldn't further embarrass himself and his family.

He had the right political message, but similar themes are being spouted by Elizabeth Warren. Warren better not have any scandals in her closet, for I intend to write her name in for president on next year's ballot.
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Novelist and convicted killer Michael Peterson has just walked out of jail thanks to a legal technicality. His murder conviction was thrown out by a judge because an expert witness for the prosecution has turned out to be a crook.

That may be true, but there are others who say his wife didn't die in any "accident" down a flight of stairs. We also know about the death of a one-time lady friend of us who "coincidentally" died down a flight of stairs in Germany.

Call me unimpressed. I hope he is sent back to prison. He might not be, though.

Obama DOES Deserve

to be forced to step down ala LBJ if for no other reason than he has surrounded himself with shady Chicago pols and Robert Rubin retreads from the Clinton administration. Obama is more concerned with polishing his image than in governing. No wonder his administration is a disaster.

Because Obama is the choice of the Democratic Party fundraisers, there is virtually no chance of somebody coming out of the woodwork to challenge him in the primaries. I for one am truly fearful of another Obama term, for the Democratic Party will capitulate and the GOP will get any and everything it wants anyway.

At least with a President Newt or a President Mitt the Democratic Party would act like an opposition party.

You Know the GOP Has Gone Off the Deep End

when some of the power brokers believe Newt Gingrich isn't "conservative" enough, i.e., isn't fascistic enough.

Here is a candidate who waxed eloquently about bringing back orphanages and abolishing child labor laws, and because he hasn't yet promoted outright slavery, he's not making the grade.

The GOP may be trying to put their most electable candidate, or the one who has more of a chance than Huntsman of getting both the nomination and the presidency, Mitt Romney, on the back burner in yet another quest to throw the election to Obama. Or else Romney is playing rope-a-dope, letting all of the other candidates crash and burn before he gets the nomination himself.

You Can't Lose What You Don't Have

It has been speculated for years our friend Newt has been suffering from some kind of mental problem, especially regarding those delusions of grandiosity, but one could say the same for Obama or for any other politician.

Seriously, I did read some article many years ago, when he was Speaker of the House or just following his tenure, where it was speculated by the author he had bipolar or some similar disorder.

It really isn't anything to make light of if he had something wrong. I am just worried about his POLITICS, which can be summed up as having the only cause as himself.

This article, by Gail Sheehy and written back in 1995 for Vanity Fair, is the one I was thinking of regarding speculation of possible mental illness. It has some interesting insights into Newt and his family:

Dr. Frederick Goodwin, director of the Center on Neuroscience, Behavior and Society at the George Washington University Medical Center and a national authority on manic-depression, made no attempt to diagnose Newt Gingrich but did provide some illumination on the Speaker's possible genetic inheritance. "There is interesting new data on first-degree relatives," he says. "It sounds like he has one first-degree relative with manic-depressive illness, his mother, and at least one second-degree [his maternal grandmother, who "wiped out"]. What generally gets transmitted in offspring that don't have the illness itself is the drive and creativity...the positive aspects without the negative aspects, the silver lining. First-degree relatives of manic depressives often become successful...Gingrich's quickness, his ability to pick things up quickly, are not inconsistent with what the studies of first-degree relatives of manic-depressives have shown."

Some children of manic depressives exhibit traits of a less severe form of mania known as hypomania. Another expert, a psychiatrist at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, elaborates on hypomania, describing it as a state below mania. "There are people who are close to manic but don't become flamboyantly manic...You can call it a biochemical imbalance. It is part of the consideration of manic-depressive illness today. I have seen it in families." According to this expert, grandiosity is a frequent symptom of this condition. "And in Gingrich, his upbringing and the hypomanic flair of the personality might create a double reason for his being grandiose because he's trying to overcome the feeling of tremendous inferiority."

In Manic Depressive Illness, which Goodwin co-authored with Kay Redfield Jamison, he describes the usual mood in hypomania as "ebullient, self-confident, and exalted, but with an irritable underpinning." He goes on to quote earlier studies that characterizes the thinking of a person in a hypomanic state as "flighty. He jumps from one subject to another, and cannot adhere to anything." Another study describes the role of hypomania and extroversion in some leaders, noting behavior that is "often intolerant and unyielding...given to impulsive action...full of energy and at the same time full of strong purpose and burning conviction...the outcry attracts other extroverts and soon there assembles a group of dominant men who unite in a common cause."

Etc.

As expected, the GOP is waging further war on the unemployed.
_____

Paul Krugman announced the obvious to anybody who has been paying attention at all.
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Lots of eggs are going to be on the faces of so-called journalists and commentators as the truth starts coming out of the Penn State mess.

If Joe Paterno lives long enough, he could die even richer from all of the lawsuits he could file against the media.

The longer the scandal drags on, the less there appears to be to it.

Obama Should Go Back to the University of Chicago

since he has an arrogant professor-type attitude and isn't cut out for the presidency anyway.

Early in his administration, President/Professor Obama repeatedly referred to “teaching moments.” He would admonish staff, members of Congress and the public, in speeches and in private, about what they could learn from him. Rather than the ideological or corrupt “I’m above the law” attitudes of some past administrations, President Obama projected an arrogant “I’m right, you’re wrong” demeanor that alienated many potential allies. Furthermore, the president concentrated power within the White House, leaving Cabinet members with no other option but to dutifully carry out policies with which they had limited input in crafting and might very well disagree. From my experience, this was especially true in the environmental, resources, housing and employment areas. Not by coincidence, these areas have also been responsible for much of the president’s harshest critiques.

I think Obama is a legend in his own mind. The rest of the public has long since ditched the Hyde Park messiah hype.

Sign of the Times

The percentage of adults in the United States who are currently married is at an all-time low.

It is not surprising given the worsening economic climate.

Still, the average age of first marriage is still too young, with 26.5 for women and 28.7 for men although a far cry from the fifties and early sixties.

Outrage Upon Outrage

Our legal system, including and especially the civil system, which can be easily gamed if you have unscrupulous lawyers and milquetoast insurance adjusters, is completely and totally broken.

I am so pissed off. It appears the mom got her little payout; hence, why my part of the case is being dismissed. When the board or whoever decides to approve the settlement, the judge will end the case and then you know what will happen. I will be tarred and feathered like Joe Paterno over nothing, and I can do absolutely nothing about it.

I filed a complaint with the State Bar of Nevada:

I want to file a complaint against three lawyers who have been counsel in a case which has either been settled out of court or is about to be settled out of court. The case is _____ filed in U.S. District Court. I was representing myself in this matter, and the lawyers involved in this case on both sides, Thomas P. Beko (Bar number 2653) for the plaintiffs, and Debra O. Waggoner (Bar number 5808) and C. Robert Cox (Bar number 1780) for WCSD, were always diligent in sending me any and all information pertaining to this case. That is, until recently.

Waggoner and Cox on November 9, 2011, filed a "stipulation for extension of time to complete discovery and related deadlines" with the court. In this stipulation was noted a mediation meeting of November 21, 2011, to resolve or try to resolve the issues. Since I was named in this case, which generated a lot of unwanted publicity, I had every right and expectation to have received this document in the mail. My being pro se should have NO bearing on this. However, Waggoner and Cox NEVER sent this document in the mail. The ONLY way I found out about ANY mediation hearing was a chance lookup on the U.S. Courts website, which of course charges a fee to look at the documents. I found this document only last night, a full month AFTER this document was filed with the court and some two weeks after the mediation was supposedly held.

With regard to Beko, he contacted me by mail in a letter dated November 21, 2011, which happened to be the day of the scheduled mediation. Here is what he wrote:

As this litigation has progressed, we have determined that we are willing to dismiss you from this lawsuit. Please contact me at your earliest possible convenience, so that we can discuss this matter further.

Not one word was mentioned about any mediation hearing or why he was willing to dismiss the case. I wrote back to him.

Then a letter from Beko dated December 6, 2011, states this:

In follow up to our exchanged correspondence, enclosed herewith please find a proposed Stipulation for Dismissal and Order. Please sign this stipulation and return it to me in the enclosed self-addressed and stamped envelope. Upon my receipt of the stipulation, I will obtain the other needed signatures and file it with the court. Upon receipt of an order confirming the dismissal, I will send a copy to your for your records.

That was it. I signed the document and mailed it back to Beko, but now I wonder if I should have mailed it back at all given the fact nothing was disclosed. Again there was NO mention of any mediation hearing or settlement of the matter or why I was to be dismissed. The ONLY assumption I can make is the case was settled out of court, yet I have had NO information from either party. I feel like information was kept from me for no reason at all. I know that if I had hired a lawyer, this would not have happened. I almost feel like both sides were being sneaky about it rather than simply negligent, thinking I would never find out.

Lawyers not only need to communicate with their clients, they also need to communicate with others involved in a case. Concealing information or failing to notify other parties is NOT ethical, in my book.

They have no argument at all why they failed to notify me of any hearing, settlement, or failing to mail a document. They had always done it in the past.

If you need copies of the documents, I can mail them to you.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Mom will get her money and move to either Klamath Falls or Eureka and drop a load of cash on a house. To hell with how she did it.

Fuck them. Fuck them ALL.

Laugh of the Day

"I also pledge to uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect for the marital bonds of others."--Newt the Coot regarding his third marriage

Recall, if you will, Newt cheated on his first wife, Jackie Bentley Gingrich, with a variety of women, including future wife Marianne Ginther. He decided to reward his older first spouse (who had been a high school teacher of his) with divorce papers served on her while she was recuperating from cancer surgery. When that divorce was finished, he married Marianne, but unfortunately for Newt, she wasn't much of a political wife. She preferred to stay in Georgia or Ohio pursuing her own career.  Unfortunately for Marianne, she too had health problems, so Newt did what he does best, and that was to cheat on her with presumably Calista Bisek. Newt's carousing (during the time when former president Bill Clinton was undergoing a sham impeachment over the Lewinsky silliness) became the subject of much gossip, including a great article by David Corn that is as unforgettable as the 1984 Mother Jones piece.

One can assume--or not--the woman in question was his current--and perhaps last, unless she gets sick--wife:

Democratic aides on Capitol Hill, who long had traded in gossip about Gingrich's extramarital recreations, were beside themselves with anger. From such sources, I received a number of leads and tales. My favorite was from an aide who swore she had once spotted Gingrich's pale-green Mustang bouncing up and down in an underground House parking garage, with the windows all fogged up -- signs that not-so-conservative behavior may have been occurring within.

The aide said she had tried to peer through the condensation to determine with whom Gingrich was rocking and rolling, but that she just couldn't get a clear-enough view.

After all, it could have been his wife.

His supporters have decided to gloss over the inconsistencies of his life and appreciate his support for marital fidelity. I don't doubt he is faithful NOW--he's close to 70. My understanding is Calista watches him like a hawk, so he doesn't DARE cheat.

Calista should be watching her health and should be regularly seeing a doctor, just in case.

"Unreality"

doesn't begin to describe this presidential race.  Here we have two political parties, both of which are beholden to the same interests, playing a con or a bait-and-switch on the American people.  Each side pretends to have voters' interests in mind, and both use the fear card in order for voters to vote for the "least scary" individual.  If the GOP nominee is Gingrich, most voters will almost certainly vote for Obama. If it is Romney, it won't matter because the two are essentially the same.  In any case the elites will get what they want.  I believe Obama is actually more dangerous because he wraps himself in the Democratic Party label, but in fact he is actually a right-wing Republican and probably to the right of Romney.

For the one percent or fraction of one percent who own our politicians in Washington, it's a game of "heads I win, tails you lose."

For evidence of the unreality of the presidential campaign, take a look at these:

Obama pretends to be a Democrat:







The GOP debate of Saturday night was for  those with strong stomachs or with a strong sense of humor.

NCLB Has Been an Abject Failure

Diane Ravitch lays it on the line:

After his election, Congress bought this story and passed No Child Left Behind. This law mandated that all children would be proficient by 2014 in grades 3-8. All children without exception. Bear in mind that no nation in the world has ever achieved 100% proficiency. 

Now we know the results of this absurd law. More than 80% of our schools have been labeled failing schools. By the year 2014, nearly 100% of our schools will be considered failures. Has any other national legislature in history ever passed a law guaranteed to label every single one of its schools a failure? I don’t know of any.

We now know that NCLB was based on a phony claim. On national tests, Texas does not lead the pack; it’s right in the middle. We now know that the achievement gap did not close in Texas, and that dropout rates went up. But the whole nation is stuck with this testing regime.

Let’s be clear about what NCLB has really accomplished: It has convinced the media and major philanthropies and Wall Street hedge fund managers that American public education is a failure and that radical solutions are required. The philanthropists and Wall Street hedge fund managers and Republicans and the Obama administration and assorted rightwing billionaires have some ideas about how to change American education. They aren’t teachers but they think they know how to fix the schools.

And Obama is a thousand times worse than George W. Bush on education.

link

Are All Administrators This Way?

From Teachers.net:

In all post observation conferences following observations, my principal adopts a severely confrontational attitude. Her version of motivation is to be as intimidating as possible. She clearly takes great delight in humiliating her teachers. Evidently, she believes that the best way to motivate the people who work at her school is to make us feel as worthless as possible. Rather than discourage us, this is supposed to inspire us to "aim higher." Two of our best teachers - who were not only colleagues but also friends - have left to work in other districts as a direct result of the way this principal has treated them. Another colleague broke into a sweat, had trouble breathing, and was showing the symptoms of heart attack at one point last year while being observed. She had to be taken from the school by ambulance. One of our best teachers has suffered a stroke and may never return to teaching; while it cannot be proven definitively that the stroke was a direct result of this principal's treatment, I know firsthand that she was under severe stress because of this supervisor. Numerous others of my colleagues have told me of similar treatment. While I realize now that it is "nothing personal," the fact that she treats so many people so badly is little consolation. Is bullying the predominant norm for management among public school administrators these days?

The short answer is yes.  Here is my long response:

The reason for this is because people who are in education for the kids remain teachers--they don't become administrators. There was a time long, long ago when principals had many years in as teachers and became principals when they neared retirement age--as in 62 or 65. There were some bad apples, but most of them actually knew something about education and were master teachers. Nowadays, the vast majority of principals nationwide are garbage and have no business whatsoever being in supervisory positions. Certainly they have no business in positions providing unconscionable power thanks to virtually no supervision. Almost all of the good principals left when the "reforms" started taking hold in this country. What public schools are left with are the dregs who couldn't cut it as teachers or they were burned out and hated kids. Most people outside of education seem to believe that people who "rise up the ladder" in education are similar to those in private business in that they are the most ambitious or capable (it's not really true in private business, but that is the thinking). In public education, administrators are people who "failed up." The further up the ladder they go, the less responsibility and accountability they have save MAYBE the superintendent, and at the principal level there is virtually no accountability whatsoever for their actions. It is almost impossible to fire a principal. In the rare cases it happens, the media takes notice. If a teacher goes up against a principal, it is difficult if not impossible for a teacher to win. Teachers live in fear because these wannabe dictators can ruin their chances of ever teaching again. These scumbags have all of the power while teachers have none. They are protected by their districts and by the legal system. The fact districts get taxpayer money is the reason there is such an inflated sense of entitlement by administrators. They can't cut it in the "real world" of business and will do anything and everything in their power to preserve their jobs. Their only duty is to themselves--not the taxpayers they serve.

They don't teach you this in ed school.  Too bad, but then if students knew the reality of public school teaching, they wouldn't be stupid to go into it.

Teachers.net formatting stinks, and I apologize for the big paragraphs.

 

Because Public Education

is one of the last public sector areas for the crooks to exploit, destroy, and create profit for themselves.

It's based on the neoliberal philosophy which says public sector work is bad because it is public.  There is no concept of the common good or that public could be better and more efficient in their twisted view of the world.

Of course the privatizers schemes are lousy and have poor results.  There are certain things in society that cannot be successfully done by the private, for profit sector to any degree, and that includes education.

Nice Way to Pander to the Right Wing

by claiming that "generous" pensions by public employees taken early is some kind of ripoff.

A tiny, tiny, tiny minority of public sector employees get these huge pensions; the vast majority don't get anywhere near this.  Besides, in some 14 states, they don't get Social Security or get a reduced benefit there.

I get so sick and tired of the lies the media promotes in order to deflect criticism from those who deserve it and who created the economic mess in the first place: Wall Street.

This post from DU:

The private sector began looting pension funds at the same time it began outsourcing jobs and manufacturing years ago to avoid paying fair wages, pensions and taxes. So, it becomes tedious listening to all the blather about rich public retirees being coddled at the expense of down trodden private sector workers. Private sector workers need jobs, decent pensions and benefits, not public employees to scapegoat. Disparities in the amounts of federal pensions for the same GS levels are reflective of the amount the employees contributed from their own wages during their careers. That money is invested with risk in the private sector and can take a hit like any other investment. Some people are luckier than others when they retire, but here are no "golden parachutes". 

The 15 richest hedge fund managers in the US averaged incomes of $3 billion each in 2010, only slightly less than the fiscal deficits of all 50 states combined. The 400 wealthiest Americans average incomes of $24 billion and their combined wealth is greater than the bottom 99% of all Americans. Combined, their assets are equivalent to about 7% of the entire GDP of the country. More than a few of that top tier of the 1% should be doing time in federal prisons, and that would be a worthwhile expenditure of public money.

I hate this shit because it is so obvious the media distracts from the real outrage.

A related piece is here.

Legal News, I Guess

I will be scooping the northern Nevada and AP media on this, but I just thought I'd let readers know that I am being dismissed from that silly Sparks Middle School "rape" case wherein I was accused, along with a counselor there, of "failing to report" something that never was brought to my attention and never happened.  The alleged "rapes" were said to have happened in early 2007, with the suit having been filed in September of 2008, about a month after I had my kangaroo hearing on bogus charges at WCSD.

The plaintiff's lawyer contacted me about two weeks ago saying he wanted to dismiss the case against me.  I wrote back, and today I received an original copy of the stipulation for dismissal which I signed, dated, and mailed back to the lawyer.  After he and the school district's lawyer sign this stipulation, it goes to Judge Larry Hicks, who will then sign it and the dismissal will be official.

I fully expect the entire case to be thrown out of court within the next six to eight weeks.  Currently both parties are filing pretrial motions.  Unfortunately, I doubt there is anything I can do legally to clear my name.

Ever the Right-Wing President, Obama

has decided to shaft women in order to court the Catholic vote.

This is totally cynical on Sebelius's part, but she has been told from on high what to do regarding the "morning-after" pill.

It's the Accountability, Stupid

Somebody on Teachers.net wrote this about trying to go into education:

I would like to ask the Administrators for input.

I am turning 40 this year. Years ago I was an Education major and in my Senior year was persuaded to change to Business Administration. I have been a Business Professional now for 11 + years. I routinely create curriculum, processes and provide training on a Corporate level. I am at the point in my life where I am wanting to get back to my true passion--educating Children. I would like your opinion.  Would you hire a 40+ year old career changer with a B.S. in Education?  If I completed a Masters instead would that work for or against me?  I am a single empty-nester which works to my favor as I have little obligation outside of work.   Input? Thank you in advance. Leslie

I doubt she--most likely a she--cared much for my response, which is in three parts:

Forget teaching, period. There are no jobs to speak of, and if by some miracle you get one, you are treated like garbage by principals who most likely are failed teachers themselves.

You will find yourself harassed out of a job and a career. You will need to be lawyered up, not because of parent lawsuits but because of administrators who regularly flout the law.  You are too old at 40; age discrimination is rampant in the field and you have little recourse legally.

You have to understand that public school districts are not about the children; they are about preserving the people in administration and at all costs. This is the bitter truth about public education in the United States. Stay away, please. This is the best advice you could ever get.




Additionally, you CANNOT rely on the unions to help you if or when (most likely WHEN since the majority of the principals in the U.S. are not the best candidates for those jobs which provide unlimited and unchecked power over subordinates) a principal harasses you or terminates you for bogus reasons (principals call it "for cause"-- a total joke because "for cause" is whatever a principal says it is and he or she can
fabricate charges without any accountability or loss of job). These unions will knife you in the back; their law firms are also in cahoots with the districts in "due process" hearings, which are jokes, as I learned from experience. Administrative law is not worth the paper it is written on. That is why I say you have to be lawyered up in order to keep your job, should you ever be able to find one in public school districts anywhere in the United States these days. The unions will NOT tell you about EEOC and other alternatives to their "due process" hearings that are conducted along the lines of the kangaroo court in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." Thousands of people continue to go to college to train for a career where the working
conditions are horrible and mistreatment by administrators is rampant. These would-be teachers want to help kids, but the administrators who run the schools and districts are NOT in it for the kids. They are in it solely for the unlimited and unchecked power, perks, and obscene salaries. And therein lies the rub. Teachers don't have a chance in such a filthy, corrupt system.

You also must read the newspapers and know how teachers are demonized by the media. "Reform" efforts are underway to deskill and deprofessionalize teaching so that "teachers" will have "careers" of only two or three years and they will be fired or nonrenewed so they will never be vested in pensions and never be
able to work in their chosen profession again. It's all about the money now. The privatizers want the public schools to loot to enrich themselves while the administrators want the cheap bimbos they can use up and spit out. No "reform" efforts get at the real problem in public education and that's with the unchecked and unaccountable power principals and other administrators hold over teachers--there is nothing even
remotely comparable in other public sectors or in private sector employment. Why don't "reformers" care about this very real issue? Because many of them are cut from the same incompetent or sociopathic cloth as most principals.

People don't like what I have to say, but the truth hurts.





When I substitute taught a number of years ago, I would go into the teachers lounge and overhear teachers complain about administrators and think that these teachers should have been grateful to have jobs. I felt at the time these teachers needed attitude adjustments. There are hundreds of people standing in line just
dying for a job like theirs, I used to think, yet they had no clue how hard it is to get a teaching job.

Well, I have been on the OTHER side of the fence as a teacher, and now I know these teachers were WARNING me in their way to stay away from education. I had to learn the hard way just how bad the job
is.

In private sector and other government sector work, your supervisor is closely supervised and held accountable (usually), but in public ed, principals get away with murder.

----

It's the truth, but unfortunately I had to find out the hard way and am still paying dearly for my "career choice."

I can't stand the way the website formats posts, and I had to try and reformat it so it is halfway readable.

Since the RGJ is Going to Require An FB Account

in order to post comments following articles, I will no longer be able to be posting there under my current handle. I doubt I will ever post there again using my real name, for I was publicly vilified regarding that ridiculous lawsuit mentioned on this blog and my name smeared all over the local media in Reno and throughout the west via AP. It is still ongoing, but it should be concluding in the next couple of months. That is all I will say about it right now, but it is possible I will have some news to make public before that time. I just don't know yet.

In any case, I am not going to be slandered any further by assholes who have no information. Unfortunately, my comments regarding my former school district will be no more at the newspaper site. Any criticism I have of the district will be on this blog. Even though I moved away from Reno almost two years ago, I still feel there needs to be facts out there about this particular district in addition to education in general.

I have used the FB comments feature in other newspapers around the country, but given how I was trashed in Reno unnecessarily, I won't be using the RGJ version.

link

The ONLY Trust Obama Has Ever Busted

is the trust of the American people.

It is sickening he is going around the country in full campaign mode trying to channel Teddy Roosevelt.

Another Illinois Politician Once Remarked

about fooling the people some of the time but not all of the time, but Barack Obama tries his best to fool the American people he is not a sellout to neoliberal and Wall Street interests by playing the populist card. This latest attempt to secure his re-election isn't fooling anybody, least of all most Democratic voters.

Obama would garner a LOT of support if he would decline to run for another term ala LBJ and concentrate on getting Bill Ayers to ghostwrite his memoirs.

Obituaries--Harry Morgan

Actor Harry Morgan, best remembered as playing Col. Potter in the long-running sitcom M.A.S.H., has died at the impressive age of 96.

I like to remember him for his excellent performance as the henpecked neighbor in December Bride. His character, Pete, was always complaining about his wife, Gladys, who was never seen in the series.

Morgan was so popular in the part he had his own spinoff series with Cara Williams playing Gladys. The series had the highly original title of Pete and Gladys.

I saw December Bride in reruns when it went into syndication some fifty years ago, but I watched the spinoff when it first aired.

A couple of YouTube clips from the two series:

December Bride:



Pete and Gladys:

Obama Is About as Popular as the Plague,

but the GOP is peddling such a fascist, extremist, crackpot agenda, one wonders if the GOP isn't trying to throw next year's election.

What is compounding the problem from my standpoint is Obama embraces many of the same ideas as the GOP and is willing to work with these extremists in the name of "reaching across the aisle." This only leads to the conclusion that since both political parties serve the same interests, the candidates play the "good cop, bad cop" game. The GOP peddles an extremist agenda hoping the people will be scared enough to vote for Obama, who will do what the neolibs want. People are screwed regardless.

The problem in next year's elections is there is nobody to vote FOR. I absolutely REFUSE to give Obama my vote for all of the reasons I have mentioned over the past four or five years.

BO + TR = 0 Points

Obama has received a lot of flak for waxing "eloquently" about his idol, Ronald Reagan, who he long aspired to emulate. Almost all of the criticism was from Democrats, you know, people the official party once represented.

Now having tarnished the party brand by trying to ape the fascists and wanting to be re-elected, Obama is now channeling Teddy Roosevelt, who was a Republican but actually would qualify as a raving leftist today.

It's not going to work, Barry. You have alienated all factions of the Democratic Party, and it's too late to reverse course.

You lie in bed with neolibs, you get bit in the ass.

It's All About the Money

when it comes to education "reform" or the mistreatment of teachers by various school districts--hell, almost ALL of them--in the United States.

These and other posts mirror exactly what I went through nearly four years ago, and I am still suffering as a result.

Although I am in the process of getting my teaching license here in Oregon, given what I know now about public education--the REAL problems, not the fake garbage "reported" by the media or blathered about by politicians of both political parties--I am not sure I have the stomach to EVER work as a teacher in the public schools ever again. As long as principals have unilateral power over teachers, with NO accountability for their actions, teaching will remain an extremely risky occupation.

More Nonsense About Education "Reform"

from a "Democratic" governor who is almost as bad as Obama is on this issue:

Friends,

Of all the troubling statistics about education in Oregon, the most disturbing to me is the possibility that this generation of Oregon children will be the first to be less educated than their parents and their peers around the U.S. The strength of our communities and the future prosperity of our state depend on reversing this slide. We have a shared responsibility – as parents, teachers, school board members, business leaders, taxpayers and policymakers – to make the changes necessary to succeed.

I feel a tremendous sense of urgency to deliver better results for students, more resources for teachers and more accountability in our education system – from Pre-K through K-12 and college and career readiness.

Earlier this year – with the creation of the Oregon Education Investment Board and a package of significant education reform policy – the legislature took the first steps toward a more student-centered education system designed to achieve our state’s education, social and economic objectives. We must build on that progress, and I am proposing legislation for the February 2012 session to better coordinate and integrate Oregon education from Pre-K through college and career readiness. Below you’ll find an update on developments in three key areas:

Pre-Kindergarten Success
As I’ve said from the beginning, it all starts with an emphasis on improving the effectiveness of early childhood services. In February I’ll work to streamline disparate programs and consolidate boards and commissions to ensure more children get the health care, pre-school, nutritional and developmental services they need to be ready for kindergarten. A recent Oregonian editorial noted, “early childhood reforms are aimed at getting everybody ready by the starting line … imagine the difference it would make to the state's school system, its economy and the lives of countless people.”

K-12 Innovation
I’m bringing a new concept – the achievement compact – to the legislature in February. Essentially, it’s an agreement between the state and educational institutions to specify outcomes and measures of progress for all Oregon primary, secondary and post-secondary students. I’m proposing using tailored achievement compacts as an alternative to the punitive, one-size-fits-all approach of the federal No Child Left Behind Law. I’m also seeking authority for a new statewide Chief Education Officer to design and organize a more integrated Pre-K through post-secondary system.

Excellence in Higher Education
You’ve likely read or heard something recently about the termination of University of Oregon President Richard Lariviere. While some have questioned the decision, I believe it was the right one. And more importantly, I think we can all agree on two critical issues moving forward. First, the University of Oregon community – students, faculty, alumnae and supporters – must have meaningful input in the transition and search for a top-notch new president committed to excellence. And second, we cannot allow this episode to distract us from the important work of pursuing excellence across all levels of education and all parts of our state.

In remarks to the Oregon Education Investment Board last week, I outlined a process to consolidate boards and commissions and streamline management of the statewide system to free-up resources to support teaching and learning, including arriving at a single entity to direct and coordinate Oregon’s university system. I also look forward to working with legislators, the Board of Higher Education and universities on legislation in 2013 to allow independent institutional boards for one or more Oregon universities.

We have much to do, and I thank you for your ongoing commitment to Oregon. I urge you to track all of the latest developments at the Oregon Education Investment Board site.

John

This is from an email I received yesterday. Given his idiocy regarding ESDs, I don't trust him as far as I can throw him on education.

He's a physician by occupation, with an Ivy League pedigree. That's enough to disqualify him right there.

News, Etc.

Thanks to widespread fallout from news reports, animal abuse whistle-blower Lynn Jones has been offered her airport job back.

It's good to hear good news for a change.

Lynn Jones, who said she was fired from her job as an airport baggage handler last month after she reported animal abuse, has been offered reinstatement with full back pay.