WTF?? Pat Tillman's Uniform and Diary Were BURNED After His Death?

Just what in the G-d damned hell is going on here?

Did they not want America to find out that Pat was a liberal Democrat and a Kerry supporter? That the man whose death Bush was using as a propaganda tool loathed Bush and Cheney and their illegal Iraq war?

I want some f---ing answers.

Right Wingers: We Can't Fight Poverty, But We Can Subsidize Fox "News"

Here you go, folks--yet another reason the right wing hypocrite frauds need to be voted out of office: Fox News' parent company paid no taxes in two of the past four years despite enormous profits, because of government sponsored corporate welfare. Yes, we can take care of Rupert Murdoch, but we can't take care of millions of people hanging on by their finger nails.

My GOD, I loathe these radical Republican bastards.

Hey, How About That "Great" Bush-Cheney Economy?

Scary news here:

If anything, the United States is more vulnerable today [than in 1973 and the oil embargo]. In that era, America enjoyed a net inflow of earnings from global investments, ran a trade surplus, and lent far more than it borrowed...

But today, our trade deficit is more than 6 percent of gross domestic product, and we borrow heavily to finance both private capital needs and government debt. Until lately, optimists insisted that cheap foreign debt-financing would continue indefinitely and prop up the dollar, because it was in China's interest to keep underwriting American purchases of its ever-expanding exports.

But, swollen with dollars, China is behaving more like an activist investor. The Chinese government's investment arm has begun buying not just debt but real assets, including 9.9 percent of the private equity fund Blackstone and a big chunk of Barclays bank. We can't count on China -- or anyone else -- funding America's burgeoning foreign debt at bargain rates indefinitely.

If the dollar slide turns into a crash, the Federal Reserve would face the unhappy choice of either hiking interest rates to raise foreign confidence in the dollar (thus deepening domestic recession) or letting the dollar sink further and increasing imported inflation.

...And the prospect of higher credit costs has Wall Street increasingly edgy. The Wall Street Journal recently tallied 21 credit deals ranging from $150 million to $20 billion since mid-June that had to be scrapped or delayed because nervous investors balked at the proposed financial terms.

The unsold homes backlog is at its highest level in 15 years, according to the Financial Times. It reports a 57 percent drop in the stock price of building companies in the past two years. Busted private equity deals and predictions of a deeper housing slump sent the Dow down 520 in two days.

I've been saying for years that our profligacy (read: Republican irresponsibility) was going to catch up with us, and now it is. God help the economically vulnerable.

The Iraq disaster combined with a possible recession in 2008 spells one thing: A Democratic landslide on the magnitude of 1964--or better.

The Voice of the Insane

Really, why isn't Michael Savage in an asylum somewhere?

Ominous News for the Right Wingers for 2008

As the chickens continue to come home to roost.

From Meteor Blades on DKos: Iraq By the Numbers

See if these stats don't utterlty enrage you:

655,000: Iraqi deaths a Johns-Hopkins study attributed to the war nine months ago.

2770: Iraqi civilians killed in May 2007, according to government reports. (Actual figure unknown because the Iraqi government refuses to share its data with outside agencies that could verify totals.)

1.9 million: Estimated Iraqis displaced within the country.

2.35 million: Estimated Iraqi exiles outside the country in January 2007.

18,000: Iraqi doctors who have fled the country since March 2003.

???: Iraqis orphaned by the war – no reliable statistics.

25%: Iraqi children who are malnourished (May 2006).

130,000: U.S. troops taking part in the invasion at Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s insistence.

500,000: U.S. troops estimated to be necessary by generals who put together a prewar contingency plan.

$60-$95 billion: Total cost of Iraq war and aftermath calculated by Paul Wolfowitz in February 2003.

$600 billion: Money Congress has allocated for direct costs of the war and occupation so far.

$750 billion: Total the Cheney-Bush Administration has sought for keeping the occupation going through September 2008.

$140,000: Estimated cost per minute of the war and occupation in 2007.

$2 trillion: Total direct and indirect costs of war and occupation (through 2010) calculated by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Blimes in January 2006.

$9 billion: Taxpayer money that disappeared in Iraq.

$549.7 million: Value of unaccounted for spare parts shipped to contractors in 2004.

$1.4 billion: Overcharges by Halliburton.

6,000-10,000: Estimated number of U.S. troops whose injuries have included brain trauma.

30%: Estimated percentage of troops who develop serious mental problems within three or four months after returning from Iraq.

14: Journalists killed by U.S. forces in Iraq.

112: Total number of journalists killed in Iraq.

1-2 a day: Hours of electricity available to the average residential household in Baghdad. (Actual figure unknown since U.S. no longer reports the electricity figures for the city.)

5000: "Diehard" insurgents the Pentagon estimated to be fighting on July 28, 2003.

20-30,000: Insurgents the Pentagon estimated in October 2006.

70,000: Insurgents the Pentagon estimated in March 2007.

69%: Iraqis who say U.S. presence worsens security situation (polled in March 2007).

71%: Iraqis who want U.S. troops out within a year (polled in September 2006).

71%: Americans who want U.S. to withdraw troops by April 2008 (polled in July 2007).

52%: U.S. Senators who have voted to withdraw most troops by April 2008.

8%: Republican Senators who have voted to withdraw most troops by April 2008

Look at this whole list. Let it sink into your consciousness. Let your mind absorb these terrible data. Weigh the implications of these facts. Look at the criminal, traitorous, right wing conservative Republican administration that is responsible for them. And then redouble your resolve to help destroy the wretched, corrupt, lying, Bush-enabling Republican Party that has defended all of this to the bitter end. Yes, there were Democrats who were pro-war.

But only the Republicans still are.

Counter Argument That Pat Tillman Was NOT Murdered

And that the story is being spread to pin blame on his squad mates and away from the Bush Administration's negligence and incompetence. You can read it here.

Was Pat Tillman Murdered?

The rightwingers used his death to promote a war that Tillman was vehemently opposed to. And then they found out Pat had been a Democrat, a Kerry supporter, and they dumped him because he was no longer a useful prop. Hannity and Coulter even called his grieving parents liars for saying that Pat loathed the Boy King Cretin and his entourage. Now. there is strong evidence that Pat Tillman may have been murdered.

After an investigation, the government changed the story -- that Tillman was a victim of friendly fire, an honest mistake, because he was mistaken for the enemy. The recent revelations now cast this conclusion into serious doubt. You don't mistake someone from 10 yards away. But, was it murder or negligence? Was this a deliberate homicide?

President Bush is not helping at all. With these new details, and his decision to invoke executive privilege in the Tillman investigation, the president is certainly sending the signal that he has something to hide.

It is inevitable, then, that unless the president comes clean, rumors about Tillman's death will take hold. By stonewalling, there is no way to stop people from wondering, "Was the man the White House used to promote the war ordered to be killed because he was becoming increasingly critical of the war in Iraq?" It was well known that Tillman was critical of the decision to go to war, and had often read and quoted Noam Chomsky. I don't personally believe such a conspiracy to be the case, but until the president comes clean, rumors like that will continue to grow. Every officer knows that if a soldier in their command is killed they must write the family and tell them the truth, for exactly that reason. Why can't the man who sent Pat Tillman to war, and used his death for political gain, have the courage to tell a family what happened to their son?

Why is Bush invoking "Executive privilege", his all-purpose mantra for keeping people from seeing his dirty work? What the hell is going on here?

I want answers. We deserve them. But most of all, Pat's parents deserve them.

WAS PAT TILLMAN MURDERED?

J. Miller Rampant is Fighting Technical Difficulties Right Now

That's why I haven't posted for a week. But I'll get these resolved very soon. Aloha.

Our "Friends" the Saudis

You know, the ones who are providing almost half the terrorist-insurgents who are targeting our troops:

The situation has left the U.S. military in the awkward position of battling an enemy whose top source of foreign fighters is a key ally that at best has not been able to prevent its citizens from undertaking bloody attacks in Iraq, and at worst shares complicity in sending extremists to commit attacks against U.S. forces, Iraqi civilians and the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.

Not to mention being the source of most of the 9/11 attackers.

Of course, since the Bush family is on such intimate terms with the Saudi royal family, it might be in poor taste to mention it.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

They had to go to green on parts of the map. They ran out of shades of blue.

I love it. God help me, I do love it so.

(From Survey USA)

Every Picture Tells a Story

Below is a picture showing how many Republican candidates turned up at the NAACP's recent candidate forum.



Tom Tancredo, the virulently anti-immigrant congressman, was the sole GOP representative.

Gee, I wonder why African Americans vote more than 90% Democratic?

HAW! I Just LOVE it When These Right Wing Hypocrites Are Exposed

The current Exhibit A is right-wing Louisiana Senator David Vitter, who has been caught in prominent New Orleans whorehouses and has now been outed in the DC Madam investigation. David Corn nails Vitter's typical conservative hypocrisy here:

Vitter, who is married with four children, has been a vigorous advocate of family values, championing abstinence-only programs and calling for a ban on gay marriage. In a statement his office rushed out on Monday night--before he could be outed by Hustler magazine--Vitter said he had committed a "serious sin" and claimed that "several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling." I seem to recall that Bill Clinton took a similar stance after he acknowledged his affair with Monica Lewinsky. That, though, did not prevent Vitter from calling for Clinton's forcible removal from office.

Of course it didn't prevent him from calling for Clinton's removal, just as Newt Gingrich wasn't deterred from attacking Clinton while he, Gingrich, was having an adulterous affair with his own secretary. These right wing bastards almost NEVER hold themselves to the same standards they hold other people to. Their whole vile philosophy rests on sheer moral bankruptcy and empty moral posturing.

Hey Vitter--if you're so damned contrite, resign from office.

Ted Nugent: Talentless Right Wing Liar, Fraud, and Hypocrite

Ted Nugent, who plays the guitar as if his hands were made out of concrete, has published a hilariously bad "op-ed" in the lunatic right's most high profile cesspool, the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. He excoriates "filthy hippies" for their obsession with sex and drugs and basically blames everything that's wrong with America on the 1967 "Summer of Love". Down with Tyranny has an excellent rebuttal here:

Nugent is a voice of ultra-reaction, something like Ann Coulter, with the craziest corner of modern day Republicanism. Like the Germans who blamed their predicament on everyone but themselves after World War I and constantly agitated for fascism, Nugent is incapable of learning anything from history.


Laughably, Nugent poses as a paragon of traditional values. Let's see what Mr. Brave Right Wing Defender of Morality is really like. From The Populist:

Ted Nugent is not a perfect person, nor is he the Rock and Roll superstar that he likes to believe that he is. It is well known that Ted Nugent was quite the Ladies man back in the 1970's. It is also a somewhat well known fact that Mr. Nugent led a very naughty relationship with an under aged woman, who was about 15-20 years his junior, and also became her legal guardian, with the consent of her parents of course. Although, confidentially I am told that Ted intimidated her parents into signing the consent forms. The relationship was not a very happy one, however, once this beautiful young woman realized that she was nothing more than an on call sex slave and caretaker of Ted's Children and house. She finally became fed up with his womanizing ways and left. I will give Mr. Nugent credit; he did marry and have children. His first wife, Sandra Jezowski, was killed in a car accident in 1982. Ted blamed drugs, although, friends of mine who live in the area in which this happened, tell me that Sandra was suicidal because Ted was more interested in being mister rock and roll star than being a loving husband and father to their two children. The couple was divorced when the accident happened.

And how many underaged teenaged girls did Mr. Virtue nail while he was tour? I think that's still called statutory rape. (Or maybe he would prefer the term pedophilia.) Hey, Teddy Boy, don't you advocate death for rapists?

Nugent also likes to portray himself as a superpatriot. Let's see how he was when it was his turn to defend America in Vietnam:

In 1990 he told the Detroit Free Press newspaper:"[that] that 30 days before his draft board physical, he disavowed personal hygiene. The last ten days he ingested nothing but junk food and Pepsi, and with a week to go until the physical, he stopped using the bathroom altogether. When the big day came, he had been living in excrement-caked and urine-stained pants. Always the hero, however, Nugent reassured the Free Press, “But if I would have gone over there, I’d have been killed, or I’d have killed all the Hippies in the foxholes. I would have killed everybody.”

Now THAT'S creative draft dodging! Wow! What a BRAVE AMERICAN!! Man, no wonder that he and George W. Bush are such friends.

Additionally, Nugent likes to appear in public sometimes sporting his Confederate flag shirt. You remember the Confederates, don't you? The traitors who started the Civil War, a war that killed 600,000 Americans? So what if the rebel flag is the flag of treason and the people who wear it no better than the traitors who carried it into battle to fight for the preservation of human slavery and the death of America? Teddy Boy is proud, by God, to wear it to events such as Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry's inauguration.

Nugent is a pathetic, emotionally crippled former sexual predator. He mindlessly hates women, hates gays, hates the genuine patriots who are against the Iraq War, and tries to compensate for his inadequacies by fondling his phallic-symbol guns constantly. He's the perfect example of the modern conservative Republican: lecturing about virtue while being a complete moral degenerate.

Oh yeah: and his "music" is dogshit, too.

On Our 231st Birthday, a Republic in Danger

America has never really fully lived up to its ideals. The early nation countenanced human slavery and maintained a powerful, unquestioned patriarchy. But the great words of Jefferson's Declaration and the noble goals laid out in the Preamble to the United States Constitution told of the aspiration to a future where all humans could live in freedom and dignity. Lincoln understood that the Civil War was about this issue, giving voice to it in his immortal Gettysburg Address ("a new birth of freedom"). America, in short, was always a place that was in the process of becoming. Its people often acted foolishly or cruelly and they showed all the weaknesses and shortcomings of people everywhere. And yet the best part of our ideas always inspired most of us with the vision of a nation headed to a new kind of greatness, a greatness not just of military power but of justice and opportunity. There were always the crooks and the conmen, always the people who only paid lip service to the ideals, but they never really seemed to be running the show, at least not for long. They would always be exposed and ultimately defeated. It really seemed, therefore, that the United States might some day be the great example for humanity, a startling and unique aggregation of all the elements of humanity bound together by a set of ideas into a new kind of society, one in which the rule of law was above all and the preservation and expansion of human well-being and freedom were the ultimate objectives. That was the hope, the dream, the vision, that stirred the best in us.

Now, that vision is in the gravest danger it has faced in more than 140 years. Our nation has been captured by a set of individuals so fanatical, so ruthless, so ill-equipped to govern, and so contemptuous of our traditions, laws, and ideals that the very survival of our nation is in question. Driven by greed and cronyism, they are systematically bankrupting our nation and imperiling the economic future of our descendants. Led by the truly frightening and dangerous Dick Cheney, they are destroying the system of checks and balances which is one of the crown jewels of the system of government James Madison so carefully constructed for us. A bizarre coalition of laissez-faire ideologues, religious fanatics, cynical business leaders, and what can only be called neoimperialists has seized power, aided and abetted by a media that has been compromised to the point of paralysis. Many in the media are now the outright allies of and collaborators with this coalition, clouding every public issue in a mist of lies, distortions, and misdirections. The very institutions on which our country rests are under assault. A movement to transform America into a theocratic empire is well under way. And standing in the middle of all this, doing what we can, is a group of people who are often seriously divided and uncertain as to what approach to take to stop this nightmare from triumphing--most of the Democrats, the vast majority of the independents, and a small but truly decent minority of Republicans who see what's happening and are genuinely appalled by it. It is we who must dig in our heels and say no:

NO to illegal wars generated by lies and pseudo-patriotic wardrum beating.

NO to the use of torture and rendition as tools to destroy our enemies.

NO to the alliance between radical Islam and far-right fundamentalist Christianism.

NO to the attempt by the far right to interfere with and regulate every intimate sphere of human life.

NO to the abandonment of the poor and underprivileged.

NO the concept of the "unitary executive", which is simply a fancy term for dictatorship.

NO to the destruction of the Bill of Rights in the name of "security".

NO to theocracy.

NO to empire.

NO to the use of the media to manipulate and confuse public opinion.

NO to the cozy little Beltway culture where those who govern and those who report live in a mutually beneficial symbiosis that threatens the very essence of our country.

NO to a future impoverished by the short-sighted greed, looting, selfishness, and profligacy of today.

NO to cronyism, the rewarding of incompetence, the celebration of mediocrity, and the entrenched power of lazy, indifferent, adolescent-minded, upper class sociopaths like George W. Bush.

Our nation is in profound crisis. Any way you look at it, it is up to those of us who still believe in it and who still love it despite its faults and shortcomings to save the vision of our founders. We can still achieve the society they aspired to, but the time is short. The radical Right has rigged the system in its own favor--stacking the judiciary, dominating the airwaves, buying out or bribing gatekeepers in every direction--and their resistance is, as we have seen, savage and utterly unprincipled. But we can prevail if we have the courage to call corruption and authoritarianism by their true names. We need toughness, we need courage, we need brains, and above all we need backbone.

No more concessions. No more compromises. No more surrenders.

Here we stand--for America and for a future that can still be ours, if we want it.

God Bless America--now and for all time.

Keith Olbermann's Righteous Anger

It's a great thing to see, right here.

Wow. No one has said it better. Just watch, amigos and amigas. Just watch.

A Good Summary of Bush's Libby Outrage

It can be found here, courtesy of Andrew Sullivan.

Bush and Cheney are simply criminals, our national Mafiosi, protecting their friends, screwing their enemies, and basically spitting in the face of anyone who objects--such as the vast majority of the American people.

The Myth of a "Conservative America"

One of the radical Right's most successful con jobs over the years has been the marketing of the lie that America is a "conservative nation" with "traditional values" (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean). This despite the fact that only about 32% of Americans describe themselves as conservatives. The 68% that call themselves moderate or liberal apparently don't count, I guess. I also guess that the 70% who disapprove of our so-called "president" don't count either. The national media continue to give the Bush Crime Organization a pass on the vast majority of issues, and the national political dialogue is dominated by repulsive rightwing toads like the despicable Ann Coulter, the pathetic Glenn Beck, and the laughable little punk Sean Hannity. In fact, a recent survey indicated that an astonishing 91% of commentary on talk radio is from rightwingers. Add in the entire Fox "News" propaganda apparatus and the rest of Rupert Murdoch's empire, the psychotic ranting of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, the bloodthirsty warlust of the Neocon Chickenhawks who appear constantly on national television, and the cringing, Bush-kissing White House press corps, and one sees clearly the source of the lie that America is solidly rightwing. This report from MediaMatters should help clear things up nicely.

Among the key findings from major, scientifically conducted surveys:

Now, I defy ANY conservative in America to tell me that these are the views of a "conservative" nation. Respect for the rights of women. Protection of the environment as a priority. Willing to pay more in taxes for government health care. Critical of the crackpot right's interference in private affairs. Equal job rights for gays. Read the whole article--it's truly eye-opening. And then DEMAND that the views of the TWO-THIRDS OF AMERICANS WHO ARE NOT CONSERVATIVE be given the respect and consideration in the mainstream media that they deserve.

Yes!! J. Miller Rampant Has Gone Hawaiian!!

Since few things in life are more tiresome than reading a writer's oh-so-personal reactions to being in a beautiful place, I'll skip the part about telling you how amazingly gorgeous Kauai is or how overwhelmingly nice the vast majority of people out here are. Kauai has all of the human issues and problems that any other place has. And yet there really is a sense here that one is more intimately connected with the natural world, and so perhaps those issues can be dealt with and endured more readily. There is also a sense of community that I've experienced that is unlike any other. Yes, it is expensive to live here, but if you shop carefully, you can do as well as back in Chicago. And knowing that I will never again experience a 30 degree overcast, wet, dismal, ugly, soul-destroying Midwestern winter day again makes any sacrifice well worth it.

Come and see Kauai--and you'll see what I mean.

J. Miller Rampant is Moving to Hawaii. It Will Resume on 1 July

My family and I are moving to Kauai on Wednesday. It's going to take some time to get organized, so I'm not going to be blogging for a while. I'll (hopefully) be back on line on Sunday, 1 July.

See y'all later.

On Retiring After 33 Years as a Teacher

I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into in 1974 when I was hired at Lincoln-Way Community High School in New Lenox, Illinois. I had done well in college and in my student teaching, but I found that neither one had really prepared me for the job I had taken on. High school definitely wasn’t like college. There was no atmosphere of intellectual excitement, there was little sense of self-discipline, and there was a great deal of sullen adolescent resentment at being a captive audience that I had to deal with. I almost didn’t survive my first year, but older and caring mentors helped pull me through. I was much stronger and more effective my second year; after five years, I felt like an Old Pro. Now, 33 years later, as a genuine Old Pro, I wanted to share some thoughts with the readers of my blog.

First, this job is one hell of a lot harder than people think it is (if you care about being good at it). It requires enormous preparation, a strong will, a tough emotional hide, and constant reading, learning, and personal growth. I was often surprised by how exhausted I was at the end of a school year. A lot of people think teaching is an easy gig—short hours, summers and holidays, off, etc. To them I say: try it. Try excelling at it. Try interacting with people 14 to 18 years old who are going through their own profound personal changes. Try finding ways of taking a small portion of the immense learning of the human species and relating it to teenagers who are often distracted by a hundred other interests and concerns. Try disciplining and motivating these kids. Try adjusting yourself to other teachers and the kids’ parents in what is often a very stressful environment. And then come back to me and tell me how easy it is.

Second, the classroom is an extraordinarily complex environment. Teaching is more of an art than a science, and it takes one a long time to get good at it. (In many ways, as one of my mentors told me my first year, the kids will change you more than you will change them. That’s more true than non-teachers realize.) Classroom interaction is a mixture of communication and social skills unlike anything I have ever experienced. Anyone who’s done it for a while knows what I mean.

Third, the commentators outside of education who regularly castigate and attack the competence of public school teachers don’t know what they’re talking about. The mainstream media often carry a grotesque caricature of American education. Right-wing critics want the public schools dismantled because we supposedly have “failed”. That’s a damned lie. Research like this would shock many of those who have been conditioned to think of American schools as desolate wastelands of ignorance:


By comparing the results of foreign students and American students on tests administered in both nations, and then examining the American students' scores on the U.S. NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress], it is possible to reliably estimate how well foreign students would perform on the NAEP.And it turns out that only one-third of those high-flying Swedish kids would be considered proficient readers; the NAEP figure for U.S. fourth-graders was 29 percent. The great majority of the remaining countries would have fewer proficient students than the United States. Using the NAEP standard, no country comes close to having a majority of proficient readers.Under the NAEP standard, Singapore is the only nation in the world to have a majority of its students be proficient in science, and that by a scant 1 percent. Only a handful of countries would have a majority of students proficient in mathematics.

And from my own previous writing:

There are certain people in our society who are dedicated to the destruction of the public school system on ideological grounds. Most often these are conservatives (often religiously motivated) or libertarians, although certain liberal or progressive parents also choose to attack public education. These people have waged an unrelenting propaganda war against the public schools, demonizing teachers unions, demanding vouchers, insisting on ever more tests (with reductions of aid to schools that fall short in such tests, an exercise in perverse “logic” if there ever was one), demanding tax breaks for parochial schools and home schoolers, and generally spreading as many distortions about what we do for a living as possible. These politically motivated attacks have done a lot of damage to our image because a lot of people haven’t been exposed very much to our side of the story. It’s time they were.

The Public Schools Are An Integral Part of American Life. According to the Census Bureau, in October 2003 more than 85% of all American students were in the public schools. When only those not in college were considered, the public schools’ proportion of America’s student body rose to almost 87%. Those who advocate eliminating the entire system are weirdly out of touch with the realities of how big a change they are (foolishly) advocating. The public school system in the United States has been one of the greatest engines for spreading democratic values and social cohesion in American history. It is perhaps the last place in America where people from different neighborhoods, religious backgrounds, social classes, and ethnic groups interact with each other on a regular basis (outside of the armed forces, which contain a much smaller percentage of the population.) It is this massive institution that some propose removing from our nation’s life entirely, at enormous risk to our country’s future.

Americans Do Not Generally See the Public Schools as Failures. Are the American people massively dissatisfied with public education? In 2003 (to stick to the same year for comparison’s sake) the Gallup Organization surveyed Americans about their perceptions of the public schools. When asked about the quality of their own oldest child’s education, 75% indicated they were completely or somewhat satisfied. In 2004 Gallup reported the percentage of those satisfied with the public school education their own children were receiving was even higher than in 2003. Those decrying the public schools are more often simply reflecting their personal biases and not the opinion of the American people. Interestingly, in the same 2003 survey Gallup asked its sample of adults to give a letter grade to the schools nationally and their own local schools. When asked about the nation’s schools, only 26% gave them a grade of A or B, with only 2% giving the nation’s schools an A. But when asked about their local schools, 48% gave them an A or B, with 11% giving them an A. When the grade of C was factored in, 52% rated the nation’s schools as deserving this grade, but only 31% thought their local schools deserved this “average” mark. Why the discrepancy? In my opinion, it shows that the more parents are personally familiar with the school system, the better they like it. The lower perceptions they have of the nation’s schools as a whole have been fostered by the persistent attacks of those who want to bend education to their own purposes.

Are Private Schools Inherently Superior to Public Schools? There are, of course, many data that demonstrate private school students generally perform better on standardized tests than public school students. However, there are some important factors we need to remember: that children of poverty and disrupted homes are more likely to be in public schools; that special needs children are far more likely to be in public special education districts; that public schools cannot, by law, turn away any student; and that public schools are governed by an enormous number of laws and regulations specifying in detail their curricular, disciplinary and custodial boundaries. Further, it can be argued that the parents of private school children, having made a substantial investment in their children’s education, may be more involved in the personal supervision of their kids’ studies. Such variables have a deep impact on the comparisons between public and private schools. In a report published by Phi Delta Kappa on mathematics achievement comparisons between students in public and private schools (Grades 4 and 8) we find the following conclusion:

Our findings suggest that it is time for a critical reexamination of common assumptions regarding the effectiveness of public and private schools. As market-style reforms change the public school landscape, prompting many to call for various forms of privatization of schooling options, it is important to examine the evidence regarding whether private schools are, indeed, more effective than public schools. In our study, once we accounted for the fact that private schools tend to have higher-SES [socioeconomic status] students than public schools, we actually found just the opposite of what was expected: public schools outperformed private schools within each SES quartile.

In private secondary schools the student-teacher ratio can be significantly lower than in public schools. Private high schools have much more latitude in designing their academic programs than public ones. They can more readily remove disruptive students and they can be far more selective than any public high school can be in screening their applicants. 7

Are American Schools and Students Trailing the Rest of the Developed World? Many parents have heard America’s schools compared negatively to those of foreign countries. The Organisation [British spelling] for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank keep exhaustive statistics on the developed world’s educational systems. Some of the results are revealing, to say the least. Yes, the United States does have some very serious and embarrassing deficiencies. But the picture of an American school system hopelessly behind the rest of our advanced competition is not what the data tell us. The picture is more complex and varied than many would have you believe.

None of this is to argue that we can’t do better. But to assert that American kids are bringing up the rear in the advanced world’s education system is simply wrong.

Fourth. To every teacher reading this, I say: Every kid, in his or her own way, deserves respect, if only for being a human. Each of the kids has a different combination of strengths and weaknesses. In all but the worst of them, there is something positive and respectable. Even the worst kid retains a minimal claim to our consideration. He may be ratty looking, he may be temperamental, he may be obnoxious and about as charming as a hemorrhoid, but he’s still a person. Even when a disruptive or insubordinate kid is being disciplined, there are rules that should be followed that preserve a measure of that kid’s dignity. Respect is a two-way street. We forget that sometimes.

It’s easy to be critical of teenagers. They often look strange. A lot of them are trying out weird hair styles or wearing bizarre clothing. Some of them are inked, pierced, and bejeweled in startling ways. A lot of them are really immature in their behavior. They laugh at stupid things, throw cheap shots and insults at each other, horse around, play dumb tricks on their friends, and get angry at the drop of a hat. Many have an unfortunate propensity toward slacking, viewing mandatory reading as a suggestion and homework as something best avoided until 2 a.m. the night before it’s due. And so very many of them always seem to be consumed by childish, insignificant (in our eyes) little high school problems, the kinds of issues we wrestled with years ago and now see in a less urgent light. They’re worried about making the cheerleading squad or how their makeup looks or whether some girl likes them or whether they did the right math problems. They can make it really tough to take them seriously. But underneath all that is a student in your class, a resident of your district, someone’s intensely beloved son or daughter, and one of the people who will be in charge of things when you’re retired. (Sobering thought, isn’t it?) Respect them and you will help a better grown-up emerge from the chrysalis of high school.

Every single kid knows something about life that we don’t. We might never have lived with a chronic, uncontrolled alcoholic. Some of them have. We might never have seen our parents split up; a lot of them have. We might have lived in the same area all our lives; some of them have lived in a dozen different states. And a kid’s life experiences don’t even have to be anything as dramatic as these examples to teach us something. Each one of these kids has seen life from eyes through which we can never see. Part of respecting them is comprehending that. If we are open to the experience, each one of these kids can broaden and deepen our definition of what it means to be a person.

Every kid must find his or her own way, and no kid will ever do it exactly the way any other kid does. It’s something isn’t it, watching them become their own men and women. They’re trying out a lot of new roles, almost as if they were trying on outfits. They’re pretty unsure and tentative in filling those roles most of the time. But they manage. The good news is that the vast majority of them will make it through high school all right and will go on to new challenges after it’s over. (You have to keep reminding them that yes, there is indeed life after high school.) Every young man or young woman who passes through our schools successfully did it in his or her own unique way. Their ways may baffle or appall us, but in the end, sometimes against all the odds, they measure up. If you had them when they were freshmen and you see them again when they’re seniors, you’re often amazed at how they’ve changed. Each of them went through those changes in a way unlikely to be duplicated exactly by anyone. There’s something very reassuring about that, to me. It speaks to the resiliency and adaptability of the human spirit.

At the end of my last class ever I tried to keep it together but I couldn’t. I was telling the kids in my 7th hour that my family was first in my heart, but that throughout my career the young people I had known and loved had been my second family. That’s when I lost it. It was so strange. In one sense, I had been waiting for this moment for years, but in another I found it almost unbearably hard. I was no longer going to be Mr. Miller. I was no longer going to define myself as a high school teacher. And I was no longer going to get to meet any more of those young people who had sustained me, exasperated me, exhilarated me, frustrated me, amused me, and given my life its central purpose over the years. I felt a mixture of relief, joy, sorrow, and gratitude at that moment, and the emotional impact of letting go of all I had known for more than three decades overwhelmed me. I can’t really describe it, but if you’ve experienced this yourself, you know what I mean.

So I am retired now. I’m moving out of state. I am beginning a new life. I hope to tutor at least part time and work on my book about the nature of human history. I’ll watch my grandchildren grow up (their mother and they coming with us), I’ll continue to cherish my remarkable wife, and I’ll try to find a new way to define myself. But I’ll always count myself lucky. I got to tell something of the story of the human experience on this planet to more than 4,000 young men and women. I can’t think of any way I could have spent my life better than that. And I will forever be proud that I was public school teacher, a small part of that great host of millions of teachers who love and care about the young people of America. I will no longer be in the classroom.

But it will always be in me.

It Doesn't Work. Period.

So-called "abstinence only" education, that is. It's a complete failure, but that doesn't stop the Idiot Right from pushing it. New evidence:

A recent study commissioned by Congress concluded that abstinence-only programs are completely ineffective in preventing or delaying teenagers from having sexual intercourse. Nor do they lower unwanted pregnancy rates or lessen the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

The solution? Give young people accurate and honest information about sex, including information about contraception.

We can choose to live in some kind of idealized dream world where teenagers are chaste and studious and young people are imbued with "virtue"--or we can live in the world as it actually is. I choose to live in the latter.

Bob Somerby Continues to Speak the Truth

Particularly about the diseased press corps that in 2000 practically handed the presidency to an unqualified little waste of skin named George W. Bush in preference to the immensely talented and qualified Al Gore, who would have been one of America's great presidents. Somerby continues his devastating critique here. And don't forget his incomparable archives, either. He has, over the years, presented a thorough and utterly damning case for the proposition that the national press deliberately and relentlessly lied about and smeared Al Gore from 1997 onward, an attack that made the election of 2000 close enough for the right wingers to steal.

Bob Somerby: defender of historical truth.

Mr. Sensitive Strikes Again

What an asshole.

Hey Right Wingers--Live With Bush, Die With Him, Too

There are few things more absurd and wildly dishonest than the current right-wing effort to disavow George W. Bush because Bush isn't a "real" conservative. Hmmm. That's funny. When Bush was riding high the rightwingers embraced him fanatically and enthusiastically. They shouted about his conservative virtues from the rooftops. But now that Bush is widely hated and reviled, they're falling all over themselves to repudiate him. The inimitable Glenn Greenwald is having none of it--and he nails this new right-wing garbage hard:

Jonah Goldberg, May 29, 2007 (Bush approval rating - 32%)

Bush, The Liberal [Jonah Goldberg]

Richard Cohen discovers something some of us on the right have been saying for a while: if you hold your head just so and look at Bush from the right angle, he looks an awful lot like a liberal.

Jonah Goldberg, November 8, 2003 (Bush approval rating - 60%)

But it is now clear that Bush's own son takes far more after his father's old boss than he does his own father, at least politically speaking. From tax cuts (and deficits, alas), to his personal conviction on aborrtion (sic), to aligning America with the historical tide of liberty in the world, Georrge (sic) W. Bush has proved that he's a Reaganite, not a "Bushie." He may not be a natural heir to Reagan, but that's the point. The party is all Reaganite now. What better sign that this is now truly and totally the Gipper's Party than the obvious conversion of George Bush's own son?

Rush Limbaugh, November 8, 2006 (Bush approval rating -- 31%):

Liberalism didn't win anything yesterday; Republicanism lost. Conservatism was nowhere to be found except on the Democratic side. . . . Conservatism did not lose, Republicanism lost last night. Republicanism, being a political party first, rather than an ideological movement, is what lost last night.

Rush Limbaugh, July 7, 2004 (Bush approval rating -- 55%):

Reagan was right just as George W. Bush is today, and I really believe that if Reagan had been able he would have put his hand on Bush's shoulder and say to him, "Stay the course, George." I really believe that.

Bob Novak, March 26, 2007 (Bush approval rating - 32%):

With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress -- not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment.

Bob Novak, March 24, 2003 -- (Bush approval rating - 65%):

[Bush is] a president who may be more basically conservative than Ronald Reagan.

National Review's Rich Lowry, January 28, 2007 (Bush approval rating - 33%):
It is, in all seriousness, it is a distressing and depressing time to be a conservative. I'm reminded of the old saying by Mao -- things are always darkest before they go completely black.
In recent years, we have watched a Republican Congress disgrace itself with its association with scandal, with its willful lack of fiscal discipline, and with its utter disinterest in the reforms that America needs. And at the same time, we watched a Republican President abet or passively accept the excesses of his Congressional party and, more importantly, fail to take the steps - until perhaps now - fail to take the steps to win a major foreign war. . . .

National Review Editorial, Rich Lowry Editor, October 22, 2004 (Bush approval rating - 52%):

In his bid for reelection, George W. Bush deserves the support of conservatives. . . . Bush has shown evidence of being able to learn from his mistakes. We have made political strides in Iraq. . . . Bush deserves conservative support, as well, on domestic issues. . . It has been a long and difficult four years, largely as a result of events not of Bush's making. For conservatives, however, backing Bush's reelection should be an easy decision.

Folks, isn't it obvious that these conservative con artists are trying to have it both ways? They are the ones who foisted the worst president history on us, and then, when this president's conservative philosophy failed--and failed utterly--they argue that he isn't really one of them! I swear, these people have more nerve, more sheer chutzpah, than any group of people I've ever seen. Don't let them get away with it. The Right chose to live with Bush; now, let it die with him, as well.

Today Was My Last Day as a High School Teacher

I'm still processing that reality. I'll get back to you later with my thoughts about it all. Right now, it seems like a dream.

On Memorial Day 2007

Thank you to all those who have sacrificed for our country. Let us honor your memory forever and extend comfort to your families.

And may there someday be an end to the adding of new names to the Roll of Honor.

The Truth About John Wayne

The screen "hero" of such epics as The Sands of Iwo Jima deliberately avoided all combat in the Second World War. The story is here, courtesy of Truthdig:

An outspoken hawk during the Vietnam War, Wayne co-directed and starred in the Pentagon-subsidized propaganda picture “The Green Berets.” Duke denounced antiwar protesters, reportedly saying: “As far as I’m concerned, it wouldn’t bother me a bit to pull the trigger on one of ’em.”

Wayne was, in reality, a draft dodger. America’s archetypal soldier was in fact a chicken hawk. He was a cheerleader and champion of militaristic patriotism and combat he had never experienced. Wayne had “other priorities” during WWII—achieving superstardom (and saving his neck) was more important than defeating fascism. Much like Vice President Dick Cheney, who sought numerous deferments during the Vietnam War, Wayne was the quintessential war wimp.

According to Pilar Wayne, her husband “would become a ‘superpatriot’ for the rest of his life trying to atone for staying home” during WWII. Like Wayne, the current crop of GOP chicken hawks are great actors, overcompensating for their previous patriotic failings (draft dodging, etc.) by sounding the jingoistic battle cry for a new generation of working-class sons and daughters to go to war. Or, as George W. Bush did in a priceless moment of Hollywood flourish, dressing up in a flight suit to declare a failing and deadly war in Iraq a “mission accomplished.”

William Manchester, in his memoir of his World War II combat experiences, Goodbye, Darkness, writes that when wounded Marines saw Wayne's image on the screen, they booed and threw things at it. The Marines knew the truth about John Wayne. Wayne may have been a great actor, but he was not a hero--and nothing should ever let us forget that. We see the echo of Wayne's hypocrisy in the current crop of Chickenhawks--and nothing should ever let us forget that, either.

Henry Kissinger on the Men Who Serve America

“Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” - Henry Kissinger

Bastard. Filthy right-wing bastard.

An Amazing Article That Deserves Your Attention

It's called, "Greetings from Idiot America" and in it Charles Pierce lays out the most devastating analysis of our current crisis I have ever seen. The gist of Pierce's argument is that many Americans have come to hate and fear anyone who actually knows what he or she is talking about, preferring instead to act from "The Gut", the irrational, unthinking, primitive, instinctive part of the brain. Pierce's words are ferocious and savage, cutting right to heart of our national tragedy. Key excerpts from Pierce's 2005 article that originally appeared in Esquire:

LET'S TAKE A TOUR, shall we? For the sake of time, we'll just cover the last year or so. A federally funded abstinence program suggests that HIV can be transmitted through tears. An Alabama legislator proposes a bill to ban all books by gay authors. The Texas House passes a bill banning suggestive cheerleading. And nobody laughs at any of it, or even points out that, in the latter case, having Texas ban suggestive cheerleading is like having Nebraska ban corn. James Dobson, a prominent conservative Christian spokesman, compares the Supreme Court to the Ku Klux Klan. Pat Robertson, another prominent conservative preacher, says that federal judges are a more serious threat to the country than is Al Qaeda and, apparently taking his text from the Book of Gambino, later sermonizes that the United States should get with it and snuff the democratically-elected president of Venezuela.

The Congress of the United States intervenes to extend into a televised spectacle the prolonged death of a woman in Florida. The majority leader of the Senate, a physician, pronounces a diagnosis based on heavily edited videotape. The majority leader of the House of Representatives argues against cutting-edge research into the use of human stem cells by saying that "an embryo is a person... We were all at one time embryos ourselves. So was Abraham. So was Muhammad. So was Jesus of Nazareth." Nobody laughs at him or points out that the same could be said of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, or whoever invented the baby-back rib.

And, finally, in August, the cover of Time—for almost a century the dyspeptic voice of the American establishment—clears its throat, hems and haws and hacks like a headmaster gagging on his sherry, and asks, quite seriously: "Does God have a place in science class?"

Fights over creationism—and its faddish new camouflage, intelligent design, a pseudoscience that posits without proof or method that science is inadequate to explain existence and that supernatural causes must be considered—roil up school districts across the country.

The president of the United States announces that he believes ID ought to be taught in the public schools on an equal footing with the theory of evolution. And in Dover, Pennsylvania, during one of these many controversies, a pastor named Ray Mummert delivers the line that both ends our tour and, in every real sense, sums it up: "We've been attacked," he says, "by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture."

And there it is. Idiot America is not the place where people say silly things. It's not the place where people believe in silly things. It is not the place where people go to profit from the fact that people believe in silly things. Idiot America is not even those people who believe that Adam named the dinosaurs. Those people pay attention. They take notes. They take the time and the considerable mental effort to construct a worldview that is round and complete. The rise of Idiot America is essentially a war on expertise. It's not so much antimodernism or the distrust of intellectual elites that Richard Hofstadter deftly teased out of the national DNA forty years ago. Both of those things are part of it. However, the rise of Idiot America today represents—for profit mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage and in the pursuit of power—the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they're talking about. In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a preacher, or a scientist, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.

In the place of expertise, we have elevated the Gut, and the Gut is a moron, as anyone who has ever tossed a golf club, punched a wall, or kicked an errant lawn mower knows. We occasionally dress up the Gut by calling it "common sense." The president's former advisor on medical ethics regularly refers to the "yuck factor." The Gut is common. It is democratic. It is the roiling repository of dark and ancient fears. Worst of all, the Gut is faith-based.

Yes, folks, people who believe that Adam and Eve played with dinosaurs are idiots, and there's no other way to put it. Unfortunately, many of these idiots are now in power. The capture of our political process by this terrifying irrationalism constitutes as grave a threat to America's future as Islamic fundamentalism. (I notice, by the way, a growing alliance between the militant Christian fundamentalists and the militant Muslims, especially in the areas of creationism, the crushing of women's rights, and the violent persecution of gays.) Pierce has courageously called our attention to this situation in the bluntest terms. You owe it yourself to read the entire article--and then vow to take action.

They STILL Don't Give a Damn

Despite recent phony rhetoric, the Bush Administration intends to do absolutely nothing about the global climate crisis. The BBC has the story of a proposed G8 global warming document here:

Correspondents say the document hints at a looming struggle over the issue of climate change at the G8 summit, to be held on 6-8 June in Heiligendamm, Germany.

Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to use Germany's presidency of the G8 to secure a major climate change deal, including:

--Agreement to slow the rise in average temperatures this century to 2C

--A cut in global emissions by 50% below 1990 levels by 2050

--A rise in energy efficiency in power and transport by 20 percent by 2020.

Greenpeace Director John Sauven described the US position as "criminal".

"The US administration is clearly ignoring the global scientific consensus as well the groundswell of concern about climate change in the United States," he said.

Yes, criminal is a good way to describe it. Ignoring massive scientific evidence--as usual--the Bush regime is willing to sacrifice the well-being of billions of people to protect its cronies in the oil industry. Big Oil is fighting tooth and nail against doing anything about global warming, and in fact is spearheading a disinformation campaign that is spreading lies about the nature of the problem. (You can check it out for yourself here.) The U.S. produces about 25% of the world's greenhouse gases. China, the other big polluter, won't do anything substantial if we don't. Thus, the Bush right-wing Republican position is effectively destroying the international effort to slow or reverse the effects of warming, effects which are indisputably tied to human activity. Once again, the Oil Men in the White House have proven that when it comes to the lives of ordinary people, they still don't give a damn.

You shouldn't be surprised.

A Look Into the Future

Very cool.

Shooting Down Neo-Confederate BS

The next time you hear some apologist for the Confederacy talking about the "War of Northern Aggression" or hear him asserting that the South fought only to defend itself and its way of life, remind him of what Mississippi's state government said was its reason for seceding:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

(Thanks to a poster named "ahermit" on HuffPo for pointing this out.)

The Civil War was about SLAVERY. It was, from the southern point of view, an attempt to PRESERVE HUMAN SLAVERY and to DESTROY THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. It was a loathsome, repulsive act of TREASON and the leaders of the rebellion were TRAITORS who should all have been HANGED. The defense of the display of the Confederate flag is nothing more than an attempt to GLORIFY TREASON. It has NOTHING to do with "heritage" and it has everything to do with RACIAL HATRED AND VICIOUS BIGOTRY. (Heritage? Virginia became an English colony 400 years ago. Virginia was part of the Confederacy for four years. How does 1% of the state's historical experience become its "heritage"? Mississippi was part of the Confederacy for 2% of its statehood history. Some "heritage".) The Republicans who defend the Confederate flag are KISSING THE ASS OF RACISTS in order to win the votes of RIGHT WING REDNECK IDIOT NEANDERTHAL PINHEADS.

Have I made my position clear?

Bush to Troops: You're Not Worth the Extra Money

This kind of crap just makes me crazy.

Troops don’t need bigger pay raises, White House budget officials said Wednesday in a statement of administration policy laying out objections to the House version of the 2008 defense authorization bill.

The Bush administration had asked for a 3 percent military raise for Jan. 1, 2008, enough to match last year’s average pay increase in the private sector. The House Armed Services Committee recommends a 3.5 percent pay increase for 2008, and increases in 2009 through 2012 that also are 0.5 percentage point greater than private-sector pay raises.

The slightly bigger military raises are intended to reduce the gap between military and civilian pay that stands at about 3.9 percent today. Under the bill, HR 1585, the pay gap would be reduced to 1.4 percent after the Jan. 1, 2012, pay increase.

Bush budget officials said the administration “strongly opposes” both the 3.5 percent raise for 2008 and the follow-on increases, calling extra pay increases “unnecessary.”

You see, the White House says the wonderful benefits package that the military provides will close the gap. Some might disagree with that, in light of the disgusting treatment of our troops at the hands of Halliburton. And others might point out the many troubles plaguing the VA. But hey, it's the Bush Administration. They wouldn't lie, would they?

Mr. "Support Our Troops" strikes again.

On the Death of Falwell

He repeatedly stirred up hatred against gays. He lied through his teeth about Bill Clinton and hurled every vicious smear against the Clintons he could think of. He was consistently dishonest, a complete moral fraud, and a pseudo-Christian. He was a tyrant who wanted to see science driven out of the schools and a theocracy established in our nation. He had extensive ties to far-right psychotic and financier Sun Myung Moon. He was moral ugliness and hypocrisy personified. So I have no tears to shed for this wretched man. Eric Alterman has more here.

Good riddance.

UPDATE: Think I'm being too rough? Check out the Falwell quotes from this article.

Wow! An Absolute Must-Read From Digby

Haven't you wondered about the perversity of much of our Washington-based political commentariat? They exploded with rage when Bill Clinton lied about sex, but they've tried their damnedest to prop up a dishonest little silver-spooned rich boy who blundered and lied this country into its worst foreign policy blunder since Vietnam. They are a self-designated elite who hold the rest of the country in utter contempt while pretending to be in touch with "ordinary Americans". They consider Washington to be "their" town. Now Digby, on Hullaballoo, has ripped into this sick, perverse, inbred group of losers with surgical, laser-like precision--and it's a devastating indictment. Excerpt:

When the equally phony George W. Bush came to town it was love at first sight, and why wouldn't it be? Here you had a man whom these people could truly admire --- a rich man of the bluest blood, born into one of the most powerful families in America who nonetheless pretended to be some hick from Midland Texas. He took great pride in his phoniness, just as they did, and they all danced this absurd kabuki in perfect step for years each pretending to the other that they were all "just regular guys."

You can see then why some of us have concluded that the Dean [David Broder] and his cadre of establishment courtiers don't actually care much about what "the people" think about anything. And it should also be obvious why we are so skeptical of their reporting skills when they venture out on their anthropological expeditions to find only examples of Americans who strangely hew to their own Hollywood casting of themselves -- an America of Sally Quinns warmly played by plucky Donna Reed and David Broder himself, brought to life by loveable Wilfred Brimleys. ("They came in and they trashed the place. And it's not their place." Can't you just hear it?)

Of course political reporters should go out and interview Americans and write stories about what those Americans have to say about the issues of the day. But those interviews are not any more representative of what "the people" as a whole think than are the liberal blogs or Sally Quinn's fictitious "small town" or the fans at a NASCAR race. This is especially true when it's filtered through the phony bourgeois posturings of a bunch of highly paid reporters and insiders who have contrived a self-serving little passion play in which they are regular blue collar guys from Buffalo and corn fed farmers from the Midwest (Real Americans!) who just happen to summer on Nantucket and get invitations to white tie state dinners with the Queen of England. Pardon us fringe dwellers for being just a tad skeptical that these forays out into "America" are informing us about anything more [than] the embarrassing neuroses of some very spoiled elites.

Nothing I have read recently sums it up better. I urge you to read the whole thing--and then pass it on.

Greenwald Lays the Hurt on Broder the Fraud

Man, if this were a boxing match, the ref would have stopped it. Glenn Greenwald absolutely destroys David Broder and the entire corrupt "Beltway" culture he represents. In a reply to Joe Klein, Greenwald takes issue with Klein's defense of the "Dean" of the political press corps. Excerpts:

Broder seems to have absolutely no idea that the country has turned against George Bush and his war to a historic and irreversible degree, and no cute and clever Rove-designed platitudes at a Press Conference will change that. Anyone remotely in touch with the political sentiments of "Americans" would know that.

Klein should also look here, where some of Broder's most out-of-touch and obtuse observations are collected -- including:

* Broder's 2005 canonization of Bush ("the quest for freedom . . . is a central purpose of his administration");

* his November, 2004 criticisms of Bush critics for what he said were misguided concerns that the Bush presidency was radical ("he will have to work within the system for whatever he gets. Checks and balances are still there");

* his November 1, 2004 proclamation that the country likes Bush personally far more than Gore and Kerry and that "the country is truly conservative";

* his April, 2003 decree that "there is little the Democrats can do to shatter the reputation for strong leadership Bush has built, and not much their presidential candidates can do to win equal reputations for themselves";

* his May 2003 confession that "I like Karl Rove" followed by a very moving reminiscence of the quality time he was able to spend with Rove in Austria when (just like the ordinary people): "Tom Mann of the Brookings Institution and I were assembling a cast of American politicians to address a group of 40 emerging political leaders from Western Europe, the former Soviet bloc, Asia and Africa, I suggested we invite Karl Rove to be one of the instructors";

* his October 2002 "report" where he explained how Don Rumsfeld personally invited him to the Pentagon to explain how Iraq is such a grave threat, and at the meeting, Rumsfeld "pulled out a pencil and drew me a simple chart -- a downward sloping line tracing the erosion of Iraq's conventional military strength in the decade since the Gulf War, and an upward sloping line showing its growing store of WMD - weapons of mass destruction." Based on Rumsfeld's crude and condescending scribblings, an obviously flattered Broder pronounced: "Rumsfeld left me with the impression that he is aware of the risks of war with Iraq, but confident they can be handled." And finally:

* his October 2002 attack against protestors trying to stop the Iraq War with meetings in Iraq: "It was all too reminiscent of Jane Fonda in Hanoi or antiwar protesters marching under Viet Cong flags."

Last year, Broder decided to spew pure caricature and cliche about the ordinary people he loves so much by claiming that only [a] few Democrats "have much experience with, or sympathy for, the military."

In sum, Broder has propped up one of the most unpopular and corrupt presidencies in history, all after he spent years waxing hysteric over a deeply popular President and a sex scandal that Americans by and large thought was petty and inconsequential. Time and again, David Broder is on the wrong side of every critical political issue. His judgment proves again and again to be worthless and misguided. And his opinions could not be any more detached from the "ordinary Americans" he thinks he represents.

In truth, Broder is a fraud, a shill for Bush and Cheney (he is, as I recall, Cheney's personal friend) and representative of everything that is wrong with our lapdog political press. Greenwald is right: the "Washington Beltway" insiders ARE the problem in this country, and only a peaceful revolution that displaces them can correct it.

Hmmm. What Could Be Causing This?

New Video on Government Corruption

Here.

Haw!!

Refuting the Big Lie of the "Failing" Public Schools

The buffoons who make education policy in this country at the federal level (and the equally buffoonish commentators on education) never tire of touting standardized test scores as "proof" of the failure of American public schools. As a teacher, I naturally take umbrage at these accusations of incompetence. So I always enjoy seeing these people made to look foolish in articles like this by Gerald Bracey. Key finding:

By comparing the results of foreign students and American students on tests administered in both nations, and then examining the American students' scores on the U.S. NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress], it is possible to reliably estimate how well foreign students would perform on the NAEP.

And it turns out that only one-third of those high-flying Swedish kids would be considered proficient readers; the NAEP figure for U.S. fourth-graders was 29 percent. The great majority of the remaining countries would have fewer proficient students than the United States. Using the NAEP standard, no country comes close to having a majority of proficient readers.

Under the NAEP standard, Singapore is the only nation in the world to have a majority of its students be proficient in science, and that by a scant 1 percent. Only a handful of countries would have a majority of students proficient in mathematics.

And yet the NAEP results are constantly used to flog the public schools and scare Americans into thinking that education is in a state of collapse in this country. The reasons this is done are often quite simple: opponents of the very idea of public schools want to take over the education system. These are the John Stossels of the world, driven by ideological motives, who constantly lie about the public schools in order to destroy them. Articles like Bracey's are a refreshing antidote to such lies. Read the whole thing, as they say in blogdom, and see if you don't agree.

Job One: Save the Bees!!

This is pretty alarming, to say the least.

"The Commander Guy"??

Good God, is this guy six friggin' years old or what??

The Bush-Cheney-Kristol-Rumsfeld-McCain Catastrophe: By the Numbers

Courtesy of Think Progress.

On the Fourth Anniversary of "Mission Accomplished", Bush Betrays the Troops--Again

Glenn Greenwald recalls, in scathing fashion, the disgusting groveling and media worship enjoyed by Commander Codpiece four years ago today as he pranced around on the deck of an aircraft carrier, playing dressup so he could feel like a Real Man. (And worship it was. Was there anything more cringe-inducing than Chris Matthews' homoerotic verbal fellating of the Boy King at that time?) This was one of the low points in the history of the modern American media (and that says something).

Now, four years later, with more than 3,300 Americans dead for no good reason, with an Iraqi death toll perhaps in the hundreds of thousands, and $500 billion squandered, the Emperor With No Clothes has vetoed a bill for merely suggesting that a timetable for withdrawal be set. The lack of funding for our troops is Bush's fault. It is he, and he alone, who is holding the process up. Like a spoiled, petulant child, Bush's idea of compromise is "Give me everything I want and don't ask any questions." Well to HELL with that. I hope the Democrats throw the same bill in his g-d damned face again and again until it is abundantly clear who has betrayed America's fighting men and women.

And while we're at it, why is Condoleeza Rice allowed to simply ignore a congressional subpoena? Whatever happened to contempt of Congress?

Democrats, dig in your heels and FIGHT. The people of America are counting on you.

UPDATE: By the way, let's help this go viral.