Small Talk moves.
Russo gets it right for a change:
After years blogging on a rough Yahoo 360 site, small schools guru Mike Klonsky has moved to a new, better-looking and -working location (here), from which I am sure he will continue to excoriate corporate-style school reform and known-nothing (sic) sellouts like me.
Sunday links.
No Child Left Behind is “one of the emptiest slogans in the history of American politics,” Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) said at the final day of the Representative Assembly, and the law must be fixed. Unfair Social Security penalties, need to go too, he said, drawing thunderous applause after declaring himself a proud sponsor of a bill to repeal the penalties, known as GPO-WEP. NEA
According to the most recent survey from the National Education Association on how teachers spend personal time, about 35 percent of teachers surveyed nationwide in 2003 said they were participating in courses and activities sponsored by their school systems in the summertime. “Many of them take professional development courses because that’s easier to do in the summer,” said Daniel Kaufman, a spokesman for the Maryland State Teachers Association. “It needs to be said that most teachers during the school year work much more than just the usual daily schedule. They’re usually in the 60-hour per week range.” PEN Newsblast
I was talking with some friends who live in Congressman George Miller (D. Contra Costa) district. Miller is important since he is the Chair of the House Education and Labor Committee which is the starting point for the revision of No Child Left Behind re-authorization. Cong. Miller has held a series of town hall meeting in his district. However, as reported, these town halls were controlled and limited. Well informed teachers were limited from participation. Here Congressman Miller could have listened to those who do the work rather than the conservative advocacy organizations that dominate testimony in Washington, D.C. Educational Justice
JOHN MCCAIN: “Now we’ve got the cables. We’ve got talk radio. We’ve got the bloggers. I hate the bloggers. We’ve got all kinds of sources of information.” Youtube
High-speed rail won the pole position on the November ballot — it was named Proposition 1 when the secretary of state assigned numbers to the 11 initiatives voters will consider. That’s no guarantee of victory, but the momentum is clearly building. Fresno Bee
“Now I know this wasn’t necessarily the most popular part of my speech last year but I said it then and I’m saying it again now because it’s what I believe and I will always be an honest partner to you in the White House,” said the Illinois senator, who spoke to the group via satellite from Montana. Obama proposes to raise teacher pay through merit based rewards for work above and beyond their positions. The issue has long been a widely opposed proposal among the NEA due to its potential for abuse through favoritism and “subjective” evaluations. The Hill
Discussing Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) struggling campaign on Fox News Sunday today, Weekly Standard Executive Editor Fred Barnes argued that McCain “needs to pay attention to the right.” “Here’s what he needs to do, he needs to touch on some of the social issues which energize the right,” declared Barnes. Barnes specifically said that McCain is “going to have use” gays in the military and gay marriage as wedge issues:
BARNES: In particular, gays in the military for one. We know Barack Obama is for allowing gays in the military, and Bill Clinton tried to do, but backed off. This is not a popular issue. Gay marriage is another one. These are both issues that I think McCain’s going to have to use. You can’t ignore the right. If he does, he’ll lose. Think Progress
Obama, the war and the 24 Hour Rule.
Josh Marshall Talking Points Memo says this about news reports of Obama’s flip on the war:
We’ve seen many examples over the last couple days of reporters egregiously lapping up the McCain camp’s nonsensical spin about Obama flip-flopping on Iraq. But some reporters can get spun so thoroughly that they actually retrospectively rearrange the facts of the campaign to accommodate the McCain camp’s spin. Change the facts to suit the spin, as it were.
“We’ll see.”
We watched a terrific movie last night. Netflixed Charlie Wilson’s War.
It is all about the work of a Texas congressman (Tom Hanks), a rich right-wing Texas born-again played by Julia Roberts and a CIA operative acted by Seymour Phillip Hoffman, to get covert support to the mujahadeen fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 80s.
The movie was a funny and fascinating bit of important history. How much of it is factual is Hollywood problematic. But it is a good yarn.
Hoffman as CIA agent Gust Avrakotos tells a little story:
Gust Avrakotos: There’s a little boy and on his 14th birthday he gets a horse… and everybody in the village says, “how wonderful. the boy got a horse” And the Zen master says, “we’ll see.” Two years later The boy falls off the horse, breaks his leg, and everyone in the village says, “how terrible.” And the Zen master says, “We’ll see.” Then, a war breaks out and all the young men have to go off and fight… except the boy can’t cause his legs all messed up. and everybody in the village says, “How wonderful.”
Charlie Wilson: Now the Zen master says, “We’ll see.”
Old school.
Bruce Springsteen.
Three over coffee.
Cafe con leche and tortilla sandwiches at Barcelona’s Mercat de la Boqueria.
The neighborhood fireworks, fire crackers and quarter sticks didn’t stop until two AM this morning. I’m a bit groggy. So this morning’s coffee was not just a pleasure, but a necessity.
We let our grand kids sleep late and Anne and I went off to Letezia’s for the Saturday morning ritual. Monday, we all head out across the big Lake for four weeks in Michigan. The first week with all the kids culminating in a joint 60th birthday celebration next Saturday, including, would you believe, fireworks.
Thomas Sowell’s lies.
In a post earlier this week I mocked the right-wing columnist for the wing-nuts-on-line National Review, Thomas Sowell. Sowell wrote some crap about how the French teachers’ union was responsible for the victory of the Nazis in France.
JD2718 tried to fact check Sowell’s quote and came up empty. Check the comment section of the original post. Brother Mike on Small Talk places Sowell’s slanders and lies in the bigger picture of false patriotism.
NEA finally and at long last endorses Obama.
Here’s Reg Weavers’ statement:
NEA’s 3.2 million members, like most Americans, are ready for change. Barack Obama understands that a child is more than a test score, that schools need adequate resources, and that creating great public schools for each and every child is a shared responsibility. We need a president who understands that the strength of our country, the vitality of our economy and the health of our democracy depend on quality public schools. NEA members have shown today that they’re prepared to help put a friend of education in the White House, and get this country back on track.
Obama will address the RA today by satellite.
Did the NY Times miss the story? Again.
In a widely noted front page story the NY Times did one of those reports about how today’s universities are seeing the exit of aging 60s radical professors, replaced by those with no concern for political activism. The writer goes to Madison and creates the characters of professors Michael Olneck and Sara Goldrick-Rab to prove the point.
Goddrick-Rab was says she was expecting it.
The readers missed a big part of the story: The intense pressures to publish or perish constantly, to get grants to support not only ourselves but our students, the ramping up of statistical standards, and the enormous benefits (and costs) of “specializing” very early in school. I declared my college major in the first semester of freshman year, and took nearly nothing but sociology courses for the next 6 years. Where did it get me? A BA in 3.5 years, and a PhD within 5 years after that. And I did learn a lot along the way– but it was far from a classical experience. And the current reward structure provides little space for political activism — indeed it leaves no time whatsoever for any real activism, if one wants to also have a family.
Equally important, the story missed my wonderful relationship with Mike Olneck, my friend and mentor at Wisconsin. Mike is one of the reasons I came here, and a prime reason why I stay. His departure this winter will be nothing less than depressing.
If I wanted Hillary, I would have voted for Hillary.
For all the analyses of why Hillary Clinton lost the fight for the Democratic nomination, one fact is irrefutable. Barack Obama’s early opposition to the war in Iraq and Hillary Clinton’s early support for it was a fundamental factor in where they each ended up.
In recent days, some have suggested that Obama’s anti-war position is wavering.
I don’t know.
I believe in the “24 Hour Rule.” I wait 24 hours after a news cycle before I give any credibility to a report. You need only refer to the BS story of Obama’s refusal to do a fist bump with a kid in Ohio to understand the value of the 24 Hour Rule.
But Obama’s position on the war in Iraq is much more serious a matter than whether he refused to do a fist bump with an elementary school student.
Parse words. Shift positions on the Senate FISA bill. Take the middle ground on gun rights. Whatever.
I, like millions of others, want this war to end. Back off from that and all bets are off.
“Conservative icon” is dead.
He’s dead.
CNN is calling him a “conservative icon.”
The Republicans are sobbing at the loss of one of their own:
“Today we lost a senator whose stature in Congress had few equals,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate’s Republican leader. “Sen. Jesse Helms was a leading voice and courageous champion for the many causes he believed in.”
Apparently McConnell believes in those causes too.
And there is sadness in the White House where spokesman Scott Stanzel said,
“America lost a great public servant and true patriot today.”
There were tears, sadness and media loss of memory. Jesse Helms, who died today at 86, was a racist, homophobic cretin. People who believe in decency, equality and fairness will not be shedding tears. In fact, at your 4th of July picnic, you might just want to hoist an extra to note his passing.
Fair and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) disclosed the following example of Helms’ racism in 2001:
As an aide to the 1950 Senate campaign of North Carolina Republican candidate Willis Smith, Helms reportedly helped create attack ads against Smith’s opponent, including one which read: “White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races.” Another ad featured photographs Helms himself had doctored to illustrate the allegation that Graham’s wife had danced with a black man. (The News and Observer, 8/26/01; The New Republic, 6/19/95; The Observer, 5/5/96; Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms, by Ernest B. Furgurson, Norton, 1986)
A true patriot in the view of the Bush White House.
Happy 4th!
Creedence Clearwater Revival:
In 1852 Frederick Douglass asked, “What to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?”
Frederick Douglass.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.
