Sep 10 2012
Adapted from The Stars Hollow Gazette‘s Rant of the Week
This is an excerpt from George Carlin’s Brain Droppings, speech which he gave at the National Press Club on May 13, 1999.
An initiative is an idea that is going nowhere.
How much soft money can I collect in exchange for my core values?
The full video of the speech, in which he talked talked about America’s penchant for euphemism and about labeling minorities, is 56 minutes including his answers to questions from the audience.
Sep 10 2012
Sep 10 2012
Chicago Teachers Union On Strike For First Time in 25 Years
By Susie Madrak, Crooks & Liars
September 10, 2012 06:00 AM
All of a sudden, teachers are the enemy of the state. All of a sudden, our public schools are worthless and need to be overhauled by CEOs and people who have never taught a day in their lives (except the shock troops of Teach for America, which is to teaching what McDonald’s is to food). But many, many so-called liberals have been sucked into this argument, enabling what is little more than an elite union-busting, money-making operation.
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There are a lot of straw men set up in this argument, and desperate parents will grab at any of them if they think it will help their kids. But study after study finds the same thing: For-profit charter schools do not perform better, and in many instances, they perform worse. Yes, well, adding a profit motive to something will do that.So when the media tries to paint this teacher strike as greedy unions vs. "reform," don’t buy what they’re selling. Read this or this or this instead.
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Oh, and Rahm? Good luck counting on the teachers unions to get out the vote this year.
How Michelle Rhee Is Taking Over the Democratic Party
By Molly Ball, The Atlantic
Sep 8 2012, 12:31 PM ET
Yet there are signs that Rhee’s persona non grata status in her party is beginning to wane -- starting with the fact that the chairman of the Democratic convention, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, spoke at the movie screening Rhee hosted at the convention earlier this week. Another Democratic star, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, spoke at the cocktails-and-canapes reception afterward. Across the country, Democratic officials from governors like Colorado’s John Hickenlooper to former President Clinton -- buoyed by the well-funded encouragement of the hedge-fund bigwigs behind much of the charter-school movement -- are shifting the party’s consensus away from the union-dictated terms to which it has long been loyal. Instead, they’re moving the party toward a full-fledged embrace of the twin pillars of the reform movement: performance-based incentives for teachers, and increased options, including charter schools, for parents.
The inroads made by the education reformers go all the way to the top -- to President Obama, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and the “Race to the Top” initiative that required states to make reforms to get federal education funds -- and they amount to a major shift for the Democratic Party on one of its signature issues. “These are some of the most high-profile Democrats out there,” Rhee says, also mentioning Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel, Philadelphia’s Michael Nutter, and her husband, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. “They are taking on the unions. They are fighting for what they believe in. It definitely signals a new day.”
Sep 10 2012
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
September 10 is the 253rd day of the year (254th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 112 days remaining until the end of the year
On this day in 1776, Nathan Hale volunteers to spy behind British lines
On this day in 1776, General George Washington asks for a volunteer for an extremely dangerous mission: to gather intelligence behind enemy lines before the coming Battle of Harlem Heights. Captain Nathan Hale of the 19th Regiment of the Continental Army stepped forward and subsequently become one of the first known American spies of the Revolutionary War.
the Battle of Long Island, which led to British victory and the capture of New York City, via a flanking move from Staten Island across Long Island, Hale volunteered on September 8, 1776, to go behind enemy lines and report on British troop movements. He was ferried across on September 12. It was an act of spying that was immediately punishable by death, and posed a great risk to Hale.
An account of Nathan Hale’s capture was written by Consider Tiffany, a Connecticut shopkeeper and Loyalist, and obtained by the Library of Congress. In Tiffany’s account, Major Robert Rogers of the Queen’s Rangers saw Hale in a tavern and recognized him despite his disguise. After luring Hale into betraying himself by pretending to be a patriot himself, Rogers and his Rangers apprehended Hale near Flushing Bay, in Queens, New York. Another story was that his Loyalist cousin, Samuel Hale, was the one who revealed his true identity.
British General William Howe had established his headquarters in the Beekman House in a rural part of Manhattan, on a rise between 50th and 51st Streets between First and Second Avenues Hale reportedly was questioned by Howe, and physical evidence was found on him. Rogers provided information about the case. According to tradition, Hale spent the night in a greenhouse at the mansion. He requested a Bible; his request was denied. Sometime later, he requested a clergyman. Again, the request was denied.
According to the standards of the time, spies were hanged as illegal combatants. On the morning of September 22, 1776, Hale was marched along Post Road to the Park of Artillery, which was next to a public house called the Dove Tavern (at modern day 66th Street and Third Avenue), and hanged. He was 21 years old. Bill Richmond, a 13-year-old former slave and Loyalist who later became famous as an African American boxer in Europe, was reportedly one of the hangmen, “his responsibility being that of fastening the rope to a strong tree branch and securing the knot and noose.”
By all accounts, Hale comported himself eloquently before the hanging. Over the years, there has been some speculation as to whether he specifically uttered the famous line:
I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.
But may be a revision of:
I am so satisfied with the cause in which I have engaged that my only regret is that I have not more lives than one to offer in its service.
The story of Hale’s famous speech began with John Montresor, a British soldier who witnessed the hanging. Soon after the execution, Montresor spoke with the American officer William Hull about Hale’s death. Later, it was Hull who widely publicized Hale’s use of the phrase. Because Hull was not an eyewitness to Hale’s speech, some historians have questioned the reliability of the account
Sep 10 2012
The tens of millions of Americans planning to vote for Romney and Republican candidates or Obama and Democratic candidates still don’t seem to understand how broken the political system is, they still can’t seem to grasp that there isn’t much point in voting when Wall Street owns 90 percent of the politicians. They don’t like to think about politics, they can’t see the relentless corporate agenda behind all of the two-party system posturing, but they’ve seen plenty of movies, so maybe it can all be explained to them this way . . .
The two-party system has torched you like The English Patient, your civil liberties are Gone With the Wind, open your newspaper and all you see is Pulp Fiction. Nixon said he’d bring us together again, but we got Haldeman and Ehrlichman and their Little Shop of Horrors, Reagan promised morning in America, but we got Dog Day Afternoon, Bush promised compassionate conservatism, but we got the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the bankers and corporations promised jobs and prosperity, but we got Apocalypse Now.
Put your popcorn down and tell me, do you understand what’s been happening here YET?
No?
Well here’s a red-white-and-blue clue for you . . .
Sep 10 2012
Last time we discussed oxygen as an element, including why we do not burst into flame in our 21% oxygen atmosphere. Quantum mechanics can really be interesting.
This time we shall discuss some of the compounds of oxygen with other elements, and I emphasize SOME because oxygen forms hundreds of thousands if not millions of compounds.
Some of these compounds are essential industrial materials, some are essential for biological processes, and some of them can cause real problems when released into the atmosphere. A few of them are quite toxic. Let us look into them!
