This blog will focus on political images I have found all around the Internet, though I will intersperse some commentary and quotes that I find interesting.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
If you have a religious bone in your body....
If you have a religious bone in your body, this is an interesting take on Jesus...
Source
Years ago the religious right kidnapped Jesus. They blindfolded him, bound and gagged him and currently hold him in a windowless room in the church basement. They make him sign confessions that he hates homosexuals, opposes gun control, backs all of America's military adventures, loves free market capitalism, loathes taxation and thinks the poor are poor because they are lazy, dope-peddling good-for-nothings. That is the bad news. The good news is that the guy in the basement isn't Jesus at all. Jesus escaped two millennia ago.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Hypocrites on the march
Them Southern, Bible-thumpin' Republicans love them some illicit sex and theft. The Bible Belt is not necessarily the morality belt.
A Mississippi mayor has been forced to come out of the closet after charging taxpayers for a purchase made at a gay sex store in Toronto
Greg Davis, the Republican mayor of Southaven, Miss., is embroiled in a spending scandal after state auditors requested receipts for $170,000 (U.S.) in improper charges he made to the city.
According to The Commercial Appeal, a newspaper in Memphis, Tenn., the receipts include thousands of dollars in liquor and lavish dinners, as well as a $67 charge at a store called Priape, which bills itself as “Canada’s premiere gay lifestyle store and sex shop.”
Mr. Davis ran as a conservative, family values candidate in an unsuccessful bid for Congress in 2008. He has a wife of 19 years, Suzann, and three young daughters, who are all active members of Heartland Baptist Church, according to the city’s website.Source
Nothing says "Jesus" like an AK-47 and arson.
Just in case you weren't clear on the type of people with the calling for religion...
INDIANAPOLIS -- A man who police said drove up the steps of the Indiana War Memorial draped in an American flag and carrying a gun told RTV6 he was trying to spread the message of Jesus Christ.
Daniel Whitaker, 49, admitted to pouring gasoline down the steps of the memorial and lighting it on fire Nov. 22, leading to a tense standoff with police.Source
Monday, December 19, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
Well said, blogger.
Modern Conservatism isn't simply about them owning as much as possible; it's also about breaking anything they can't own.-- by a blogger on (ontheleftcoast)
Well said, Justice - and just as true today.
"A state grants to a [corporation] the blessings of potentially perpetual life and limited liability...It might reasonably be concluded that those properties, so beneficial in the economic sphere, pose special dangers in the political sphere"- Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Well said, Henry. And just as true today.
"American fascists are easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest..."- Henry Wallace, 1944
Well said, Joe
“That’s what I find absolutely bizarre: Republicans moralizing about deficits. That’s like an arsonist moralizing about fire safety. These guys have zero credibility.”
– Vice President Joe Biden, quoted by the Orlando Sentinel, speaking to Florida Democrats.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Monday, December 12, 2011
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
The education conundrum...
The following is no surprise to those of us connected with public education in the U.S. If you think education in this country is bad now, just wait until the conservative politicians get done with it.
source: Daily Kos
In New York State this coming year, not only will the children be evaluated based on these tests which have no sound reliability coefficient linking these exams to eventual success or happiness in life, but teachers will also be evaluated on their students' ability to perform. In just this morning's Syracuse Post-Standard an article appeared about a petition, signed by hundreds of school principals across the state, protesting the tests and the evaluation.
The State Commissioner of education, more politician than educator, defends the state's position without any real, defining evidence that this nonsensical crap will work. He's just pandering to the right wing in the state who want education privatized.
When they fire all of the "bad" teachers, or drive them out of the profession by "remediating" them, where do they think the next batch of teachers will come from? Are there really thousands of teacher candidates with powerful credentials and a proven record of pushing children through difficult tests just sitting around waiting to earn $40,000 a year? I don't think so.
A longtime friend on the school board of one of the largest school systems in America did something that few public servants are willing to do. He took versions of his state’s high-stakes standardized math and reading tests for 10th graders, and said he’d make his scores public.
By any reasonable measure, my friend is a success. His now-grown kids are well-educated. He has a big house in a good part of town. Paid-for condo in the Caribbean. Influential friends. Lots of frequent flyer miles. Enough time of his own to give serious attention to his school board responsibilities. The margins of his electoral wins and his good relationships with administrators and teachers testify to his openness to dialogue and willingness to listen.
He called me the morning he took the test to say he was sure he hadn’t done well, but had to wait for the results. A couple of days ago, realizing that local school board members don’t seem to be playing much of a role in the current “reform” brouhaha, I asked him what he now thought about the tests he’d taken.
“I won’t beat around the bush,” he wrote in an email. “The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system, that’s a “D”, and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction."
He continued, “It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate.
“I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities.
“I have a wide circle of friends in various professions. Since taking the test, I’ve detailed its contents as best I can to many of them, particularly the math section, which does more than its share of shoving students in our system out of school and on to the street. Not a single one of them said that the math I described was necessary in their profession.
“It might be argued that I’ve been out of school too long, that if I’d actually been in the 10th grade prior to taking the test, the material would have been fresh. But doesn’t that miss the point? A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.”
Here’s the clincher in what he wrote:
“If I’d been required to take those two tests when I was a 10th grader, my life would almost certainly have been very different. I’d have been told I wasn’t ‘college material,’ would probably have believed it, and looked for work appropriate for the level of ability that the test said I had.
“It makes no sense to me that a test with the potential for shaping a student’s entire future has so little apparent relevance to adult, real-world functioning. Who decided the kind of questions and their level of difficulty? Using what criteria? To whom did they have to defend their decisions? As subject-matter specialists, how qualified were they to make general judgments about the needs of this state’s children in a future they can’t possibly predict? Who set the pass-fail “cut score”? How?”
“I can’t escape the conclusion that decisions about the [state test] in particular and standardized tests in general are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.”
source: Daily Kos
In New York State this coming year, not only will the children be evaluated based on these tests which have no sound reliability coefficient linking these exams to eventual success or happiness in life, but teachers will also be evaluated on their students' ability to perform. In just this morning's Syracuse Post-Standard an article appeared about a petition, signed by hundreds of school principals across the state, protesting the tests and the evaluation.
The State Commissioner of education, more politician than educator, defends the state's position without any real, defining evidence that this nonsensical crap will work. He's just pandering to the right wing in the state who want education privatized.
When they fire all of the "bad" teachers, or drive them out of the profession by "remediating" them, where do they think the next batch of teachers will come from? Are there really thousands of teacher candidates with powerful credentials and a proven record of pushing children through difficult tests just sitting around waiting to earn $40,000 a year? I don't think so.
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
Sounds about right
"[T]he Republican establishment, such as it is, is essentially powerless. It sold its soul to the Tea Party, sat by silently as extremist rhetoric engulfed the GOP and figured that swing voters would eventually overlook all this to cast votes against a bad economy.via DownWithTyranny
"That's still Romney's bet; yet his failure to break through suggests the right wing will not be trifled with. Republican leaders unleashed forces that may eat their party alive. And the only Republican really enjoying what's happening is Newt Gingrich."
-- E. J. Dionne Jr., in his Washington Post column today, "A GOP reality-show race, thanks to the Tea Party"
Monday, December 05, 2011
Problems with Pakistan escalate...
Pakistan has decided to scrap all existing anti-terror cooperation agreements with the United States in a development that may not only take the uneasy alliance between the two countries to the point of no return but also impede world efforts at bringing sustainable peace in Afghanistan.
Republicans are the biggest hypocrites
Conservatives have been whining about the deadbeats at Zuccotti Park. Turns out they were right:
Saturday, December 03, 2011
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