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.
Tuesday, November 05, 2013
Good bumper-sticker advice.
Don't like abortions? Don't have one. Don't like gay marriage? Don't gay marry.
Education in retreat
The decline of our educational system is not accidental. It is being manufactured by those who want your tax dollars pouring into the coffers of private corporations. Common Core standards? Being written by private corporations. Common Core materials, tests, and text books? Being written by private interests. All making profits off of your tax dollars. All designed to make your schools look bad and weak.
And who will benefit when the public schools fail? Corporations who will step in to fill the void with private and charter schools, all the while changing program to produce graduates who are more in tune with the mindless cretins they want working for minimum wage in their shops. And, of course, making a huge profit from your tax dollars.
Government is NOT the evil empire, the corporate state is.
And who will benefit when the public schools fail? Corporations who will step in to fill the void with private and charter schools, all the while changing program to produce graduates who are more in tune with the mindless cretins they want working for minimum wage in their shops. And, of course, making a huge profit from your tax dollars.
Government is NOT the evil empire, the corporate state is.
Hell-bent on privatizing American education.
GUEST VIEW: Parents can fight back against Common Core (Click here to read the entire article - it is well done)
By JESSICA MCNAIR Special to the Observer-Dispatch Posted Nov 04, 2013 @ 03:00 AM
Parents’ cries about homework troubles have become routine this fall. Hours spent around the kitchen table, questions that highly-educated parents can’t answer, and tears from their children have parents wondering, “What is going on?!”
The simple answer would be: Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
The better answer would be that local school districts have been pushed between a rock and a hard place and they have chosen to bend to the pressure of high stakes tests rather than act in students’ best interests.
Enticed by federal Race to the Top money, New York state has adopted the CCSS, created and delivered tests aligned to the CCSS in grades 3-8, implemented a new teacher evaluation system (APPR) tied to student test scores on the aforementioned exams, and required participation in a cloud-based student information data system that stores personal information about all children.
[...]
Sending home loads of homework, over testing even our youngest students, and requiring work be corrected until it’s perfect is a blatant effort to prepare students for the “state tests”.
[...]
Teachers can only meet students’ long term educational and emotional needs when supported by leaders who value individuality over common standards, creativity over test taking, privacy over data collection, and curiosity for learning over fast-paced rigor, stamina and perfection.
Cleverly-crafted plan
What we must understand is that this is part of a larger and cleverly crafted plan of the corporate reform movement in education. With the rollout of CCSS, our school leaders have been given the task of improving student performance. If that performance doesn’t improve, as judged by standardized tests, then schools face poor evaluations for teachers and principals, and ultimately, school closings.
[...]
HOW YOU CAN HELP --
Reach out to your child’s teacher to offer your support and ask for your child’s true educational needs to be met.
-- Refuse to take part in New York state exams this spring.
-- Attend upcoming forums and events about CCSS including the Rally for Public Education on Nov. 7 from 7:00-8:30 pm at Valentino’s Banquet Hall in Washington Mills.
-- Participate in a statewide protest of CCSS on Nov. 18 by keeping your child(ren) home from school.
-- Contact your elected officials and express your concern.
-- Urge your local school board to pass a resolution against high-stakes testing.
-- Let PTA leaders know you disagree with NYSPTA’s support of CCSS.
Read more: http://www.uticaod.com/guest/x2132751520/GUEST-VIEW-Parents-can-fight-back-against-Common-Core#ixzz2jm6oqSVb
Monday, November 04, 2013
Is the U.S. constitution outdated?
Ironic, in terms of my post a few minutes ago on the government's complete disregard for the fourth amendment, that this article should pop up. Click on the headline to read a lot more.
At The Atlantic, Alex Seitz-Wald writes The U.S. Needs a Constitution—Here's How to Write It:
Open thread for night owls: Is the U.S. Constitution obsolete?
Sunday, November 03, 2013, 11:48 pm
| America, we've got some bad news: Our Constitution isn't going to make it. It's had 224 years of commendable, often glorious service, but there's a time for everything, and the government shutdown and permanent-crisis governance signal that it's time to think about moving on. "No society can make a perpetual constitution," Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1789, the year ours took effect. "The earth belongs always to the living generation and not to the dead .… Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years." By that calculation, we're more than two centuries behind schedule for a long, hard look at our most sacred of cows. And what it reveals isn't pretty |
Chris Christie - just another Republican asshole
I won't spoil the fun - the headline below says it all - click on it to read the article.
Chris Christie To Teacher: 'I Am Tired Of You People!'
THE NSA - a national disgrace
The fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads...
And I don't care HOW the NSA justifies it's spying on Americans - it is CLEARLY unconstitutional.
Jennifer Radack is a civil liberties attorney with the Government Accountability Projectwho has been in contact with Edward Snowden. In an ABC News interview, she reported that other NSA insiders have been inspired by Snowden's bravery and sacrifice and have come forward with further revelations about the organization's excess, criminality and lawlessness. She says that the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers has backfired, squandering the administration's credibility with its own operatives and inspiring them to speak out.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
And I don't care HOW the NSA justifies it's spying on Americans - it is CLEARLY unconstitutional.
Inspired by Snowden, more NSA insiders are blowing the whistle (Click on this headline to read more)
Saturday, November 02, 2013, 6:41 pm
Jennifer Radack is a civil liberties attorney with the Government Accountability Projectwho has been in contact with Edward Snowden. In an ABC News interview, she reported that other NSA insiders have been inspired by Snowden's bravery and sacrifice and have come forward with further revelations about the organization's excess, criminality and lawlessness. She says that the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers has backfired, squandering the administration's credibility with its own operatives and inspiring them to speak out.“I think the government hopes to chill speech by employees in the national security and intelligence fields, especially those at the NSA and CIA, but the unintended consequence is [that] more and more whistleblowers are coming through the doors of the Government Accountability Project (GAP),” said Jesselyn Radack, referring to the organization where she works as the National Security and Human Rights Director. “I think courage is contagious, and we see more and more people from the NSA coming through our door after Snowden made these revelations.”
Barry Goldwater on conservatism and abortion.
“Today’s so-called ‘conservatives’ don’t even know what the word means. They think I’ve turned liberal because I believe a woman has a right to an abortion. That’s a decision that’s up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right. It’s not a conservative issue at all.”
---Barry Goldwater
---Barry Goldwater
It's a special kind of stupid
It's a special kind of stupid that conservatives display these days - the kind where they are so stupid that they WANT to be stupid.
Sunday, November 03, 2013
Al Gore: all fired up
Gore on fire: Says humans treating atmosphere 'as if it is an open sewer' (Click on this headline to read more)
Saturday, November 02, 2013, 11:26 pm
Al Gore has been everywhere lately. Just last week he presided over his "24 Hours of Reality" project which was seen by millions globally! And without even taking a nap the very next day he gave a talk at Making Progress, where he was fired up, more so than many had ever seen him.
He touched on many subjects:
He spoke about how income inequality threatened the American Dream, subprime mortgage systems helped start the Great Recession, and how the world is still dealing with the credit crisis as a fallout.But unsurprisingly, he reserved his passion for his signature issue; the environment:
“Now we have, on the books of the large, public multinational energy companies, $7 trillion of subprime carbon assets,” he said. “Their valuation is based on an assumption that is even more ridiculous and absurd than the assumption that these people that couldn’t make a downpayment or monthly payments were good risks for home mortgages. The assumption is that those $7 trillion can be sold and burned.”“They will not be sold and burned. They cannot be sold and burned.”Gore went on to describe how humans are putting 90 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every day, “as if it is an open sewer.” That pollution traps the same amount of heat as the energy from “400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs going off every 24 hours.”
Now, if this don't beat all...
Iraq Makes Request for Weapons (Click on this headline for a video and to read more)
Saturday, November 02, 2013, 10:25 pm
Iraq is what he describes as a “vibrant democracy” in a New York Times op-ed in anticipation of a visit to the U.S. and a meeting with President Obama this week.
Maliki says he’s fighting terrorism. Al-Qaeda is in Iraq killing the Iraqi people, he explains. “It has been almost two years since American troops withdrew from Iraq. And despite the terrorist threats we face, we are not asking for American boots on the ground,” he writes. “Rather, we urgently want to equip our own forces with the weapons they need to fight terrorism, including helicopters and other military aircraft so that we can secure our borders and protect our people. Hard as it is to believe, Iraq doesn’t have a single fighter jet to protect its airspace.”
A proud liberal
If by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people--their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties--someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a Liberal.
---John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage
---John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage
Surprised at the lack of credibility of mainstream media yet? Nah, me either.
Oops, CBS '60 Minutes' Benghazi Source Is A Liar (Click on this headline for a video and to read more)
Saturday, November 02, 2013, 12:49 p
That belated "60 Minutes" hit job on the Benghazi tragedy -- highly touted by Fox News, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and others on the right -- is now under attack over serious credibility issues.
Graham used the “60 Minutes” report to justify calling Monday for additional hearings into Benghazi and threatened to block a vote on President Obama's nominees until lawmakers had heard from all the surviving witnesses to the attack.
The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung strongly calls into question the star witness promoted by Lara Logan, who just happens to have a book to sell, has asked for money for his account, and told a completely different tale in his official report on the night of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
The man CBS called Morgan Jones, a pseudonym, described his heroic efforts to save the besieged Americans at the Benghazi compound while the attack was underway, scaling a 12-foot wall and taking down a terrorist with the butt end of a rifle.
So brave. So full of shit.
WaPo:
"But in a written account that Jones, whose real name was confirmed as Dylan Davies by several officials who worked with him in Benghazi, provided to his employer three days after the attack, he told a different story of his experiences that night.In Davies’s 21 / 2-page incident report to Blue Mountain, the Britain-based contractor hired by the State Department to handle perimeter security at the compound, he wrote that he spent most of that night at his Benghazi beach-side villa. Although he attempted to get to the compound, he wrote in the report, “we could not get anywhere near . . . as roadblocks had been set up.”
Pro-life, or just anti-people?
Perhaps the right-wing is populated mostly by people who hate their own lives and therefore feel everyone should be be hated? Just guessing.
Saturday, November 02, 2013
GOP lying about the ACA
This all started with a story in the mainstream media about a woman in Florida who was losing her health insurance because of the new regulations in Obamacare and, the story went on, she would now have to pay an exorbitant amount for a new policy...
Reince Priebus apparently hasn't been watching his Fox News.
.@DWSTweets: what are u going to tell this Floridian whose rates are 10 TIMES higher under #ObamaCare?http://t.co/...
— @Reince
He's way behind. Greta Van Susteren already debunked that story. If Reince missed that, he can check out that bastion of liberal partisanship, Consumer Reports, which also destroys that story. They take a look at the Florida woman's cancelled health policy and compare it to what she could—affordably—get by shopping on the exchange.
Consumer Reports destroys 'rate shock' horror story (Click on this headline for the original post)
Friday, November 01, 2013, 6:12 pm
Better luck next time, buckaroo.
.@DWSTweets: what are u going to tell this Floridian whose rates are 10 TIMES higher under #ObamaCare?http://t.co/...— @Reince
Barrette’s expiring policy is a textbook example of a junk plan that isn’t real health insurance at all. If she had ever tried to use it for anything more than an occasional doctor visit or inexpensive prescription, she would have ended up with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical debt. [...]
There you go, Reince. In future, don't ask any questions you don't want to hear the answer to."She's paying $650 a year to be uninsured," Karen Pollitz, an insurance expert at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, said. "I have to assume that she never really had to make much of a claim under this policy. She would have lost the house she's sitting in if something serious had happened. I don't know if she knows that." [...]Okay, but can't we be outraged that Ms. Barrette will have to fork over $591 a month for a replacement plan? Actually, no, because she has other and better options than the costly plan Blue Cross Blue Shield wants to put her in. She [can] get real insurance that covers all essential health benefits for well under $200 a month. [...]To put these two plans in perspective, let's imagine that Ms. Barrette's luck runs out and she receives a diagnosis of breast cancer that will cost $120,000 to treat.Under her current junk plan, she would probably receive no more than a few hundred dollars of benefits for doctor visits and drugs. It wouldn't cover her surgery, her chemotherapy, her many expensive medications, or the repeated diagnostic tests she'd likely require. She would end up with probably $119,000 of unpaid medical bills. With the Humana plan, those bills top out at $6,300 a year, no matter what.
Shooting report
New gun carnage study: 500 children and teens die each year, another 1500 are hospitalized (Click on this heading to read more)
Thursday, October 31, 2013, 10:13 pm
Every year, 500 children and teenagers are killed from gunfire and another 7,500 kids are hospitalized from gun injuries, according to a new study from doctors who reviewed a decade’s worth of hospital pediatric records.The study on gunshot wounds (GSWs) is online at the American Academy of Pediatrics, and here is its conclusion:
Hospitalizations and in-hospital deaths for children with GSWs are increasing. Currently, over 7,500 children are annually hospitalized for GSWs, including over 500 in-hospital deaths. While recent policy proposals to limit military-style semi-automatic assault weapons are important, handguns remain the leading injurious agent and may be a more efficacious target. Household gun ownership and safety practices vary widely by state. There was a significant relationship between %-household gun ownership and %-GSWs occurring in the home. The relationship was dose-dependent with safety measures (any
Republicans - still the same old assholes
Paul Ryan starts budget negotiations by going after Social Security and Medicare (Click on this headline for the original post)
Thursday, October 31, 2013, 9:46 am
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)
"Taking more from hardworking families just isn't the answer. I know my Republican colleagues feel the same way."Wow. So Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts are off the table? Not exactly. In fact, not at all. What Ryan was declaring off the table has little to do with "hardworking families," in fact:
"So I want to say this from the get-go: If this conference becomes an argument about taxes, we're not going to get anywhere."Oh. The "hardworking families" who aren't going to be asked to give more are in fact major corporations currently benefiting from tax loopholes—that, after all, is the main place Democrats would be looking for added revenue. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and the hardworking families that rely on them are very much on Ryan's chopping block. Just as they always have been.
Examining the state prison systems
States that expand Medicaid could lower their prison health costs (Click on this headline to read more)
Wednesday, October 30, 2013, 8:24 pm
The study concluded that spending increased in 42 of the 44 states studied. Median growth of 52 percent, but in 12 states, prison health expenditures at least 90 percent. Texas and Illinois experienced inflation-adjusted decreases in their prison healthcare costs.
The main reasons behind the rising costs? More prisoners thanks in part of mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines and the unmitigated failure of the war on some drugs. A failure except for the prison industry, that is. Over the past four decades, the U.S. inmate population has risen by 677 percent, from 198,061 in 1971 to 1,538,854 in 2011. The other factor is the aging of that prison population. In 1999, only 43,000 prisoners were over age 55. Now, 121,000 are. Those older inmates with chronic diseases average two to three times that of the cost for other inmates, according to Pew.
Friday, November 01, 2013
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