Virginia Voting 2013

First off, Mark Herring released the standard "I-Think-I-Won-This-Thing" statement that's de rigueur for this stuff - somebody has to claim the prize, and that puts pressure on the other guy to concede; and the other guy will demand a recount; and we'll all still be here doing the same thing for another month.  But it's important to have the numbers edge on the first pass because recounts generally don't change the outcome (Florida 2000 not withstanding, of course).

The main thing I wanna point up here is this:  After a week of scouring thru the precinct reports and digging up one or two machines that hadn't been included in the first count, and then sorting out the provisional votes, and and and - after adding up more than 2 million votes, Herring's ahead by a whopping 163. So if you're somebody who blows off the chance to vote because you're walkin' around thinking your vote doesn't matter (and I say this with love and charity in my heart) - go blow yourself; you're an idiot.

Secondly, here's a map looking at vote distribution by county and incorporated city areas, which is the map Repubs love to see because it seems to show "the real Virginia" should've gotten its way, and that "them damned yankee-lovin' city-livin' DemocRats are stealin' our heritage and denyin' us our god-given rights" (to live at the mercy of corporate whim, but never mind all that).  Anyway, here's that map:

And here's a Cartographic look at what the numbers and the distribution really mean:

Again with love and charity in my heart: Demographics, dumbass.  Get some.

hat tip = Blue Virginia

Schools Matter

So what happens if we don't slap a nation-wide school system with all the crap we've been dumping on our public schools?

Schools Matter takes a look at it - and finds that the DoD schools were exempted from NCLB etc etc etc, and gosh:

So what do we see as a result at the DoDEA schools (see earlier post here) after all these years of living without corporate charter schools, teacher evaluation based on test scores, value-added assessment, corporate missionaries for TFA, AYP, Reading First, scripted parrot lessons, DIBELs, segregation based on test scores, corporate tutoring, venture philanthropy, required testing to graduate or be promoted to the next grade, total compliance classroom, test and punish, test prep, withdrawal of funds from those who need it most, rewarding schools that don't need it, nervous breakdowns, vomiting students, nosebleeds, suicides by principals, school children dying from toothaches as billions are spent on testing, and on and on....How have the DoDEA schools survived without all this?

This first group includes the schools that have been scoring better than the National Average:

Then we have the bunch in the middle where there's no appreciable difference between these schools and the Nation Average:

And lastly, here's the group lagging farthest behind the National Average:

Did ya happen to notice where the DoD schools happened to rank in all o' dat?

Almost forgot - isn't a school operated by the Department of Defense very much the epitome of a "Government School"?  And since those Gubmint Skools are doing just fine without all that massive boondoggle, can we drop the bullshit now?

Today's Pix

Battle Of The Brands

One of Lee Camp's Moment of Clarity videos on YouTube

Today's Best Blog Headline

From Wonkette:

THAT NORTH DAKOTA NAZI-TOWN GUY IS A LITTLE BIT BLACK, SO IT IS TRUE THAT BLACK PEOPLE ARE THE REAL RACISTS

It's not quite the greatest post ever, but I don't care - the headline makes it worth looking.

Today's Quote

(via Charlie Pierce)

War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.

In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it.

In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them.

In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed.

It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle.  --James Madison, 1793.

You Know Somebody's Thinking It

It's just bound to be the next big thing in marketing.

A New One For Me

Schools Matter:

This space explores issues in public education policy, and it advocates for a commitment to and a re-examination of the democratic purposes of schools. If there is some urgency in the message, it is due to the current reform efforts that are based on a radical re-invention of education, now spearheaded by a psychometric blitzkrieg of "metastasizing testing" aimed at dismantling a public education system that took almost 200 years to build. JH August, 2005

I'll tell y'all up front that I don't know how to "fix the schools".  But we've been trying this melange of Charter Schools and Magnet Schools and For-Profit-Public-Private and Casino-Style-High-Stakes-Testing etc etc for something like the last 20 years or so, and I think it's time to admit that practically every attempt to shoehorn the operations of a Public School System into the Standard Business Model has failed.

I guess I should clarify what I think has failed - these attempts are not making for better students or for better teachers, and they're not making for a better work force, and they're sure as shit not making any given community better.  It is, however working beautifully when it comes to making some well-connected "entrepreneurs" quite comfortably wealthy.  Don't you have to wonder why Neil Bush suddenly discovered his long-dorment passion for Student Testing and Assessment right about the same time his brother was busily sliming No Child Left Behind thru congress?

See, it kinda works like this here:  When you make the endeavor about The Public Good, then you build in an incentive to do good things for The Public.  When you make the endeavor about Profit, then you build in the incentive for Rentiers to take profit.

(I can't believe anybody has to say it out loud like that, but fuck me, there it is)

Anyway, schools need a lot of help in a lot of ways, but a lot of the ways we've been "helping" them is straight up shameful.  Let's try something else.

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Please, Not Hillary

I'll have a really hard time supporting Hillary Clinton if when she runs in 2016.  I just have this thing against 'legacies'.  I don't think you should get special consideration for admission to any school just because you're the child of an alum.  You shouldn't have the professional skids greased for you in any way just because your parents were 'important' - or because your husband preceded you in office (even tho' having a famous/popular husband may be the only way you get the respect you've earned by your own worthy accomplishments).

There's no earthly reason Paris Hilton should command anything close to national attention for anything she does.  There's equally no reason to believe Meghan McCain would be some kind of leading light in the GOP Youth Brigade if it wasn't for her daddy's name and her mommy's money.  Luke Russert should be running the cash register at the Dollar Store while he works part time as an assistant to the deputy senior intern at some local AM station in Pokacuzzin West Virginia, where he gets to read the farm report whenever the regular guy is too hungover.

Here's my thing:  no more Kennedys and no more Rockefellers and no more Pauls and no more Bushes and no more Clintons.  No lagacies.

"Unfortunately", Hillary's credentials are nothing short of amazing.  Plus, I can't see anybody on the Repub side who could get thru the primaries and still have anything in his platform worth voting for.  So I may have to make an exception.

But then along comes Elizabeth Warren:

We’re three years from the next presidential election, and Hillary Clinton is, once again, the inevitable Democratic nominee. Congressional Republicans have spent months investigating her like she already resides in the White House. The New York Times has its own dedicated Clinton correspondent, whose job it is to chronicle everything from Hillary’s summer accommodations (“CLINTONS FIND A NEW PLACE TO VACATION IN THE HAMPTONS”) to her distinct style of buckraking (“IN CLINTON FUNDRAISING, EXPECT A FULL EMBRACE”). There is a feature-length Hillary biopic in the works, and a well-funded super PAC—“Ready for Hillary”—bent on easing her way into the race. And then there is Clinton herself, who sounds increasingly candidential. Since leaving the State Department, Clinton has already delivered meaty, headline-grabbing orations on voting rights and Syria.

Yet for all the astrophysical force of these developments, anyone who lived through 2008 knows that inevitable candidates have a way of becoming distinctly evitable. With the Clintons’ penchant for melodrama and their checkered cast of hangers-on—one shudders to consider the embarrassments that will attend the Terry McAuliffe administration in Virginia—Clinton-era nostalgia is always a news cycle away from curdling into Clinton fatigue. Sometimes, all it takes is a single issue and a fresh face to bring the bad memories flooding back.

I hope Warren stays right where she is tho'.  I want her to be a thorn in their sides for a very long time.

And I think it sucks that the political firmament has become so dull that practically any bright spot at all looks like a fucking supernova to us.

This Point Of Pale Light