Does The Moon Also Fall?

Here's your homework assignment for this week.  But if you're anything like me, it'll take you a good while longer than a week to get it all internalized.



Thinking about things like String Theory and other Quantum-y stuff usually gives me a pounding headache.  So, I try instead to think about what was going on in people's heads in the 17th century when Newton was trying to introduce his new ways of doing things.  And it occurs to me: the TeaBaggers of that time resisted all this revolutionary thinking the same as they do now.  It's not much to hang onto, but I have to remember that time is actually on our side.  Evolution doesn't care if you "believe" in it or not.  The surest path to extinction is to defy the natural order of cause and effect.  Adapt; Improvise; Overcome.  If you don't learn, you don't change.  And if you don't change, you die.

The News From Afghanistan

As of today, in wars supposedly intended to get us a little payback, we've now gotten almost 3 times as many Americans killed as died on 9/11.  

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The killing of an American serviceman in an exchange of fire with allied Afghan soldiers pushed U.S. military deaths in the war to 2,000, a cold reminder of the perils that remain after an 11-year conflict that now garners little public interest at home.

When do we get it thru our thick skulls that none of this makes any sense at all?

Gettin' It Done - 38 & 37

I truly hate the Performance Test model for improving schools.  Teachers and Administrators are actually pretty smart people, and it doesn't take a long time before they figure out the game.  I'm not saying they're all just a buncha short-cutters and cheats, I'm saying they know that about the only thing that gets improved in any big way is the balance sheets of companies that suddenly pop up to peddle Assessment Software and their new-found "expertise" as Education Consultants - the teachers and admins figure out how to do what they need to do to keep the doors open, and how to make it look like they're toeing the line as prescribed by power-drunk law-makers and self-designated "experts" who have practically no fuckin' clue how any given school actually works.

And here's the kicker:  You don't fix the schools until you fix the neighborhoods - maybe we could concentrate on that for a minute or two, eh?

37. Crafting Next-Generation School Tests: Devoted $330 million in stimulus money to pay two consortia of states and universities to create competing versions of new K-12 student performance tests based on latest psychometric research. New tests could transform the learning environment in vast majority of public school classrooms beginning in 2014.

And speaking of schooling, this one I can get behind in a pretty big way.  "Higher" education is becoming (if it isn't already) the new High School.  Since there are practically no jobs in the traditional sectors where lots of non-college-track kids could catch on, you don't get any job that doesn't require Spatula Skills if you don't have at least a coupla years beyond K-12.  By trying to do something about the Loan Sharks, Obama is trying to make it a little harder to chain these kids to a lifetime of servitude just so a few bankers' kids get new Mustangs for graduation.

38. Cracked Down on Bad For-Profit Colleges: In effort to fight predatory practices of some for-profit colleges, Department of Education issued “gainful employment” regulations in 2011 cutting off commercially focused schools from federal student aid funding if more than 35 percent of former students aren’t paying off their loans and/or if the average former student spends more than 12 percent of his or her total earnings servicing student loans.

Meep Meep, Muthahfuckah

Wile E Coyote's cousin Bibi addresses the UN.

Sen Jim Webb, (D-VA)

Those young Marines that I led have grown older now. They’ve lived lives of courage, both in combat and after their return, where many of them were derided by their own peers for having served. That was a long time ago. They are not bitter. They know what they did. But in receiving veterans’ benefits, they are not takers. They were givers, in the ultimate sense of that word. There is a saying among war veterans: “All gave some, some gave all.” This is not a culture of dependency. It is a part of a long tradition that gave this country its freedom and independence. They paid, some with their lives, some through wounds and disabilities, some through their emotional scars, some through the lost opportunities and delayed entry into civilian careers which had already begun for many of their peers who did not serve.

And not only did they pay. They will not say this, so I will say it for them. They are owed, if nothing else, at least a mention, some word of thanks and respect, when a presidential candidate who is their generational peer makes a speech accepting his party’s nomination to be commander-in-chief. And they are owed much more than that — a guarantee that we will never betray the commitment that we made to them and to their loved ones.

Any Questions?

Today's Cartoon

GOTV

Goofy as all hell, and the numbers are quite a bit different now, but it's still all about moving a few people off the fuckin' dime and out to the polls.

On average, over the last several cycles, national elections are decided be fewer than a dozen votes per precinct.  Make a few calls and see what happens.

The War Goes On

In this particular case, I refer to The War On Women.

via Addicting Info:

On Friday, the Illinois court of appeals upheld a decision that allows pharmacists and medical dispensaries to refuse to give out emergency contraceptives on the grounds of religion.

So here's a thought; maybe I could go to Pharmacy Tech school, wait around for that job at CVS to open up, and then after I'm kinda established, I could convert to the Christian Science brand of religion.  At that point, it seems like I'd be in the perfect position.  I could simply refuse to fill or dispense any prescriptions because my religion forbids it, which means I wouldn't be required to do any actual work.  And they couldn't pressure me or fire me because I could sue their asses off for Religious Discrimination in the workplace.

Gettin' It Done - 39

Because you can't concentrate well enough to learn everything you need to learn when food is competing for the top spot on your brain's list of priorities.

39. Improved School Nutrition: In coordination with Michelle Obama, signed Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010 mandating $4.5 billion spending boost and higher nutritional and health standards for school lunches. New rules based on the law, released in January, double the amount of fruits and vegetables and require only whole grains in food served to students.

And btw -  
It has given us the iced doughnut, the burger and the fattest people on Earth.

But now America is outdoing even itself when it comes to unhealthy food, by trying to claim pizza is a vegetable.

A school lunches Bill going before Congress aims to reclassify the junk food due to the tomato paste on the dough.

Read more: The Daily Mail

God Love Daily Caller

A facebook friend posted a bit from The Daily Caller about the evil Obama spending way too much of our tax money on "official travel" blah blah blah.

And guess what popped up in the comments?

It was up for a good 15 minutes before somebody probably flagged it and it got taken down; and I don't presume to know that it wasn't conveniently "planted" by some dirty rotten Democrat just to make the noble TeaBaggers look bad.  And I suppose the 14 'Likes' could've been the result of an email tree (or whatever) so a bunch of other dirty rotten Dems could rush over and hit the 'Like' button to make it seem like there's a lot of racist assholes posting comments at The Daily Caller.  Yeah, OK.  But y'know, sometimes it is what it looks like.

Today's Pix

Dear facebook friends...

Grandma doesn't get lei'd much anymore

The Vote

From Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, about the myth of voter fraud:

At this point, you may be wondering if there's really anything wrong with all this. What's the problem with cracking down on voter fraud? And why shouldn't voters be required to show photo ID? If you need ID to cash a check or buy a six-pack, why not to vote?

The answer—surprising to many—is straightforward: Not everyone has, or can easily get, a photo ID. If you don't drive, you don't have a driver's license. If you're poor, you probably don't have a credit card. And if you're unbanked and don't need ID to buy liquor, you probably don't have much need for photo ID at all.

Once that sinks in, the electoral significance becomes obvious. In 2007, shortly before the Crawford decision was handed down, the Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity and Race released a study of Indiana voters showing that among whites, the middle-aged, and the middle class, about 90 percent possessed photo ID. Among blacks, the young, and the poor—all of whom vote for Democrats at high rates—the rate was about 80 percent. Overall, 91 percent of registered Republicans had some form of photo ID, compared to only 83 percent of registered Democrats.

--and--

Still, Republicans argue, anyone can obtain a photo ID with a modest amount of effort if they really want to vote. And isn't this small amount of inconvenience worth it in order to crack down on fraud?

Sure—but first there needs to be some actual fraud to crack down on. And that turns out to be remarkably elusive.

 --and--

Statistics tell part of this story: According to a survey by the Brennan Center, 8 percent of voting-age whites lack a photo ID, compared to 25 percent of blacks. Getting an ID card from the state usually requires you to produce a birth certificate, and Barbara Zia of the South Carolina League of Women Voters recently explained what this means in her state: "Many South Carolinians, especially citizens of color, were born at home and lack birth certificates, and so to obtain those birth certificates is a very costly endeavor and also an administrative nightmare."

In St. Louis, where our story opened, Kit Bond's outrage about dogs and dead people has a long pedigree. It is, a local official told the American Prospect's Art Levine, "code for black people." This kind of racial dog whistling, which relentlessly paints ethnic minorities as corrupt and dishonest, is corrosive not just to our political discourse, but to democracy itself.

--and--

The scandal of the photo ID laws, then, isn't so much that they give one party an advantage, or even that they affect minorities disproportionately. The scandal is that they knowingly target minorities. So even if the real-life effects of these laws are small, they're impairing civil rights that African Americans and others have spent decades fighting, and sometimes dying, for. This in turn means that something most of us thought was finally taboo—active suppression of minority votes—isn't really taboo after all.

Gettin' It Done - 40

Today's installment on what Obama's accomplished.

40. Expanded Hate Crimes Protections: Signed Hate Crimes Prevention Act (2009), which expands existing hate crime protections to include crimes based on a victim’s sexual orientation, gender, or disability, in addition to race, color, religion, or national origin.

Not crazy about this one.  I don't like the idea that we're creating categories of Thought Crimes.  If you commit a crime, what matters to me is that you're held to account for it, and your deep-seated motives are a matter for the prison psychologist to figure out.  If we learn something from it, then great; maybe the info is useful in preventing more of the same.  I just don't think having some sinister motive makes the crime worse, even tho' I do think having really good reasons for committing certain crimes can make a difference in what happens when you're being processed thru the justice system.

Gilligan And The Stench

Wasn't it about this time in 2008 that things started to fall apart for McCain and Palin?

“I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he’ll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him,” Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa, told The New York Times on Sunday.

(more at Politico)

Everybody used to moan and wail about the impending death of the Democratic Party - now it's the GOP's turn.  How does any democratic organization fix itself?  What was the process that pulled the Dems up out of the abyss in the early 90s?  Much thinking and learning of new things are required here.

And with the recent news of how all the big money has shifted away from Obama and toward Willard, what am I supposed to conclude if Obama pulls it off and wins in spite of what looks like a concerted effort at a Corporate Takeover?