On The Draft

Just a quick side note:
Football is my all-time favorite thing, and I'm trying hard to stay with it, but it's really not good when the run-up to the draft looks just like the Emmys or the red carpet bullshit on Oscar night.

I hate thinking about it, but the time may be coming when I just hafta to walk away.  We'll see what happens with the head-injury thing, and the long-term care for ex-pros, and especially how the teams and the league react once Michael Sam gets taken.

Imagine That

Pew Research has found that 55% of Russians think it's unfortunate that the Soviet Empire is gone.

55%

Most Russians think they'd rather return to theirs lives under "communism" than keep things the way they are now under Putin and the new Russian aristocracy.

Is Our Children Learning?

Yes - they're learning how to take the shortcuts necessary to get the money without having to do the work, which is almost exactly what the Law of Unintended Consequences is all about, which is in full flower when it comes to the straightup bullshit that so many people like to call "School Reform".

Here's a new site I stumbled upon today: CURMUDGUCATION

And here's a full post that lays it all out:

Since the president has declared this week National Charter School Appreciation & General Ain't Charters Swell Week, you are probably thinking, "How can I be part of the charter school excitement?"

In the past, many charters were launched that focused solidly on providing unique and exciting educational experiences for their communities. These schools were innovative. These schools were connected to their communities. These schools were icing on the public school system cake. And these schools were run by chumps. There's only one question you need to answer to gauge the success of your charter school -- am I making money.

Here's how to properly cash in on the charter school movement.

Diversify!
Not the school -- your portfolio. Set up multiple companies. Create a holding company that owns the building, and charge the school rent and facilities fees. Create a school management company, and hire yourself to run your school. Form your own custodial contracting company. Write your own textbooks, and then sell them to yourself. Buy a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter and set yourself up as a lunch concession with ten dollar sandwiches.

Don't Overlook the Obvious
"Non-profit" just means "not wasting money by throwing it away on stockholders." Taking money hand over fist that you can't call profit? Just put it all in a big wheelbarrow and pay it to yourself as a salary. There's no legal limit to what you can be paid as the charter school operator. The only limits to your salary are the limits set by your own sense of shame. If you have no shame, then ka-ching, my friend. Ka. Ching.

Ain't Too Proud To Beg
Have a fundraiser. When you wave schools and children at people, they fork over money like crazy, whether you actually need it or not. The only way it could work any better would be if you found a way to work in the American flag and puppies.

Students Are Marketing Tools
Students have a job at your charter, and that's to make your charter look good and marketable. If they won't do the job, fire them. If they aren't for sure going to graduate, fire them before senior year (100 percent graduation rate makes great ad copy). If they are going to create bad press for disciplinary reasons, fire them.

Students Are Also The Revenue Stream
The other function of students is to bring money in while not costing any more than is absolutely necessary. Never take students with special needs (unless you can use them to make the school look good without incurring extra costs). If a student will require extra disciplinary or academic intervention, fire him.

Always remember, however, that students need to be fired during Firing Season -- late enough to hold onto the money they bring, but early enough that they won't hurt your numbers.

Only Use McTeachers
Personnel costs will eat up your revenue. Make sure your teachers are young, cheap, and easily replaced. Remember -- with the proper programs in a box, teaching requires no more training and expertise than bagging up an order of fries. Why pay New Cadillac wages when all you need are Used Yugos. It should go without saying, but they should never, ever be allowed to organize. Keep them too demoralized to cause trouble, and if someone insists on causing trouble, fire her. Pro tip: TFA can be a great source of people who don't even want to be teachers and will gladly take themselves out of your way.

Remember -- You Are A Public School
You are entitled to public money, public resources, public buildings, public anything you can get them to give you. Never pay a cost out of your pocket when you can get the taxpayers to foot the bill. You also want to accent the "public" in your marketing, as it helps reduce parents' reluctance to screw over the actual public schools.

Remember -- You Are A Private School
Never let anybody see your financials, ever. This is your business, and nobody -- especially not the taxpayers who pay you -- is entitled to know anything about how you run it. "Transparency" is a dirty, dirty word.

In general, rules are for chumps. Make sure you are only playing by the ones that best serve your ROI.

Make the Right Friends
It's true that not everybody can afford to buy, say, an entire legislature or the governor of a state, but even outside of New York, it's possible to use the giant pile of money you've accumulated to help important people understand what a great public service you're performing.

We've come a long way from the days when charter school operators made the mistake of thinking that their schools should focus on educating young men and women. In Modern Times, we better understand that a well-run charter operation can contribute to an important job -- the business of taking money away from undeserving taxpayers and putting it in the hands of the deserving rich. By focusing on the One True Function of charter schools -- making money -- you can develop a robust business that will make it possible for you to send your own children to real private schools that provide the kind of education that, thank goodness, you will never try to incorporate into your own charter operation.

Logical Fallacy #12 - Ambiguity

Today's Pix

Today's Keith

The last segment; the winner for tonite; this is why I miss Olbermann, and why we need to remember that we need guys who'll step up and do this.

Stating The Obvious

Because sometimes, ya just gotta say it straight out.

From No More Mister Nice Blog:

This study has been conducted five times since 1971. The percentage of reporters identifying as Democrats has dropped, too, though not as much, while the number calling themselves independents has increased. Yes, the right thinks this proves the existence of media bias.

You know what could really turn this around? Imagine if right-wing kids could watch conservative journalists practice in real time. What if they could actually see journalistic conservatism modeled for them that way? How different everything would be if -- I know this sounds crazy -- a conservative channel were the highest-rated news source on American television. Yeah, I know -- crazy, right?

The existence of Fox News, and the fact that it's extremely successful in the ratings, should be an inspiration to right-wing wannabe journalists eveywhere. It isn't, though, for two reasons:

First, nobody at Fox News actually practices journalism. Nobody digs out stories, finds scoops, offers depth and perspective and background on what's happening in America and the world. It's all advocacy. There's no reporting.

Second, the Fox party line is that journalism is evil, even though, ostensibly, Fox is in the business of journalism. If the central news source in the right-wing universe tells its audience every day that the news business is in league with the devil, well, you can't be surprised when righty kids don't want to turn Satanic.

And my first reaction is, "well duh".  But if it's really all that obvious, then more people would be completely hip to the scam of Wingnut Media, and we wouldn't have anywhere near the problems with Deliberate Ignorance that we have in this joint right now, and we'd also have something that more closely resembles a Functioning Government.

Today's Eternal Sadness

My "Eternal Sadness" posts have always been about people dying because of our incredibly stoopid refusal to rein in the activities of the Ammosexuals among us who can't seem to wean themselves from the NRA's gun porn.

But I think I'll expand the definition a bit, and start including newsy items that indicate to me that there's something really shitty going on - the cause of which we can be pretty sure of - that we prob'ly won't; or can't; or just plain don't, do anything about.

So here's today's fer-instance:

"The rate of earthquakes increased dramatically in March and April," Williams said. "That alerted us to examine this further and put out this advisory statement."

While Oklahoma's buildings can withstand light earthquakes, the damage from a magnitude-5 temblor could be widespread. Oklahoma's last major earthquake was in November 2011, when a magnitude-5.6 earthquake centered near Prague, Oklahoma, destroyed 14 homes and injured at least two people.

"Building owners and government officials should have a special concern for older, unreinforced brick structures, which are vulnerable to serious damage during sufficient shaking," Bill Leith, a USGS senior science adviser for earthquakes and geologic hazards, said in the joint statement.

While scientists haven't ruled out natural causes for the increase, many researchers suspect the deep injection wells used for the disposal of fracking wastewater could be causing the earthquake activity. Fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, is a method of extracting oil and gas by cracking open underground rock.

Ongoing studies have found a link between Oklahoma's high-volume wastewater injection wells and regions with an uptick in earthquakes.

It doesn't seem to me that it could be much clearer.  Ya start pumping jillions of gallons of waste water into the ground, and fairly soon after that, you get a humongous increase in both the numbers of earthquakes and in the magnitude of those quakes.

I remember a time in the mid-60s when the Army was pumping waste water into at least one deep well under The Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver, and gosh, suddenly we were having earthquakes in a region where earthquakes that could actually be felt by normal humans were practically unheard of (kinda like Okla-fuckin'-homa).  They stopped pumping that shit into the ground, and gosh again, no more earthquakes.

The difference now of course is that it's about energy - we can't stop suckin' that fossil tit because we think we're on the verge of dominating the world again - this time with our Exceptionally American Methane Dick and the awesomeness of our trusty sidekick, Canuckistan Tar Sands.

But there's another big difference now as well - we don't believe there's anything we can do about it because Big Energy and their Coin-Operated Politicians are in charge and we got nuthin' to say about nuthin'.

So, a few questions:

With all this nifty new gas and oil hitting the market, when can we expect the gods of the free market to start pushing down on the price?

Since we're prob'ly not going to do anything to stop the waste water disposal; and since we can expect more and bigger earthquakes because of it, who gets to pick up the tab for digging the mangled corpses out of the rubble?  Who gets to pay for rebuilding the towns and the cities?  Who gets to take care of the broken survivors?  Can we count on the oil companies for any of that?

We get to pay for it all - at the pump; on our monthly utilities; tax breaks and straight up subsidies for oil and gas companies; home insurance; disaster relief; and and and.

We pay for it on the front end, and in the middle, and afterwards too.  We also get to pay in terms of blood thru the sacrifice of our friends and family members - not just people in uniform fighting and bleeding and dying in desert shit holes; now we get to watch ordinary people fighting and bleeding and dying here at home as well.

They're demanding my permission to fuck me in the ass; I hafta bring my own lube; and then they expect me to give 'em cab fare home.

No soul and no honor.

Guerilla Consumer Activism

Taking a page from Tyler Durden's playbook in Fight Club, John Oliver has NOT tasked us with NOT printing out some labels, and then NOT going to the grocery store to NOT paste them onto certain products.

Find this:

Add this:

Find this:

 Add this:

Find this:

 Add this:

Find this:

Add this:

Pushing back against Corporate Power sometimes has interesting results:

Don't It Make Ya Wonder

These two Alaska state troopers were killed the other day by a kid with an assault-style weapon.  They were shot in the back several times as they were trying to arrest the kid's dad.

From NY Daily News:

The charging documents for Nathaniel Kangas, 19, say he fired seven shots and killed two Alaska State troopers at close range as they wrestled with his father during an arrest on misdemeanor charges.

All eyes were on the shackled teenager as he was escorted to his arraignment in a Fairbanks courtroom packed with solemn law enforcement officers and the families of Sgt. Patrick Johnson, 45, and State Trooper Gabriel Rich, 26, who were shot to death on May 1.

The judge stated his charges as felony assault and two counts of murder and set the bail at $4 million before asking, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported, if Kangas had anything to say.

The teen took his time to respond with two words: “I’m sorry.”

Kind of interesting that NY Daily News put up a fairly straightforward story. More interesting (to me anyway) is that FoxNews.com ran the pre-packaged report from the wire service and as of 9:00am, the comments section is closed.  Hmmm.

Meanwhile, over at Washington Times, "this story is no longer available".  Hmmm, again.

But I was really just wondering when Oath Keepers or any of the other gun-suckin' militia mites are likely to show up to protect the nobly rebellious Mr Kangas from the evil clutches of an over-zealous and tyrannical state government.

One tho't: More training for the cops and less weaponry for everybody could make this kinda shit pretty rare.

Get 'Em, Prez

The 'Nerd Prom' in DC every year is a glaring and obvious example of what's wrong with this joint.  Maybe it started out as a way to get everybody together and blow off a little steam, but when you make TV out of it, then even though you hear some pretty good jokes and zingers, all you've really got is a G-Rated Celebrity Roast that always morphs down to a public circle jerk - and that's pretty much what goes on with the Dems and the GOP and the Press Poodles every day anyway.

Time Of The Season --The Zombies

WARNING: This song could steal your virginity

Skyline Pigeon --Elton John

Turn me loose from your hands
Let me fly to distant lands
Over green fields, trees and mountains
Flowers and forest fountains
Home along the lanes of the skyway

For this dark and lonely room
Projects a shadow cast in gloom
And my eyes are mirrors
Of the world outside
Thinking of the way
That the wind can turn the tide
And these shadows turn
From purple into grey

For just a Skyline Pigeon
Dreaming of the open
Waiting for the day
He can spread his wings
And fly away again
Fly away skyline pigeon fly
Towards the dreams
You've left so very far behind

Just let me wake up in the morning
To the smell of new mown hay
To laugh and cry, to live and die
In the brightness of my day
I want to hear the pealing bells
Of distant churches sing
But most of all please free me
From this aching metal ring
And open out this cage towards the sun


Songwriters
JOHN, ELTON / TAUPIN, BERNIE

Published by
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Read more: Elton John - Skyline Pigeon Lyrics | MetroLyrics

I Know I'm Losin' You --Rare Earth

The Low Spark Of High-Heeled Boys --Traffic

If you see something that looks like a star
And it's shooting up out of the ground
And your head is spinning from a loud guitar
And you just can't escape from the sound
Don't worry too much; it'll happen to you
We were children once, playing with toys
And the thing that you're hearing is only the sound of
The low spark of high-heeled boys

The percentage you're paying is too high-priced
While you're living beyond all your means
And the man in the suit has just bought a new car
From the profit he's made on your dreams
But today you just read that the man was shot dead
By a gun that didn't make any noise
But it wasn't the bullet that laid him to rest
Was the low spark of high-heeled boys

If you had just a minute to breathe and they granted you one final wish
Would you ask for something like another chance
Or something similar as this? Don't worry too much
It'll happen to you as sure as your sorrows are joys
And the thing that disturbs you is only the sound of
The low spark of high-heeled boys

The percentage you're paying is too high-priced
While you're living beyond all your means
And the man in the suit has just bought a new car
From the profit he's made on your dreams
But today you just read that the man was shot dead
By a gun that didn't make any noise
But it wasn't the bullet that laid him to rest
Was the low spark of high-heeled boys

If I gave you everything that I owned and asked for nothing in return
Would you do the same for me as I would for you
Or take me for a ride, and strip me of everything including my pride?
But spirit is something that no one destroys
And the sound that I'm hearing is only the sound
Of the low spark of high-heeled boys

Songwriters: WINWOOD, STEVE/CAPALDI, JIM
The Low Spark Of High-Heeled Boys lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., Universal Music Publishing Group