Teacher Union Bashing on Morning Joe-Ho-Ho

I wrote this draft two days after Christmas 2010 while watching MSNBC in gaping shock. I couldn’t figure out *why* they all were reading from the same playbook, bashing the unions and the teachers they represent. But they clearly were.

Now in late March 2011, since the Scotts (Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Florida’s Rick Scott) are working that playbook and it’s nearly Game Over for all of us, I am asking myself just how much of a conspiracy this has been all along.

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[I think this was a "rewind" from sometime in 2010 that re-aired this morning.]

Public school is all a big hustle, a heist — did you know that? It’s all about bad public schoolteachers ruining America for money (wait, isn’t that Wall Street, bankers, insurance and oil companies, oh and politicians– teachers aren’t exactly the idle rich comparatively) and the union leaders who protect them. All they care about is “their own money” and not working for children and the good of the people.

NJ’s GOP Thug-Gov said it, and he said even the President of the United States Barack Obama agreed, that destroying the teacher union or “persuading” them to roll over for the GOP union-busting juggernaut, was the obvious forced choice and everyone in both parties and everywhere in America knows it and agrees, except of course

Blind Pig Homeschoolers and Truffles of Ham

Even academically indefensible homeschoolers sometimes wind up doing the right thing for the wrong reason or put another way, even a blind pig sniffs out a mouldering truffle now and then (this is a childish play on the man’s last name, get it, get it?)

Either way, if banning Ken Ham for life from churchy corporate-corrupted homeschool conventions is wrong, I don’t wanna be right . . .

Ken Ham, the man behind the Creation Museum and the future Ark Encounter amusement park, has been disinvited from a homeschool convention in Cincinnati next week because he made “ungodly, and mean-spirited” comments about another speaker, according to the convention’s organizers.

Ham also will be excluded from future conventions, according to a statement by Brennan Dean of Great Homeschool Conventions.

Here’s my favorite part though. Guess who Ham’s ungodly and mean-spirited comments were meant to discredit, the man who was also invited to speak and has NOT been banned?

Woe is me, Wobegon is gone . . .

In a dramatic reversal of the Lake “Woe-Begone” Effect, in which all the kids are above average, we now labor under the Lake Woe-Is-Me Effect, in which all the kids are failing . . .

Sec of Ed Arne Duncan: 82 Percent of Schools Could Be ‘Failing’ This Year

Yes, JJ knows the correct spelling and is playing with words to make a point:

[Garrison] Keillor says the town’s name comes from a fictional old Indian word meaning “the place where we waited all day in the rain [for you].” Keillor explains, “Wobegon” sounded Indian to me and Minnesota is full of Indian names. They mask the ethnic heritage of the town, which I wanted to do, since it was half Norwegian, half German.”

The English word “woebegone” is defined as “affected with woe” and can also mean “shabby, derelict or run down.”

A point that reminds her of Minnesota’s many-minnie quaint confusions again . . .

Shame

My last post quoted Dale’s observation days before it was proven true again last night:

If a minority point of view is on the verge
of gaining a fair hearing within the rules, someone in the majority will simply change the rules. . .

It’s not just one state’s megalomaniacal “majority” doing whatever the hell they please with their naked political power these days, of course. Florida was even sneakier — why persecute American icons like Big Bird or “huddled masses” of immigrants much less dignified, educated middle-class teachers, nurses and other trusted public professionals, until you’ve simply changed the rules to disenfranchise those you already imprisoned for profit and won’t allow to then (understandably) vote against you?

Governor Rick Scott’s draconian plans to slash education funds brought out protesters all over Florida yesterday. Among the waves of angry Sunshine Staters who spoke out was goth maestro Stephen King who quipped, “Maybe my next horror novel will star Rick Scott. ”

Well…why not? Wouldn’t you love to see what Stephen King could do with these?

“Sure, I shot you, but you’re the one that fell over”

Dale McGowan at Parenting Beyond Belief:

If a minority point of view is on the verge
of gaining a fair hearing within the rules, someone in the majority will simply change the rules. . .
Though religion is in play in both of these situations, the principle applies to countless others as well.

I could have tagged this with every label Snook has got. With examples. (This for instance.)

I managed to stay three more years, trying to improve
the climate of inquiry on campus,
before nausea led me to resign . . .

Learning this principle the hard way, struggling against it like sticky spider silk until I finally gave up and came home, was overriding power of story throughout my career. I heard but tried to rise above dark mutterings of “life isn’t fair.” You might even say I had FAITH. I believed!

I was wrong.

We seldom grab public problems from the right end, or should I say from the right beginning? Start from a false premise and we’d be better not to start at all.

Spring Comes to Florida Despite Worst Governor Ever

Young Son's reading tree in full flower as he reads Sherlock Holmes, of course (photo credit - Mom's phone)

Thinking About What I’m Thinking About

Meta-minded JJ.

Snook just rolled to a pattern-perfect round number: 444,000 hits. It looks so neatly ordered that I might just leave the front page up without refreshing, until I get tired of seeing it.

Last night I passed this place again. A dozen serious young students in white, and I noticed how tall and slender yet well-proportioned, uniform in physique as well as, well, uniform!

Did they self-select into something that suited their body type in the first place, or did this activity affect how they grew and developed, making them better in such predictable ways that after the fact, it seemed they were born to it?

Which came first, I mused. The kickin’ or the edge? [groan]

And does that answer, whatever it may be, apply to our politics and religion, what attracts and repels us in life as we wind up living it, fashions and friends and mates and careers?

Everything is connected including this distracted and distracting brain-dump of a post. I’ve been hacking my head off for a week and it’s wearing on other parts of my body now. With every coughing fit, my lower back twinges; my abdomen feels like it’s herniating; my throat rasps and stings; my brain pounds inside my cranium; my ears ring and I can hear blood rushing inside. Plus the coughing has kept me up so many nights now that my eyes are red and bleary, my joie de vivre and general hygiene sinking toward apathy. I see and understand yet am helpless to resist . . .

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