SCHOOL REFORM-A FAILING GRADE

This link is  a review of two different books , one by a teacher from inner city New York and the other from a Wall Street tycoon who poses as an educator..

It's no secret that our students are in trouble , not from lack of ability, but from a system that has been led astray by over educated smart asses who think that privatization  of everything is the way to go, that unions are bad and are the reason for bad teachers existence..  Any teacher and a lot of parents will tell you bad teachers could be flushed out if administrators had any balls , which most do not.. Politics filters down to this level especially to school boards and district level educators..

This madness of test, test , test dissolves to teaching to the test.. A system that does not teach to to face the everyday world much less your working world.  Thinking is verboten.

Add to the testing craze , the bullshit of NO TOLERANCE, none thinking actions that punish the good with the bad, stripping lockers out of schools and replacing them with 100 pound backpacks (does provide training for military ground pounders) but sure as hell doesn't teach trust and if they think that cuts down on the bad things they were trying to check they had better think again. Drug dogs, cops on the grounds, arresting of 6 year old by cops, strip searches , what in the hell are we doing..

A comparison of the philosophy of education in these two books should light a fire under you if you are a parent to fight the nonsense changes we are running our schools by... The fact that Obama buys into this crap and proved it by hiring Duncan as his Secretary of Education dismays me greatly.. Having read Duncan's theories put into practice in Chicago gave me ulcers from the git go..Anybody who has ever been responsible for training people knows that his theory is bullshit..

Back in my good ole nuclear sub days, we lived in fear of the nuclear hatchet squads who would show up to test our skills with oral and operational testing I was sad to see that the testing in now by written exam which of course they were caught cheating on..

Back to the good ole days I would go.. The teacher is the Captain of their classroom they will write the tests as they did in my day. Not a standard for sure but it gives the teacher and the kids a better feel of whether they are cutting it or not..  Throw out the Billions of dollar testing dollars of testing cost, buy paint and toilet paper, and hell maybe even a few new books or computer software that isn't 20 years old...

OH FOR CHRIST'S SAKE

The pictures of the neglect and abuse in  an Afghan prisoner hospital shown on CNN today show such cruelty it is almost unbelievable .  Bitch of it is we are paying 100 million a year to run this torture chamber.. I guess one way of torture is as good as the next to the good ole USA.

What makes the story much , much worse is the fact that a US general in charge of training Afghan doctors at this hospital a few years back reported the abuse up his chain of command.. A general or two above him hid the story and even had the balls tell him that they would not do anything about this abuse because they didn't want to embarrass Obama during an election year(2010).  So once again bad shit is covered up for political reasons (think the Tillman case) .  You can point to a zillion such cover ups. The Great victory in Iraq and the winning of Afghanistan being the big ones.

Yet the Tillman affair , torture, and now this abuse of prisoners make it really hard to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag that these outright cover ups cast a shadow on my 27 years of military service.

Interesting fact < I could not find picture one of this abuse..

Story 1  

IF CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE

Does that not make people corporations? If so , my data is my product (just like a poem or music composed by you) and the corporations are stealing my product and selling it for profit..Don't you think we should be paid for our data... ?

A VERY BAD IDEA

Suggesting an extension of some Bush tax cuts is a very stupid idea.. Now I am solidly middle class and I didn't see a dime from the Bush tax cuts.. to open the dialog of Bush tax cuts will you know create a climate to encourage the right to get the whole deal extended..Sometime or another we will have to pay the bills.

CLUSTER FUCK WORLD

In CLUSTERFUCK NATION Kuntsler paints a very harsh critique of the world and particularly of the US. With Some pretty ugly words used to describe the financial folks and the common folk in general. Read it and then tell me some of the same thought have not found their way into your mind.

In particular here in the US the excess evidence of something gone terribly wrong when our youth are covered with body pictures that maybe mean something to them but leave me wondering what was is their minds when a lovely young lady get a string of barbed wire tattooed around her lovely neck.. along with 27 piercings in nose , lips, tongue, ears and probably several other parts I don't want to see..accompanied by her boyfriend with his hat on backwards , his pants slung so low that his butt crack is clearly visible, also covered with tatts and piercing. Far to many are also overweight . Coupled to the world by their cellphones to their ears afraid to have the time to think they read other folks wandering thoughts on their twitter links.. A bleak picture of the world for us old guys to look out every day.

However , Kunstler paints such a picture of our corporate world maybe these kids have a point.. What are they trying to tell us? They at least have got our attention while the ones who are plundering the world dance around unnoticed.

FINES WON'T DO IT.

OK, your about to either go to sleep or go to some girly website because this is just another economic story.. The rigging of Interest rates world wide. Robert Reich lays it out in plain English that the banks (all of them) were rigging the LIBOR rate on bonds so that their derivative packages paid off big time.. In other words we are getting fucked again..

And if Bob isn't deep or colorful enough for you try good ole Mattfor a more colorful version..

No matter which one you choose you will be left with no doubt that the world is being screwed big time..by the banking crooks of the world.

AND PLEASE DON'T FORGET AUSTERITY IS COMING SOON TO THE GOOD OLE US OF A NO MATTER WHO WINS THE ELECTIONS..WE WILL PAY BIG AND LONG FOR THEIR GAME OF THRONES.

FIRST THEY BUILD A WALL

THEN THEY PUT UP TENTS, AND THEN THEY BUILT THE OVENS AND I SAID NOTHING... THEN Israel is rounding up Africans for deportation (they say) beacause they publicly say they want to maintain racial purity...Now isn't that what the Nazi's said their purpose of the roundup of the jews.. Sounds like it to me.. ANTI SEMATIC NO..PRO HUMAN RACE YES! Here's the story