For much of the week, the White House has been dealing with an unspeakable looming crisis. No, it is not terrorism or global warming. The State of the Union speech was scheduled for Feb. 2nd . . . the same night ABC was kicking off the final season of “Lost.” The White House has announced that the State of the Union will have to wait.
The White House appeared entirely unaware of the problem until a television savvy ABC reporter raised it. (This is a bit surprising since one would think that the press office would look at such conflicts). This led to Lost fans going into anticipatory withdrawals and anger. Money Times below quotes fans as writing such warning as “I want to know about the state of The Island, not the state of the union. BarackObama I will never forgive you.”
That apparently was enough for the White House. Robert Gibbs finally quelled the flames and announced that the President would not dream of dumping the show.
“NEXT SEASON ON ABC: A PRESIDENT IS MAROONED IN THE WHITE HOUSE, UNABLE TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE PUBLIC DUE TO CONFLICTING TELEVISION SCHEDULES. TUNE IN AND WATCH AS WHITE HOUSE OFFICIALS USE OFFICE SUPPLIES TO CREATE NEW FORMS OF COMMUNICATION WITH THE PUBLIC. ONLY ON ABC!”
For the full story, click here.
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That statement probably says more about you than you realize.
It is also well established that there are lobbyists and there are lobbyists. There is a huge difference from unions – who should not be allowed to lobby as an entity, but as individual members they must most certainly be allowed their right to petition. The the power of a Union isn’t in lobbying in the first place. It’s in collective bargaining. The ability to force corporate to act right when the greed and abuses become too much. See Battle of Matewan. Unions play lobbyist almost universally on the defensive from union busting attacks to rig the law and Governmental agencies made by people like DeMint and his corporate puppet masters. The ones who are interested in having slave labor re-instituted as an acceptable business practice. But unlike the corporatists who are blindly venal sociopaths, the unions provide an important but ever eroding check against corporatists. Unions are the very example of the very American principle united we stand. Until mobsters get involved (a job for the FBI) or they are forced in lobbying nonsense by necessity of defense.
There is also no comparison to groups like the American Heart Association and Exxon and Lockheed.
But the simple solution is to not allow it to happen at all. End lobbying as it is known today. Remove all money from the process. Federally fund national elections for candidates from any party that can field one based on signatures and mandate air time. We have the technology for literally every citizen to be able to 1) get a concise clear language explanation of pending legislation and 2) give immediate feedback and/or counter proposals from individual citizens. And it can have a paper trail if needed.
But corporate money must be removed from the system. That’s the issue. Lobbyists are just the knife used to spread the graft. We need a new knife that graft cannot stick to or impact in any way. That starts at campaign finance reform, shutting down lobbying as it exists today, making the Sen. and Rep. actually do the job they were hired for: legislating. Hold government accountable. All of it.
Having a national educational standard need not be a bad thing either. It does not remove control or responsibility from local jurisdictions – it just provides a clearer job description. “X% of your students must test out as Y criteria” if you want Federal funding for state schools. It’s called a target. And they have those in every project – business or not. It is in no way unreasonable that standards be imposed and this is something that they knew in schools before the trend was to placate the dumbest by not grading anyone. It’s so much easier than actually teaching. Standards set a bar that must be cleared, but by how high is up to the locals. All men are created equal, but not all men are equally created is true but how can we know which is which without educating them first? Psychic examination? Tarot cards? Ask Jesus? No. You educate and test students equally *and this is important* to a point. If local jurisdictions wish to exceed national minimal standards, that is their call.
It is in the interest of National Security to have a populace with 100% literacy and enough basic skills to participate in government and society in an informed manner. To this end, minimums must be found for the nation, not just each state.
However, if you’d like to make it a state’s rights issue, I have no problem with that on general principle. Our current Federal government is corporatism run amok. More state need to stand up to them. But that’s a different story.
Budhha is Laughing
“School Industrial Complex? That’s almost too stupid to address.”
As Zach Galifianakis said in “The Hangover”, “Thank you.”
“Smarter kids grow up to be smarter adults…”
I know that I’m sitting at the feet of wisdom and I really don’t meant to be pedantic (I totally mean to be pedantic) but don’t you mean more educated? How does a school or teacher make someone smarter? I guess that I’m just going with the theme that it’s better to be a smart-ass than a dumb-ass(Let’s just chalk it up to multi-tasking, shall we?).
I think that any reasonable and intelligent person is for education.
I also think that education should be local and not a function of the federal government. If our educational universe rotates around DC then of course it’s going to be as corrupt and disfunctional as any other institution.
I suppose that we could have expected some trickle down education from the DOE if it weren’t for that Bennett guy. Well, it was a gamble…
When you speak of lobbyists are you including teachers unions in that? ‘Cause I know that the NEA only has student’s best interests at heart.
I was a substitute teacher on and off for five years so I have seen some things behind the scenes. Most teachers that I know made money during the summer or took care of continuing education so I’m not really going to sit here and feel sorry for them.
Local bureaucracy is accountable locally.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34818318/ns/us_news-the_new_york_times/
2a) Support a bill banning the chaplains. I think they are a violation of the Separation of Church and State and always have. If those scumbags want a prayer? Let them do in the privacy of their offices before session.
2b) Make some sense. Arabic translations have nothing to do with both books advocating killing at one point or another. It just wasn’t Jesus or Mo’ doing the suggesting but rather what men did to distort both of their teachings. Since you seem to think you know what Jesus was thinking, how about a little research into the other side: http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=7&ID=9801&CATE=1426
5) Germany had attacked an ally. More than one. An ally of Germany had attacked us. Had they not, we’d have eventually joined the war when Germany invaded our ally England – which they would have absent our being brought in early by the Japanese misstep. The Germans were PISSED about Pearl Harbor. They wanted us in the game as late as possible.
No one in Iraq had attacked anyone recently. And when they had, they attacked Kuwait, not America. We kicked their asses the first time simply because Bush’s masters in Saudi Arabia (Bush I in this instance) ordered it. They knew that from Kuwait, Saddam was coming for their theocratic heads. He ran the only secular state in the region that kept Saudi Arabia and their Fundie Wahabist nonsense from flooding the region and conflating all out war. He was the only thing holding Saudia Arabia in check. And we removed that control for them. Because the Bush and Cheney families are fascist traitors.
In fact, attack us was just about as far from Saddam’s mind as possible after the first beating he got. A tape recovered of one of his council meeting showed Saddam practically crap himself at the suggestion of an advisor that they should restart their chemical weapons programs.
Preemptive war is not a proper function of government. Defense is. As in you must be attacked to defend. Who attacked us on 9/11? Terrorists funded and manned by Saudi Arabia operating out of Afghanistan. Our first target shouldn’t have been the Afghans. It should have been Riyadh. They are who attacked us. No one else. And one cannot be at war with an idea or tactic. Terrorism is a tactic. One can be at war with a state. Just apparently not a state that has bought the offices of the President and VP and staffed it with their puppets.
Defense is not the same as imperialist expansion, which is what the invasion of Iraq was. This wasn’t even a war by proxy even like Vietnam. It was a plain old invasion. Because Bush and Cheney wanted the oil. Imperialism is a failed strategy. See: England, Spain, Portugal, Rome, etc.
And finally, but unnumbered,
School Industrial Complex? That’s almost too stupid to address. I’m for education for all. Equal and quality across the board. That’s called being pro-knowledge. Smarter kids grow up to be smarter adults who are competent and can invent things of social and economic utility whereas stupid children grow up to be good slaves and/or cannon fodder. But I’m for the School Industrial Complex (the proper term would be Educational Industrial Complex, a school is simply a building)? That’s just simply wrong.
If you ever wonder what side I’m on in any given issue? It’s not the corporatist side. EVER. Corporations are a fiction. And aside from good story telling for entertainment, I hate a liar.
None of this means that every child should and couldn’t have the best quality of education on the planet if our schools were properly funded and teachers paid a fair salary across the board. I’m talking the basics too: reading, writing, basic math, basic logic, history and civics (and free from any filters – corporatist, religious or otherwise. You know – the facts and basic tools required to be a functional and productive member of society. What they used to teach before corporatists and Fundie zealots started screwing with the educational system to dumb it down. If you want your kids to get a religious education, send them to Sunday School or a Madrassa for their indoctrination. Religion has no place in government funded education. It’s all about quality. GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out. Shit pay draws shit employees which in turn produce shit results. It rolls down hill. Business 101.
If you have a beef with the DoE, that’s fine with me. I won’t defend an organelle of government that had any utility it could have had if properly administered destroyed by that half-wit Bill Bennett. The DoE is a malfunctioning mess due to fascist influence just like every other organelle of state is at this point in time. Lobbyists are the problem with the DoE just like every other problem in government. Lobbyists are responsible for the dumbing down of American for their fascist masters. Not the true dedicated teachers out there, teachers who are abandoning the profession because they are tired of being disrespected by their employers and being forced often to live in near poverty themselves. Put in situations where they have to buy themselves the supplies they need to teach. Being put in a position where they spend more time fighting with the administration over bullshit instead of actually teaching. They want to TEACH, the real teachers, not be glorified babysitters.
I also believe in school choice. I also believe in equality of education. You should be free to choose any school you like, but they should all be required to teach both the basics and the truth as unfiltered by special interests be they fascist or theocratic in nature. Inequality, be it in education or treatment by the legal system, breed social discontent by creating an underclass of essentially slaves.
Budhha is Laughing
I’m not being defensive at all. Did you click to the link? Gen Boykin said that the Army refused to deal with Maj Nidal because he was a jihadist. What does that have to do with there being a lot of Christians in the Army and the chance that Christians might foment a coup?
1) X amount of any population is fine.
2) X amount of any population sucks.
2a) I agree but neither party has gotten rid of the Congressional chaplains or whatever they are called. What are we to do?
2b) Get back to me with an Arabic translation and you might make better headway.
2c) The pretexts will always be with us.
3) OK.
4) I don’t like fundamentalists. Even the reading ones.
5) Germany didn’t attack us yet we attacked and occupied them. Was that Unconstitutional?
Why didn’t the Dems bring Articles of Impeachment? That’s a more serious charge than lying under oath to a grand jury.
I personally think we should take all our troops out of the Middle East-the Arabian Peninsula included.
So since you are such a strict Constitutionalist why don’t you show me where the Constitution allows for the dept of education and why it’s so great?
Seems to me it was the dems who got rid of the DC scholarships that allowed common people-some might say Black people-to have school choice. Don’t you believe in school choice?
I would have never pegged you as a supporter of the School Industrial Complex.
“The White House appeared entirely unaware of the problem until a television savvy ABC reporter raised it.”
I think LOST is the right word–for the minds of many Americans…in particular those of a large number of our MSM. Can’t have us missing an episode of a TV program. It’s a good thing that ABC reporter was around to point out something the White House had overlooked.
(I’ve never watched an episode of Lost. Have I missed anything?)
************
It’s hard to get “real” news these days–except from people like Glenn Greenwald.
“Political reporting” means “royal court gossip”
By Glenn Greenwald (Salon, 1/11/2010)
Excerpt:
No event in recent memory has stimulated the excitment and interest of Washington political reporters like the release of Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s new book, Game Change, and that reaction tells you all you need to know about our press corps. By all accounts (including a long, miserable excerpt they released), the book is filled with the type of petty, catty, gossipy, trashy sniping that is the staple of sleazy tabloids and reality TV shows, and it has been assembled through anonymous gossip, accountability-free attributions, and contrived melodramatic dialogue masquerading as “reporting.” And yet — or, really, therefore — Washington’s journalist class is poring over, studying, and analyzing its contents as though it is the Dead Sea Scrolls, lavishing praise on its authors as though they committed some profound act of journalism, and displaying a level of genuine fascination and giddiness that stands in stark contrast to the boredom and above-it-all indifference they project in those rare instances when forced to talk about anything that actually matters.
This reaction has nicely illuminated what our press corps is. The book is little more than royal court gossip, churned out by the leading practitioner of painfully sycophantic, Drudge-mimicking cattiness: Time’s Mark Halperin. And all of the courtiers, courtesans, court spokespeople (i.e., “journalists”) and hangers-on who populate our decadent little Versailles on the Potomac can barely contain their glee over the opportunity to revel in this self-absorbed sleaze. Virtually every “political news” TV show is hyping it. D.C. reporters are boasting that they obtained early previews and are excitedly touting how intensively they’re studying its pages in order to identify the most crucial revelations. Just try to contemplate how things would be if even a fraction of this media energy and interest level were devoted to scrutinizing the non-trivial things political leaders do.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
“Schmidt said he asked Palin about her serenity in the face of becoming “one of the most famous people in the world.” He quoted her as saying, “It’s God’s plan.”
FFLEO,
Listened to that on 60 Minutes last night and a chill went through me, especially so because the interviewer didn’t ask him to elaborate. The thing that so scares me about her is that although she’s be proven to be an unregenrate liar, I suspect she believes her own lies. People who in their heart of hearts believe their own lives are the most dangerous of the deadly human species.
Buddha,
You said it all. Amen! For once I have nothing to add.
I’ll
For Sarah so loved the world she gave unto herself to do the work. Oh wait, let me think. Family pressures, personal lawsuits, a failed Vice Presidency race and she quit. Yep, that’s who I want running the country.
What is that song, She can’t even run her own life, ‘;ll be damned if she’ll run mine….
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/10/steve-schmidt-palin-belie_n_417977.html
Palin. Another one of “God’s Chosen” idiots.
Defensive much? I’m going to float an answer for Byron. I know he’ll chime right in if I’m off-base as to where he was coming from.
1) Some Christians are just fine. Jimmy Carter comes to mind as does Pope John Paul II. Because they not only read the book, they understand/understood it IN CONTEXT.
2) Some of Christians suck. In every possible way. Really, really bad. Like every other religion. Religion is a tool. It is often misused and abused. Religions are not absolute truths – no matter who is doing that wishful thinking. They are reflections of our desires superimposed over the words of teachers that had something of wise value to say and superimposed in such a way as to distort and often upend the very teachings themselves in the very mortal and venal service of evil men.
2a) Proselytization has no place in Government as a Constitutional matter.
2b) Proselytization has no place in war as fighting over “God” – no matter what you call it – is about as enlightened as setting babies on fire for heat and not exactly a sound base for making strategic and tactical decisions. And I don’t want to hear “Justinian” either. Battlefield hallucinations are not a good way to govern even if they accidentally led to victory. I’ll also remind you Joan of Arc was insane – a rallying figurehead who was disposed of by the people who manipulated her “zeal” in the first place for their private political ends. Once her utility as a killer was no longer needed.
2c) More people have died in the name of religious conflict than any other reason in history. Fighting over fairy tales. Although the underlying reason was often simple greed, lust or stupidity on the parts of rulers and leaders, when not the direct cause of conflict proper, religion was often a tool used to get people to kill. Often against their best interests. It still is used this way. “Jihad”? “Crusade”? “True believers” are morons being led by people who see them as nothing but cannon fodder or a cash cow (usually both).
3) Deal with it.
4) Religious thinking is dangerous in both military and governance situations. Simply because it’s not based in reality – the fundamentalist variation even less so.
5) Both situations, governance and war, must be based in reality to have even an minimally optimal solution much less a successful outcome. Bush violated the Constitution and invaded a country that HAD NOT ATTACKED US and his reason? “God” told him to. It didn’t have anything to do with his family being in the oil business with the Saudis. Uh huh. But if you smear jingoism and God all over that line of crap reasoning a bunch of people swallowed it right up in a mixture of fear and zeal. Not realizing the tasty banquet that they thought they were buying was actually a giant shit sandwich wrapped in pretty, lying, fascist paper. And the ready acceptance of this lie had nothing to do with the concerted efforts by the GOP to defund education every chance they had over the last 30 years either. Uh huh. Yeah, you can’t get smart people to kill themselves for bullshit reasons. All that logic and reason get in the way of emotional appeals and the “Fear of God or Love of God” as a motivator to kill for someone else’s prophet, er, profit. God is supposedly love according to Jesus. And all religions come down to this: in practice they are either worshiping love or worshiping death and this goes to ALL religions and their variations. God doesn’t want your money or your blood unless you are part of a death cult like Fundamentalism. That’d be men who want that blood and cash. So go and play the religion blame game as war mongers spend your lives like poker chips. They don’t give a damn about “your God(s)”. Their god is money. And they’ll kill EVERYONE if they can say “their penis”, er, “pile of cash” is biggest. It’s their nature as narcissistic sociopaths. I’d think that would be self-evident at this point in history.
Byron
You have heard of General Smedley Butler, haven’t you? Sgt Alvin York? Both Christians. One exposed a planned military coup and the other killed German soldiers despite his Christian convictions.
I’d be more worried about pretexts for martial law and violations of posse comitatus. IOW politicians ignoring their oaths to the Constitution.
And really, you link to a video critical of the army for ignoring a muslim who ended up gunning down fellow soldiers and you turn that around on Christians?
I’d love to discuss the Columbine shooting with you and how it pertains to Christians forcing kids to say the Pledge of Allegiance.