Obama's Economic Proposals

A mix or left and right

I'm not much of a "The Cure" fan, but...

The Cure- Charlotte Sometimes

The Cure-Just Like heaven

The Cure- Hanging Garden

Will the choir say AMEN

(image credit: tbctbc on Daily Kos)

En Tequila es verdad slams it out of the park again.

Being a rape survivor does not make me an unimpeachable expert on rape, the combatting thereof, and all things remotely related to it. Being a POW does not make John McCain an expert on war, the fighting thereof, and all things remotely related to it. It apparently doesn't even make him an expert on torture, because if it had, he wouldn't have worked so hard to allow America to engage in it. (Imagine me redefining my rape as somehow "not rape" so that sexual violence could be legally perpetrated against women. Morally repugnant? I think so. But that's essentially what McCain has done.)

Being a rape survivor doesn't make me any less of a nimrod when I get geographical facts wrong. My teachers didn't forgive my errors of fact by virtue of my elevated status. When McCain says Czechoslovakia still exists and moves Iran out of the way so Pakistan can border Iraq, despite the fact he's a POW, he's still a fucking nimrod. I didn't get any free passes in college. He shouldn't get free passes in this race.

Being a rape survivor doesn't put my integrity beyond reproach. If I lie, sling mud, or cheat, I can't use the rape survivor shield to fend off criticism. So why does McCain get to be a lying, cheating, mud-slinging asshat and still be thought of as an honorable, straight-talking maverick just because he's a POW? What happened to us once when we were younger cannot and should not be used to excuse the reality of who we are now.

Being a rape survivor does not mean I get to claim that I'm a better person than my opponents because I survived rape and they didn't. McCain is no better than the people he smears - in fact, he's far less of a good man than they are. If we're going to be claiming higher ground by virtue of our travails, we'd better be fucking standing on it.

I can't use my status as a rape survivor to disclaim responsibility for the actions I take, the things I say, the people I hurt, and all my many failures. It infuriates me that McCain thinks this status as a POW allows him to do all of that and so much more.

Let me paraphrase Terry Pratchett here: "Just because someone's a POW doesn't mean he's not a nasty, small-minded jerk."

McCain is.

...

McCain spits on people like my father whenever he expects his status as a POW to put him on a shining pedestal, without doing one damned thing to earn it. He spits on people like me when he uses it to excuse his moral, political and human failings. He spits on us all when he uses his status to get ahead.

It's time we stopped letting him get away with it.

Why Teach for America is BS and an entire overhaul of our education system is needed.

I know that vI said that I was done with Feministe, but....


Why I Hate Teach for America

But teaching is one of those careers that doesn’t lend itself to career switching. It’s one of those careers where the longer you do it, the better you get at it (though I’m sure there are limits to this, depending on the person). And, unlike, say, a job as a copy-editor or an architect or an art dealer, when you are a teacher it really matters that you be good at what you do, since there is no one to catch and correct your mistakes before they’ve poisoned your students’ learning experiences in some way or another. If it is your job to make sure that a bunch of six year olds learn basic reading skills, and you fail, you may have just seriously fucked some six year olds. Maybe most of them will catch up in the second grade, but maybe some wont (especially if their second grade teacher is also straight out of the pre-service training…). If it is your job to make sure a bunch of 19 year olds understand basic math concepts well enough to pass a high school exit exam, and you fail, some of those students might never go back and graduate.

I’m not saying any of this to overstate the importance of teachers in the lives or their students or to freakout any first, second, third, or fourth year teachers about their individual failures (myself, obviously, included). Every new (and veteran) teacher is allowed to make mistakes. Further, I’m not saying that teachers are obligated to stay forever in shitty work environments with principals and administration that treat them badly, or in careers that they don’t find satisfying. What I’m getting at is that there is something wrong with a system that floods poorly performing schools with inexperienced teachers who leave just as they are becoming experienced teachers.

Which is why I hate Teach for America.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a big fan of the New York City Teaching Fellows either. I’m not defending NYCTF for it’s faults, which include provided precious little support and training for their new teachers as well as frightenly high turnover rates. According to a 2007 Village Voice article, by their fifth year teaching, less than fifty percent of Teaching Fellows remain from a given cohort. But at least in NYCTF the high turnover rate is seen as a failure. In TFA, the high turnover rate is designed as part of the program. TFA members are expected to leave teaching after their two-year commitment is up, those who continue to teach are seen as the exception.

TFA members are not required by Teach for America to pursue a masters in education (which, especially if you do not have an undergraduate degree in education is required to become permanently certified in most states), although some of the states where TFA has program sites require teachers to at least begin taking graduate courses as part of their alternative certification requirements. They don’t require teachers to take the steps to become permanently certified because there is no expectation that their teachers will stay in teaching once their two-year resume-building experience is over. How do I know? Because it’s on their website!

Educational inequality is our nation’s greatest injustice. You can change this.
The first three drop down tags at the top of the TFA website read, “What We Do,” “The Core Experience,” “After the Corps.” Teaching is not a career for this organization, it is an “experience.” You can write about it in your annual Christmas letter and show up your cousins who went straight to law school instead of differing for two years to work in the inner city. You now have some “cred” when talking about why No Child Left Behind sucks. Oh, and, of course, you can put it on your resume.
And TFA will help you make that resume! Just check out the “After the Corps” section of their website. It’s chock full of career services and options of what you can do after you’ve gotten tired of “closing the education gap.” They even have partnerships with various employers such as Morgan Stanley, Deloitte, JP Morgan, and Lehman Brothers, all of which allow TFA members to defer their high paying jobs as management consultants and financial analysts to teach for two years in the trenches of underachieving schools.
Still not convinced? Listen to how much those two years of teaching forever changed this TFA alumnus:
Looking back, I’m so glad I chose to teach before embarking on this next phase of my career. I developed skills that empowered me to excel beyond my peers in business school: organization, effective time management, dexterity in communication and public speaking, and the ability to think on my feet. The responsibilities I shouldered in the classroom prepared me like nothing else could for the challenges of management, communication, and intense focus that characterize my current position, where I conduct industry research, create financial models, identify industry trends, and explain their implications.
-Scott, an analyst at Lehman Brothers
Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that what teaching is all about? Becoming a better financial analyst?MORE

Poor children used as a resume padder for people to vault into top jobs in upper class firms. How sweet.

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Judge Rules That Content Owners Must Consider Fair Use Before Sending Takedowns

A judge's ruling today is a major victory for free speech and fair use on the Internet, and will help protect everyone who creates content for the Web. In Lenz v. Universal (aka the "dancing baby" case), Judge Jeremy Fogel held that content owners must consider fair use before sending takedown notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA").
Universal Music Corporation ("Universal") had sent a takedown notice targeting a 29-second home movie of a toddler dancing in a kitchen to a Prince song, "Let's Go Crazy," which is heard playing in the background. Because her use of the song was obviously a fair use and, therefore, non-infringing, Lenz sued Universal for misrepresentation under the DMCA. Universal moved to dismiss the case, claiming, among other things, that it had no obligation to consider whether Lenz's use was fair before sending its notice. The judge firmly rejected Universal's theory:

[A] fair use is a lawful use of a copyright. Accordingly, in order for a copyright owner to proceed under the DMCA with “a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law,” the owner must evaluate whether the material makes fair use of the copyright.

More

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Donna Summer-Stamp your feet

The official music video for this is crap. Don't like the rest of her album either. But this great.

Heads up...

Swiftboating 2.0

Text only version.
Click on each bubble for more information.

As the means of communication have evolved, presidential campaigns have grown increasingly multifaceted, with each election featuring layers of complexity that were not present four years before. The most striking feature of the 2008 election may be the sheer volume and variation of the attacks being directed at Sen. Barack Obama. Though they come from many sources, arrive through a variety of media, and cover a wide range of subjects, a close examination reveals a unified thematic structure to these attacks.

As has been extensively documented, many of the criticisms Obama has faced are based on outright falsehoods. The truth is that he is a Christian, not a Muslim; he was born in the United States; he doesn't refuse to recite the Pledge of Allegiance; he wasn't endorsed by Fidel Castro; and so on. Other attacks are outrageous distortions with a kernel of truth at their core.

The diagram below shows how the seemingly disconnected attacks on Obama all drive in a similar direction. Each begins with some aspect of Obama's history, family, personal characteristics, or beliefs. The attack then moves to one of three broad themes: that Obama is a Muslim or somehow foreign; that he represents a black radicalism more at home in the 1960s than today; or that he is a liberal elitist with a radical, even socialist agenda. MORE

watching the DNC

WTF? Pat Buchanan has lost his MIND!!!Then again, does he have a mind?