How government works

Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, David Obey (D-WI), explains how appropriations for the peasant class and budget negotiations work in this man's America. On education and government cheese:

We were told we have to offset every damn dime of [new teacher spending]. Well, it ain’t easy to find offsets, and with all due respect to the administration their first suggestion for offsets was to cut food stamps. Now they were careful not to make an official budget request, because they didn’t want to take the political heat for it, but that was the first trial balloon they sent down here. … Their line of argument was, well, the cost of food relative to what we thought it would be has come down, so people on food stamps are getting a pretty good deal in comparison to what we thought they were going to get.

Well isn’t that nice. Some poor bastard is going to get a break for a change.

And these are supposedly the liberal communist socialists who are going to drown the American ideal in a bathtub full of government handouts. Karl Marx scoffs at their contempt for the proles.

With battles like this against a Democratic White House, it's hard to see why Obey would want to retire. Oh, no wait, it isn't. This seems to be the kind of stuff that would erode your soul over the course of four decades in Congress.

Ah well, hopefully the next guy in charge of the House Appropriations Committee won't be so concerned with poor people in a lousy economy eating. Or education. Seeing as he'll probably be a Republican, I think we can safely assume that to be the case.

Educate yourself

With the combination of a poor economy/job market and the recent will crushing heat, we all know that we need to better ourselves in a way that doesn't make us come into direct contact with the outside world, what with the whole bursting into flames the second your skin hits sunlight thing. So thoughts of course turn to degrees and education and improving your skill set. But what if you lack the rigorous and stellar academic record needed to gain entrance into prestigious Phoenix University? What if your personal tastes in the field of human sexuality has had the man "advise" you to take up other interests online or face a minimum prison term of 5-10 years? What if you are a gullible sort who likes wasting money? What then?

Then you have Glenn Beck to thank. Because he's opening Glenn Beck University... for you.

This July, while others are relaxing poolside, head back to the classroom - from the comfort of your own home. That may sound like an oxymoron but Glenn’s new academic program is only available online.

Offered exclusively to Insider Extreme subscribers, Beck University is a unique academic experience bringing together experts in the fields of religion, American history and economics. Through captivating lectures and interactive online discussions, these experts will explore the concepts of Faith, Hope and Charity and show you how they influence America’s past, her present and most importantly her future.

So don’t miss out on this amazing experience. Enroll in Beck University today

For a mere $10 bucks a month ($75 a year, which is a savings of $45 dollars over the monthly rate) you can learn about American history and American Future combines with heaping doses of the Bible, by a man who seemingly understands none of these concepts. But at least he'll finally have a legitimate excuse for that chalkboard. Oh, and his "Advance Crying Techniques" class will really be a study with the master, as will his "Recognizing the Investment Value of Gold, sponsored by Goldline" class. So join now, otherwise you'll miss out on "Faith 101," "Hope 101," and "Charity 101", which are literally the titles of the classes.

I mean this totally sounds like a legitimate thing and not yet another effort for Glenn to bilk his supporters with some sub-Nigerian e-mail scheme "education" malarkey. He has a crest and everything! It has George Washington on it and a buffalo and some Latin. "Tyrannis Seditio, Obsequium Deo," -> "Revolution against tyrants, submission to God." I bet that totally isn't also the pseudo-intellectual Latin motto of at least 30 or more rural militias.

Anything else I should know?

Beck University will be online-only and courses are not for credit.

I'm sure this has NOTHING to do with the fact that no accredited institution of higher learning would even think about recognizing the curriculum. BAH! I know where I want my masters degree in Faith 101 to come from and I ain't gonna let no gubmint tell me if it's valid or not! Higher education is a liberal plot lorded over by snooty progressive professors in ivory towers!

So if you've got a couple spare bucks and need a good laugh, you could do worse than Glen Beck University. Plus, it's got to be most people's safety school in case they don't get into the Glenn Beck Institute of Technology. It's much more reputable than Beck State is at any event. Everyone knows that's just a party school.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 06.28

The crime of San Francisco represented topographically. This is prostitution.

In shocking news, an incredibly old man died of incredibly old age. The shocking part isn't that Robert Byrd died or that, at 92, he wasn't even all that old by US Senate standards, it's that we still see fit to send 70+ year old men to serve and then get surprised when they don't understand the issues of the day and enact legislation at the same pace at which they fuck. This is sad for West Virginia because with Byrd's passing this is the last time anyone of note will remember that it is a state and worthy of attention.

Unsurprisingly, the easily foreseeable death of a man that we all should be surprised lived this long has thrown financial reform into disarray. Byrd was the 60th vote. So now an already weak bill that had to add in tons of loopholes, crooked deals, giveaways, and purposefully fails to address the problems that caused our economic crisis to get to 60 votes in the first place, will have to be weakened and compromised further in order to pick up one more vote. I'm just saying don't be surprised if it becomes legal for a Goldman Sachs employee to gun you down in the street in cold blood.

By the by, what's in that financial reform bill anyway? Wonk Room has an overview. FDL has an overview of all the cut rate, cheap shit, last minute carve-outs that were put in despite the fact they benefit no discernible human. Did you know auto dealers are exempt from any consumer protection agency? Because if there's a group of people with a sterling reputation for looking out for consumers, it's car dealers. On the bright side, Sen. Scott Brown scored a bunch of special deals for his corporate masters in order to buy his support... and he then pledged to vote against the bill. So of course this means they'll take out his shady deals and improve the bill, right? Of course not.

Not that any of this matters anyway. As Paul Krugman explains, we're entering a Third Depression: the Long Depression. And why is this? Because our elected betters and the elected betters around the world have decided to focus on imaginary problems instead of real ones. Namely focusing on inflation that isn't occurring and focusing on cutting back spending that isn't at adequate levels in the first place. On the bright side, suffering builds character. And a decade from now the world will have a shitload of character.

Every time Sean or I wants to write another one of the 'Our Betters' Joe Biden pieces, the Veep has to go out of his way to set the satire bar a little higher than we thought it could go. This time Joe was slinging ice cream in Wisconsin, calling people smartasses. We've said it time and time again: we have to make the VP a lifetime position and soon.

We end on a sad note today as we learn that Texas, bane of education and facts, actually can't afford to buy all those textbooks they want to have changed. The main culprit on kids not getting textbooks: their stubborn, grandstanding idiot of a governor, Rick Perry, and his insistence on not taking federal education aid because of the socialism and some dear that it'll somehow weaken their #49 ranking in percentage of adults who have completed high school. Plus, books is witchcraft. There's that.

Your daily update of what constitutes education in Texas

Well the madness is over and Texas has finally passed the last of their historical "adjustments" to make sure the children of Texas are readily aware that history has a nefarious liberal secular bias. They didn't get to add in all the parts about Indians turning into Mexicans and copious Dracula references that they wanted, but they have enough for now.

Of interest, one of the women on the Texas Board of Education came out and said that public education was a "tool of perversion" and another man referred to any opposition as coming from "the pagan left". So it's nice that the sane people are exercising control over this process.

So what were they able to sneak in at the last moment?

Elevating Confederate Leader Jefferson Davis To The Level Of Abraham Lincoln.

Requiring That Historical Figures — Except Conservative Ones — Must Be Dead For Students To Study Them.

That's right. As the argument went, keeping Davis out was "an attempt to “whitewash” history." Which, given the board's attempts to remove blacks and Latinos from their history books, even rechristen the Atlantic Slave Trade as the Atlantic Triangular Trade, is something the board would know a great deal about. So Davis' speeches are kept in to contrast with Lincoln's speeches. One notable thing about Davis' speeches? They're ones that don't talk about slavery being one of the main reason for secession and the Civil War.

As for the second, yeah, if you're a minority or viewed as a dirty liberal, you can't get into the history books unless you're dead. Even if you're dead, you might not make it in if you've offended these people's imaginary conception of Jesus. Just ask Thomas Jefferson. But if you're white and really conservative? Please, come right into the textbook, if you're having trouble finding room just elbow a founding father or a civil rights pioneer out of the way and have a seat.

But surely not every crackpot idea these goons have gets into these textbooks, right? Shockingly, that's true. Referring to President Barry as Barack Hussein Obama, probably with a couple of Islamic crescents and a black power fist encircling it, was apparently too nakedly political and openly race bait-y for the board. Instead, he's referred to as Barack H. Obama, or, alternately, "The black one that done usurped the White House" and is listed again in the section "12 signs that the rapture is imminent" under the header "Blacks in places blacks shouldn't be."

It's a shame this is over for now. I would have liked to have heard the board opine on European history as well as English Lit requirements. Sadly God doesn't love me enough to have these people take a whack at science requirements. Maybe they did and Bibles have replaced Biology 1010 textbooks. I guess we'll find out. Godspeed, Texas schoolchildren. Just remember, when it comes times to take your SAT's, remember to fill in the bubble for what seems to be the exact opposite of the things you just spent 12 years learning.

Your daily update of what constitutes education in Texas

You have to admire the education board goon in Texas. They've become national pariahs and jokes, they've become a symbol for all that's wrong in our educational system and prioritizing politicization and ideologies over facts, and they've even engendered the beginning of a backlash in their state. Yet still they go on, rewriting history so that maybe, just maybe, kids will have a more positive view of the Republican Party and definitely, definitely have to retake a bunch of basic, high school level history courses if they want to meet the minimum requirements to graduate from college.

So what constitutes history today? What race has been getting it too good in our history books? What awful historical event needs whitewashed? What relatively unimportant event within the conservative movement needs to replace a bit of actual history? Let us find out.

Several changes include... introducing a new focus on the "significant contributions" of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war.

The new curriculum asserts that "the right to keep and bear arms" is an important element of a democratic society. Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favour of examining scientific advances through military technology.
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The education board has dropped references to the slave trade in favour of calling it the more innocuous "Atlantic triangular trade", and recasts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as driven by Islamic fundamentalism.
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Dunbar backed amendments to the curriculum that portray the free enterprise system (there is no mention of capitalism, deemed to be a tainted word) as a cornerstone of liberty and argue that the government should have a minimal role in the economy.

One amendment requires that students be taught that economic prosperity requires "minimal government intrusion and taxation".
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On the education board, Dunbar backed changes that include teaching the role the "Jewish Ten Commandments" played in "political and legal ideas", and the study of the influence of Moses on the US constitution. Dunbar says these are important steps to overturning what she believes is the myth of a separation between church and state in the US.

Ahh Newton you hack, go sit with Jefferson on the swings, we need to learn how George Wallace is the exact same kind of fighter for racial rights as MLK (true, according to Texas curriculum). And thank God the softened the language on the slave trade. Otherwise kids might get an idea that slaves were the only thing being traded. I think some tools and a couple barrels of molasses were involved.

Finally someone is willing to stand up and say that the separation of church and state is a myth. Sure, some wags might point out that it's in the 1st Amendment or that Thomas Jefferson talked about how the combined effects of the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause in the 1st formed a separation of church and state. But if Jefferson was so important, wouldn't he be part of Texas educational guidelines?

Go read the article and get a little insight into the mind of the Texas school board. The phrase "paranoid persecution fantasies" and "rampant flag eating bullshit" don't even begin to explain their mindset. They believe that God has called them to indoctrinate kids with conservative dogma. Kind of frightening to think about what they'd try to pull if they thought no one was paying attention and they weren't being made national lightening rods. Then again, maybe schoolchildren haven't learned enough about President Jesus H. Christ and His victorious fight against the Kaiser.

Maths + science

Both Sean and I here are big supporters of education, science, math, and various other things that can loosely be defined as "uppity book shit". Why? Because we've been bought off by Big Book and Big Knowledge. We're huge whores, what can we say?

So we often try to highlight the large Texas sections Texas of this Texas country Texas where people Texans are trying Texas to undermine science and facts, and monkey with our basic educational system. That said, we also know when well intentioned educators are doing things wrong as well. After all, there's a right way to educate and a wrong way to educate. Let's see if you can point out where this next fellow went wrong. Show your work.

The Secret Service investigated an Alabama high school teacher for using the example of shooting President Obama while teaching a geometry lesson.
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A student in the class described the lesson: "He was talking about angles and said, 'If you're in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president.'"

The district superintendent told the News that the unnamed teacher will not be disciplined.

Where do you think the teacher went wrong? Clearly he wasn't accounting for wind resistance, any teleprompters in the way, or podium height. At least he had the decency to cross Medgar Evers' name off this old lesson plan and fill in a new darkie. Gotta make the lessons current, otherwise the kids will never pay attention.

Lest you think we'll just paint Alabama and the South with the same finger wagging brush, we'll have you know that both Sean and I consider this to be progress. In the entirety of this man's lesson he did not once refer to mathematics as "that durned numerical witchcraft", attempt to cast Pythagoras as a heretic, or petition the state to bring back the cubit as a unit of measurement. He even taught the assassination lesson in an unsegregated class. I think you'll agree that this is remarkable progress for not only Alabama, but Southern education as a whole.

So if you're in the Jefferson County area and want to drop in on Corner High School, you might just learn something. Like, say, the chemistry teacher teaching the proper gasoline to frozen orange juice concentrate measurements for homemade napalm in case that pesky local IRS building keeps infuriating you or the English Department's curriculum guidelines for their Turner Diaries unit. If you stick around, you might just get to enjoy the Phys Ed Department's George Wallace themed Field Day wheelchair races.

Messing with Texas

One must appreciate the fervency with which the Texas right wing has attempted to dumb down kids and fill textbooks with conservative fantasies and nonsense. It takes some stones to de-emphasize Thomas Jefferson so you can get in some claptrap about Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority, pretend Latinos all just jumped the border and started contributing to America about six months ago, go on about how Japanese internment was just peachy, and make sure you've sufficiently provided enough information to the kids about how violent the philosophies of the Black Panthers were in case they got too nice of an idea about black people from MLK.

But, to the credit of Texas, they did finally get rid of Don McElroy, the man spearheading the changes.... except he still has time left on his term to do damage. And he is using every second of that time to its full stupid effect. What more can he have on tap for the Texas textbook standards that will likely affect dozens of additional states? Is another one of the founding fathers going to have to take a back seat so kids can understand how important Rush Limbaugh was to the rise of conservative talk radio? Do we have too favorable an opinion of Frederick Douglass? Are there still no Latinos of any historical note? Let's find out.

The new amendment (.pdf), which is expected to get a vote on Thursday, would require high school history students to "discuss alternatives regarding long term entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, given the decreasing worker to retiree ratio" and also "evaluate efforts by global organizations to undermine U. S. sovereignty."
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As justification for that second item, McLeroy writes: "Threats of global government to individual freedom and liberty include the votes of the U. N. General Assembly, the International Criminal Court, the U. N. Gun Ban proposal, forced redistribution of American wealth to third world countries, and global environmental initiatives."

Oh Jesus, not only do kids have to learn about the evils of socialism and entitlements, they apparently need to bone up on their UN conspiracy theories. And who can disagree? I mean it is important to learn that the UN is secretly marshaling armies to come and steal everyone's guns as a precursor to robbing us and giving all our money to Africa. Plus they want governments to deal with the environment. *shudders* The horror....

One wonders if staging a junior high Model UN gets you imprisoned now or shot outright. After all, Texas must protect itself from the black helicopters, both real and those ordered by a security council of 14 year-olds in Mr. Carruthers 3rd period Social Studies class. And what of proposals for science classes to analyze the use of tinfoil headgear to block the UN's mind reading satellites? That vote is scheduled for next week.

So congratulations to Texas. Just when I thought your textbook rewriting attempts couldn't get any more weird you fire back with some things that would raise an eyebrow or two at a Teabagger vs. Ron Paul-ite competitive bake-off. Good luck with that. The first sign of a vibrant ideology is ramming through low-rent textbook changes in an attempt to indoctrinate kids. My only consolation is that when I have children they won't have to learn any of this nonsense... they'll have to learn how to dismantle the neural net of a robot before it can get its grabber claw on you and drag you back to the hive mind for "purification of the flesh".

For the kids

You know, it's been a while since we've openly mocked our elected betters in Washington for nakedly playing politics with important issues. It must be a few days now since we've done it. But we can only mock them when they give us fresh material. I mean we can't make the stuff up, right? I mean sure, I'd love for our legislative branch to somehow combine politicizing education, disrespect for the sciences, needlessly harming kids, actively trying to dumb down future generations, and add in massive dashes of cheap legislative tricks, political cowardice, and a healthy dose of repressed sexual puritanism, but that kind of stuff just doesn't happen everyday.

Wait. In 3... 2... 1...

In an example of Republican obstructionism rendered beautiful by its simplicity, the GOP yesterday killed a House bill that would increase funding for scientific research and math and science education by forcing Democrats to vote in favor of federal employees viewing pornography.
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In this case, Republicans included a provision that would bar the federal government from paying the salaries of employees who've been disciplined for viewing pornography at work.

To proceed with the bill and bring it to a final vote, Democrats would have had to vote against the motion to recommit, and against the porn ban.

But they didn't have the stomach for it, and 121 Democrats jumped ship and voted with Republicans to kill the bill.

Eat it kids. "It" being 'Waste or excrement from the digestive tract that is formed in the intestine and expelled through the rectum'. You'd know about that whole process as well as the basic digestive process that would happen after you ate 'it'... if you didn't just have your science and biology curriculum needlessly fucked with by adults, that is. Well, legally they're adults, but in reality they're more childish than you'll ever be my dear, sweet, stupid, stupid children.

Ideally the bill is still able to be brought back up for a vote, but who knows what amendments supporting funds for the perverted arts, motions to support the rape of everyone's mother, and efforts to tack on riders that give away home makeovers and manicures to child murderers will have to be dealt with so that our children will not regress into fearing the fire orb in the sky and eating mud.

Wonderful. In order to look like they don't support the porn, our elected betters choose to support dicking over kids and education, all the while not actually doing anything to make themselves look less like conscienceless assholes and getting nothing done. I think that is the textbook definition of a win-win-win-win scenario. So good we have adults in Washington tackling the important issues in a serious manner.

Progress

As one of the landmark Supreme Court decisions in US history, Brown v. the Board of Education was one of the landmark steps in the civil rights movement. Honest. It's in the history books and everything. Seems someone forgot to tell the state of Mississippi that though. So the Justice Department had to send them a little memo about segregation. In 2010.

“More than 55 years after Brown v. Board of Education, it is unacceptable for school districts to act in a way that encourages or tolerates the resegregation of public schools,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
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According to the motion, the district’s practice of permitting hundreds of students — the vast majority whom are white — to attend schools outside their assigned residential attendance zone without restriction prompted a disproportionate number of white students to attend a single school in the district, leaving a number of other schools disproportionately black.

Indeed, evidence in the case suggested that the community regarded certain schools in the district as “white schools” or “black schools.” The United States also asserted that officials in certain district schools grouped, or “clustered,” white students together in particular classrooms, resulting in large numbers of all-black classes at every grade level in those schools.

Yeah, the Justice Department of the US had to remind the Walthall County school district in Mississippi about the fact that they weren't allowed to segregate students any more. I wonder how they're going to take the revelations about the water fountain and lunch counter thing. Or the black President. Bonus points for segregating kids in a county where it's almost a 50/50 split between whites and blacks. That's a a high racist degree of difficulty.

Still, this is all understandable. 1954 was a long time ago; who can remember what landmark civil rights decision came when and applied to what, or if they were even still applicable?

There's a phrase about Mississippi: last in everything and proud of it. I guess they just had to be the last to come in compliance with desegregation. Maybe they just didn't read about it. Doesn't strike me as a big newspaper culture and they might be getting their textbooks from Texas. In any event, the next time someone asks Mississippi, they can answer "Yes, we are somewhat in compliance with historically significant civil rights legislation and Supreme Court court rulings." That's progress.

Eat it, Jefferson. Eat it hard.

Last week we congratulated Texas for sending Don McElroy, the man who was spearheading Texas' efforts to use school textbooks as a means to rewrite history with a right wing christian conservative bent, packing in a primary contest. But we added in the caveat that the man still had several months left on his term and the board still had a christian conservative bent, so there was still time for them to do some damage. And boy did they ever decide to use the time they had left.

Among the changes made include:

removing a reference to “sex and gender as social constructs” in order to avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else”, refused to require that students learn the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others, added references to "laws of nature and nature's God" in sections about major political ideas, made the second amendment the only relevant idea in the Bill of Rights, considered it important to learn about "the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association", students now learn about the "violent philosophy of the Black Panthers" to counterbalance the nonviolence platform of MLK, tries to excuse the inherent racism of Japanese internment, added apologetics for McCarthyism and the McCarthy hearings because I guess that whole period wasn't all bad, made it so that Hispanics don't exist inside of US history, added ominous references to the "unintended consequences" of of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX, removed the word "capitalism" because it has a "negative connotation", and knocked Thomas Jefferson out of the required curriculum and the Enlightenment... mostly because he coined the phrase “separation between church and state”. It also didn't help that he was a paleontologist.

So America is a Christian nation whose founders gave no thought to anything other than Biblical law ruling the land, whites did everything, McCarthyism and internment weren't so bad, and Thomas Jefferson isn't important to US history but Phyllis Schlafly is. Let's let Donny boy explain himself.

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

Yes, reality does have a well known liberal bias. What's one of the non-crazy board members think?

Mary Helen Berlanga, [stormed] out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”

Yes they can.

“They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians,” she said. “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”

Yeah, but if you rewrite history, then it becomes history! See how it works? Ah well, who needed to learn about Thomas Jefferson anyway? If he was important he would have had a bigger role in HBO's John Adams mini-series.

A round of applause for Texas' contributions to education, culture, and knowledge. It's not enough that our culture, media, entertainment, government, politicians, and news work to dumb this country down, now we have to go into books in an attempt to more proactively dumb our kids down. I'm sure it's all for the best, who learns anything from history anyway?

Messing with Texas

There are certain things we like to do on this blog: mock the dead almost as soon as they die, make cheap dick jokes, whine, bitch about religion, and deride Texas. It is because all of these things are easy and several of them involve bitter meanspiritedness. Especially mocking Texas.

What have they done this time? Oh nothing on the level of their previous exploits of taking climate change denial to the courts or using their education board to push right wing conservative dogma and rewrite history. No, it's what they believe. 60%, more or less, of them believe that it was possible that the Flintstones was a documentary, among other things. ....Yeah.

A new University of Texas/Texas Tribune survey shows just how destructive a politicized right-wing curriculum can be. A large number of Texans polled said they still don’t believe in evolution and are convinced that humans and dinosaurs co-existed:

– 51 percent disagree with the statement, “Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.”

– 38 percent agree with the statement, “God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago.”

– 30 percent agree with the statement, “Humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time.” Another 30 percent said they “don’t know” whether the statement is true.

That be hilarious if they weren't in he process of basically rewriting the nation's textbooks. God love 'em. No, seriously, God loves them. That is science fact.

Now I'm all for mixing cement in a pelican and the green car movement of Bedrock, but I'm fairly sure Fred and Barney riding on dinosaurs was a creative flourish. But it shows that with a little creative ripping off of the Honeymooners, slapping the words 'rock' or 'granite' into every name, bright colors, and a snappy theme tune can make a cartoon more credible to Texans than the Origin of the Species, carbon dating, and other such methods of witchcraft scientific measurement.

So not only didn't we descend from no monkey, the earth is so young that there was a period of time where prehistoric (but not all that prehistoric) man strapped a saddle to a triceratops before he rode it to his job at the quarry before all the dinosaurs were killed off because God didn't tell Noah to take a multitude of thunder-lizards on his ark. Because the tyrannosaurus rejected the word of God or something.

That all seems plausible, I can see why Texans believe it in frightening numbers. It certainly makes more sense than listening to the collected ramblings thousands of scientists who have observed and studied the fossil record over hundreds of years. Those people aren't God and their books don't involve giants, men with powerful hair, and spontaneous booze transmogrification. You know, like real science books (of God) have. I think Texas has it all figured out. Thank God we have them to show us the way.

Video of the day

Peter Sinclair tries to explain to you just how electric cars work, why they work, why they're cleaner, and how they improve the electrical grid.

Plus: lamentations on the loss of flying cars, creepy puppets, and because you demanded it: Finnish subtitles.

Things you should read

I have some demands. Why? Because I like the mental fiction of having a supposed willing audience with which I can makes orders and demands that are carried out with brutal efficiency. What are these commands? Well, I was going to ask that someone fly a plane into an IRS building, but since someone already did that, it's just going to be reading related.

Content and demands, on a Sunday. I'm too good to you. How is this different from the Cheap Blogging Crutch? Well, it's on a weekend and this comprises articles I couldn't find a way to tack cheap dick jokes onto. More serious stuff, I guess. Onward.

For Scots, a Scourge Unleashed by a Bottle
A story of Scotland, “Wreck the Hoose Juice”, and a nation trying to come to grips with entrenched alcoholism and the specific beverage that they seem to want to blame for it: Buckfast. It may not have made me feel sympathy for Scotland, but I do want to buy a case of Buckfast.

The Substitute
Brad Plumer looks at the fading possibilities for climate change reform and how successful the EPA can be trying to regulate pollution and emissions now that it is likely to be the only entity capable of doing so, what with the Senate deciding to become irrelevant. Now you know what those lawsuits from Texas and Virginia are meant to do: pretty much make sure we don't do anything to avoid catching our death of heat and flooding.

Sticker Shock
John Cohn looks at the methods and madness of health insurance companies and why they jack rates. In addition he lays out why this means reform needs to be passed (as if you already didn't understand that) and further explains why piecemeal legislation will not work to reform the problem and stop the rate jacking.

After Summer Olympics, Empty Shells in Beijing
The New York Times looks at Beijing and the massive Olympic structures they built for the 2008 games. The verdict? They pretty much got used that week and haven't been touched since. Most striking is the status of the Bird's Nest stadium. It has no tenant, no real future events scheduled, and is right now a de facto gift shop and is packed with snow so children can sled down the aisles. The 2004 Athens games probably bankrupted Greece. I'm sure that bodes well for Vancouver, London, Sochi, and Rio.

How Christian Were the Founders?
The New York Times explores the radical, purely politically motivated attempts that the Texas education board is taking up in an attempt to rewrite textbooks to push Christianity and conservatism at the expense of science, known verifiable history, and common sense, and how they're decisions will likely affect the textbooks of around 40+ states. I bet you didn't know that Phyllis Schlafly, the Moral Majority, and the Contract With America were some of the most integral events in American history. Well now they are. Just one of the great ways in which this country is being destroyed from the inside in the name of cheap politics.

Roger Ebert: The Essential Man
Esquire magazine's story about the life of film critic Roger Ebert now that he has lost most of his jaw, the ability to eat, the ability to speak thanks to cancer, and how his outlook and life have changed since. One of the best profile pieces you're likely to read this year.

Roger Ebert's Last Words, con't.
Roger Ebert responds to the article on his own blog, musing on the tone, the shock of seeing the photo they used, how he doesn't want people to get the idea that he's dying, and what he wants people to take away from the article.

McDonald's Has a Chef?
TIME follows around McDonald's head chef, Daniel Coudreaut, and looks at just what exactly it is he does in a job that most people expect is an attempt at irony. It's an interesting portrait at just what a man who graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and ran the kitchen at the Four Seasons does at McDonald's and the arduous, creatively crushing nature, and logistical nightmare coming up with food ideas for Mickey D's is when the sheer size and food production timetables, schedules, and production lines of an organization with as many restaurants as McDonald's has have to be taken into account.

Wall Street's Bailout Hustle
Matt Taibbi comes back for one more shot at Wall Street and the financial wizards who destroyed the economy. This time he focuses on all the various cons, grifts, scams, and outright thefts the financial and banking sector has engaged in since the global meltdown and how they haven't really learned anything.

Is our children learning?

For 49 out of 50 states, the answer to the question posed above is "Yes... at least by shoddy American standards." The soon to be exception to that rule? Utah. Maybe we were too harsh to call them out for their blinkered state legislature backed climate change denialism. It seems that education isn't their strong suit.

The sudden buzz over the relative value of senior year stems from a recent proposal by state Sen. Chris Buttars that Utah make a dent in its budget gap by eliminating the 12th grade. The notion quickly gained some traction among supporters who agreed with the Republican’s assessment that many seniors frittered away their final year of high school, but faced vehement opposition from other quarters, including in his hometown of West Jordan.
...
During a hearing of the state’s Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee earlier this month, Buttars suggested that funding 12th grade amounts to “spending a whole lot of money for a whole bunch of kids who aren’t getting anything out of that grade.” The state senator also has also suggested ending “all busing for high school students,” which would disadvantage poor students and only save a paltry $15 million.

Something that dumbs down education tacked on with a semi-racist/classist measure to cut costs because your retrograde Republican policies can't function with raising taxes or scaling back the tax cuts to the rich you've handed out to cover a nearly billion dollar budget shortfall? You knew Utah, or possibly Texas, was going to blaze that trail first.

Frankly they're just responding to the realities of our financial apocalypse. Who needs education when there aren't any jobs? Furthermore nearly everyone in Utah derives an income from one of those "Isn't it precious how we have 14 kids" reality shows, so doesn't really need an education, skill set, or pliable trade.

I know what you're saying, "Matt, don't Mormons believe that if you record them for television, the camera steals their soul? How can they all have TV deals?" Well you can't steal their soul if they're wearing special underpants that deflect the heathen voodoo rays. Plus 14 kids is a lot, a man has to be willing to put his soul at hazard to care for the fruits of his loins.

So, apologies to Utah. We didn't mean to make fun. We didn't realize you were one of the "special' states. Enjoy your eleven grades. It's all going to be fire, spears, and animal skinned barbarians heaving rocks at each other pretty soon. Who needs AP Physics or English 7/8?

For your grammatical edification

Watching a British show and just don't understand the slang? Want to expand your cursing and swearing vocabulary beyond fucker, fuckface, fucking fuck, and mother fucker? Perhaps you're just curious if you're more of a yardie, yobbo, piss-artist, or just a barmy numpty who wanks his bell end. Then perhaps might we suggest the Septic's Companion: an online compendium of British slang, replete with definitions and audio pronunciation.

Now jog on.

Quote of the Day

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, telling the student newspaper of Texas Tech how he is inspiring his students now that the Red Raiders have inexplicably allowed him to teach there.

Gonzales said he wants to encourage Tech students to have high aspirations but to realize that success doesn’t come overnight.

“Dream big but be patient,” he said. “You never know when the next George W. Bush is going to come along and give you a once in a lifetime opportunity like he gave me, but you have to be patient.

"Kids, I'm a big believer in dreams coming true. And one day, if you dream hard enough, a rich, pampered, idiot manchild will like the way you don't talk back to or contradict him. And when he gets swept into higher office, he will drag you along on his coattails and sweep you into a position you are grossly unqualified for. Whereupon, if you're lucky, you'll get to fuck with the most basic institutions of law with an almost sociopathic disregard for ethics or basic humanity. Dream big! It worked for me!"

I imagine at this point his students lifted him up on their shoulders and carried him out triumphantly, chanting "Fre-do, Fre-do, Fre-d0!" After all, who doesn't dream of being a mindless, yes-man cipher who goes on to become a disgraced halfwit all based around not what they know, but who they know? That's preparing kids for the future in a manner that is surely worth the $15k in-state and $23k out-of-state tuition cost.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 11.10

Glenn Beck loses 'raped and murdered' arbitration
In a strike for first amendment rights, comedy, and questions over whether or not Glenn Beck did rape and murder a young girl in 1990, the World Intellectual Property Organization ruled that is was well within the rights of satire to ask question about what Glenn Beck may or may not have done to that poor girl on a dark day in 1990. Good thing Beck sued, otherwise this story wouldn't have blown up into a huge internet meme. Maybe next time he'll try to hush up his raping/murdering (alleged) a little better.

Teacher Claims Fingerprinting Is ‘Mark of the Beast’
Sweet Jesus Texas, I'd sell you back to Mexico if they'd take you. Yes Texas, where an evangelical schoolteacher is suing the state over a law that requires her to give fingerprints as part of her teaching permanent record. Why is she afraid? Did she rape and murder a young girl in 1990? No, fingerprinting is the "mark of the beast" that Satan will use to blah blah blah. Not so much the fingerprints or the ink and paper, though those a good candidates for the Devil, no the mark of the beast is the computer hard drive that stores those fingerprints. What are you willing to bet she teaches science?

NASA on a crusade to debunk 2012 apocalypse myths
Since NASA doesn't have anything better to do, like fly space missions or go to the moon, they've taken to cobbling together their nickels in an attempt to drill reality into conspiracy theorists heads that a giant hidden planet called Nibiru isn't going to smash into the Earth in 2012 and the Mayans didn't know dick. Because nothing convinces conspiracy theorists like hard science, facts, and evidence from a government organization. As a last ditch effort NASA is planning on locking these people into a screening of the film 2012. Then, when the horror is over, mockingly ask them "Seriously, that's what you fucking believe in? John Cusack outwitting the earth in a limo?" Shame and the forced viewing of a terrible movie is the only way these people will learn.

FBI Interrogators Argued in 2002 That ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Techniques Were Illegal and Ineffective
Well what do you fucking know, the FBI knew what pretty much everyone else knew about "enhanced interrogation": that it didn't work, led to false confessions, and violated a myriad of US and International laws. But, of course, they're only the FBI, so what the fuck do they know? Not as much as Dick Cheney, the Pentagon, and the CIA, that's for sure. Still though, I find it hard to believe that the Bush Administration deliberately ignored the opinions of the best trained and most experienced people in the government about interrogations. That just doesn't seem plausible. I'm sure they never got the memo. That must be why they had to torture.

What's 'V' really about?
Were you curious about the new show "V", but didn't think you could plausibly graft a conspiratorial right wing theory about Obama and health care onto the plot? Well you aren't as smart as the New York Post. I don't know if I should trust the Post on this one. I mean if it was this obvious, shouldn't Glenn Beck have sniffed this one out and shouldn't the pilot at least have inspired a few tea bagger signs at the Super Bowl of Freedom? It's a shame that Obama's government issue, appendix eating nanobots have sidelined him or Beck would have had this all diagrammed out on a chalkboard by now. Until then, I'll just avoid it until half a season has passed and we can all be sure that it isn't harboring a liberal agendas, like all TV.

Broken News: Britain officially no longer interested in World War I

LONDON--With the passing last week of Harry Patch, the U.K.’s last surviving veteran of World War I, Great Britain has formally declared that it is no longer interested in the "War to End All Wars." While not a constitutional ban, the declaration is intended to limit discussion of, reference to, and glorification of the conflict, which began 95 years ago this week.

"We simply felt the time was right, as World War I has been approaching irrelevancy for years now" said Nigel Covington, Oxford professor of history and adviser to Parliament. "In fact, most British schoolchildren believe that World War I was retroactively invented to sell World War II as a sequel. And now that that codger, Patch, has shuffled off the mortal coil, we won't have to be looking over our shoulders for cranky veterans."

The declaration, cleverly entitled Bye-mar Weimar, calls for popular historical focus to shift to World War II and the ensuing collapse of the British Empire as its far-flung colonies declared independence and set the country on its path to global insignificance. Initial estimates suggest the country will save upwards of £25 million ($1.4 trillion U.S.) in education costs. The elimination of such a large chunk of the history curriculum is also expected to produce impressive gains in standardized test scores.

"Well that's that, then," clapped the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, the Right Honorable Ed Balls, MP, upon hearing of the death of his country's last surviving World War I veteran. "Finally we can get on with putting all that nasty war business behind us and reclaiming valuable page space in history books that are increasingly failing to educate our children on things they find relevant: wars that have been made into games, miniseries, and blockbuster movies.”

Striking a strident pose, grabbing the lapels of his jacket, and affecting a Churchillian air, Balls continued, “It is in these times that we must be brave enough to jettison what has happened too long ago for us to bother caring about in order to truncate all those bits that seem to repeat and echo other, more exciting parts of history."

Analyst opinion remains divided on this controversial measure, with some decrying the apparent lack of respect for a global conflict that claimed over 15 million lives.

"What utter fucking rubbish," opined Cambridge World War I historian and Professor Emeritus Dr. Roland Wright. "This was the first truly global conflict in all of human history, and one of the deadliest wars ever fought. How in the hell can we collectively ignore it?"

Defenders of the policy point to the fact that, apart from flagging public recognition, many of the war's belligerents no longer even exist.

"Go ahead and tell someone your family is from the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Kingdom of Bulgaria. You'll be laughed out of the bloody room," said Covington. Asked to address the potential savings of striking the conflict from public imagination, he then added, "On the bright side, at the rate our American cousins are dragging us into military conflicts; we'll have enough new, more easily remembered material to be able to drop World War II from the curriculum as early as 2015."

He continued, “Ask any American about the early 20th Century and they’ll just tell you it was the period after the Civil War, when people in grainy film footage moved really fast and rode those bicycles with one large front wheel, just before baseball got interesting.”

If America is unable or, less-likely, unwilling to create enough new wars to fill sufficient paragraph space, the Labor Government has begun preliminary talks with William Shatner to license his TekWar series of novels and opened negotiations with Lucasfilm Ltd. to acquire the teaching rights to the Star Wars saga.

“It says there right in the beginning: ‘A long time ago...' That means it's history,” said Secretary Balls, MP, confident this gambit would hold up against legal challenges by the more "fact-obsessed" sectors of the British populace. “Frankly, laser swords and lessons about ancient trade disputes within the Galactic Senate are more interesting than Frenchmen shitting in their own bunkers during the fighting of what children refer to as ‘the war they haven’t made any video games about.’ As for licensing TekWar, isn’t learning about the future one of the most integral parts of history education?”

Education officials for the Ministry for Children, Schools, and Families plan to have the requisite pages ripped out of the over 8 million history textbooks spread around over 25,000 schools in time for the new school term. For the 2010-2011 school year they hope to have received order on new course books where the period from 1900-1923 is addressed with the phrase “And nothing much of interest happened during this time.”

Cheap Blogging Crutch 07.21

Celebrating Cronkite while ignoring what he did
Glenn Greenwald on how Walter Cronkite can't even be buried yet because his body is spinning so furiously they can't get it into a casket. Why? Due to all the journalists who seem to praise Cronkite but don't seem to have the slightest recognition of how far their profession has fallen and how little of what they do resembles the kind of work he and men like him did.

Cocksure
Malcolm Gladwell on the banking and financial crisis and how it relates to the psychology of overconfidence, notably how we tend to overrate our accuracy and intelligence as we get older. I know what you're saying "I can't believe the financial industry is rife with self-important, over confident, self absorbed assholes!" Believe it. Read all the way through to the story of the guy who wrecked Bear Stearns getting standing ovations from various parts of the company as he left.

Teen pregnancy and disease rates rose sharply during Bush years, agency finds
What's that you say? The marked increase in abstinence only education during the Bush years led to sharp increases in teen pregnancy and STD's over that period? My God, who could have foreseen that shunning knowledge for religious moralizing and mythmaking would have disastrous consequences? Other than all those previous studies and medical analysis that said so. Next you're going to tell me that the areas that saw the biggest increases were in the south where there was the greatest emphasis on abstinence and the STD eradicating powers of Jesus. Inconceivable.

Eliot Spitzer not my only governor - hooker who worked for Kristin Davis
Just what everyone loves: needlessly cryptic hookers. In between talking about how weird Eliot Spitzer was and how cheap Bernie Madoff was, comes a tale of yet another governor who decided that he'd like to resign in disgrace. But alas, she deigns to name names. Lord Baby Jesus, I don't ask for much, I'm just asking that it be Mark Sanford.

San Diego menaced by jumbo squid
In a stunning gambit to claim the seas before the robots get any ideas, giant fucking squid have been attacking swimmers and getting ink all over San Diego. Did I mention they're giant? Yeah, I did. Did I mention they fly, have fucking parrot beaks, eat meat, and have been attacking swimmers? Shit yourself yet? Don't worry, when their icy tentacles grab you and they sink their beak into you, possibly while you're swimming in the pool or on the toilet, then you'll know who rules the seas.

Dictionary refresher

For those conservative pundits, columnists, and lawmakers who can't seem to go five minutes without crying socialism, I thought I'd give you a quick refresher on the definition of the term using easily available information found on many of the knowledge tubes in the intarwubs and dusty parchment and scrolls found in many book libraries. You know, before you hear Obama or Pelosi had sausage and bacon with their breakfast and start declaring it yet another slide into ultra-gay France-ishness on the way to a full blown Fourth Reich.

so·cial·ism n.
1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
2. The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved.

So let's be clear here.

Things that are socialist: socialism, Alaska's state owned oil resources whose profits are redistributed among the citizenry, Venezuela, Britain's government run and controlled health care system.

Things that are not socialist: offering a public health insurance plan to compete with private insurers, everything that you heard some Democrat did, that pigeon out on your balcony, generally anything that you say is socialist.

So next time you decide to work up a nice crazy froth about how some innocuous bill is going to lead to the US hot-tubbing with Hugo Chavez and the ghost of Karl Marx, stop, breathe, read this, and then let your reptile political instincts override your sense of logic and honesty. I just want you to know you're talking absolute shit, instead of now where you guys are just willfully ignorant of basic political theory. Thanks. We know return you to your regularly scheduled dick joke making and childish mockery.