Secretary of State Condolezza Rice says:
For those who were in a position of authority during the September 11, 2001 attacks every day since has been September 12th.
And this is why, at least for the last eight years, the terrorists won.
Vice President Dick Cheney on the need to bailout Detroit:
If we don’t do this, we will be known as the party of Herbert Hoover forever.
The legacy is sealed.
Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year”s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half”s worth of material. That difference amounts to a year”s worth of learning in a single year. Teacher effects dwarf school effects: your child is actually better off in a “bad” school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad teacher.
Teacher effects are also much stronger than class-size effects. You”d have to cut the average class almost in half to get the same boost that you”d get if you switched from an average teacher to a teacher in the eighty-fifth percentile. And remember that a good teacher costs as much as an average one, whereas halving class size would require that you build twice as many classrooms and hire twice as many teachers.
How many good teachers are out there who lack a state credential; who could change children’s lives but aren’t willing to jump through academic hoops?
The sensationalized weather broadcasts, which predict armageddon-like storms on a weekly basis which never happen, have been replaced by the Weather Channel which tells you exactly what the weather will be in real time every 10 minutes. And ESPN has made the local sportscast a waste of your time.
In other words, there is no reason to watch local TV news.
And when no one buys (watches) what you produce, the unemployment rolls swell.
This was my take back to Tim:
The real difference between the professional journalist and the kid with the mimeograph used to be access.
Having a Press Card granted you access to sources when print and broadcast journalists were actually independent. Once they became toadies to government and business, the power of the Press Card – and the access it entitled you to – disappeared.
The kid with the camera now gets more respect than the professional journalist because they can”t be controlled; you, of course, being the perfect example.
Never give the suckers an even break.
I swear the last year has been one big blaxploitation flick. Without the guns. And without the white girls…
I actually do read some of my spam, mostly to laugh at how insanely stupid most of it is.
But occassionally I get something that looks like it might have actually been well meant but demonstrates such a total lack of cluefullness that I have to just shake my head in amazement.
David Thibos is one such clueless marketing troll. Today he wrote me to say:
I sent you an email a few weeks ago about selling your coffees through our stores? If you want to make a push, now’s the time.
We work with buyers from thousands of grocers, specialty food stores, large retailers, mail-order catalog companies and Internet shopping sites. We need a larger variety of coffees they can choose from, hence my email to you.
If you’re interested in selling your line to more stores visit us at http://www.WiseRep.com. We guarantee sales.
Sincerely,
David Thibos
Director of Merchandising
WiseRep.com
Just in case you’d like to burn a few minutes and help Dave get a clue, his email address is:
And oh yeah, it has occured to me that Dave is just another spammer fishing for good email address to sell, so you might want to use a throw-away yahoo email address.
Monica Davey and Jack Healy write:
Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois was arrested by federal authorities on Tuesday morning on corruption charges, including an allegation that he conspired to effectively sell President-elect Barack Obama”s seat in the United States Senate to the highest bidder.
Mr. Blagojevich, a Democrat, called his sole authority to name Mr. Obama”s successor “golden,” and he sought to parlay it into a job as an ambassador or secretary of Health and Human Services, or a high-paying position at a nonprofit or an organization connected to labor unions, prosecutors said.
He also suggested, they said, that in exchange for the Senate appointment, his wife could be placed on corporate boards where she might earn as much as $150,000 a year, and he tried to gain promises of money for his campaign fund.
If Mr. Blagojevich could not secure a deal to his liking, prosecutors said, he was willing to appoint himself.
And, of course, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was the man who nailed this perverse waste of human genome.
What’s going on? It’s hard to know for sure, because the homeowners who have qualified for help so far were supposed to have been fairly good credit risks to begin with. My guess is the worsening economy is making it harder for just about all homeowners to pay their mortgages, and those who were teetering on the edge months ago — although perhaps good credit risks before that time — are now way under water. Two of the biggest culprits: Layoffs and fewer working hours. With far less money coming in, more and more people have to choose between paying their mortgages and trying to keep up with larger and larger credit card debt. They’re trying to manage both while paying the medical bills and the food bills and energy bills, and they can’t make it.
[Snip…]
This is the angry soil in which populist backlashes can take root.
Every modern recession includes a media s̩ance about how horrible things are and how much worse they will be, but there have never been so many ways for the fear to leak in. The same digital dynamics that drove the irrational exuberance Рand marketed the loans to help it happen Рare now driving the downside in unprecedented ways.
From Since You Asked:
Dear Cary,
I live in a doorman-less building. A Sabbath observer [an observant Orthodox Jew] recently moved in and invites friends to visit on the Sabbath; however, because of Sabbath rules regarding the use of machines, they won’t use the phone or the building security system. They wait in the vestibule until someone lets them in.
I never admit strangers, but they are persistent. One stuck his foot into the doorjamb as I tried to enter, and pushed past me, as I was trying to explain to him that he would have to get permission from a resident to let him in.
Recently, there was an armed robbery nearby and I’m concerned about our security. My senile landlord is religious and I’m afraid that if I complain, my rent will go sky-high at the next lease renewal. As a feminist, an atheist and a secular Jew, my irritation about the security issue is increased by my disgust with their religious practices. I’m considering sending an anonymous note to this tenant, suggesting they find a more secure way of admitting Sabbath guests, but my fury is interfering with drafting a civil or constructive note.
Insecure
The joke goes like this: Rock ‘N’ Roll is about wanting to have sex; Jazz is about having sex and Country And Western is about having had sex and feeling really, really bad about it.
Fifty Years Of Popular Songs Condensed Into Single Senteces by Marc Haynes.
This is my favorite:
Carly Simon, You’re So Vain: We used to do it, but then you did it with someone else, and now I’m not going to do it with you, although I wish we were still doing it.
Can someone please fire all the managers and rehire all the actual workers? In fact, let”s do that in the auto industry and a few others as well…
That someone, of course, must be you and me.
I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who think Andrew Sullivan has gone off the deep end in demanding simple proof from Palin, but imagine what a different world this would be today if journalists had gone after the record of President George Bush with the same fervor eight years ago?
Don’t stop Andrew!
But if most Americans with insurance had to live under the NHS for a day, there would be a revolution. It was one of my first epiphanies about most Americans: they believe in demanding and expecting the best from healthcare, not enduring and surviving the worst, because it is their collective obligation. Ah, I thought. This is how free people think and act. Which, for much of the left, is, of course, the problem.
I replied to Andrew:
Shalom Andrew,
But isn’t your point precisely the problem in the United States; that we’ve lived on the myth of unending resources for so long that we’ve come to believe that there is such a thing as a free lunch? Of course we want gold-plated health care. We just want the other guy to pay for it; or at least, we want to pay the sub-compact price for a full-sized luxury car.
And as to the British attitude, travel through much of America and you’ll find the same feelings that suffering makes you stronger and that giving into pain is somehow weakness. You might read the works of Wendell Berry — particularly Jayber Crow — for a taste of this.
B’shalom,
Jeff
Powered by Wordpress | Design by Ash Haque
XHTML Strict | RSS Entries
