Not me, but this video is!
This is also the best, most accurate summation of the situation I have seen.
Category Archives: Education
Hi, I’m a Tea Partier
Filed under Education, Politics, Religion, Social Commentary, Television, The Economy
Embracing Memory’s Tough places – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com
Another wonderful column from one of my favorite columnists:
Actually, old times there are forgotten quite a bit.
For 145 years, ever since a grim-faced Robert E. Lee rode away from Wilmer McLean’s house in Appomattox, Va., where he had surrendered his army, apologists for the South have been trying to induce the rest of us to forget the causes of the Civil War, to imbue an act of treachery and treason with a nobility of purpose it did not, in fact, possess.
“State’s rights,” they say. “State’s rights to maintain a system of human slavery,” they do not say.
It is the social and political equivalent of an extreme makeover. The thinking seems to be: when history collides with cherished self image, change history.
Something very similar seems to be afoot with regard to a related event much closer to us in time: the civil rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s.
Just a few months ago, we saw conservative activist Glenn Beck claim ownership of that movement, in defiance of historical memory. “…[W]e were the people that did it in the first place!” he cried.
Last week, in an essay in the Washington Post, University of Virginia Professor Gerard Alexander analyzed voting trends from the civil rights era to bolster his thesis that social conservatism is not intolerant. Somehow, he never got around to explaining how it is, then, that social conservatives were always the ones standing in schoolhouse doors, blockading polling places, burning buses, and cracking skulls.
More: Embracing memory’s rough places – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com.
Filed under Education, History, Politics, Religion, Social Commentary
Democrats Target Black Vote as Tea Party Collects Converts | The Guardiann
Scary….
The enormity of the task facing the Democrats in the midterm elections is all too evident at the Midwest church of Christ, which lies in a predominantly black neighbourhood in Louisville. Its pastor, the Reverend Jerry Stephenson, is a registered Democrat but he will be voting in the US Senate race for the Republican candidate and Tea Party favourite, Rand Paul.
Stephenson, 61, is furious over the school drop-out rate among African-American children in his neighbourhood – which has one of the highest crime rates in the city, especially among teenagers – and across the nation.
He felt pride when Barack Obama became the first black US president, but that pride has been tempered by a growing belief that he is not up to the job. “There has to be change that we can not only believe in,” he said, echoing an Obama campaign slogan, “but that we can see.”
The pastor is so angry that he has embraced the Tea Party movement, in spite of it being overwhelmingly white and repeatedly accused of racism. He speaks at their rallies across Kentucky, delivering fiery speeches in the cadences and rhythms common among southern black preachers.
Stephenson is in a minority of African-Americans likely to back the Republicans, estimated at little more than 10%. African-Americans traditionally back the Democrats and Obama won 95% of their vote in 2008. That loyalty appears to be holding: a Pew Research Centre survey in September found he had an 88% approval rating among black people, more than double that of the white population.
The question for Obama is whether they will turn out in record numbers again to vote Democrat or whether they will stay at home, either out of apathy or disillusionment with the slow economic recovery.
via Democrats target black vote as Tea Party collects converts | World news | The Guardian.
Filed under Education, Politics, The Economy, The South
YogaSlackers take a Rest Day – Kinda’ | Wend Magazine – iWend
Yoga Teachers: Don’t be getting any ideas….
From the accompanying article:
This past weekend, we were busy. Sam, Chelsey and I hosted the largest gathering of advanced acroyogis (blend of acrobatics, yoga, and flying massage) that has ever converged in Arizona. We taught and practiced for nearly 10 hours a day on Saturday and Sunday. It was a beautiful sight, to see so many people pushing themselves and trusting each other. Chelsey and I taught a very difficult sequence – possibly the most difficult acrobatic flow that has ever been publicly taught in a workshop setting. We demanded a lot from ourselves, and even more from our students. They did not disappoint.
Sunday night, as we finally made our way to bed after midnight, we looked forward to a sleeping in and waking up to a lazy rest day. Our friend and majestic bodywork Guru — Charlie Roach (Four Rivers Massage 520.406.4703 – worth visiting Tucson for!) — has been working on us off and on over the last year and urged us to take a bit of a rest. The acrobatics, constant race training and serious yoga practice had been taking it’s toll. We were still not fully recovered from the 1080 miles of the YES tour. We all joke about being super-human, but our shoulders, hips, and wrists were all feeling the overuse.
I slept until 7:30, which seemed pretty late since the previous week Chelsey and I had woke at 5:30 AM every morning to practice. I taught a yoga class at 8:00, intending on a leisurely breakfast and lazy afternoon. Unfortunately, Sam and Dan (yogaslacker from Minnesota who was in town for the Acro workshops) showed up to my class, and insisted that we take advantage of Dan’s last day in town. Suffice to say, I am gonna need another rest day after my rest day….
More: YogaSlackers take a Rest Day – Kinda’ | Wend Magazine – iWend.
Filed under Education, Entertainment, Style, Uncategorized, Yoga
Glenn Beck: Drawing On 1950s Extremism? : NPR
Great article on NPR. I encourage you to click the link and read the entire interview
In the Oct. 18 issue of The New Yorker, historian Sean Wilentz examines “how extremist ideas held at bay for decades inside the Republican Party have exploded anew — and why, this time, party leaders have done virtually nothing to challenge those ideas, and a great deal to abet them.”
Wilentz, who teaches at Princeton University, argues that the rhetoric expressed by both conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck and the Tea Party is nothing new — and is rooted in an extremist ideology that has been around since the Cold War, a view that the Republican Party is now embracing.
“I think what’s happening is the Republican Party is willing to chase after whatever it can to get the party back — to get power back,” he tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “This is what’s happening in the Republican Party, so instead of drawing lines, they’re jumping over fences to look like they’re in the good graces of these Tea Party types.”
Wilentz says Beck, who has emerged as a unifying figure and intellectual guide for the Tea Party movement, finds fodder for his Fox News Channel and syndicated radio shows in the ideas espoused by the John Birch Society, an ultraconservative political group founded in 1958 that, Wilentz writes, “became synonymous with right-wing extremism.”
Filed under Education, History, Politics, Social Commentary, Television, The Economy
It Get’s Better…
I’m not sure everyone realizes how deeply the recent epidemic of suicides by young, gay people have touched so many of us older gay people.
Honestly, we understand what they felt. Most of us have been there and we got past it.
We just want them to know, it does get so much better.
The guy in this video puts it all so well. I thank him for that and hope others will listen…It’s worth watching the entire thing.
Many of us have been there with him and come out on the other side. It really is a fairly universal story…
These gay kids need to realize how great life as a gay person can be once you work through all the crap…
And, believe me, you can work through it…No, it’s not easy, but just hang in there and look for support.
It’s there. We’re here. We made it…and we are willing to help you make it,too.
Remember, the bullies will probably end up driving beer trucks in small towns while you have a wonderful life. It may take a few years, but hang in there.
Also, remember, people who are popular in High School have probably peaked too soon. Your time is yet to come…
It does get so much better…
And life is so good….
Grab it and hold on to it like the something precious it is….
U.S. Economy Is 11.5 Million Jobs Short, EPI Says (CHART)
Depressing….
Even though the unemployment rate remained flat at 9.6 percent in September, the labor market would now need to add a total of about 11.5 million jobs to restore the pre-recession rate, according to analysis from Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute.
The economy lost about 95,000 jobs last month, including temporary Census workers. Not including Census positions, roughly 18,000 jobs were lost, as the private sector addition of 64,000 jobs couldn’t offset the 83,000 jobs cut by state and local governments, whose unusually severe deficits have lead analyst Meredith Whitney to predict that the next major financial crisis will come from municipal debt defaults. The state and local cuts included 58,000 teaching jobs.
MORE: U.S. Economy Is 11.5 Million Jobs Short, EPI Says (CHART).
Filed under Education, Politics, The Economy
Hey, Small Spender – NYTimes.com
As usual, Paul Krugman sets the record straight:
Here’s the narrative you hear everywhere: President Obama has presided over a huge expansion of government, but unemployment has remained high. And this proves that government spending can’t create jobs.
Here’s what you need to know: The whole story is a myth. There never was a big expansion of government spending. In fact, that has been the key problem with economic policy in the Obama years: we never had the kind of fiscal expansion that might have created the millions of jobs we need.
Ask yourself: What major new federal programs have started up since Mr. Obama took office? Health care reform, for the most part, hasn’t kicked in yet, so that can’t be it. So are there giant infrastructure projects under way? No. Are there huge new benefits for low-income workers or the poor? No. Where’s all that spending we keep hearing about? It never happened.
To be fair, spending on safety-net programs, mainly unemployment insurance and Medicaid, has risen — because, in case you haven’t noticed, there has been a surge in the number of Americans without jobs and badly in need of help. And there were also substantial outlays to rescue troubled financial institutions, although it appears that the government will get most of its money back. But when people denounce big government, they usually have in mind the creation of big bureaucracies and major new programs. And that just hasn’t taken place.
Consider, in particular, one fact that might surprise you: The total number of government workers in America has been falling, not rising, under Mr. Obama. A small increase in federal employment was swamped by sharp declines at the state and local level — most notably, by layoffs of schoolteachers. Total government payrolls have fallen by more than 350,000 since January 2009.
Filed under Education, Health Care, Politics, The Economy
Op-Ed Columnist – Third Party Rising – NYTimes.com
Great column from Thomas Friedman in the Times this morning…
The comparison to the Roman Empire is one that has crossed my mind many times…
A friend in the U.S. military sent me an e-mail last week with a quote from the historian Lewis Mumford’s book, “The Condition of Man,” about the development of civilization. Mumford was describing Rome’s decline: “Everyone aimed at security: no one accepted responsibility. What was plainly lacking, long before the barbarian invasions had done their work, long before economic dislocations became serious, was an inner go. Rome’s life was now an imitation of life: a mere holding on. Security was the watchword — as if life knew any other stability than through constant change, or any form of security except through a constant willingness to take risks.”
It was one of those history passages that echo so loudly in the present that it sends a shiver down my spine — way, way too close for comfort.
and
“We basically have two bankrupt parties bankrupting the country,” said the Stanford University political scientist Larry Diamond. Indeed, our two-party system is ossified; it lacks integrity and creativity and any sense of courage or high-aspiration in confronting our problems. We simply will not be able to do the things we need to do as a country to move forward “with all the vested interests that have accrued around these two parties,” added Diamond. “They cannot think about the overall public good and the longer term anymore because both parties are trapped in short-term, zero-sum calculations,” where each one’s gains are seen as the other’s losses.
We have to rip open this two-party duopoly and have it challenged by a serious third party that will talk about education reform, without worrying about offending unions; financial reform, without worrying about losing donations from Wall Street; corporate tax reductions to stimulate jobs, without worrying about offending the far left; energy and climate reform, without worrying about offending the far right and coal-state Democrats; and proper health care reform, without worrying about offending insurers and drug companies.
“If competition is good for our economy,” asks Diamond, “why isn’t it good for our politics?”
We need a third party on the stage of the next presidential debate to look Americans in the eye and say: “These two parties are lying to you. They can’t tell you the truth because they are each trapped in decades of special interests. I am not going to tell you what you want to hear. I am going to tell you what you need to hear if we want to be the world’s leaders, not the new Romans.”
Click here for the full column: via Op-Ed Columnist – Third Party Rising – NYTimes.com.
Filed under Education, History, Politics, Social Commentary, The Economy
Lost in the 21st Century 
Say “No” to Hate in Winston Salem School Board Race
For those of you in Winston-Salem:
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Filed under Education, Gay, Greensboro, Politics, Religion, Social Commentary