1/ If you want to know how the oligarchy wants to continue to destroy education in this country, apart from the overt attacks on public schools, this is an eye-opening story from the Times. It's the quiet little assaults that are the most deadly, and there are lots of them. This is a story about the State of Georgia, and many other states too, taking public funds earmarked for public schools and channelling them to private religious schools teaching creationism and other insane and stupid doctrines.
It's like the oligarchs want to have a serf class with minimal education, no hope, no prospects and forced to work for Chinese wages......and the 20% shall rule them......
When the Georgia legislature passed a private school scholarship program in 2008, lawmakers promoted it as a way to give poor children the same education choices as the wealthy.
The program would be supported by donations to nonprofit scholarship groups, and Georgians who contributed would receive dollar-for-dollar tax credits, up to $2,500 a couple. The intent was that money otherwise due to the Georgia treasury — about $50 million a year — would be used instead to help needy students escape struggling public schools.
That was the idea, at least. But parents meeting at Gwinnett Christian Academy got a completely different story last year.
“A very small percentage of that money will be set aside for a needs-based scholarship fund,” Wyatt Bozeman, an administrator at the school near Atlanta, said during an informational session. “The rest of the money will be channeled to the family that raised it.”
A handout circulated at the meeting instructed families to donate, qualify for a tax credit and then apply for a scholarship for their own children, many of whom were already attending the school.
“If a student has friends, relatives or even corporations that pay Georgia income tax, all of those people can make a donation to that child’s school,” added an official with a scholarship group working with the school.
The exchange at Gwinnett Christian Academy, a recording of which was obtained by The New York Times, is just one example of how scholarship programs have been twisted to benefit private schools at the expense of the neediest children.
2/ Regular readers of DDD know how much I respect Frank Rich as one of the wisest commentators on the political scene out there, so I was very pleased to find this - Rich's thoughts on issues of this week, including Cory Booker's comments on Obama, and more.....
As everyone now knows, Newark Mayor Cory Booker broke rank on Meet the Press last Sunday, saying that the Obama campaign's attacks on Romney's Bain record were a "nauseating" distraction from the real issues. (Booker did not specify what those “real issues” were.) Why'd he do that?I hope no one is nauseated if I suggest that this was idle self-promotion on Booker’s part. His message was: I am the reasonable, above-the-fray, bipartisan statesman who will deign to serve as the adult in the room while the two presidential campaigns throw dirt at each other like kids in a sandbox. Booker is a smart and capable leader but I fear he may have spent too many mornings drinking the “Why can’t we just all get along?” Kool-Aid (or should I say Starbucks?) at Morning Joe. To my ear, this seemed more about his own narcissism than about Obama, Romney, or the country. It was equally embarrassing, if not exactly nauseating, to watch him back down on his Twitter feed and in a YouTube video that left you wondering if he had the courage of any of his convictions or was ready for prime time on the national stage.
Obama quickly rebuffed Booker, saying that the Bain attacks were very much what the campaign was about. Is he going to keep hammering on this until election day?I was heartened that Obama didn’t run away from his point, which is not to attack business in general or the private equity business in particular, but to go after Romney’s own record — the main record Romney is running on, which is his career at Bain.
3/ Hard to believe we have just been through six months of madness, AKA the Republican nomination process......luckily Jon Stewart remembers it all for us in just under four minutes......a "best moments" compilation.......very funny.....
The Republican party finally has a clear candidate for President in former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, but not that long ago it seemed the primary race would never end.
Over the many months, Jon Stewart made sure we didn't miss a single gaffe, "oops," or outlandish remark with his analysis on "The Daily Show," and we still have half a year of general election campaigning to get through. But before Stewart digs into the rich comedic field which is Romney vs. Obama, you can catch up with all the best moments from the GOP primary race in just four minutes.
4/ A wonderful ad from the BBC for David Attenborough's series "Life On Earth".....beautiful images of how wonderful this planet really is......
5/ Did you read about the Facebook IPO? And how the stock collapsed and had to be propped up by the banks? Matt Taibbi has some pithy opinions about this story......
A suit has been filed by Facebook shareholders against Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, Morgan Stanley and others. It's based on a very simple concept: when internal analysts learned that Facebook’s numbers were going to be worse than expected, the company and its bankers didn’t tell everyone, but just "selectively disclosed" information to a small group of "preferred investors."
Henry Blodget, who unfortunately should know about these things, gave a good summary of it all on CBS This Morning:
I was on the phone last night with a former hedge fund CEO who was talking about this. "Facebook," he said, "is a colossal example of a complete clusterfuck where everybody wins except the ordinary investor."
His point was that virtually every week now we see stories like this that hint at a kind of two-tiered market system – in which most of the real action takes place inside an unregulated black-box network of connected insiders who don’t disclose their relationships or their interests, while everyone else, i.e. the regular suckers, live in the more tightly-policed world of prospectuses and quarterly reporting and so on.
6/ Remember Mrs. Brown and the Bikini Wax? Here is another wonderful clip titled "Mrs. Brown and the Condom"......very funny.......2 minutes......
7/ Are you fat? Anyone in your family fat? Read why Big Ag has taken over the food supply for almost all Americans.....
Except you, of course - you are aware of what they are doing and how they are poisoning you if you don't eat organic, aren't you?
Nearly half of all Americans will be obese by 2030, researchers reported at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Weight of the Nation conference in Washington earlier this month. 42 percent of us are projected to be obese, placing a huge strain on our already compromised health care system. Brian Fung at The Atlanticpoints out that the healthcare costs of obesity — $550 billion over the next two decades — is more than the U.S. Department of Defense asked for in its fiscal year 2013 budget.
There are a lot of reasons — chemical, psychological, environmental — for why people are obese. But explaining societal obesity means looking at what the food system is providing for us to eat — and how government policies might promote certain foods over others.
“In the political arena, one side is winning the war on child obesity,” a new Reuters report on the food lobby begins. “The side with the fattest wallets.”
That’s entirely true. As Reuters reports, the food and beverage industry has been relentless in Washington lately, more than doubling their spending in Washington during the past three years, completely outpacing public interest groups looking out for children’s health:
8/ Mitt Romney gave a speech last week at Liberty University, and Bill Maher had some comments on both his speech and the venue.....a good one........4 minutes......
At the end of "Real Time" Friday night, Bill Maher lambasted Liberty University, the Virginia religious university that has become a mandatory stop for Republican presidential candidates. (Watch above.)
"You can't expect me to believe anything Mitt Romney said last week at Liberty University, because a) he's a liar and b) Liberty University isn't really a university," Maher began. "It's not like an actual statesman visited a real college. It's more like the Tupac hologram visited Disneyland and said what he would do as president during the Main Street Electrical Parade."
Romney delivered Liberty's commencement speech on May 12.
9/ Hydraulic fracking takes incredible amounts of water, and also a special kind of sand which is found in Wisconsin as part of a unique ecology of that state.......but the mining of that sand is causing huge damage.....
The title of the article is "The Environmental Nightmare You Know Nothing About"
f the world can be seen in a grain of sand, watch out. As Wisconsinites are learning, there's money (and misery) in sand - and if you've got the right kind, an oil company may soon be at your doorstep.March in Wisconsin used to mean snow on the ground, temperatures so cold that farmers worried about their cows freezing to death. But as I traveled around rural townships and villages in early March to interview people about frac-sand mining, a little-known cousin of hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," daytime temperatures soared to nearly 80 degrees - bizarre weather that seemed to be sending a meteorological message.
In this troubling spring, Wisconsin's prairies and farmland fanned out to undulating hills that cradled the land and its people. Within their embrace, the rackety calls of geese echoed from ice-free ponds, bald eagles wheeled in the sky, and deer leaped in the brush. And for the first time in my life, I heard the thrilling warble of sandhill cranes.
Yet this peaceful rural landscape is swiftly becoming part of a vast assembly line in the corporate race for the last fossil fuels on the planet. The target: the sand in the land of the cranes.
Five hundred million years ago, an ocean surged here, shaping a unique wealth of hills and bluffs that, under mantles of greenery and trees, are sandstone. That sandstone contains a particularly pure form of crystalline silica. Its grains, perfectly rounded, are strong enough to resist the extreme pressures of the technology called hydraulic fracturing, which pumps vast quantities of that sand, as well as water and chemicals, into ancient shale formations to force out methane and other forms of "natural gas."
That sand, which props open fractures in the shale, has to come from somewhere. Without it, the fracking industry would grind to a halt. So big multinational corporations are descending on this bucolic region to cart off its prehistoric sand, which will later be forcefully injected into the earth elsewhere across the country to produce more natural gas. Geology that has taken millions of years to form is now being transformed into part of a system, a machine, helping to drive global climate change.
10/ Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees died last week, so here is a sample of their timeless music - a live concert performance of "How Deep is Your Love".....wonderful.......
11/ You may have noticed some stories about non-citizens on the voter rolls.......but it's the usual story of Rick Scott's boys trying to win Florida for the Republicans.....great article from Robyn Blumner in the St. Pete Times......
Here we go again. Another tight presidential election, another Florida voter purge. This time Republican Gov. Rick Scott's appointed secretary of state, Ken Detzner, is targeting suspected noncitizens. The purge list, according to a review by the Miami Herald, is heavy with Hispanics, Democrats and independents, who will have to prove their citizenship and fast. Otherwise, they lose their vote.
The process raises uncomfortable comparisons to the Jeb Bush-era error-ridden felon list. That purge list was used to prevent thousands of legitimate voters from casting ballots in the 2000 presidential election — an election decided by 537 votes.
Detzner claims that 180,000 registered Florida voters may not be citizens after their names and other data were "matched" to foreign nationals in an outdated state motorist database. These voters could easily have been naturalized in the years since obtaining or renewing a driver's license or state I.D. Still, the secretary of state is sending these names, after a second vetting, to local supervisors of election for them to send warning letters to voters that they have 30 days to prove their citizenship or be dropped from the rolls.
Obviously noncitizens don't have the right to vote and shouldn't. But local supervisors of election are wondering about the suspicious timing of this purge and the imperfections in Detzner's list. Already some of the 2,700 noncitizens on the verified purge list are proving to be citizens. Which leads to the question of whether this is a pure effort to clean up the voter rolls or is there an element of suppressing minority votes?
12/ You may be confused about how Bain Capital, Romney's former company, makes it's money......let Tony Soprano make it clear for you.....two fascinating minutes........
Yes, TONY SOPRANO! Almost funny......
The national debate over private equity so far has hinged on the question of whether experience in the field qualifies Mitt Romney, the former Bain Capital executive, for the presidency. But a more vexing, and largely unanswered, question lies just beneath the surface: How is it, exactly, that an investment company can make millions even as the company it's ostensibly trying to turn around goes bust?
For that answer, we turned to what may seem like a less-than-reliable source: Tony Soprano.
The investors profit, it turns out, not despite the failure of the company, but in factbecause of it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/13/ A moving article about one son's trouble finding affordable care for his mother in her final years, and how we have no constructive way to deal with the old and sick.......
If you have older parents, or siblings, you may face some of these issues.....although I don't any more I found this story riveting both in human terms and as a major issue for our society ......
A Life Worth Ending
ShareThisWhat do you do with your mom when she can’t do anything—anything at all—for herself? This is not, first and foremost, about how you address her needs but about where you put her. No, it is first about who or what facility will take her.
No, it is first about what member of the family will actually sort through the incredibly byzantine and deadening options—or lack of options.
It is at this point that I became unreasonably mad at my Maui brother. In a way I understood the basis of his excuse: It was not a coincidence that he was living in Maui—his twenty years in paradise were in part an exercise of the modern right to distance himself from his family, a point which he was militantly maintaining now. He lived in Maui precisely to be far from all this. It was notable that among the people with whom I shared my tales-of-mother crisis, many, with far-flung ailing parents, identified themselves as the Maui brother. Of all things to escape, this might be the big one. And, too, in my Maui brother’s defense, all responsibility is relative: If he was doing less than I was doing, I was doing by a significant leap less than my sister was doing.
It is among the most reductive facts in this story: Women take care of the old. They can’t shake it because they are left with it. In the end, it is a game of musical chairs. The girl is the one almost invariably caught out.
14/ "The Campaign" is a Will Farrell movie coming out this summer.....and it looks really good judging by the trailer....he is a Democratic Congressman challenged by a newcomer......fun trailer........
15/ Al Sharpton is a host of a show on MSNBC, and in their final episode this season the SNL cast give us their special take on one of his shows......note his first guest - Mick Jagger! One of the better skits they have done.........excellent.......
The latest episode of "Saturday Night Live" took on Al Sharpton, portraying the MSNBC host as someone who just doesn't understand the news.
The show has mocked Sharpton's hosting abilities and his teleprompter flubs on "Politics Nation" before. On Saturday, it returned to the theme with a hilarious skit starring Kenan Thompson as Sharpton and Mick Jagger as a JP Morgan executive.
Thompson introduced the week's big Wall Street story: the $3 billion loss at JP Morgan — or as he called it, "Jip Morgan."
When the executive said it was actually pronounced "J-P Morgan,” Thompson responded, “OK then, you can call me A-L Sharpton.”
When the executive said it was actually pronounced "J-P Morgan,” Thompson responded, “OK then, you can call me A-L Sharpton.”
16/ A very interesting story about Florida and how our tax system is failing......love the title......
Florida: A 21st century state with a 20th century tax system.
This is one of these issues that is not going to be solved any time soon, because of the political blowback involved in trying to change anything is this state full of intellectually challenged voters, but the problem is not going away......hello crisis!!!!
This is actually very interesting and bi-partisan.....reality for a change........
TALLAHASSEE — Amid a fourth straight year of budget shortfalls, signs of fraying in Florida's tax system abound.
Money for each of Florida's 2.7 million public school students this fall will be at its
second-lowest level in eight years. Only last year was worse. There are no dollars for public school construction or repairs, while universities can pay for only about a quarter of what they say is needed.
Even as gas prices rise, gas tax collections are tumbling as fuel efficiency slows consumption. Florida road projects totaling $11.6 billion were shelved in the past five years because of the money shortage.
On the horizon? It gets worse.
Although state lawmakers mostly steer clear of the debate, tax experts say state dollars needed for schools, roads and other basic services are rapidly disappearing amid a changing economy.
"There's no doubt about it," said Randy Miller, vice president of the Florida Retail Federation and a former state revenue director. "Florida is trying to run a 21st-century economy that is completely built on a 20th-century tax system. At some point, we've got to modernize it - but when?"
17/ An uplifting story [!] for a holiday weekend.....8 ways life on earth could become extinct.....mostly long term [not in our lifetime stuff] but look at #4.....changing weather patterns, which is happening right now.......
No single one of these issues is necessarily a world ender. It's not like we're going to catch a bad flu and go extinct as a species, or that the stock market will crash and the world will be plunged into a thousand years of darkness, or that the seas will rise and engulf us. But taken together, it seems as though the world is headed into a period of great vulnerability. Climate and disease and food and economics are not wholly separate things--they are intertwined. If we are pushing everything closer and closer to some tipping point, it stands to reason that we are taking a risk.
Todays video - 3 reasons to quit drinking....oldie but goodie........
Todays .01% joke
At dawn the telephone rings, "Hello, Senor Rod? This is Ernesto, the caretaker at your country house." "Ah yes, Ernesto. What can I do for you? Is there a problem?" "Um, I am just calling to advise you, Senor Rod, that your parrot, he is dead". "My parrot? Dead? The one that won the International competition?" "Si, Senor, that's the one." "Damn! That's a pity! I spent a small fortune on that bird. What did he die from?" "From eating the rotten meat, Senor Rod." "Rotten meat? Who the hell fed him rotten meat?" "Nobody, Senor. He ate the meat of the dead horse." "Dead horse? What dead horse?" "The thoroughbred, Senor Rod." "My prize thoroughbred is dead?" "Yes, Senor Rod, he died from all that work pulling the water cart." "Are you insane? What water cart?" "The one we used to put out the fire, Senor." "Good Lord! What fire are you talking about, man?" "The one at your house, Senor! A candle fell and the curtains caught on fire." "What the hell? Are you saying that my mansion is destroyed because of a candle?!" "Yes, Senor Rod." "But there's electricity at the house! What was the candle for?" "For the funeral, Senor Rod." "WHAT BLOODY FUNERAL??!!" |
She showed up very late one night and I thought she was a thief, so I hit her with your new Ping G15 204g titanium head driver with the TFC 149D graphite shaft."
Silence........
More Silence.........
Even more Silence.........
"Ernesto if you broke that driver you are in deep shit".....
Todays British jokes.....
These are classified ads, which were actually placed in U.K. Newspapers:
FREE YORKSHIRE TERRIER.
8 years old, Hateful little bastard. Bites!
______________________________
FREE PUPPIES
1/2 Cocker Spaniel, 1/2 sneaky neighbor's dog.
______________________________
FREE PUPPIES. Mother is a Kennel Club registered German Shepherd.
Father is a Super Dog, able to leap tall fences in a single bound.
______________________________
COWS, CALVES: NEVER BRED. Also 1 gay bull for sale.
______________________________
JOINING NUDIST COLONY!
Must sell washer and dryer £100.
______________________________
WEDDING DRESS FOR SALE .
Worn once by mistake.
Call Stephanie.
______________________________
FOR SALE BY OWNER. Complete set of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 45 volumes.
Excellent condition, £200 or best offer.
No longer needed, got married, wife knows everything. ______________________________
Thought from the Greatest Living Scottish Thinker--Billy Connolly.
"If women are so bloody perfect at multitasking,
How come they can't have a headache and sex at the same time?"
______________________________
Children Are Quick TEACHER: Why are you late?
STUDENT: Class started before I got here.
______________________________
TEACHER: John, why are you doing your math multiplication on the floor?
JOHN: You told me to do it without using tables.
______________________________
TEACHER: Glenn, how do you spell 'crocodile?'
FREE YORKSHIRE TERRIER.
8 years old, Hateful little bastard. Bites!
______________________________
FREE PUPPIES
1/2 Cocker Spaniel, 1/2 sneaky neighbor's dog.
______________________________
FREE PUPPIES. Mother is a Kennel Club registered German Shepherd.
Father is a Super Dog, able to leap tall fences in a single bound.
______________________________
COWS, CALVES: NEVER BRED. Also 1 gay bull for sale.
______________________________
JOINING NUDIST COLONY!
Must sell washer and dryer £100.
______________________________
WEDDING DRESS FOR SALE .
Worn once by mistake.
Call Stephanie.
______________________________
FOR SALE BY OWNER. Complete set of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 45 volumes.
Excellent condition, £200 or best offer.
No longer needed, got married, wife knows everything. ______________________________
Thought from the Greatest Living Scottish Thinker--Billy Connolly.
"If women are so bloody perfect at multitasking,
How come they can't have a headache and sex at the same time?"
______________________________
Children Are Quick TEACHER: Why are you late?
STUDENT: Class started before I got here.
______________________________
TEACHER: John, why are you doing your math multiplication on the floor?
JOHN: You told me to do it without using tables.
______________________________
TEACHER: Glenn, how do you spell 'crocodile?'
GLENN: K-R-O-K-O-D-I-A-L'
TEACHER: No, that's wrong
GLENN: Maybe it is wrong, but you asked me how I spell it.
(I Love this child)
______________________________
TEACHER: Donald, what is the chemical formula for water?
DONALD: H I J K L M N O.
TEACHER: What are you talking about?
DONALD: Yesterday you said it's H to O.
______________________________
TEACHER: Winnie, name one important thing we have today that we didn't have ten years ago.
WINNIE: Me!
______________________________
TEACHER: Glen, why do you always get so dirty?
GLEN: Well, I'm a lot closer to the ground than you are.
______________________________
TEACHER: Millie, give me a sentence starting with ' I. '
MILLIE: I is..
TEACHER: No, Millie..... Always say, 'I am.'
MILLIE: All right... 'I am the ninth letter of the alphabet.'
______________________________
TEACHER: George Washington not only chopped down his father's cherry tree, but also admitted it. Now, Louie, do you know why his father didn't punish him?
LOUIS: Because George still had the axe in his hand.....
______________________________
TEACHER: Now, Simon , tell me frankly, do you say prayers before eating?
SIMON: No sir, I don't have to, my Mom is a good cook.
______________________________
TEACHER: Clyde , your composition on 'My Dog' is exactly the same as your brother's.. Did you copy his?
CLYDE : No, sir. It's the same dog.
(I want to adopt this kid!!!)
______________________________
TEACHER: Harold, what do you call a person who keeps on talking when people are no longer interested?
HAROLD: A teacher
______________________________
TEACHER: No, that's wrong
GLENN: Maybe it is wrong, but you asked me how I spell it.
(I Love this child)
______________________________
TEACHER: Donald, what is the chemical formula for water?
DONALD: H I J K L M N O.
TEACHER: What are you talking about?
DONALD: Yesterday you said it's H to O.
______________________________
TEACHER: Winnie, name one important thing we have today that we didn't have ten years ago.
WINNIE: Me!
______________________________
TEACHER: Glen, why do you always get so dirty?
GLEN: Well, I'm a lot closer to the ground than you are.
______________________________
TEACHER: Millie, give me a sentence starting with ' I. '
MILLIE: I is..
TEACHER: No, Millie..... Always say, 'I am.'
MILLIE: All right... 'I am the ninth letter of the alphabet.'
______________________________
TEACHER: George Washington not only chopped down his father's cherry tree, but also admitted it. Now, Louie, do you know why his father didn't punish him?
LOUIS: Because George still had the axe in his hand.....
______________________________
TEACHER: Now, Simon , tell me frankly, do you say prayers before eating?
SIMON: No sir, I don't have to, my Mom is a good cook.
______________________________
TEACHER: Clyde , your composition on 'My Dog' is exactly the same as your brother's.. Did you copy his?
CLYDE : No, sir. It's the same dog.
(I want to adopt this kid!!!)
______________________________
TEACHER: Harold, what do you call a person who keeps on talking when people are no longer interested?
HAROLD: A teacher
______________________________
Todays retirees joke
Here's something to think about.
I recently picked a new primary care doctor.
After two visits and exhaustive Lab tests, he said I was doing 'fairly well' for my age. (I'm approaching 70).
A little concerned about that comment, I couldn't resist asking him, 'Do you think I'll live to be 80?'
He asked, 'Do you smoke tobacco, or drink beer, wine or hard liquor?
'Oh no,' I replied. 'I'm not doing drugs, either!'
Then he asked, 'Do you eat rib-eye steaks and barbecued Ribs?
'I said, 'Not much... my former doctor said that all red meat is very unhealthy!'
'Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, boating, sailing, hiking, or bicycling?'
'No, I don't,' I said.
He asked, 'Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or have a lots of sex?'
'No,' I said...
He looked at me and said,.. 'Then, why do you even give a shit?
I recently picked a new primary care doctor.
After two visits and exhaustive Lab tests, he said I was doing 'fairly well' for my age. (I'm approaching 70).
A little concerned about that comment, I couldn't resist asking him, 'Do you think I'll live to be 80?'
He asked, 'Do you smoke tobacco, or drink beer, wine or hard liquor?
'Oh no,' I replied. 'I'm not doing drugs, either!'
Then he asked, 'Do you eat rib-eye steaks and barbecued Ribs?
'I said, 'Not much... my former doctor said that all red meat is very unhealthy!'
'Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, boating, sailing, hiking, or bicycling?'
'No, I don't,' I said.
He asked, 'Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or have a lots of sex?'
'No,' I said...
He looked at me and said,.. 'Then, why do you even give a shit?
