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It amazes me how quickly we forget. Our lives are so busy… Things blur by, pass in a moment to be replaced with a long line of new things to take their place… Did you know today was the 10th anniversary of Johnny’s passing?
I was curious an looked it up over the summer because my memory too had faded and I couldn’t remember which year it was. He passed September 12, 2003... The official cause was diabetes; however those who knew him, all knew he’d been in a hurry for some time to join June, who passed 4 months earlier….
As one watches the video, those of you old enough see an America we all knew as a child. Even if we weren’t country music fans at the time. That America is long gone, but one very similar has replaced it… full of economic hardships, angst, and self pursuit at the expense of inner peace. His music is more relevant today, perhaps than when we knew him.
I am surprised by the number of younger generation who live his songs, and know them, far better than those of the Beatles, Who, or Stones… His lyrics are simple, direct, and reach out to grasp that humanity that sometimes escapes us all.
it is ironical we were all talking about the VMA’s last week. For ten years ago, Johnny Cash was nominated and actually won, the VMA award for best cinematography for this video posted…
They called his name… And the winner is………………………………… Johnny Cash……….
All waited for his speech, but no one came up… Uncomfortable chatter as everyone looked around… After minutes someone came out from the back stage and said, Johnny is in hospital tonight and needs all of your prayers…. This award will be sent to him…..
Those prayers were answered just 15 days later…. He was in June’s arms before the night was over…..
High Stakes Testing is just that… High stakes… The underlying principle is that we hire you to do a job and if you don’t accomplish that job, we fire you; putting someone better in.
The job the education governor and his Secretary of Education were supposed to perform, was raise test scores. Test scores went down.
So under high stakes testing, what happens to a teacher when her scores go down? She gets fired.
So under high stakes testing, what happens to a school when it’s scores go down? It gets closed.
So under high stakes testing, what happens to the State of Delaware when it’s scores go down? It loses Federal Funding.
Our scores went down and Federal Funding for Race To The Top is not coming back….
Who was responsible? Our Governor who put in all these programs, invested millions of dollars in consultants, and paid heavily invested Wall Street educational companies to run our state’s education system…
If a teacher gets fired, if a school gets closed, if a state loses its grants, shouldn’t someone at the top be held accountable? or is it that high stakes testing only works for the poor, and downtrodden, but those at the top can do whatever they please?
Probably the latter is true, which is why we don’t see Mark Murphy packing his bags and headed to another Common Core State. Though he did NOT improve our states results (they actually got worse), he does not have to fear for his job.
Why? Because events were out of his control… So he shouldn’t be fired…
One would hope, the Delaware peoples’ sense of fairness would come into play here. One would think.. Why would we not fire the Secretary of Education, but fire his secretary who made his phone calls? Why would we not fire the proponents of charter schools who are in danger of failing dismally,, but fire those teachers doing well in those public schools competing against charter schools for student funding? Why would we fire those teachers who make strong gains with inner city children, and heap laud and praises on those in Charter Schools who took last years top students, and made them into this year’s top students?
Why would we use a double standard and fire those on the bottom, but allow those on the top to do the same mediocre performance they have always done in the past? Why would we fire those on the bottom from whom we tied their hands behind their backs, and pulled all the necessary resources needed to do their job, and not fire those who took those resources away?
“Put simply, the Delaware public should NOT tolerate, a Governor and Legislature who refuse to provide sufficient resources to high need schools and then turn around and blame the schools and communities for their own failures. (all the while, protecting millions of dollars in separate aid programs that drive funds straight into charter schools embedded in wealthy districts).”
They should be fired… Either one of two things must happen… If we choose to go the route of high-stakes testing, then it needs to apply to those at the top too. Actually first. If Michelle Rhee had gotten fired, none of the turmoil would have happened causing a whole generation to get lost. Or if you are not going to fire those at the top for factors they are responsible for, but have no control over, then you shouldn’t be firing those teachers dealing with poverty in their classrooms, with single parent issues, with neglect, with crime, with drugs, with home abuse, with parents who are unemployed. Sure they are responsible for doing the best they can; but you can’t have one set of rules at the top, another at the bottom and maintain your office….
Mark Murphy works for Jack Markell. He gets fired when Jack is tired of him. Jack will not be running for state office. He has two and a half years left on this cycle.
But, next November, we have legislative elections. We can pressure and fire THEM based on their attitudes and votes this upcoming session. If they don’t and can’t get high scores this next summer, and if they run on firing and demoting teachers, they should receive their just desserts.
This is actually very doable in this state. WE can eliminate all those legislators who state that teachers and parents are at fault for our schools, and turn a blind eye to their removal of “in school” funding, forcing public school teachers to have to do more, with much, much, less… Anyone who says we need to cut costs in schools, needs to go. Anyone who promotes a charter school, needs to go…. Anyone who by doing these things that damage the rest of our children who are trying to learn in some of the best public school districts in the country, before school reform began tearing them down…. needs to go.
A short list of those who, by their actions last session, should, unless they change, face the same forms of accountability affecting those who work in public schools.
David Sokola
Patty Blevins.
Greg Lavelle
Earl Jacques
Vote them out……
“All Rise and Raise Your Right Hand… Do You, solemnly swear to have no remorse, to allow those known to be extremely violent and mentally twisted, to possess all purchasable firearms and ammunition, and to have no restrictions upon their use? So Help You?
“WE DO. WE VOTED AGAINST Barbieri HB 88 w/HA 1, HA 1 to HA 1, HA 2 BECAUSE WE BELIEVE ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO OWN A GUN WITH NO RESTRICTIONS, EVEN IF THEY LOVE THE MALICIOUS KILLING OTHER HUMAN BEINGS.
Ok then in order please state your name and affiliation… in the order you are listed above.
Sweeney Todd– Republican; Bruce Ennis– Democrat; James Holmes–Republican; Colin Bonini– Republican; Adam Lanza– Republican; Cathy Clouthier– Republican; Charles Manson– Republican; Brian Bushweller,–Democrat; Gerald Hocker– Republican; Greg Lavelle– Republican; Robert Marshall– Democrat; David McBride–Democrat; Gary Simpson–Republican; Robert Venables– Democrat; Charley Manson– Republican; Brian Pettyjohn– Republican; Jeffery Dahmer– Republican; Ernie Lopez– Republican; Sweeney Todd– Republican; David Lawson– Republican; Jeremy Loughner– Republican…..
it is probably time to discuss this.
For years we have quietly known and accepted the negatives of having an NSA. Things like we need it for our protection, or it makes things safer, tended to overide our fears that they know too much already, and I can’t do anything in private anymore…
We accepted that as progress.
However, when you have an organization so secret, that members of Congress are shocked to find out what it is doing, that no one knows who is authorizing who gets spied upon and what, that when brought before the courts for overstepping the Constitution, it can’t be prosecuted because a) it operates under “secret” laws, b) with “secret operations”, c) authorized by “secret courts” …. it is time to shut the entire operation down.
Why do we have the NSA when we have the CIA and the FBI. The FBI covers domestic spying. The CIA covers international spying. So, unless we find out that there are aliens and the NSA is really running the world while we think otherwise, then it probably ought to go.
I find it interesting that those on the far right, and those on the far left are the most outraged by this disclosure. We’ve been stating that news on this blog after the story was broken back in 2007-8 and not one press person cared. I supposed the AP Story opened their eyes this time. Struggling to put a finger on why, I came up with the theory primarily by looking at Congress, that it is the libertarians on left and right who are against, and the conformist, primarily in the center who are acceptive. So this gives us a split where the bottom third and the top third of the political body are opposed to the middle third… If you look at Congress that is exactly how it splits up. Moderates are pro domestic spying, the libertarians are not.
Probably similar is the theory that those beholden to corporate interests are pro-spying, after all, that is normal in the corporate environment; interoffice spying is not limited by any judicial system because it is deemed to be private. Those aghast, tend to fight corporate intrusion from their original political perspective, either left of right.
What the NSA does, watch everything to discern what is happening to increase its chances of survival, is not new. Intelligence has been the secret success of many an empire. Knowing what someone will do before they do it, is pretty comfortable in a world where in a day, we probably pass within 10 feet of 10,000 people (that includes inside our vehicles).
That is what all governments with the capacity, do. The biggest argument against it, is that it is un-American. Sure we have the “ability” to do it, but do we have the restraint, not to…
America has always been ruled by restraint. When Washington was entreated to be the King, he restrained and said no. When the heads of Europe all bet that Washington would invent a method to stay in power, he restrained, and government turned over peacefully. When the US was left in charge of a broken Europe, it put it back together and went home. The only country to invade another and give it back willingly to its original owners.
We had a scare in Boston a while back. Did the NSA protect us then? It’s a secret, no one knows. In Newtown 26 bodies littered the floor of an elementary school. Did the NSA protect us then? When a gunman burst into Aurora firing into the audience, did the NSA protect us then? When Gabby Gifford took a bullet, where was the NSA? Did the NSA protect us then?
That is the point. We are always in danger. But our personal lives are more at risk if our private information should fall into a competitors hands, than being victim of a terrorist. In Boston just 2 people died. In Newton 26. But each and every one of us, is at risk that selective information from ones past, can be used in secret to smear each and every one of us, should it fall into the wrong hands.
What would happen if we shut the entire agency known as the NSA down? A big nothing. They overstepped. It is not knee-jerking anger to respond “Shut them down right now!” It it calm, cool reasoning tipping the balance, that points out simply that is the right way to go.
And now it is Michelle Rhee herself. The DC darling who was praised by both McCain and Obama during the 08 campaign, now has to contend with the fact that she knew all along the cheating was beyond the parameters of normal and did nothing about it… It is one thing if you don’t know, and your underlings who you have told to “produce or else” change their scores underneath of you, but it another to actually know and understand the implications (that she and her principals erased and changed the answers from wrong to right), that what you may be proposing is false and to then go forward and propose it anyway using the compromised data to back you up….
Just this year, we had Texas acknowledge that the test results then under then George W. Bush governorship, were faked. That pilot project went on to become the “No Child Left Behind” which left a whole generation behind.
Again just this year we had almost the entire district of Atlanta whose amazing results sold the rest of the nation into diving towards Common Core and RTTT , indicted under falsifying all the test results…
You see.
This new fangled educational system does not work unless the results are fabricated.
This is the same new fangled educational system which the Markell administration and Mark Murphy seem to be forcing upon Christina School District as we speak. This system is dependent upon holding teachers accountable to standards that don’t work…. Then pulling out these faked test results from Texas, DC, and Atlanta, waving them and saying… we want results like these….
Ummm. No thank you. Things used to be much better before corporate got involved…
Anyone who has ever worked in any corporation, no matter what geographical spot you live or work in, knows very well your success depends on how you look doing it, not on whether or not things get done ethically… On the other hand, our sports teams have the opposite philosophy. To them, it is what you accomplish that matters, no matter how you look in achieving it.
It is time we switch and use the sports model, not the corporate model for our educational needs. Our children deserve the best.
This is the first thing I saw as I began my day, and that day is ruined already…. On Delaware Liberal this is what greeted me….
Whole Jewish families lined up against the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto, and shotCourtesy of Mirror.co.uk
Iranians Don’t Have PigeonsCourtesy of 4.bp.blogspot.com
Nazi’s Idea of Crossing State Lines to engage in sport shooting illegal in their own state.Courtesy of 4.bp.blogspot.com
What happens when one callously equate human life with pigeons.
Courtesy of TheIndyChannel.com
You do not have to draw the same conclusion I did from this video. If you try to equate the two then the onus is on you. This is just a portrayal of how the video made me feel…
That shot of the pigeon still alive, going “why are you doing this! why are you doing this!” would have been just like one of those first graders looking up at Adam Lanza. Sigler and Lanza are alike. It is a free country and I can say so…
If we’d had mandatory background checks, and a registry, Adam Lanza might be on medication right now…..
This is the head of Delaware’s Republican Party. How can anyone ever vote for a Delaware Republican ever… again?
It is time to sanction gay marriage. Gay marriage is different from civil unions. Gay marriage means much more. Someone who is gay, who can now be married for life is finally an equal citizen. Without that certainty the rest of their rights are meaningless….
“Oh, we’ve got nothing against gays!. You are equal to the rest of us, except, snicker, snicker, when YOU marry, we will give it a lower second class status and call it a civil union.”
Until Gay Marriage is made legal gays are only second class citizens….
It is interesting that very conservative parents of gay children, see it with open eyes… “Yeah, why can’t they get married?” Senator Portman who was flirted with as Romney’s running mate, and the odious Dick Cheney are both in favor of gay marriage. They credit their openness to learning from their children… every parent wants their child to be happy.
As a nation we’ve been here before. Blacks were given freedom by the Federal government, but local governments who disagreed, would not allow them to marry whites. Obviously the signal being sent was no, they weren’t equal after all. Mexicans in the West, legal and forced to be accepted so by whites, had to deal with local laws disallowing mixed marriages… After all, they “really” weren’t equal, not even close?.” American Indians, even though there were many interracial lifelong monogamous sexual unions during the exploration of our frontier, those unions were banned by laws intent on maintaining the purity of the Caucasian race, “Indians, equal with the white man? Get real!”…
All these laws have fallen away, shredded by common sense and common decency. It it easy to label a group with which we have no connection, as a “they” and say “they” are different, allowing it to be “ok” to treat “them” with disdain……
It is when “they” become part of “us” and we finally realize that treating “them” with disrespect is exactly the same as “us” being disrespectfully treated; we certainly would find that to be unfair. …
It is upon that realization, that discrimination against them… finally becomes unfair….
Our Constitution and Declaration of Independence are pretty clear… all humans are equal at birth… and once we widen our perception of what is human, we are forced by our beliefs to accept them into our family as well….
Hard as it was for the South, we finally accepted that slaves were human beings, and therefore agreed they should be afforded the same protection as their owners….
Hard as it was for mankind, we finally accepted that women were human too, and therefore agreed they should be afforded the same protection as their “owners”….
We later had to revisit the treatment of those whose ancestry derived out of our former African slaves, even to the point of guaranteeing them by law, actually making it punishable to treat them with disrespect, in order to drive home this point to Southerners, that…. all people are created equal….
Any baby born within our borders becomes a citizen. Whether its parents are or not… They were born here; they are equal to the rest of us… We allow any baby to grow up and marry any other baby who grew up here, unless they are gay.
The overwhelmingly majority of our culture has recently come to the realization that people who are gay, are created that way. They can change it no more easily than one can molt the color of their skin, or alter the slant of their eyes, or raise or lower their cheek bones… That is how God makes them…..
For anyone to vote no against Gay marriage in Delaware’s General Assembly, they will have to first imagine themselves in a Twilight world, one where genes gave dominance to gays, and heterosexuals occurred rather rarely… Being one of those heterosexuals, who had deeply fallen in love with someone of another gender, would you, a Delaware Representative, settle for only having civil unions for you and your heterosexual spouse, when all the gays around you were getting married and raising families?
Their gay clergy would spout: “Oh, you are one of those… We can’t let you marry….”
If you CAN’T IN GOOD CONSCIOUS agree that you yourself should be discriminated against because you happen to be heterosexual in a gay world, something you were born with and couldn’t change, then you cannot vote AGAINST gay marriage when it comes up for a vote with any good conscious.
Voting against gay marriage, carries the same moral price as did the voting against the freeing of slaves, as did the voting against allowing women to vote, as did the voting against letting blacks finally be allowed to succeed….
Now, since all of those are so much woven into the fabric of our society, we forget today that back then there were people who actually argued vociferously against allowing these citizens to become equal members of our society… it was just like people argue against gay marriage today.
They arguing were wrong then. Those same people doing it to gays, are wrong now….
Settling for Civil Unions instead of marriage is a slap in the face. It has only one point and that it to say: “Oh, you aren’t as good as us, and never will be.”
Each time in our nation’s past, it took the will of strong people to overcome the strong wills of weak people…. Delaware needs to allow gay marriage, simply because not doing so is the morally wrong thing to do…. Those crying against it with self thought-up platitudes, will come around eventually after the deal is done and the battle is over…
They have to!… One can only argue against what is right, … for so long.
Everyone know’s the Kardashians are the first. They are everywhere. But who is second?
The Palin Family, of course…
Birds of a feather, flock together……
Courtesy of ©2012 Michael D’Antuono oil on canvas 30″ x 40″
In an insightful meeting at the Delaware Republican’s Lincoln Day dinner Saturday night, Grover Norquist, the featured speaker, came to give the locals an idea of what was going on in Washington…..
More gridlock. More obstruction. More intransigence, In his speech, the prime points were that there would be no compromise. Republicans were dedicated to seeking full sequestration. They were going to cut spending no matter what was going to happen. They don’t care if Dover AFB is going to close; its a good thing because the military budget will be cut in half. They don’t care if Highway funding is going to be fully put all upon the states; sequestration is going to cut the budget in half. They don’t care if there will be no beach rebuilding this summer; Republicans are going to cut the Federal budget in half. There will be no agriculture support payments; Republicans are going to cut them in half. There will be no Federal Medicare or Medicaid payments reimbursements made to the states; Republicans are going to let sequestration cut them in half. When heaven forbid, an oil tanker turns the beaches and marshes of Rehoboth to Ocean City Md, into this century’s Valdez calamity, Both state’s will have to use their general fund to clean it up; the Republicans are going to say no to all new money…. Remember the last East Coast hurricane relief? You were lucky, was the implication. Forget about any more for any storms in the future…
On the revenue side, huge tax breaks must continue going to oil companies and oil hedge funds; Republicans are going to say taxes were raised too much already. Huge off-shore tax breaks will be maintained by billionaires and millionaires; after all taxes are raised too much already for any more loopholes to be closed. (If pressed, they might do away with the mortgage interest deduction since that doesn’t affect billionaires; it only affects the middle class so it won’t create any economic impact.. The implication was that Republicans will do that if necessary, but at the bottom of the upper class; that is where they draw the line… ) The clear message was: it is time to make the poor suffer more; after all, the rich have suffered too much already.
More gridlock. More obstruction. More intransigence,
“You can’t have compromise when both parties are going in the opposite directions.” said Grover. “It doesn’t do any good to say no, no, no, …yes. It has to always be no, no, no… no.”
More gridlock. More obstruction. More intransigence,
There was little that was new. Grover did express hope that as the Obama/McCain wave of democratic Senators comes up for a vote this next election, many in traditional Red states, playing a no-gain defense until the new team comes on board, is their best option.. Grover Norquist also made the point that due to the Republican redistricting, the red districts will outnumber the blue in the House until the next redistricting in ten years.
A decade of decadence is a long time.
Grover did bring up an interesting concept. That we have red states and blue states and they will be a laboratory of who is right, red or blue… We will see within these experiments whether theology can trump economics, whether philosophy can support a family, or whether an idle belief, can pay the bills…. He seems to believe that side by side experimentation will bode well for the red states instead of the blue. He is thinking only as a rich person. We shall see if voters agree with him, if they prefer living in a first class blue state or would rather forebear a third world red state…. His idea will backfire…
He praised Indiana erroneously, calling that a school choice state. Instead voters threw out their gung-ho school-choice education head and replaced him with a Democrat who is going slow.. He praised Indiana’s privatization plan of the Indiana Turnpike without mentioning this road had not had upgrades to it in over 5 years. It is called the most dangerous Turnpike in America. (The money collected is going to the investment bankers)… He derided California which has finally achieved a balanced budget. He praised Wisconsin’s eradication of public unions without mentioning that because of Scott Walker’s governmental pay cuts, the economy in Wisconsin was collapsing while all others were bouncing back from the recession. So though his scenario as presented painted a glowing picture to those Republicans seated before him, it was full of errors.
But I confess, I agree with his premise. I too would like to see vindication that in order to run a stable economy you need what’s been missing: a balance between profits, taxation, and job growth and the only way to achieve that is to tax the top echelon much, much more so they reinvest in their state to avoid paying higher taxes….. As was just done in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland; all economies that are now rising while those of red states are falling or staying the same.
Unfortunately we will have to make the states our laboratory. We will have no choice but to rely upon the state level to analyze what is working and what is not and then derive from pure evidence, which one of our two parties we need to completely eradicate and do away with…. so government can begin to compromise and to work again.
For on the national scale, Grover promised it: All we are going to have is….. More gridlock. More obstruction. More intransigence,
We will have it; because Mr. Norquist said so. He promised it in a keynote address, at Dover Downs in Dover Delaware on February 9th, 2013….