Governor Tony Soprano

I'm really getting tired of the Chris Christie good fella-slant nose-goombah shit. Here's the Intrepid* governor addressing one of his constituents when said voter dared to question the Emperor on his education agenda.

While on vacation with his family in Seaside Heights, N.J. on Thursday, the Republican governor lashed out at a passerby who, according to TMZ, made a derisive comment about his education policies. 

"You're a real big shot," Christie fired back at his heckler. "You're a real big shot shooting your mouth off." 

The man responded: "Just take care of the teachers." 

Christie approached the man, yelling at him to "keep walkin' away ... keep walkin'." A man accompanying Christie then put his hand on the governor's shoulder and walked with him in the opposite direction.

Remember, this is the same Governor whose administration blew a $400 million federal education grant at Christie's insistence. The reason: he wasn't satisfied with the deal that was made with the Teachers' Union and made his education staff reapply for the grant at the last second, causing confusion and ultimately leading to accidental omission of information and a loss of the federal grant money.

And for God's sake, put the ice cream down, Governor. Hot day? Try some water... or maybe a lemonade.

(*Intrepid as in the size of an aircraft carrier, not the actual definition of the word.)

President Obama's Weekly Address - April 21, 2012

Calling on Congress to Prevent Student Interest Rates from Doubling

Santorum's College/Religion Dogwhistles Are Wrong

"...62 percent of kids who enter college with some sort of faith commitment leave without it."

~Rick Santorum

That would be completely wrong. But did you actually expect it to be correct?

"...multiple studies have found that the opposite is true — including the one that Santorum has reportedly been referring to.

A study published 2007 in the journal Social Forces — which PBS reports that Santorum’s claim is based on, although his spokesman didn’t respond to TPM’s request for confirmation — finds that Americans who don’t go to college experience a steeper decline in their religiosity than those who do."

I just can't understand Santorum's latest crusade against a college education when studies in fact do show that a college degree does lead to a more successful career. But I suppose it's all part of the Republican attempt to dumb down America. How else would they get votes? And when all else fails, use the indoctrination boogeyman.

"President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob. There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard everyday and put their skills to test that aren't taught by some liberal college professor that [tries] to indoctrinate them."

At least he called him, "President Obama." But it's funny, I don't remember anyone railing against "indoctrination" in our nation's schools until we had a Manchurian Candidate, Kenyan anti-colonialist, illegitimate President. But Santorum goes on.

Pressed by moderator David Gregory whether he encouraged his children to go to college, Santorum said he encouraged them "to get higher education." "In fact, if college is the best place for them, absolutely, but you know what? If going to a trade school and learning to be a carpenter or a plumber or other types of skills or an artist... or musician, all of those things are very important and worthwhile professions that we should not look down our nose at."

Who said anything about looking down our nose at those who don't go to college? And "higher education" is what the President exactly said.

George Stephanopolous: All he said was he wants, quote, "every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training."

President Obama's Weekly Address - September 24, 2011

Strengthening the American Education System

Lawrence O'Donnell and Matt Damon on Teachers and the Attack on Teachers

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

You can watch Damon's full speech here.

President Obama's Weekly Address - June 11, 2011

Partnering with the Private Sector to Spur Hiring

President Obama's Weekly Address - May 21, 2011

Reforming “No Child Left Behind” This Year

President Obama's Weekly Address - April 16, 2011

America’s Fiscal Future

President Obama's Weekly Address - March 5, 2011

Cutting Waste, Investing in the Future

President Obama's Weekly Address - February 19, 2011

Winning the Future at Intel

President Obama's Weekly Address - January 29, 2011

Out-Innovating, Out-Educating & Out-Building Our Competitors

When Politics Meets Personal

Posted by JHW22

I have been volunteering for an organization for over a year. I help them with research for their strategic and marketing plans and grants. I've never met them in person and they are four states away from me but I cared about their cause so much that I couldn't not help.

They run a preschool and childcare center for children in California with an emphasis on children with an ill family member. My friend has been fighting Leukemia for years and he and his wife faced the struggles of trying to find care while he was going through treatment. They learned that the emotional and physical stress takes a toll on the entire family and found it difficult to find good care for their children when he needed to get to appointments or treatments or be in the hospital.

They started their organization wanting to create an all-inclusive home-away-from-home with emergency drop-off services if an ill family member needed to be rushed to the hospital. They wanted to incorporate emotional healing into a child's day of learning the ABC's or that yellow and red make orange. They wanted to provide a place for families to seek financial planning, estate planning, stress management and bonding with other families of young children who are all experiencing the same struggles, fears and needs.

Their organization is one of a kind. They were recognized by the California and United States Senates, personally awarded by Senator Barbara Boxer, as being a crucial resource for children and their families.

They also educate children who aren't from a family experiencing these stresses , because even these children benefit from their curriculum grounded in empathy, communication of fears and frustrations, and from watching children like them struggle. These children all learn to be a community.

The organization also runs a nonprofit foundation to raise funds to help pay for children of all backgrounds to attend. They want to help parents already paying medical bills be able to send their children to a childcare and preschool designed with their needs in mind.

My friends are an inspiration.

Sadly, the California budget has cut funding for the licensing and regulation of new preschool facilities JUST as my friends were ready to get approval for their new building. Aside from the fact that they have committed their time and money into the new location, there are children and families who will suffer. Not just the families my friends serve, but the countless children who have been unable to attend preschool because of California's budget problems, and now more who will lose their childcare and preschool providers because of licensing and regulation shortfalls.

I will be spending the next days and weeks working with my friends to help them create an advocacy plan for getting this problem addressed immediately. We must get childcare and early education for the children who need it most. We can't allow the lack of funding for licensing and regulation prevent businesses from providing a necessary service.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions, send them my way. I hope to return with a clearer call to action soon.

Thank you,
Jennifer

President Obama's Weekly Address - October 9, 2010

Strengthening Education, Not Cutting It

Arizona Has Gone Nuts

Arizona "...schools will lose state funding if they offer any courses that "promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals."

...Meanwhile, in a move that was more covert until the Wall Street Journal uncovered it, the Arizona Department of Education has told schools that teachers with "heavy" or "ungrammatical" accents are no longer allowed to teach English classes."

Okay y'all, we gotta git these Mexicans to stop book learnin' our red-blooded, God fearin' Amurkin kids and git us some proper English teachers to edumacate our young'n's likes my mammy learnt me.

But it's not about race, right Arizona?

President Obama's Weekly Address - March 13, 2010

Education for a More Competitive America & Better Future

Why Are Conservatives Stupid?

by Armadillo Joe

Or should I ask "why are stupid people so conservative"?

Because my formulation of the GOP membership as "The Stupid, The Deluded and The Corrupt" remains intact and reinforced every single day. In today's edition, the educational braintrust in the Great State (and future Republic) of Texas directing the book-learnin' of the supple young minds in their care have concluded that too much "fact" and not enough "fiction" can be damaging to young minds with regards to, um, science and hard data. Instead of being able to dismiss these drooling Jebus-freaks as yet another bunch of banjo-pickin' toothless-goobers determined to keep themselves and their offspring mired in the intellectual and sociological poverty of 13th Century thinking -- and cheering on their defeat after defeat in court rooms across the land from the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925 to the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision in Pennsylvania in 2005 to their electoral defeat in Kansas a year later -- we actually have to pay attention to this particular group of self-righteous religious kooks because when it comes to high school textbooks in America, Texas is the 800-lb gorilla. Texas buys so many textbooks that textbook publishers generally tailor their entire line of books to Texas state standards, forcing the other 49 to comply simply by narrowing the field of alternatives.

It's scary. From Salon.com:

Textbook publishers demonstrated as recently as last year that they're not immune to pressures to pander to one of their biggest markets. In 2002, in an effort to appease Texas, references to the Ice Age as occurring "millions of years ago" in a history textbook were changed to read "in the distant past" so it wouldn't conflict with literal interpretations of the Bible. In 2001, the board rejected an environmental science book as "anti-free enterprise" and "anti-Christian" for its coverage of global warming.

Just because Barack Obama is our president doesn't mean these people have been vanquished. Not by a long shot. If "Scopes" (and "Inherit the Wind") didn't shame them into forever hiding under a rock (or, I dunno, becoming smart), they know no shame and nothing will ever drive them into permanent hiding. They must be fought at every turn as the mindless, unthinking and (in this specific case) brain-eating zombies they are.

Their relationship with the truth of the modern world is best described by this quote from The Terminator:

"It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."

So, to answer the question posed in the title of this here post: because they choose to be. And they will not rest until they force everyone else to join them in the intellectual sewer.

God help the children of Texas.

Can We Just Give Texas Back To Mexico?

Don McLeroy, chairman of the State Board of Education and point man in the fight over Texas' science curriculum... is convinced that evolution taught uncritically undermines faith, [and] knows that it will take a different kind of argument to win the debate about what should be taught in science classes in Texas public schools.

...[The avowed creationist] is among board members who want the standards to require a more critical approach to the teaching of evolution. It's a theory that McLeroy, 62, believes lacks the empirical data required to be taught without discussion of its particular insufficiencies.

I suggest to Mr. McLeroy that as soon as he collects an equal amount of "empirical data" for creationism or intelligent design (or whatever you're calling it this week) as has been collected for evolution, then he can make his case.

(H/T FDL)