I think this is a great idea and one you’d think the Obama’s themselves would have thought of. After all, Michele is pushing for healthier school lunches and the abolition of “food deserts” in poor neighborhoods:
(Image via CBSNews.com)
What could be more American than hot dogs and apple pie? Perhaps it’s no wonder that politicians spend much of their time on the campaign trail hamming it up with voters at diners, burger shacks and other eating establishments that aren’t exactly paragons of healthful fare.
But a group of doctors and activists will be calling on President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and other members of the executive branch to refrain from turning calorie-laden pit stops into photo ops this election year. On Thursday, they plan to present the White House with a petition asking Obama to issue an executive order banning appearances with “carcinogenic or obesogenic foods.”
“Increasingly, the use of food in photo ops conflicts with important messages that public health officials are trying to convey in order to safeguard the health of the American public,” explains the petition from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, also known as PCRM.
No, this isn’t a headline from The Onion. It’s real but tell me the priorities here aren’t assbackward:
University of Florida Eliminates Computer Science Department, Increases Athletic Budgets
Wow, no one saw this coming. The University of Florida announced this past week that it was dropping its computer science department, which will allow it to save about $1.7 million $1.4 million. The school is eliminating all funding for teaching assistants in computer science, cutting the graduate and research programs entirely, and moving the tattered remnants into other departments.
[...]
Meanwhile, the athletic budget for the current year is $99 million, $97.7 million, an increase of more than $2 million from last year. The increase alone would offset the savings supposedly gained by cutting computer science.
Well, we might not be able to compete with the Chinese or the Indians in computer science but if they get football teams, we’ll probably be really, really good at those games. Glad to see we’re preparing for the future.
The high school senior who stood up at Mitt Romney’s town hall meeting here today was worried about how he and his family would pay for college, and wanted to hear what the candidate would do about rising college costs if elected. He didn’t realize that Mr. Romney was about to use him to demonstrate his fiscal conservatism to the crowd.
The answer: nothing.
Mr. Romney was perfectly polite to the student. He didn’t talk about the dangers of liberal indoctrination on college campuses, as Rick Santorum might have. But his warning was clear: shop around and get a good price, because you’re on your own.
“It would be popular for me to stand up and say I’m going to give you government money to pay for your college, but I’m not going to promise that,” he said, to sustained applause from the crowd at a high-tech metals assembly factory here. “Don’t just go to one that has the highest price. Go to one that has a little lower price where you can get a good education. And hopefully you’ll find that. And don’t expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on.”
On Friday, President Obama launched a push to get congress to halt a scheduled doubling of federal college loan interest rates on July 1, from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent for low- and middle-income undergraduates (also known as Stafford loans).
And based on a hope and prayer that we don’t remember anything from one day to another, this is Romney today:
Mitt Romney appears to agree with President Obama on student loans, if not on the overall direction of the economy.The likely Republican nominee today called on Congress to “temporarily extend the current low rate on subsidized undergraduate Stafford loans” for college students.
Thought I’d update ya’ll on the police state going on at the University of Colorado – Boulder today. (Don’t know what I’m talking about? Go here.)
As I said yesterday in the post linked to above, CU police “strongly suggested” I not take my usual morning route through campus on my way to the food bank today. But I left the house and as I approached the campus I could have going one of three ways; my usual way (through the campus), to the west around the campus, or to the east around the campus. I decided to take my usual route and go straight through the campus and well, see what happens.
Turns out nothing happened but it was obvious it was still early. I was on the campus proper for probably four minutes and I traveled approximately half a mile (there are three pedestrian crosswalks along the way and I had to stop at each one). Orange traffic cones lined the entirety of the road, placed roughly every eight feet. A person dressed like this
stood at every driveway and sidewalk leading into the campus to the west. “Campus Closed” signs were visible on folding placards placed in the median.
On my way home I took a different route (my usual route home) which took me along the immediate eastern edge of campus. I saw two electronic road signs along the way, both of them flashing “WARNING TRESPASS PROSECUTED.”
I am so ashamed of the university.
Here are my Tweets of the Day:
And this one which, if true, means CU is spending more to keep the pot smokers away than if it had just let them be. Ridiculous waste of money:
And this would be my photo of the day:
(Photo via Arash Mosaleh of 9News)
Let’s just legalize marijuana already and be done with this charade.
Like any state legislature dealing with 8 percent unemployment and thousands of its residents facing disenfranchisement, the Tennessee Senate is targeting the menace of underage hand-holding.
Last week, the Senate passed SB 3310, a bill to update the state’s abstinence-based sex education curriculum to define holding hands and kissing as “gateway sexual activities.” Just one senator voted against the legislation; 28 voted in favor.
Uh oh:
And uh oh:
(Photo via flickr user DonnaJW)
How far are the wingnuts going to push this back? Will being born eventually be labeled as a “gateway to sexual activity?” Might as well. That’s how absurd this is getting.
Someone should start a blog consisting solely of insane quotes from Republicans as in stuff nobody in their right mind would say and nobody in their right mind would believe; quotes that 15 or 20 years ago would have been considered so factually ignorant they would have been ignored. Such as this from Rush Limbaugh today:
“…what else would make student debt high? Ah, ha, ha, ha, how could I forget? Birth control pills. So birth control pills and tuition are causing student debt to spiral out of control and threaten the Obama recovery.”
Wow, I hadn’t heard of anything like this before now:
There are just seven pairs of boots lined up outside the kindergarten classroom in this fading farm town. Just eight crayon drawings are taped to the wall outside second grade.
Enrollment is dropping at the Grant-Deuel School [in Revillo, South Dakota], as at so many rural schools. Fewer students means less state funding and a slow extinction.
But Superintendent Grant Vander Vorst has an improbable plan to save his little school on the prairie – by turning it into a magnet for wealthy foreign students. This year, 11 students from China, Thailand, Germany and elsewhere account for nearly 20% of high school enrollment, bringing cash and a welcome splash of diversity to an isolated patch of the Great Plains.
Grant-Deuel is not alone. Across the United States, public high schools in struggling small towns are putting their empty classroom seats up for sale.
In Sharpsville, Pennsylvania, and Lake Placid, New York, in Lavaca, Arkansas, and Millinocket, Maine, administrators are aggressively recruiting international students.
They’re wooing well-off families in China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia and dozens of other countries, seeking teenagers who speak decent English, have a sense of adventure – and are willing to pay as much as $30,000 for a year in an American public school.
The end goal for foreign students: Admission to a U.S. college.
I haven’t thought much about it yet but this hits me as just plain sad. When I read stories like this I instantly think about all the money we’re spending on wars (something like a couple million per week in Afghanistan alone) and I shake my head and think about how totally f*cked up our priorities are.
I come across so much mind-blowingly crazy stuff like this every day, my whole blog could be dedicated to it. I tend to shake my head and move on at most of it but sometimes I have to stop and scream. And I’m screaming now:
A Republican State Senator from Alabama claimed this week that keeping teacher salaries low is actually an order from the Christian deity figure, imparted in ancient texts written by Jewish tribesmen thousands of years ago.
Speaking at a prayer breakfast recently, Alabama state Senator Shadrack McGill praised giving pay raises to politicians, saying that it helps to prevent bribery. Then he shifted gears and went in the opposite direction with regards to teachers, arguing against a bill that would increase their salaries.
“Teachers need to make the money that they need to make,” he said, according to Alabama newspaper The Times-Journal. “There needs to be a balance there. If you double what you’re paying education, you know what’s going to happen? I’ve heard the comment many times, ‘Well, the quality of education’s going to go up.’ That’s never proven to happen, guys.
“It’s a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher’s pay scale, you’ll attract people who aren’t called to teach. To go and raise someone’s child for eight hours a day, or many people’s children for eight hours a day, requires a calling. It better be a calling in your life. I know I wouldn’t want to do it, OK?”
He continued: “And these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It’s just in them to do. It’s the ability that God give ‘em. And there are also some teachers, it wouldn’t matter how much you would pay them, they would still perform to the same capacity. “If you don’t keep that in balance, you’re going to attract people who are not called, who don’t need to be teaching our children. So, everything has a balance.”
Huzzah!
10, 15, 40 years ago, this wouldn’t have made the news. It would have been thought of as, literally, crazy; the rant of a religious nut.
I went to grade school in Bloomington, Indiana. Back then, there was a thing called the separation of church and state.
Facts were taught in schools (not “theories”) and religion was taught in churches. If the Republicans in Indiana get their way, the two will merge:
Indiana’s Senate Bill 89, which if enacted would allow local school districts to “require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science,” was passed by the Senate Committee on Education and Career Development on January 25, 2012.
Good luck Indiana. Pretty soon you won’t be able to complain about the madrassas in the Middle East that combine the teaching of reading and writing and that of religion. That’s where you’re going.
This was one of the headlines on the front page of my local newspaper this morning:
CU-Boulder proposes 15.7% tuition hike for in-state students
Plan would raise full-time students’ tuition to $8,875 next year
In-state tuition for full-time students at the University of Colorado next year could soar 15.7 percent under a plan proposed Wednesday.
Under the proposal, tuition for full-time students in the College of Arts and Sciences — which enrolls the most students on the Boulder campus — would increase from $7,672 this year to $8,875 next year.
The increase, if approved, would amount to an extra $1,203 a year.
CU has raised tuition between 8.8 percent and 9.3 percent each of the last four years.
Per that last sentence, let’s presume that on average CU has raised tuition by 9 percent each of the last four years. That means if the 15.7 percent increase is approved, over the last five years tuition will have increased at CU by 51.7 percent, over just five years.
Wow. Soon a college education will either be available only to the wealthy or kids will be saddled with even more debt when they enter the working world.
Too bad we can’t put some of the billions we’re spending on war toward funding our universities.
Yesterday we learned that the United States of America’s 2012 discretionary budget allocates 59% to defense spending and 6% — 6% — to education.
That said, schools in the United States are literally falling apart:
FORT COLLINS, Colo.—Timnath Elementary School is closed after a ceiling collapsed over the Thanksgiving holiday.
School district crews and a structural engineer are working Tuesday to determine the cause.
Poudre School District spokeswoman Danielle Clark says teachers discovered the collapse when they returned to school on Monday, an extended holiday for students.
Thank God this happened over the Thanksgiving weekend. What if it hadn’t?
Ms. Sullivan is the 18-year-old high school senior who attended an event in Topeka, Kansas last Monday which was billed as a “Kansas Youth in Government” forum. Ms. Sullivan pissed off Kansas Governor Sam Brownback — the keynote speaker — when she sent a tweet about his speech that Brownback’s staff didn’t like.
(Apparently Brownback’s staff is sitting around in pajamas in their parents’ basement, eating Cheetos, trolling the web for negative tweets about Brownback instead of creating jobs.)
Sullivan tweeted that Brownback “sucked” and “blowsalot.”
How dare she?!
Sam – Fidel Castro — Brownback’s office (don’t forget, Brownback sets the tone for what his office does) contacted the principal at Sullivan’s school, who (being the tool that he or she is) demanded that Sullivan write a letter of apology to Brownback by today (11-28-11) or face who-knows-what kind of discipline.
Sullivan refused, and today Brownback backed down, saying his staff “overreacted.“
Overreacted? Ya think?
Anyway, this incident got a lot of press and I’m willing to bet Ms. Sullivan received some ugly tweets and possibly even death threats so her decision not to apologize can’t have been easy. That’s why I want her to know how proud I am that she stood up for her fundamental right to freedom of speech. I respect her guts.
Oh, and as for that principal — you’re a pathetic example to the kids in your school.
You probably heard about the Kansas high school student, Emma Sullivan, who sent a tweet Governor Sam Brownback didn’t like and the ensuing effort to get her to apologize. Well, she refused to apologize (YOU GO GIRL!) and now Brownback is walking the incident back:
“My staff over-reacted to this tweet, and for that I apologize. Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms. I enjoyed speaking to the more than 100 students who participated in the Youth in Government Program at the Kansas Capitol. They are our future. I also want to thank the thousands of Kansas educators who remind us daily of our liberties, as well as the values of civility and decorum. Again, I apologize for our over-reaction.”
So ironic that this happened during a “Youth in Government Program.” Those kids got a lesson in government all right. The Joe McCarthy form of government.
As an aside, I just spent a good five minutes looking around at FoxNews.com and I can’t find one single article about this incident. They don’t want their audience to know how unAmerican Republicans can be.
By now you may have heard the “big” political news of the day: The New Hamphsire Union Leader endorsed Newt Gingrich for president this morning (what are they smokin’ up there?).
The Union Leader is a newspaper:
But, guess what? OMG, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry: Some in the Twittersphere have totally misunderstood this news; they think Newt was endorsed by a union leader, as in a person:
Rachel Maddow said it all just now as to what the 2012 election is going to be about. Forget the 99ers. Forget jobs. Forget education. Forget healthcare. Forget infrastructure.
Thanks to Bush’s Supreme Court and Citizens United, 2012 is all about:
CASHWARFARE.
I’ll put video up as soon as it’s available but ain’t that the truth?
I don’t know about you but I can’t afford to buy my representative. But Bank of America can!
Here’s a great article about Republicans think it’s cool to be stupid. An excerpt:
For eight years, just about every time George W. Bush was in the same room as someone with a post-graduate degree, the failed former president would tell the same joke: “I remind people that, like when I’m with Condi I say, she’s the Ph.D. and I’m the C-student, and just look at who’s the president and who’s the advisor.”
Republican crowds always cheered the line, reinforcing the anti-intellectual attitudes that too often dominate conservative thought. The man who succeeded Bush in Austin, and hopes to succeed Bush as the next Republican president, is cut from the same cloth.
As a child, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas was dead set on being a veterinarian. “That was my heart’s content. It’s what I always wanted to do,” he said.
Then came a day of reckoning, during the second semester of his sophomore year at Texas A&M University, when he went to see the dean of the veterinary school. His advice: switch to an easier major.
“He said, `Son, I’m looking at your transcript,’” Mr. Perry said. “‘You want to be an animal science major.’”
Perry made the joke during a speech yesterday at Liberty University, a school founded by crazed televangelist Jerry Falwell. The Texas governor didn’t say much about politics, but he spent a fair amount of time talking about what a lousy student he was.
Perry noted, for example, that at his small high school, “I graduated in the top 10 of my graduating class — of 13.” The crowd laughed and applauded.
ennifer Rubin, a conservative writer at the Washington Post, said Perry’s speech “was, at least in part, a celebration of ignorance.” She added, “Yes, he was trying to be self-deprecating, but it’s disturbing to see that he thinks being a rotten student and a know-nothing gives one street cred in the GOP.”
Disturbing to say the least. Hey, let’s encourage our kids to be as crappy a student; as ignorant as they can be! Go Amerrrrca!
Check out this new shirt (for girls ages 7 – 16) that J.C. Penny is peddling:
In other words, hey young girls, being pretty is all that matters.
Poor kids. I would hate to grow up in the environment young girls are growing up in today. Be thin. Be beautiful. Be sexy. Period. And what if you happen to be born with a body that isn’t any of those things?
I have never watched a full episode of “Jersey Shore,” but the bits and pieces I have seen are embarrassing to me as an American. The fact that a show featuring an entire cast of dumbed-down airheads was even produced is a sad commentary on the state of our nation. I mean, until the other day, “Snookie,” the “star” of the show, didn’t know Montana was a state.
So I empathize with Abercrombie & Fitch. They are so embarrassed by the show they’re offering to pay cast member Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino not to wear their clothes:
With their quick rise to fame, the cast of MTV reality show “Jersey Shore” has cashed in on a number of endorsement deals, including weight loss supplements, alcohol and bronzer.
But here’s a first. Teen apparel retailer Abercrombie & Fitch Co. is offering to pay Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino not to wear its merchandise.
The New Albany, Ohio company released a statement Tuesday evening titled “A Win-Win Situation,” in which it stated a “deep concern” over the association between Mr. Sorrentino and the brand. A&F offered up a “substantial payment” to Mr. Sorrentino “to wear an alternate brand.”
“We understand that the show is for entertainment purposes, but believe this association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans,” the statement read.
The company also extended the pay-to-not-play offer to the other Jersey Shore reality stars and said it was “urgently waiting a response.”
This has to be a first in the annals of advertising history. Retailers historically love product placement but apparently they feel much as I do when it comes to “Jersey Shore” bimbos being associated with their brand.
In a rational universe everyone in the country would know about this and Michele Bachmann’s campaign would be either in very serious trouble or over:
Let’s try to wrap our heads around this. Bachmann’s opposition to raising the debt ceiling is one of the most important planks in her presidential platform. She has touted it in two ads, presenting it as a sign of her courage. She repeated it again last night at the debate, asserting that opposing the hike is “the right thing to do,” and even cited Standard and Poors’s downgrade as proof of her superior grasp of our fiscal dilemma.
Less than 24 hours later, the news emerges that S & P has confirmed that it was precisely this opposition to raising the debt ceiling, and the cavalier attitude towards default exhibited by the likes of Bachmann, that led to our downgrade.
The question of what led S & P to downgrade our credit rating is a matter of verifiable fact. And S & P has now confirmed that one of the central rationales of her candidacy is a key reason for their downgrade. What will she say when confronted with this fact? How will she explain it away? Will anyone even ask her to try to explain it?
In a rational universe, this would be devastating to her candidacy. Of course, the world of GOP primary politics is anything but a rational universe.
Chances are we won’t hear a thing about this on the corporate media, and for sure it won’t be reported on Fox, all of which is really pretty darn terrifying if you think about it for a minute. Here we have a woman who is running for PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and she is getting away with making a provable lie one of the central themes of her candidacy.
History according to wingers (you know, the people with their own set of “facts”):
Talk to a prominent social conservative these day and the odds are pretty good that he or she is a fan of David Barton.
Perhaps more than any other person, the Texas-based amateur historian has provided grist for the idea of American Exceptionalism—the argument that America’s unique success in the world is divinely caused and due to its committment to core Judeo-Christian principles. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, the tea party champion and likely 2012 presidential contender, invited him to teach members of Congress about the Constitution; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says he learns something new every time he listens to Barton.
He’s a pretty influential guy. So what, exactly, does he teach? On Wednesday, Right Wing Watch flagged a recent interview Barton gave with an evangelcial [sic] talk show, in which he argues that the Founding Fathers had explicitly rejected Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Yes, that Darwin. The one whose seminal work, On the Origin of Species, wasn’t even published until 1859.
Fact: The “Founding Fathers” were doing their work roughly 100 years — yep, 100 years folks — prior to the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species and 50 years prior to his birth, for God’s sake.
Yo, wingers: They count on you being really, really dumb.
The MSM will spend the weekend talking about Anthony Weiner and Sarah Palin and who know who the hell else so we don’t think about how corporate America is trashing us and our planet:
Brazil has taken a big step towards passing new laws that will loosen restrictions on the amount of Amazon rainforest that farmers can destroy, after its lower house of parliament voted in favour of updating the country’s 46-year-old forest code.
In a move described as “disastrous” by conservationists, the nation’s congress backed a bill relaxing laws on the deforestation of hilltops and the amount of vegetation farmers must preserve. The law also offers partial amnesties for fines levied against landowners who have illegally destroyed tracts of rainforest.
This is a photo of the Amazon rain forest per the article above.
This is a photo of the Amazon rain forest I knew as a kid:
(That river? It’s the Amazon.)
The Brazilians who chop their forests down are people who have no other means of survival, so they turn to logging.
The state-of-the-art facility, which features an IMAX movie theater as well as multiple fetus incinerators.
Planned Parenthood announced Tuesday the grand opening of its long-planned $8 billion Abortionplex, a sprawling abortion facility that will allow the organization to terminate unborn lives with an efficiency never before thought possible.
During a press conference, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards told reporters that the new state-of-the-art fetus-killing facility located in the nation’s heartland offers quick, easy, in-and-out abortions to all women, and represents a bold reinvention of the group’s long-standing mission and values.
Hey, it’s The Onion folks. But no. Wingers believe it. Note some of their reactions:
– PAID FOR WITH TAX DOLLARS — MAKE ME SICK!
– Planned Parenthood’s Auschwitz . Who would have thought?
– Something is seriously wrong with our society…..WOW….I am sickened and saddened by our society.
So, Tea Party people — you claim you are the ones who hold the Constitution next to your heart (closer than any of the rest of us) and you defend all things you claim are inherent to the United States of America, yet you loathe public debate and an open exchange of ideas? What’s with that?
A New Jersey teenager says she’s received threats since challenging U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann to a debate over the Constitution.
Ann Myers
Ann Myers
challenged the tea party favorite in a letter dated April 29. After it started getting media attention last weekend, commenters on tea party websites have threatened to publish her home address and some have threatened violence.
The 16-year-old from Cherry Hill says several commenters have called her a “whore.”
Her father, Wayne, says he’s concerned for his daughter’s safety.
[...]
Myers says the Minnesota congresswoman misstates or distorts facts about the Constitution. Bachmann’s office told The Courier-Post of Cherry Hill that it won’t respond to the debate challenge.
16-year-old Ann Myers reached out to Bachmann, hoping to engage her in the democratic process. Bachmann is wrong not to respond to her challenge — wrong not to respect and praise her as someone who cares about her country — and Bachmann is wrong not to demand that her supporters stop threatening Myers.
I remember a time when someone like Ms. Myers would be praised for her interest in the Constitution, in politics, in her country, and for her willingness to stick her neck out.
Bottom line: Why do people want to do harm to a kid who challenges a politician to a debate? What’s so threatening about that? Seems to me the reaction here says more about Michele Bachmann’s timidity and insecurity — and that of her supporters — than anything else.
I was alive during the age of the Freedom Riders. I remember the four little girls who died in the bombing of the Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. I was their age. This would be me at 11-years-old:
I remember being afraid because my father took part in civil rights marches in those days. My 11-year-old self was scared someone would throw a bomb through our “picture window” in Bloomington, Indiana because of what he did. Or burn a cross on our front lawn.
Watch Freedom Riders tonight on PBS. It’s a lesson in how to make change, scary as it is:
