RealClearPolitics – Articles – Staying The Coarse.
My dad found this article, written by George Will – a pretty fair and level-headed, and certainly well-respected, columnist – which discusses the Clintons’ campaign “tactics.”
I think Edwards is just staying in this to siphon votes off of CLinton and vie for a VP spot
// January 27th, 2008Edwards’s Appeal Overshadowed by Rivals’ Celebrity – washingtonpost.com
In the worst-case scenario, one aide said, Edwards will keep running and collecting delegates, as Obama and Clinton run neck and neck. Then Edwards goes to the Democratic Party convention in Denver as a potential kingmaker.
Synthia
// January 26th, 2008A company has managed to created chromosones, and now hopes to patented the process. Some of the suggested uses for the technology seem brilliant but could have drawbacks. And since these patents would be privately owned, we have no idea what the chromosomes would actually be used for.
Daily Kos: Kucinich Drops Out, Shifts Focus To Saving House Seat
// January 24th, 2008Daily Kos: Kucinich Drops Out, Shifts Focus To Saving House Seat
It almost seems too easy. The next big election in which the two front-runners are both very close and a third-party contender might steal enough votes to throw the election (think Nader in 2004)…
…just donate heavily to someone in his or her home district, and put their seat in play.
Addressing the female vote
// January 23rd, 2008Barack Obama : : Change We Can Believe In | Barath’s Blog: Addressing the female vote
A little linguistics and framing, a la George Lakoff. =)
NYCDOE is playing dangerous (and uninformed games)
// January 22nd, 2008The below article is from the union, but don’t need to hear the other side of this argument – there aren’t always two sides! The NYCDOE is surreptitiously collecting data on teachers? Bullshit!
UFT fights teacher evaluation pilot
The New York Times reported on Monday that the city Department of Education has undertaken a secretive pilot program in which 2,500 teachers at 140 city public schools are being measured without their knowledge on how much their students improve on annual standardized tests. DOE officials said that they are considering using an analysis of this data to evaluate teachers and to make decisions on teacher tenure, a step that would be in violation of our collective-bargaining agreement and state tenure law.
UFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following response that day:
These standardized tests were never designed to be used to evaluate teachers individually. As weve said before, school and teacher accountability must be based on multiple indicators that make sense to teachers, resonate with parents and are fair, accurate and transparent. Secretly collecting test score data and basing teacher evaluations on them run counter to any of these principles.
The data being collected by the DOE in this secretive pilot cannot isolate and identify the effect or influence of any individual teacher, and no statistical Band-Aid can change that. Even the experts agree on that. Neither the law nor collective-bargaining agreements ever anticipated data being used this way, and we intend to use both to stop such a misguided use. Imagine principals dictating to teachers who their students are, how many they must teach and what curriculum to use and then evaluating them on standardized test scores!
Most important, this is a terrible thing to do to kids. It risks turning our school system into Test Prep, Inc., with educators doing nothing else but preparing students for standardized math and English tests and denying kids the balanced and well-rounded education they need. In addition, it undermines the commitment to collaboration and working together on a school level that was codified in the School-Wide Bonus program. In sum, there are so many educational and technical flaws in this concept that I find it shocking that the school system is even considering it. The United Federation of Teachers will fight this on all grounds educational, legal and moral.
YouTube – Address to Missourians from Gov. Matt Blunt
// January 22nd, 2008YouTube – Address to Missourians from Gov. Matt Blunt
I heard this man booed aloud at a St. Louis Blues game after being put on screen…his departure won’t bring tears.
To do it now surely indicates that a scandal is to follow (unless this one was somehow narrowly averted…)
YouTube – Barack Obama Speaks at Dr. King’s Church
// January 21st, 2008YouTube – Barack Obama Speaks at Dr. King’s Church
Obama gives a brilliant speechat Ebenezer Baptist Church
US intel chief wants carte blanche to peep all ‘Net traffic
// January 17th, 2008US intel chief wants carte blanche to peep all ‘Net traffic
A provocative article on internet safety. The Director of National Intelligence wants the right to patrol all of the internet to keep it safe, saying ‘Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.’”
Sayings like that, says security guru Bruce Schneier, “are why the police aren’t in charge; security and privacy are complimentary. Privacy is part of our security against government abuse. If they were really zero-sum, we would have seen mass immigration into East Germany.”
The intel chief claims that if we don’t protect out networks, the economic effects of such an attack could be magnitudes worse than 9/11. But…
The claim that “cyber-security” demands handing over such expansive authority looks like similar overreach. On the prevention side, it is not clear why the NSA is better equipped to handle attacks than the large financial institutions terrorists would target, which surely have ample incentive and adequate resources to secure their networks. And law enforcement has thus far been managing to conduct investigation into and prosecution of computer crime under existing rules.