florida schools are failing

and all this talk about how good no child left behind is from the right side of their mouths, with the left side saying, wait, we cant meet those standards, so please lower them so we'll look good with the rest of the country.

 

With nearly all of its schools at risk of not meeting federal standards under the No Child Left Behind act, Florida wants to make it easier for schools to comply.

Florida asked the federal government Friday to make it easier for schools to comply with the No Child Left Behind act, a rigorous set of rules that only one in four state schools currently are able to meet.

Since President Bush's signature education law passed three years ago, many Florida schools have allocated extra teachers and time to help bring various subgroups of students -- for instance, those in special ed, or with limit-English or low incomes -- up to standard.

Florida's changes, if approved by the U.S. Department of Education, would allow many principals to scale back those efforts.

By one estimate, they also would instantly triple the number of Florida schools making ''adequate yearly progress'' under federal law.

as a poster on DU put it succinctly:

"Florida" didn't ask for anything. (The guy that runs the place is named BUSH, just say it, media. Under Gov. BUSH, schools are failing, and the BUSH administration wants to lower the bar to make BUSH look good. After all, his BROTHER is the EDUCATION president! Remember?)

Are they waking up?

FINALLY.... from rocky mountain news:

Members of Congress from both parties on Thursday raised sharp questions about the exclusion of political opponents from two taxpayer-funded appearances by President Bush.

Three people were ejected from the president's Social Security town hall meeting in Denver March 21 after they arrived in a car with a "No more blood for oil" bumper sticker.

zoundry is too beta for you

ok, this tool is starting to piss me off.  zoundry needs to do a lot of work before it's ready for prime-time, and especially if he's going to charge for it.

the last word on schiavo

regarding schiavo's death (ya i know i said i wouldn't comment on this case again, but hey, its fart friday, and april fools day), slate's today's papers (a must-read every day) uses the same quotes that i heard on every news/talk show yesterday.  one can only wonder if that's all they said. 

"The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak." House Majority Leader Tom DeLay added, "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."

the hypocrisy of these two statements is suffocating.

the Friday Fart

comes to us from a letter to the editor of the des moines register:

Angela D. Binns' letter of March 26 declares that articles pertaining to the so-called marriage amendment have been written in an anti-gay context.

She wrote that this subject should be portrayed in a "pro-family" style and fashioned to reflect popular "traditional Midwestern American values."

Her ideas simply deliver prefabricated buzzwords used to camouflage that particular amendment from its actual purpose of instituting brazen discriminatory regulations against law-abiding, taxpaying American citizens into the Constitution.

Furthermore, Binns' suggestion that the Register place a "positive spin" on this topic equates to nothing more than a double standard by requesting tolerance for the intolerant.
-Doug Bucklin,
Des Moines.

wal-mart or wal-fart

i get a kick out whenever i see someone defending wal-mart.  it's generally hot air as the idea of the speaker (or writer in this case) is to convey the notion that big is always better.   for instance:

Wal-Mart paid $30 million directly in state and local taxes last year apart from the $114 million Wal-Mart generated in sales-tax revenues for the state and local communities.

Seventeen thousand Iowans work at our stores, clubs and distribution center in Iowa. We buy $545 million in goods and services from 1,233 Iowa suppliers who employ more than 64,000 people.

we citizens need to not allow wal-mart carte blanche to run roughshod over our established traditions, laws and rules.  too many times, rules are changed to accommodate wal-mart. too many times, laws are changed to accommodate wal-mart.  too many times the excuse being because wal-mart is 'big' and that big is always better.

 

the last word on schiavo

my last thoughts on this grotesque abuse of power by republicans in congress.

 

for the media to pander extensively to 20% of the population, is dispicable.  a miscarriage of justice surrounding the attempts to force an action that is so private and personal, it ranks at the top of the things government has no business meddling in.

 

but then, that's the republicons for you.  they acted like neophyte extraction of some primordial ooze, and i hope and pray to God that the people of the United States will remember Terry Schiavo during the next election.

Quasar's Quote for the Day

new series.  *whew*, thought He left me there for a while.  anyway, on with the show:

 

fostering hate from the bottom is nothing.

 

fostering hate from the top is nothing short of being skum.

will this take

 

zoundry gets a D grade

got this new tool.  it's from zoundry, and it looks like JUST the thing the doctor ordered.  God i hope so.

 

oh wait, spoke too soon.  there's no button for putting in links.

 

what the fuck good is a blogger tool if you cant button-a-link???  and why am i required to put in a title???

 

this tool STINKS.

 

on edit:  i take that back.  you right click to insert link, and to use other tools.  so it's not so bad after all.

well, welll.... WELLLL.... from the son of the man who brought us NO NEW TAXES, comes a nice lil' bit of news that i'm sure nobody on the bushite plank are going to want to hear about this:

WASHINGTON - If American forces aren't pulling out of Iraq in a year, a draft will be needed to meet manpower requirements, military analysts warned Wednesday.

With recruitment lagging and no end in sight for U.S. forces in Iraq, the "breaking point" for the nation's all-volunteer military will be mid-2006, agreed Lawrence Korb, a draft opponent and assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration, and Phillip Carter, a conscription advocate and former Army captain.

from AZ central

blogger is BACK and i gotta say, WITH A VENGENCE!!

about fuckn time

first, mediacom (see previous post)
then it was the mixer getting static, which means this 2month old device needs to go into the shop, for god knows how long, AND in its original box.
and now the printer is printing blurred/smudged copy on the right side.

WHEN WILL THIS TORTURE END??

i'm really sick and tired of mediacom. calld them up when the hum in their box got so annoying it was next to impossible to have it plugged into the system. anyway, upon learning that they're charging customer $15.99 to come get their boxes, they're gonna require customers to return the boxes, to halfway to clear lake, and THEN they will start crediting the account.

this is my response: FUCK YOU BASTARDS. i'll schedule service calls every fuckn day til the sky turns green until you fix this problem.

i think i'm gona have to take another serious look at satellite.

just so we don't forget:

(the shiavo case) could have ended back then. But others weighed in, and Terri's family, the Schindlers, stepped up their campaign through media and religious groups. The tube was reconnected.

Now, seven years later, the case is wending its way to a natural conclusion, after Florida's governor, Jeb Bush, was denied permission to take custody of Terri Schiavo, and the Florida Senate rejected a bill that would have prohibited the denial of food and water. And though Congress took the extraordinary measure of weighing in to give federal courts the authority to review her case, a federal appeals court ruled against reinserting her feeding tube. The Supreme Court refused to get involved.

Des Moines Register

once again, the nytimes proves to us that they are indeed king of all lapdog media, obediently selling their souls to the devil. from slate's today's papers:

The NYT off-leads a sneak-peak at a presidential-appointed panel's report on U.S. intel failures. Citing "officials who have seen the report's executive summary," the Times says the commission focuses much of its heat on the CIA's Iraq work but doesn't have any major bombshells. The commission, which the NYT notes operated behind closed doors, and whose creation was initially opposed by President Bush, was not specifically mandated to look at the other side of the question: how the administration portrayed the intel it received. The NYT mentions that the commission made a "case study" out of the much-flawed and rushed 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. What the Times doesn't mention is that the original classified NIE had lots of caveats and CYA language that somehow disappeared from the version that was made public in the run-up to the war.

dateline: 5/26/92

subject: lyrics

you've got to hear it
not just listen to it
gotta see it
not just look at it
if you cant feel it
don't touch it.

son of a bitch.. fuckn blogger again wastes my post in its seemingly eneverending quest to fuck with the user. as i was sayin before i got so rudely interrupted: i always thought arnold got elected because of the energy crisis, and now that he settled for pennies on the dollar, this lil' bit of news comes as no surprise, but rather a testament of my ability to know the truth.

from TrustingDog:

Lest we forget...
Monday, October 6, 2003
While the California press is reluctant to challenge the Austrian dumbbell lifter on anything more significant than his palm print on some females' behinds, one reader of our report below confronted Schwarzenegger. Friday, at a staged event in front of the Von's supermarket in Bakersfield, Referring to the disclosure in my column (which would have been well known to the candidate by that time), she shouted, "He's in bed with Kenny Lay, you idiots! It's your money!" There was dead silence for a beat, then came the voice through the loudspeakers, "I suhtunly wasn't in bet wit YOU!" (While Arnold's proud new boorishness was a hit with the yahoos, the Terminator was stopped dead by his interlocutor's comeback which is simply too brilliant, dead-on accurate, and salacious to repeat on a family website.) Here's what got the man upset: CALIFORNIA LAY'D BY ARNOLD According to a series of memoranda our office obtained today, Arnold Schwarzenegger's dalliance with boys in a hotel room just two years ago is every bit as scandalous as his manhandling of women during his career as celebrity he-man. The wannabe governor has yet to deny that on May 17, 2001, at the Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles, he had consensual political intercourse with Enron chieftain Kenneth Lay. Also frolicking with Arnold and Ken was convicted stock swindler Mike Milken.

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=284&row=1

fuckn blogger had better take this post because i'm not doing it for a sixth time.

March 27, 2005 14:49 IST

US aviation manufacturer

Lockheed Martin has offered to

build 'exclusive' F-16 fighters for

the Indian Air Force, much

superior to any existing fighters in

service in the world.

"If India's requirements are

beyond any existing fighters, we

are prepared to make upgraded

F-16s to India's specifications

with complete transfer of

technology," Mike Kelly, Senior

Executive of Lockheed Martin told

PTI.

The comments assume

importance in the wake of the US

administration's decision on

Saturday to clear sales of F-16s to

Pakistan and allow American firms

to sell sophisticated weapons to

India.

http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/

mar/27martin.htm

from the lexington herald-leader:

FORT BLISS, Texas - An Army reservist accused of killing a detainee in Afghanistan told investigators that the blows that caused the man's death were commonly used to deal with uncooperative prisoners and that his superiors approved of the technique.

Other soldiers testified at a hearing here that they were taught to administer the so-called "compliance blows" in an Army course covering non-lethal tactics and that the blows became an accepted way of dealing with detainees who were considered "combative."

The statement from Pfc. Willie Brand and the testimony from his fellow soldiers provide new evidence that prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq might have been the result of interrogation and detention practices adopted for the war on terrorism.

little by little, time is revealing much more than what the neocons have told us, and more and more of what the non-neocons have told us.

i hate my video card drivers. or something ... because every time i come out of screensaver, the active window closes. something is fuckn dikn with me and its making me really pissed off.

that people would consider george w. bush, and those who allow him to act out, christian is blasphemous in its core. the things he has done, is doing, and continues to want to do, are as anti-Christian as it gets. all this dog and pony show of hands clasped together in prayer are just that. the walks into the church are nothing but photo ops. to show the people that he's a devote follower of Christ, only, to me he's working harder at covering something up.

the one thing i do credit bush for is allowing me to understand that there indeed are evil people out there.

where in the bible does jesus tell us that peace is gained by war? or any indication that strength meant lots of weapons? that these republicans call themselves christian is a blasphemy to the christian religion. for the true christians believe not in war being a way to have peace, but that peace will exist without war.

of course, what do you do with those who don't hold those beliefs? those that don't even pretend to be christian? those bad apples that are in every barrel? can you rightly cast them in the same light of those who pretend to be christian? those who pretend to do all things right? who pretend that they can do no wrong?

put a mirror to their faces.

thank you, God.

on this easter, many are reflecting on things christian, and about jesus in particular.

jesus was a member of Q.
'nuff said.

guess this pretty much says it all:

Fortune 500 companies that invested millions of dollars in electing Republicans are emerging as the earliest beneficiaries of a government controlled by President Bush and the largest GOP House and Senate majority in a half century.

-- the washington post

making our country safer huh. we diverted resources from, as we have seen lately, a REAL threat to a phantom threat and this is what happens (from today's papers):

The Los Angeles Times' top non-local story reports that the CIA closed out a spy ring in 2002 that it had assigned to monitor Iranian militants in South America. The agency was having some success intercepting information related to Tehran and Hezbollah, but top brass decided that the resources would be better spent on al-Qaida and Iraq. "We're going to be starting from near zero," one CIA official complained of future intelligence gathering on Iran.

one again, a repuke adventure backfiring. only in this case, a result that which can not be sustained without more fear, blood and chaos. i guess the _is a reason why the republicon color is red.

talk about someone disconnected from reality.... an article in today's town paper quotes some guy by the name of Dave Brasher, who lobbies at the Statehouse for the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

"We think the appeal is mostly political and not really borne out of good economics,'' Brasher said. "Out of that minimum-wage-earning population, the vast majority, or certainly the biggest plurality, are essentially teenagers.

then the author ot the piece proceeds to show just how disconnected from reality that man is:

Among those workers, 56 percent are 20 years old or older and 59 percent are women. According to the report, 37 percent worked between 20 and 34 hours per week while 28 percent worked full time. Thirty-four percent worked fewer than 20 hours per week.

oh well, i tried:

Unless (deposit of $500) payment is provided, we have suspended further processing of this order for wireless service with Cingular Wireless.

when has congress gone against the wishes of 80% of its constituence?

even hitler had his followers.

i hate when companies act like they got you by your balls.

actually, i kinda get a cheap thrill out of making sure they understand, in no uncertain terms, that they don't.

get ready for another terror alert:

Public approval for Bush slipped from 52 percent in a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll over the weekend to 45 percent in that same poll released Thursday. A CBS News poll released earlier in the week found Bush's approval slipping six points to 43 percent.

i have a great idea for a new comedy central series: when the GOP eat their own. the fascination i get by watching the GOP fight amongst themselves, is without comparison.

The WP runs an analysis on the political implications of the Schiavo fight. Congressional Republicans turned it into a national issue, only to find that polls say "82 percent of Americans—including a whopping 68 percent of people who identify themselves as evangelical Christians" think they should have stayed out of it. Now some GOP lawmakers are complaining (anonymously) about their leaders.

that's all i'm posting from TP today. i think i've done too much already.

i hope this will be the last time the word "shiavo", (or is it schiavo?) will appear in this blog.

seems that the husband and his parents-in-law, which together make up both sides of the legal battles that have transcended not only every court possible, but even the once hallowed-halls of congress, only turned 'mortal enemies' since .... get this, the settlement. this was all caused because of a family squabble over money.

sick isn't it. another day not to be proud being and American.

ya know, if ya add up all the times one had reason to not be proud of America, wanna bet that the red-times double the blue-times?

there are so many things wrong with this picture, i dont know where to begin:

The Los Angeles Times leads with a criminal investigation into a global arms trafficking ring, which has allegedly found evidence that the government of Pakistan illegally purchased nuclear weapons components from American companies. The timing of the revelation is awkward because, as the Washington Post and the New York Times report in their lead stories, President Bush announced yesterday that he had decided to allow Pakistan to buy American-made F-16 fighter planes, reversing a 15-year-old ban on the sale of such weaponry to the unstable nation.

[criminals-R-us, or in some circles, "the bush administration". bush bends over backwards rewarding this terrorist, because, as some of us have known for a long time, the criminals, the crooks, the terrorists.... they're all one and the same]

The criminal investigation began early last year, when a former Israeli army major was arrested at the Denver airport and charged with illegally exporting high-speed bomb triggers. The LAT's story includes new details suggesting that a separate shipment of sophisticated oscilloscopes, purchased by the Israeli from an Oregon company, were sent to a Pakistani arms merchant who has close ties both to his country's military and to Islamic militants. U.S. officials tell the paper that they suspect the materials ended up in the hands of the Pakistani government, which they allege has "begun a push to acquire advanced nuclear components in the black market as it tries to upgrade its 30-year-old nuclear program." But anonymous investigators grouse that their probe has been "stymied" by State Department officials, who consider Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf "too important to embarrass."

Similarly, the NYT sees lifting the ban on fighter jet sales to Pakistan "as reward for cooperation" in the war in Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

[i.e., bush rewards failure. he gave the man responsible for providing slam-dunk evidence of iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the highest medal in the country. he promotes condi to secretary of state for her dismal failure at keeping us safe prior to 9/11. this is how the bushite people work. they eat each others shit, and feed on each other's enemies. it's a sick sick sick world they live in, and certainly have no place in American politics.]

Bush's father barred such sales in 1990, citing evidence that Pakistan was attempting to build a nuclear bomb. Pakistan will probably buy two dozen planes to start, but the WP says there will be "no limits on how many it could eventually purchase." That's good news for the financially-struggling Lockheed Martin plant in Fort Worth, Texas [GET THAT, A TEXAS COMPANY, THE GOOLD OL' BOYS OF TEXAS HAVE STRIKED AGAIN] that makes the planes, the WP says.

from Slate's Today's Papers

and continuing on, the next paragraph sums it up rather nicely:

Predictably, Pakistan's regional rival India denounced the move as a "great disappointment." In a personal phone call, Bush told the India's prime minister that, as consolation, America is willing sell India even better planes, missile defense systems, and the like. The WP says some analysts doubt this strategy, saying it means the United States "would effectively supply both sides in a new arms race in one of the world's most dangerous hot spots." But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tells the WP that it's all part of a plan to "break out of the notion that … anything that happens that is good for Pakistan is bad for India, and vice versa."

condi let it slip: IT'S ALL PART OF THE PLAN.

but do you think any of our American(sic)presscorps will pick up on that? HELLLL no. the lapdog press, made possible by a bush brat, will one day regret it sold its soul.

people often ask me if i think i'm different.

after a look of puzzlement, i say of course, why would you think otherwise?
who else do you know that can say to you:

"i bet i can make you say "well, all fuckn right man, that was fuckn great"

how many other people are there like me out there?

how much more of the name shiavo can you stomach?

The military will support efforts by Afghan and American agencies, rather than lead them. It will move antidrug agents by helicopters and cargo planes and assist in planning missions and uncovering targets in a stepped-up war on the trade and the heavily armed forces that protect it.

Under previous guidelines, the American military in Afghanistan was held back from such missions. The 17,000 American troops were authorized to seize or destroy drugs and drug equipment only if they came across them in the course of traditional military activities to capture or kill insurgents and terrorists.

To support the new effort, the Defense Department is requesting $257 million, more than four times the amount last year, in emergency financing for military assistance to the counternarcotics campaign, in addition to the $15.4 million in the Pentagon's budget for fiscal 2005, which began last Oct. 1.
...

In Congressional testimony last May, for example, Mark L. Schneider, senior vice president of the International Crisis Group, a humanitarian organization operating in Afghanistan, called on the American-led coalition to "state clearly that one of its missions is counternarcotics and helping Afghan government agencies to destroy the Afghan drug-trafficking problem."

He urged the military to change its rules of engagement to make intervention easier, and also urged increased American financing for Afghan governors who pay local forces to eradicate the poppy crop.

Planners at the Pentagon and at the Central Command, which directs coalition military efforts in Afghanistan, acknowledge that the new tasks will force American commanders to accept some risk in the counterinsurgency effort as they divert personnel and equipment from combating terrorists and guerrillas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/25/politics/25military.html?

i only have one question, well, tons of questions, but one that will get asked right now:

what took them so long?
what took them so long to do anything at all?

the anti-war crowd has been screaming this for years, and now that the pro-war crowd sees the problem, we're supposed to believe that since the pro-war crowd is getting what they want, something done in this case, then we're to be happy?

i'm jus joyous that this paints exactly the picture i want of the republicons who are in charge.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

what a great idea!! it's about time legislators start getting creative in ways to save money. the numbers are a bit hard to swallow however. anyway, from the des moines register

The proposal - believed to be the first of its kind in Iowa - would allow U.S. Motorsport Entertainment Corp., the developer of the track, to pocket up to $12.5 million that its customers pay in sales taxes on tickets and concession stand sales at the Newton track. Once that total amount is collected, the sales tax revenues from the track would begin flowing into the state treasury, under the terms of the legislation.

funny. tom delay is the subject of tonite's nightline.
and confirms that he was nothing more than a GOPher boy when he started out in politics.

i would say, he still is nothing more than an errand boy.

i think what's happening is that the issue is getting that underdog treatment. either that, or this could really be the wakeup call i and a score of other Americans who love their country have been praying for.

Young adults have been the strongest supporters of the proposal for months. Support among those 18-29 dipped from seven in 10 to just under half, according to the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. A quarter of young adults now say they're not sure how they feel about such personal accounts.

The poll found that just over four in 10, 44 percent, of all those polled, support creation of the accounts, down from 54 percent in December, while 40 percent are opposed.

The amount of support for the plan differs widely depending on how the question is worded.

When poll questions mention that people will have a reduced guaranteed benefit with the accounts, the support dips into the 30s with a majority opposing the plan. When the question emphasizes only the positive aspects of accounts, some GOP polls have found a majority supporting accounts.

Polls find a healthy majority agree that Social Security faces long-range problems.

--from yahoo

CbS:

shiavo. this thing has gotten completely out of control.

they lost. and yet are incapable of admitting it.
sad really. just pathetic that some people just can not accept mortalityj for some reason. this isn't about "pro" life. hell, who's anti-life? oh wait, governors of states with death penalties are in many cases anti-life.

there is hardly anybody more nauseating than robert novak. this columnist is a shill all the way. prostituting himself to the highest bidder. so long as they're wearing their nixon pins, he'll bend over backwards convincing you that the sky is green.

nice site:

can of fun

cnn is reporting that katherine harris "first met" karl rove just recently.

who the hell do they think they're kidding?

i like imus. i think i come close to being about as straight-forward as he is. so it is with great pain that i have to report on this. however, given my past history with him, i can only assume one thing. it's not spitzer. it's cheney. imus, like a good human being, hates cheney. and has been oh so overt about it. he does not hide his feelings like so many other mediawhores. imus is not a mediawhore. he's a member of an incredibly exclusive club.

is the 'other side' as unaware of us as we are of them?

What deserves the most attention in the latest Social Security trustees report isn't the revised projection estimating that the system won't be able to pay full benefits after 2041 (instead of 2042, as estimated a year ago). What everyone ought to focus on isn't Social Security at all.

It's Medicare.

the des moines register

the hypocrisy of this administration is suffocating. david yepsen, who has won more poopyhead of the year awards than any other iowan, offers this:

The meeting was with former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, now the secretary of Health and Human Services, which has recently dropped a little bomb on the states: Starting July 1, the federal government will no longer allow states to use accounting gimmicks to wheedle more money out of Uncle Sam for the Medicaid program, which provides health care for the poor.

That's a $65 million loss to Iowa