Pay No Attention to the Future Bible School Dropouts Behind the Curtain

I give this a week before this is passed around unironically among the wingnuts.

Kevin D. “Manly men can defy the laws of genetics with their alpha male musk” Williamson, National What’s Wrong With Your Face:
The Last Radicals

Not to spoil anything, but today’s bout of neuronal spasm is about education. And like all wingnut diatribes on education, now that teachers have been declared enemy combatants, that means it’s about how education sucks and should be destroyed. Now, there could be a way to make that argument sound well… less stupid.

Buuuuuuut, the likelihood of such an argument coming from Kevin Williamson of “manly men produce manly sperm which creates more male homunculi in the designated female’s white static baby area” fame is about as strong as the Cubs winning a World Series.

But, hey, maybe I’m wrong. Just because he demonstrates a genetic knowledge stemming from the fourth century BC (just scroll down to Aristotle), doesn’t mean he won’t have something cogent to a-

Shorter (or the last port before Jungle):

  • If students benefitting from a 1:1 student:teacher ratio and a curriculum that can adjust to the pace of the student have advantages over students packed 30-50 to a classroom and forced to complete endless standard timed tests. And if the more liberal beneficiaries of this system exist and integrate relatively okay into adult society, then obviously kids yanked out of school to get a crash course in evangelical religious horseshit are the shocktroopers who will destroy the evil edifice of Big Education and its unconscionable belief that kids should be “educated” with so-called “facts”. Pah, who needs facts in Bible School or Liberty University, which incidentally are the only schools said conservative kids can qualify for with the state of their “better” “education”.

Or not.

There is exactly one authentically radical social movement of any real significance in the United States, and it is not Occupy, the Tea Party, or the Ron Paul faction.

Nope, none of these and certainly not any organization like the radical anti-choicers who have nearly succeeded in terrorizing a legal and necessary surgery practice out of real availability or maybe white supremacists, neo-nazis, militia groups that have successfully shot senators and blown up federal buildings. Certainly not Evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons and their continued attempts to take over the country and force it to align with their stated religious beliefs.

Yeah, why do I get the feeling that Kevin’s definition of “authentically” and “significance” are about as slippery and functionally meaningless as Todd Akin’s definition of “legitimate”?

Also way to ingratiate yourself with the mouth-breathers, Kev! Everyone loves being told that they don’t count unless they do what you… force your wife to do.

It is homeschoolers, who, by the simple act of instructing their children at home, pose an intellectual, moral, and political challenge to the government-monopoly schools, which are one of our most fundamental institutions and one of our most dysfunctional. Like all radical movements, homeschoolers drive the establishment bats.

Not really. It’s not like the evil teacher’s union when they meet up for their satanic meetings spend the whole time bitching about how the vast horde of homeschooled children is draining valuable money from their “education scam”. Doing so would take valuable time away from the aborted fetus barbeque and preventing charter schools from existing. Also, charter schools? Another on the list of not radical enough for Kevvy.

In the public imagination, homeschooling has a distinctly conservative and Evangelical odor about it, but it was not always so. The modern homeschooling movement really has its roots in 1960s countercultural tendencies; along with A Love Supreme, it may represent the only worthwhile cultural product of that era. The movement’s urtext is Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing, by A. S. Neill, which sold millions of copies in the 1960s and 1970s. Neill was the headmaster of an English school organized (to the extent that it was organized) around neo-Freudian psychotherapeutic notions and Marxian ideas about the nature of power relationships in society. He looked forward to the day when conventional religion would wither away — “Most of our religious practices are a sham,” he declared — and in general had about as little in common with what most people regard as the typical homeschooler as it is possible to have.

Here we begin Kevin’s shuffling of the cards for his patently obvious three card monte trick.

And here’s where I throw him a bone. Yeah, homeschooling doesn’t have to mean education-free religious brainwashing of children viewed as tools and objects by their parents and their Church. It doesn’t have to mean a kid receiving a decade+ of lies that ill support them for adult life in any way and severely limits their ability to have a real job that helps people or have any human empathy.

In fact, homeschooling can be really beneficial if done right. If a kid’s parents have the skills in education and the privileges of financial security to devote one of them full time to the education of their child, they have a bevy of advantages.

Every child flourishes ideally when there can be one teacher to every one student and the curriculum can shift and bend depending on the student’s pace, energy level patterns, interests, etc… And the universal downsides of homeschooling such as the diminished social education and interaction with kids from wildly different backgrounds and work habits or the melding of multiple authority figures into the parent can be mitigated by partner organizations.

I’ve taught a few groups of collected homeschoolers who’ve come to the museum in order to practice working in groups, learning social interaction, etc…

But just like in regular education, just because the best teacher with the engaging style, limitless empathy, and solid knowledge of their subject matter can be great doesn’t mean the teacher who’s only there because they’re the kid of the football coach can’t be a complete waste of space.

In short, if your parent/teacher hybrid is a moron who still thinks the sun revolves around the Earth, you’re still going to get a subpar education even if you have all those other advantages.

“People forget that some of the first homeschoolers were hippies,” says Bob Wiesner, a counselor at the Seton Home Study School, a Catholic educational apostolate reporting to the bishop of Arlington, Va. In one of history’s little ironies, today most of homeschooling’s bitterest enemies are to be found on the left. “We don’t have much of a problem from conservatives,” Wiesner says.

Really? Your conservative propaganda mill is rarely criticized by conservatives? Color me shocked!

“It’s the teachers’ unions, educational bureaucrats, and liberal professors.

Yes, they and their greedy hateful hands are doing… well, very little to get in your way other than insist that college admission standards, GED test subjects, and state standards of education meet a certain threshold to be considered satisfactory. Well, that and maybe some worried sounds about those children whose futures are placed in the hands of ignorant control-freaks who think books are just Satan’s footsoldiers. Because, you know, teachers are freaks who randomly care about shit like that.

College professors by and large don’t want students who can think for themselves. They want students they can indoctrinate, but that’s hard to do with homeschoolers — homeschoolers push back.”

Actual indoctrination organizations always throw around charges like this, saying that professors just can’t handle the kids’ truth bombs and are humbled by their home-grown brilliance. Cause the reality for these poor religiously-poisoned kids who come from that kind of home school environment is well…

You know what happens when said kids try and interact with the real world after they’ve memorized their list of “questions to stump their college professors” and they’ve decided to make their dramatic stand in class to rant about how evolution is a lie and the Earth is only 6000 years old?

They get smacked down hard. And not because they ask “hard questions” or because “college professors hate dissent”, but because once you start having to pay to go to schools, teachers officially don’t have to moddle-coddle ignoramuses who want to play Amateur Smarty-Pants.

If they’re lucky, the professor will leave them some dignity and let them walk out of the classroom with a “martyr” story to tell their Bible Group. If they’re not… well, professors are a bunch of underpaid, overworked incredibly intelligent people for the most part who have often spent a career dealing with all manner of “I iz smart” stupidity. If they’re unlucky, then that professor will grant the dumbass wannabe a thorough demonstration of why they are experts in their fields and the kid is just a social maladjust who has somehow managed to go 18 years without realizing that parents can lie to their children and maybe it really was a good idea to get some actual information in their education.

But I like how not even Kevin “Sperm are homunculi” Williamson pretends that the myth they sell these kids is what they’ll encounter. No pretense that professors are just looking to waste the first day of classes publicly debating with a student with no interest in actually learning the material and no regard for the kids who actually wanted to learn what reality looks like.

He relishes the story of a number of graduates of his program who attended a top-tier Catholic university and enrolled together in theology classes taught by the school’s most notorious liberals.

As we see here. Did you graduate from psychotic non-hippie homeschool? Excellent, you are fully qualified to choose from any bible college you want. Not a real college, not even a full seminary, but definitely someplace like the “college” recently vacated by Dinesh “religious rules are only for the proles” D’Souza.

Well, as long as they aren’t filled with some “notoriously liberal types” who try and fill your head with so-called “facts” about things that supposedly happen in “reality” if you were just to open your eyes and “look”. Fucking hippies who are totally awesome when we want to pretend to be a legitimate method of education.

They were of course more conversant with church orthodoxy than were many of their instructors.

Ah, that all important “church orthodoxy”. Because really that’s the only thing worth knowing. Of course, most of these conservative homeschoolers come from an Evangelical and Protestant background that has no official “church orthodoxy” for professors to fall afoul of. And Mormon and Catholic “church orthodoxies” pretty much sum up to “whatever Salt Lake City or the Vatican says it is on any given day”, so it’s not like those are really worth fuck all to any form of education focused on the long term.

Even to the “education” given at the Jesus-infused diploma mills.

“The professors hated them. But the kids had fun.

See aforementioned rant about how getting your ass intellectually kicked for being an ingratiating asshole with no respect for the teacher’s time or their fellow students’ time and money is not hate.

Also, I like the bizarre second line here. “But the kids had fun”. Sure, the education they or their parents paid hundreds to thousands of dollars for is being interrupted and wasted so Johnny No-wit can play Junior Philosopher in a vain attempt to prevent himself accidentally being educated, but hey, at least they were “entertained” by it. And after all, isn’t that why one goes to school (even a useless waste of money like Liberty University)? To just have fun*?

The president of that college at that time was trying to clean up the theology department, so when the professors would complain, he would call the students in and tell them to try to be polite — with a wink and a nod.”

Yeah, this shit is happening all over the place, not just in podunk shit “colleges”. And I don’t mean that bullshit that never happened about professors being so cowed by their awesome students’ education level they had to tattle to the dean rather than enforce some basic level classroom control.

Rather the stacking of the decks by wingnut presidents who see it as their sacred mission to “correct the liberal bias of universities” by filling their schools with so many anti-educational nutjobs they might as well call it a Snickers bar.

I’m not particularly a fan of the trend.

One of those liberal professors is Robin West of the Georgetown law school, who wrote a remarkably shallow and evidence-free jeremiad against homeschooling that was published to the journal’s discredit in Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly.

Oh hey, wingnuts are complaining about the scientific value of somebody’s academic research. Well, if the minds that regularly cheer stuff so terrible it’s made me act like Tom Hanks from Castaway, think it’s terrible then obviously it must be like an academic holocaust, an anti-Noble of “because I say so” argumentation and tables cribbed off the bar notes of homeless schizophrenics.

Well, let’s see this abomination.

Shorter Evil Satanist Article:

  • Hey, funny story, turns out when you massively deregulate and privatize education you can get some nasty side effects. Especially when some students’ educational futures are put in the hands of the type of moron who thinks that voting for Republicans is a good thing, and no one bothers to check up on them.

Well I think we can all see how she became persona non grata to the wingnuts. How dare she notice that privitization and deregulation produce anything other than infinite cake and rainbows!

And wow, people. You don’t know how badly I needed something like this. Most “academic” “papers” cited by wingnuts are the sort of thing they use to induce cancer growth in test mice. I’m pretty sure I’ve left brain cells back in the depths of some of those rambling, just-so rationalizations and obvious bullshittery.

So to read some actual incisive analysis, well-written, well-researched, carefully phrased, and beautifully argued? Oh wow. It’s like a first sip of water after a week stranded in the desert.

Let me send you some glorious morsels:

“They do so, furthermore, with little or no oversight from public school officials, who in some states need not even be notified of the parents’ intent to homeschool… In other words, in much of the country, if you want to keep you kids home from school, you can. If you want to teach them from nothing but the Bible, you can. If they want to skateboard all day, and you choose to let them, you can.”

And how about this?

“Special needs kids, vulnerable or sensitive children, parents of children who are for very good reason fearful of bullies, parents of children who rightly or wrongly are repelled by the sexual and misogynistic propaganda that proliferates in middle and high school culture, parents of kids who are preternaturally curious and gifted kids themselves, children of the over-educated and under-employed suburban mothers who simply would prefer to do this work themselves than delegate it to the state, all of these children and parents would not be hurt, and would likely be helped, by reasonable state regulation.”

Utterly delicious**! If you have a spare hour, please do either click over or google the article “The Harms of Homeschooling” by Robin L. West in the Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly. It’s great reading, very educational, and actually written in a more accessible style than some academic papers can be.

Well enough nerding out, let’s get back to Kevin’s obviously cogent, rational, and altogether accurate rebuttal to West’s Satanist drivel.

More a work of imagination than one of scholarship, the article ignores the wealth of data suggesting that homeschooling is a largely upper-income and suburban phenomenon

Yeah, I’m just going to let Robin answer some of these for me.

“Finally, the economic harms. The average homeschooling family may have a higher income than the average non-homeschooler as was recently reported by USA Today. The radically fundamentalist ‘movement’ family, however is considerably poorer than the population, and it is the participants in these movements– the so-called ‘patriarchy movement’ and its ‘quiverfull’ branch and related groups– that are the hardcore of the homeschooling movement Their lack of job skills, passed from one generation to the next, depresses the community’s overall economic health and their state’s tax base.”

and that homeschooled students typically outperform their public-school peers.

Robin?

“Second, although I will be criticizing the right to completely deregulated homeschooling, I do not mean to deny for a moment that homeschooling is often— maybe usually– successful, when done responsibly. Passionately involved and loving parents, whether religious or not, can often better educate their children in small tutorials at home, than can cash-strapped, under-motivated, inadequately-supported, and overwhelmed public school teachers with too many students in their classrooms. Results bear this out, as homeschool advocates repeatedly point out (and as critics virtually never deny): the homeschooled children who are tested, or who take college boards, whether or not religious, perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not, do very well on standardized tests, and on the average, they do better than their public school counterparts (though it must be noted that the parents and children who voluntarily subject themselves to testing are the self-selected educational elite of the homeschooling movement).”

West offers a caricature of homeschooling families far removed from reality: “The husbands and wives in these families feel themselves to be under a religious compulsion to have large families, a homebound and submissive wife and mother who is responsible for the schooling of the children, and only one breadwinner. These families are not living in romantic, rural, self-sufficient farmhouses; they are in trailer parks, 1,000-square-foot homes, houses owned by relatives, and some, on tarps in fields or parking lots. Their lack of job skills, passed from one generation to the next, depresses the community’s overall economic health and their state’s tax base.”

Yeah, as you may have noticed from that ending sentence, that would be filling in the gap of my … in the Robin quote two above. As you’ll also notice, the context for this vicious attack is hardly as Kevin characterizes it (I know! Shocking, right?), an attack on all homeschooling, but rather a commentary about the specific sub-community of quiverfull patriarchy movement Fundamentalists and their particular quirks about education and the role and humanity of their families.

But hey, reading comprehension is for fags and hippies, right?

Education scholar Brian D. Ray

Brian D. Ray is the head of the National Home Education Research Institute, which is supposedly devoted to studying homeschooling in depth and indeed does publish a journal covering the subject.

Of course, said journal is less of a research journal and more a propaganda mill for lobbying Congress on the wonderfulness of homeschooling. The “journal” only publishes around 2 articles each issue, with one of the articles always written by Dr. Ray himself and the other usually coming from a close personal friend.

Now this in itself might not be completely damning until we note its history of just making up research to be wildly disseminated among the wingnuts and the fact that he has a vested interest in keeping the homeschool movement in its problematic status quo as he makes a fine mint off various speaking tours and books specifically targeting the Christian homeschool market.

Well, that and being a complete disingenuous hack with a fake “research institute” hurts his credibility just slightly.

who specializes in homeschooling, found that West’s claims “basically have no foundation in research evidence,” and pointed out to the contrary that “repeated studies by many researchers and data provided by United States state departments of education show that home-educated students consistently score, on average, well above the public school average on standardized academic achievement tests. To date, no research has found homeschool students to be doing worse, on average, than their counterparts in state-run schools. Multiple studies by various researchers have found the home educated to be doing well in terms of their social, emotional, and psychological development.”

As demonstrated here, quite nicely. Unless Brian D. Ray managed to get all the way to a PhD without learning 2nd grade reading comprehension, I think we can safely punt him into the category of faux-academic lie-smiths I wouldn’t even bother to piss on if they were on fire.

Also, it’s worth noting the weasel words at the end. Yes, multiple studies (published in your hack journal), by various researchers (who all share your name and are you) support your bullcrap.

And yeah, let’s just throw on another Robin quote just to put the boot in a little:

“First, children who are homeschooled with no state regulation are at greater risk for unreported and unnoticed physical abuse, when they are completely isolated in homes. As the trial judge in In re Rachel noted, “95% of referrals for child abuse come from public school teachers or officials.” Without the window provided by either public or private schooling, a family’s privacy and sometimes its isolation will shield it from officials with a duty to report evidence of abuse.”

The problem is not educational outcomes: Students in the Seton program tend to score on average in the 80th percentile on standardized tests.

Already covered. So anything to add, Robin?

“The educational harm is the most immediate, direct risk of unregulated homeschooling. It is also the only one in this litany of possible risks adamantly denied by homeschooling advocates. There is indeed no credible evidence that homeschoolers as a group do worse on standardized tests, but contrary to their claims, there is also no credible evidence that they do better. There is no credible evidence of accomplishment at all. Because of the non-existence of testing requirements in much of the country– itself an important political victory of the homeschooling movement– the studies suggesting as much suffer from severe selection bias: the elite of the homeschool world– those parents who voluntarily submit their children for testing– is tested against the total public school population.”

The problem is that progressives operate as though the state owned children as joint property.

Oh HAI, IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION, I was wondering where you were hiding. Yes, truly it is the liberals who view their children as property.

Heh, what I like most is that Kevin’s cognitive dissonance actually flared visibly when he tried to rationalize that with reality. It’s like, oh wait, they so don’t… uh, well, they view it as uh… double property or like shared property between parents and the state instead of them being properly the parent’s property and FUCK am I bad at this. Oh well, I’ll just post something and no one will notice. It’s not like National Review readers really care what we throw out there as long as it seems to reinforce their desperate fictions of how the world works.

Dana Goldstein, writing in Slate, urged her fellow progressives to resist the temptation to homeschool, arguing that the practice is “fundamentally illiberal” and asking incredulously: “Could such a go-it-alone ideology ever be truly progressive?” She went on to argue that the children of high-achieving parents amount to public goods because of peer effects — poor students do better when mixed with better-off peers — meaning that “when college-educated parents pull their kids out of public schools, whether for private school or homeschooling, they make it harder for less-advantaged children to thrive.” She does not extend that analysis to its logical conclusion: that conscientious, educated liberals should enroll their children in the very worst public schools they can find in order to maximize the public good.

Wow, not even halfway down the page and you already need to bail on Robin West and bring in an “even the liberal” Slate writer to be your designated boogeyman***.

That’s weak sauce even for you.

The numbers are against them, but West, Goldstein, and like-minded critics still bristle with hostility at homeschooling.

Or mildly criticize the lack of regulation in homeschooling which can lead to grim social, educational, and political problems in such a way that leads you to incoherent rage.

But hell, when has coughing politely and daring to note the shape of the world in the presence of a FREEDOM AMERICAN ever been anything other than the true definition of a hate crime?

There are three related reasons for that.

Oh goody, we’re going to get “men produce homunculi” levels of insight again. Welp, let me just set up the IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION meter up so we can see how-

The first is that progressives by their nature do not trust people as individuals

And it’s already a smoking crater. Well done!

and feel that, whether we are applying for a credit card or popping into 7-Eleven for a soft drink, Americans require state-appointed overseers.

Yeah, we don’t need no stinking regulators or oversight. Like that factory in Georgia that turned out to be producing the peanuts for nearly every peanut butter brand sold in America? It just decided for its self how much regulation it needed and trusted the government to keep its meddling claws out of their individual freedom.

And thanks to those individually-minded pioneers, I got to enjoy a week’s vacation from work I wouldn’t normally have had and a free anatomy lesson into the exact inner workings of my intestines and bowels.

I doubt I would have been that illuminated by some namby-pamby “overseer”-demanded safety regulation or standard.

If homeschooling weren’t already legal — a happy consequence of the longstanding patchwork of exemptions in state-level mandatory-education statutes — it is highly unlikely that most state legislatures would vote to legalize it.

Robin?

“Specifically, the parents and their advocacy groups argued that religious parents had a free exercise right, grounded in the First Amendment, to educate their children as they see fit, in private, at home, in accordance with their religious beliefs, and with no oversight by or even interaction with state authorities. In the face of this adamantly asserted constitutional right, and strapped for cash in any event, the states ceded responsibility for what has previously been a core state function– the education of children– to whatever parents claimed that they preferred to educate their children themselves.”

Thank you.

Nine-tenths of American children attend government schools, and most of the remaining tenth attend government-approved private schools.

Apparently religious private and charter schools are now also government-run public education. I guess, this is how Mona Charen could blame union-thug-teachers for the problems she faced with the private religious school she sent her kids to.

The political class wants as many of that remaining tenth in government schools as possible; teachers’ unions have money on the line, and ideologues do not want any young skull beyond their curricular reach. A political class that does not trust people with a Big Gulp is not going to trust them with the minds of children.

Yes, truly it is the greedy maw of our under-funded over-worked, under-staffed, over-stuffed public school system who is greedily exploiting a broken system to enrich themselves and who are worried about their inaccurate ideology being exposed to the harsh light of reality.

Also, what is with glibertarians and their FREEDOM cries over fucking snack food?

Yeah, douchebags, fight for the right for snack foods to be unregulated and for there to be no real information given on them. Truly that is a grave and important issue and doesn’t at all make you look like over-privileged spoiled babies demanding the right to catapult yourselves to an early grave without suffering the inconvenience of being reminded that you are doing so.

While West would like to criminalize homeschooling — she writes wistfully of the days when “parents who did so were criminals”

Not to interrupt the sterling bit of accuracy you’ve accomplished so far, but actually she didn’t “write wistfully” but merely noted that relatively recently homeschooling was in fact outlawed before the 1980s when public school was considered mandatory.

She also noted:

“For a hundred and fifty years, parents of special needs children, parents in isolated parts of the country who live far from any public schoolhouse, as well as a smattering of parents of circus performers, professional athletes, and child stage actors have homeschooled their children, and exemptions in the various states’ compulsory attendance laws have explicitly allowed them to do so.”

But given that the context just “gets in the way” I can see why you have yet to include a direct link to her article and have only described it in the most vague terms possible.

Man, reality’s liberal bias is a bitch, ain’t it?

— others have sought to regulate it out of existence, for instance by declaring homeschoolers’ residences to be public schools and requiring them to meet attendant planning and zoning standards, by installing such things as fire-safety systems, parking facilities, and emergency exits. “The good news is, there are very few people with authority and power who want to end homeschooling,” says Jeremiah Lorrig of the National Home School Legal Defense Association. “They’ve given up trying to outlaw it — and now are trying to control it.”

Blah blah paranoid wingnuttery, they are taking our guns away, blah.

Seriously though, all the wingers living in perpetual fear that their comfortable middle class bland lives are suddenly going to be destroyed by the liberal hordes just makes me want to have it happen, once, for a joke, just to see the looks on their faces.

Sadly for the rest of us, we’re too busy dealing with real problems, real oppressions, and real people who hate us and want us to be miserable because of who we are, to bother with such extensive LARPing.

The second reason for this hostility is that while there is a growing number of secular, progressive, organic-quinoa-consuming homeschool families, there remains a significant conservative and Christian component. The reasons for progressive hostility to conservative Christians are many and complex, but one of them is that, like the homeschool, the church is something outside of government control, a forum that the triple constitutional protections of religion, free speech, and association place beyond the range of Leviathan’s leash. Progressives are by their nature monopolists, and the churches constitute real competing centers of power in society.

Yes, the only reason we’d ever have to criticize Chruch-based education or political involvement is because it’s just too darn free of government meddling. And we’re just so very monopolistic in our thinking what with our socialist… FUCK, why do I suck so bad on simple IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION? It’s “no, you see, liberals are the real X”, that’s it. So why do I keep fucking it up and looking like a complete tosser?

Oh right, I was primarily educated by those Churches that liberals hate for no good reason.

Oh and by the by, Robin did you have anything to add?

“Fourth, there are political harms. Fundamentalist adults who were homeschooled over the last thirty years are not politically disengaged, far from it… They mobilize readily. The ‘army’ in which adult homeschooled citizens are soldiers has enormous clout: homeschoolers were called ‘Bush’s Army’ in 2000 and 2004 for good reason. Their capacity for political action is palpable and admirable, although doubly constrained: it is triggered by a call for action by church leaders, and in substance, it is limited to political action the aim of which is to undermine, limit, or destroy state functions that interfere with family and parental rights… They are as effective as they are, and as successful as they are, because they engage in politics in the same way that soldiers participate in combat. They don’t question authority, and they can’t go AWOL. With little education, few if any job skills, and scant resources, their power either to influence the lines of authority within their own sphere, or to leave that sphere, is virtually nil.”

Did I mention I love her article, because I really really do.

A third reason is that the majority of homeschool teachers are mothers. A traditional two-parent family with one full-time breadwinner and one stay-at-home parent is practically built into the model. Goldstein scoffs at that as the “dated presumption that children hail from two-parent families, in which at least one parent can afford (and wants) to take significant time away from paid work,” but of course the model is neither dated nor restricted to religiously conservative red-staters: Liberal enclaves such as Brooklyn and Seattle are full of stay-at-home moms. (Brooklyn, in fact, is a hotbed of crunchy homeschooling.)

The significance of this is… what?

I mean, yeah, I can see all sorts of significances. Like how women are expected to do high-intensity often-free work that is often undervalued or unappreciated in our society. And especially in “traditional”, i.e. bitterly patriarchal, households, said women are even expected to acquire skills that would earn her a healthy living and then use them solely for the free use of their family. Skills in cooking, cleaning, sewing, art design, and with homeschooling, all the educational duties of every K-12 teacher. All for an annual salary of 0 dollars and using up all her time from waking up to going to bed.

But I don’t see how this is a point in Williamson’s favor.

Hey, everybody, we’re exploiting the fuck out of the free labor of women in our communities! Preventing them from having the time to pursue their own job and thus ever being anything less than wholly reliant on the “man of the house” who provides the all-important paycheck and is therefore the only one who gets respect and is treated like a full human being. Isn’t conservative homeschooling awesome?

But hey, what conservative War on Women, right?

Homeschooling families pay their taxes to support local public schools, like any other family — which is to say, begrudgingly in many cases — and the movement does not seek the abolition of local government-education monopolies. (It should.) Homeschooling families simply choose not to participate in the system — or, if they do, to participate in it on their own terms.

And that is a step too far for the Hobbesian progressives, who view politics as a constant contest between the State and the State of Nature, as though the entire world were on a sliding scale between Sweden and Somalia. Homeschoolers may have many different and incompatible political beliefs, but they all implicitly share an opinion about the bureaucrats: They don’t need them — not always, not as much as the bureaucrats think. That’s what makes them radical and, to those with a certain view of the world, terrifying.

Yes, now that we’ve borrowed the fig leaf of respectability given to us by liberal, competent homeschooling in order to try and protect our creepy cult like belief that we own our children and wives like they were products we bought in a store, let’s now also speak on their behalf and claim that what every homeschooler on the planet wants is zero regulation into our creepy abuse mills.

You know, because those liberal, competent homeschooling parents love nothing more than being tied directly to offensively terribly conservative religious brainwashing and having everyone assume that is what they are doing to their children.

Cause if our bullshit was regulated we couldn’t pull a Huck Finn’s dad and demand our kid pull out of school at the exact moment he starts becoming more educated and aware of reality than us.

So… kindergarten.


‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. I’m such a fucking academics nerd. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™


*Okay yes, to many people. And yes, college environments and that first taste of freedom, even in oppressive religious hellholes like Bible Colleges are an important place for young men and women to explore and discover who they are in separation from their parents. And yes, the exploration of fun in all its incarnations (oh yes, indeedy) is a crucial part of that for many adolescents. But still, if you only want to get drunk and fuck, there are bars way cheaper than any 4-year college.

** Okay, here’s some more choice bits from the “meat” of the article:

“Second, there’s a public health risk. Children who attend public schools are required to have immunizations… Thus, deregulated homeschooling means that homeschooled children are basically exempted from immunization requirements. They are more susceptible to the diseases against which immunization provides some protection.”

“Third, public and private schools provide for many children, I suspect, although I have yet to see studies of this, a safe haven in which they are both regarded and respected independently and individually. Family love is intense, and we need it to survive and thrive. It is also deeply contingent on the existence and nature of family ties”

“Again, in unregulated states, parents need not teach their children a thing, if they so desire. Religious parents can teach nothing but the Bible, and nothing but a literal interpretation of that, and secular anti-schooling parents can allow their children to skateboard, dance, or play video games to their hearts’ content, free of any dull training in reading and arithmetic. Whether homeschooled children receive an education comparable to that provided in public schools is almost entirely a matter of parental discretion… Also sacrificed is their exposure to diverse ideas, cultures, and ways of being. Again, this is not incidental; it is the fully intended result of the deregulation movement. The children of the most devout fundamentalists are being intentionally shielded from those parts of a public school curriculum that have this broadening potential.”

Have I mentioned how I love this article? Because I fucking love this article!

*** To be fair, this “even the liberal” Slate article is a pretty dumb article on its own merits. It mixes decent awareness of reality and real issues with immense privilege fails and less of a grasp on the issues of education than she thought she had. Needless to say, her comment thread ripped her apart a bit for it. I don’t need to hold my breath on whether Kevin got a similar flaming for this half-effort.

 

Comments: 442

 
 
 

Ain’t that fancy book-lernin’ just for elitists anyhow?

 
 

Hey! I was home-schooled by Eva Braun for most of third & sixth grade & all of fourth & fifth. Look how I turned out!

No Bible education in that, however.

 
 

Homeschooling families pay their taxes to support local public schools, like any other family — which is to say, begrudgingly in many cases — and the movement does not seek the abolition of local government-education monopolies.

To point out what should be shockingly obvious – the fact that you have other choices means it’s not a monopoly by definition.

But hey, you were probably homeschooled, so I shouldn’t expect you to know the definition of monopoly.

 
 

The fact is, liberal bias in the media comes from government union feeding schools that are failing, we need more religions education nd home schooling that is to balance out the branewashing by the liberals, which has taken over it all. If God were back in goverment where He bleongs this ould not be a problem, voting for Romney agains the Islamist Socialest would help.

 
 

Gary Ruppert said, the Islamist Socialest feeding the balance of home schooling by Romney, where He bleongs. If schools are agains from branewashing liberals [a]nd goverment, which has taken over where God comes, bias in the media [w]ould not be a problem. If voting for religions were back, that is, I would help this. That is all.

Well, maybe the words were in a different order; but, it’s Sunday. We get creative.

BTW; Jeffraham Prestonian from before: Where do we go, now?

We’re here because, we’re here, because, we’re here because we’re here.

 
 

Why is this guy wetting his pants again? Home-schooling is legal and is under no serious political threat, anywhere in the country. There’s plenty of textbooks and other curricular help out there—yes, from a Christian perspective too—to help anyone do it right who really wants to. Does he think no standards should exist at all?

 
 

Does he think no standards should exist at all?

Yes.
SATSQ

 
 

The problem is that progressives operate as though the state owned children as joint property.

Wow, is that telling. The problem, as he sees it, is not that children are viewed as property, the problem is that government thinks it has any say in how parents treat their property, as if the little owned object has its own rights or interests worth protecting.

 
 

One thing that maybe plays into the equation is that with some families with closely-spaced kids, home schooling may almost be in some ways easier. My erstwhile neighbors across the hall home-schooled the four little boys they had in six years. When I think of the effort the mother would have put into getting them dressed, fed and out to the bus stop on time, then getting them home, helping them with their homework and school projects, etc., worrying all the time whether they got stuck with a shit teacher*, I can’t help thinking she maybe saved herself a lot of grief with home schooling.

*Oh yes, it happens. My absolute all-time worst teacher ever—and I mean college and everything—was my first grade teacher. Not coincidentally, that was my last year of public school.

 
 

The fact is, home schooling and the bible is in the consitution, socialism and liebrals arent

 
 

You know, there’s really no reason why homeschooling should be a political issue, and despite the fearmongering from some people it’s really not. The people predicting the banning of homeschooling have about the same credibility as the guys claiming that the Fairness Doctrine is coming back.

In my experience, it’s not liberals who keep trying to turn homeschooling into a partisan issues. Hell, I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard it mentioned by anyone left of center – not that I pay that much attention, but I do keep an eye on educational issues. I feel like this is an artifact from the 80’s, when evangelism went from a religious movement to a political one. Two things happened: Evangelicals took on a lot of partisan political beliefs that they hadn’t really held before, and a lot of their non-political beliefs became partisan tools. You can prove this by looking at educational trends that are popular among leftists, such as unschooling. Your New-Age Retro Hippies have never even tried to turn these issues into partisan clubs.

I can’t say that liberals never make hay out of non-political issues, but it’s mostly conservatives, no doubt.

 
 

It’s not homeschooling we need to worry about, it’s the charter schools bull shit.

Privatize the profits, socialize the costs. That’s always the goal of the plutocrats who run our country. And that’s what charter schools are all about.
~

 
 

The “D” stands for “Douche.”

 
 

College professors by and large don’t want students who can think for themselves.
This is very early in Kev’s spewl and sort of blows his arse out of the water. Universities spend all of their fucking time trying to get kids to think for themselves. That is the main reason they exist. That’s why they get them to read stuff and learn stuff. SO THAT THEY KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT!
I imagine that good home schoolers do that too.

 
 

And I agree that they will get smacked down when they provide fererences such as “My dad says” and “Elder Romney says”.
Good

 
 

Ferences? You want ferences? I’ll get you some ferences, I’ve got it written down somewhere

 
 

The first is that progressives by their nature do not trust people as individuals

I literally have no idea what this means.

 
 

I literally have no idea what this means.

As a liberal, I don’t believe you.

 
 

College professors Churches by and large don’t want students people who can think for themselves.

Fixed, for great justice!

 
 

As a graduate of NYC public schools and the son of two graduates of NYC public schools and NYC public higher education (CUNY), let me state right here how much I hate the phrase “government schools.” It signifies ‘asshole speaking” to me even more strongly than does hearing Ayn Rand quoted.

Shorter me: Every time I hear the words “government schools” I reach for my metaphoric gun.

 
 

The first is that progressives by their nature do not trust people as individuals

Oxymoronic statement. Progressivism is unnatural, as any conservative knows.

 
Seriously, NOT the Doughy Pantload
 

Just curious. I wonder how many hours Mr. Williamson has spent inside the walls of a public school over the last year or two?

Just guessing. I bet it’s less than the amount of time he has spent building nuclear colliders.

 
 

BTW, I’ve seen Master D. on TV. Hes every bit as pompous and douchey as you’d expect him to be. Maybe more. Just a repulsive creature.

 
 

I can’t think of a better school from which to drop out than a bible school.

 
 

has its roots in 1960s countercultural tendencies; along with A Love Supreme, it may represent the only worthwhile cultural product of that era.

Really? No cultural products of the 60s were worthwhile besides those two? No music like Dylan or The Beatles? No movies like Lawrence of Arabia or The Apartment? No plays like The Night of the Iguana or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? No television shows like The Twilight Zone or The Prisoner? No books like Slaughterhouse-Five or To Kill a Mockingbird? Not even any of the awesome fucking fashion? Nothing?

How about the Civil Rights movement? I guess that wasn’t worthwhile either…

Oh wait, I forgot who I was talking to.

 
 

A.K. was going to send me his ferences, but I guess he forgot.
~

 
 

I don’t remember
I don’t recall
I’ve got no ferences
No ferences at all

 
Ill-Tempered Clavier
 

Oh, Gary…if only spelling and grammar were in the Constitution

 
Ill-Tempered Clavier
 

@ kiwi…HAHAHAHAH! Shock that monkey!

 
 

“The modern homeschooling movement really has its roots in 1960s countercultural tendencies; along with [John Coltrane’s album] A Love Supreme, it may represent the only worthwhile cultural product of that era.”–Williamson

Congratulations, Kevin W., you have found a glibly stupid way to give kudos to one of my all-time favorite recordings. Restricting myself to music and culture:

It’s ignorant or dishonest to set A Love Supreme apart like this, as a worthwhile anomaly in a sea of countercultural crap … I bet that Coltrane would have appreciated this cover of “Mars” from his 1967 album Interstellar Space. It’s OK to like A Love Supreme but not Interstellar Space, but what can we honestly say about the cultural and personal changes that produced them both?

Coltrane held views that would horrify the average American conservative, let alone evangelical home-schooler. He was a nice, sweet fellow who was utterly consumed by impulses that they devote their lives to denying. The mystical oneness of all things, and all faiths. The self-annihilating moment of artistic/spiritual transcendence. Complete earnestness and intensity of purpose to the exclusion of material considerations.

Nothing that our conservatives hold dear survives in the still heart of the maelstrom Coltrane seeks to embody. I suppose if Kevin Williamson can set himself aside for awhile, he can listen as well as I can, but why would he? Coltrane made it clear enough that he was trying to “Break on Through to the Other Side.”

This whole movie is worth watching, but you could start at 34:50 for a summary of his 1960s direction and influence (including terrific use of a Ravi Shankar clip and fine commentary by Lamont Young). Or you could proceed to 48:00 for a juxtaposition of a speaking-in-tongues/ecstatic trance clip with Coltrane’s late-era style. To my ears, sublime.

 
 

ROBIN WEST IS DENTISTRY!

tmtrbf;rtfqos (too much to read before work; read teh first quarter or so)

LOL, I smecked because as a callow youth I gave correspondance a shot & completely chumped out!

Yep … there’s an elephant (hehehe) in the room when homeschooling has gone from being synonymous for “gifted” to synonymous for “meat-based workplace hazard.”

 
 

nearly every child who is homeschooled in our school district is a catholic…what do you suppose that’s all about?

 
 

nearly every child who is homeschooled in our school district is a catholic…what do you suppose that’s all about?

Naughty-schoolgirl webcam pr0n.

 
 

You can namecheck great jazz recordings all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that the biggest driver of alternatives to public schools in the 1960s was parents who didn’t want their lily-white children in the same classroom with those tacky Negroes.

 
Just Alison, who can't be buggered thinking of something clever to write
 

the church is something outside of government control, a forum that the triple constitutional protections of religion, free speech, and association place beyond the range of Leviathan’s leash.

Get thee behind me, Government Satan!

Progressives are by their nature monopolists

Argle, what?

and the movement does not seek the abolition of local government-education monopolies. (It should.)

Urp – it should? Why? Monopolies? I do not think that word means what he thinks it means.

as though the entire world were on a sliding scale between Sweden and Somalia

You mean it isn’t?

If God were back in goverment where He bleongs this ould not be a problem

Hey, I’m not gonna vote for a dude who’s been buggering around elsewhere for the last 3 millennia. Assuming the fundies would let atheist forrin’ women vote anyway.

The fact is, home schooling and the bible is in the consitution, socialism and liebrals arent

Other things that aren’t in the cons’tushun:
– advertising;
– cars;
– fairy cakes;
– lard.

Just saying.

 
 

The reasons for progressive hostility to conservative Christians are many and complex, but one of them is that, like the homeschool, the church is something outside of government control, a forum that the triple constitutional protections of religion, free speech, and association place beyond the range of Leviathan’s leash.

Those conservative Christians just sit there doing nothing at all and minding their own business and it really BURNS ME UP. Why can’t the CIA talk through THEIR fillings?

 
 

@ ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©: “Privatize the profits, socialize the costs. That’s always the goal of the plutocrats who run our country. And that’s what charter schools are all about.”

If you mean the corporation-run schools, you’re absolutely right. But that’s still only one subset of charter schools. My daughter has attended Oakland School for the Arts since middle school, which is by legal definition a charter school. It is not run by an outside corporation, though they do get grants from various philanthropies including a few corporate ones. (The grants go to performance and artistic infrastructure, not academics). But those donors have no influence on curriculum, which is based on the model of the High School of the Performing and Visual Arts in NYC. And being an art academy in the flaming liberal East Bay, it’s pretty progressive by any standards. Still, the students take all the goddamn STAR tests that No-Child-Left-Unscrewedover demands, and do quite well. The teachers are fantastic, the academics are way above average (my daughter is taking four AP courses in 12th grade), the parents are committed and active but *work with* the teachers. And the kids love the place. Yes, admission is selective, but not based on academics, rather on auditions and portfolios. The ethnic mix is essentially identical to Oakland as a whole. Bullying is almost non-existent due to good staff intervention and, well, everybody there is a smarty-pants artsy fag-nerd anyway.

I bring all this up because the term “charter school” has been nominalized into meaning “corporate run”. Like the “crunchy liberal” homeschoolers, who resent being lumped in with knuckle-dragging, quiverfull fundies, I cringe when “charter school” is used that way. Let’s say “corporate charter school” when that’s what we’re actually talking about.

 
 

I bring all this up because the term “charter school” has been nominalized into meaning “corporate run”. Like the “crunchy liberal” homeschoolers, who resent being lumped in with knuckle-dragging, quiverfull fundies, I cringe when “charter school” is used that way. Let’s say “corporate charter school” when that’s what we’re actually talking about.

Fair enough and well said, but I suspect that the bad elements in the charter school movement are well-prepared to expand into the territories that publics, and laudable charters and privates, are currently occupying.

It seems to me that what works in education is not so great a mystery, but neither is it as profitable as other routes, and what works is not effective if the true goal is indoctrination along narrow lines.

I wish your daughter’s school continuing success, and I’m genuinely happy for you. If we accept that you’re in the neighborhood of some good ideas, the question is how they’ll win out for all of the nation’s kids … definitely not through “school choice” as it’s taking shape …

I was a poor kid who benefited from imperfect public schools. Late in life my mom is very keen on the wonderful charters and private schools her grandchildren are attending. She seems to have forgotten the bad old days, but I haven’t. I’d be illiterate and innumerate if not for the type of schools we’re busy dismantling in favor of poorly-documented experiments for the possible benefit of a few. All in all I think it’d be better to incorporate what we know into a well-funded and managed public system with strong federal oversight.

 
 

First they came for the insufficiently conservative theology professors…

Why am I picturing these “brilliant” home schoolers like this? Oh, yeah, because they’re all white!

 
 

Linkfail?

Or something more…………….sinister??

 
 

The reasons for progressive hostility to conservative Christians are many and complex

Couldn’t possibly include the history of vociferous support for slavery, racism, sexism, homophobia and general stupidity.

 
 

Why am I picturing these “brilliant” home schoolers like this?
Probably because you have not watched ‘Lisztomania’ sufficiently often.

 
 

The first is that progressives by their nature do not trust people as individuals

Noooooooooo. It’s because we can’t control them. Or something.

 
 

I want this election to be over with. Can you all wake me in two weeks?

Btw, JP, I talked to you in da last thread.

 
 

..man, I wish I was homeschooled – so I had an excuse for how I’ve failed to capitalize on my education in any way whatsoever.

 
 

Education is one of those funny areas where conservatoids and normal people seem to agree (if you drink a lot and squint your eyes tightly)–but whereas normal people are appalled at the deterioration of public education into a ineffective confusion of bureaucracy and mismanagement due to decades of budget cuts, standardized testing, politicized curricula, “privatizing” school systems, and relegating professional educators to the lowest rung on the social ladder, and so want to fix the system for the good of society and future generations of humanity, conservatoids of all stripes are frustrated that those FUCKING TEACHERS KEEP TRYING TO EDUCATE– despite all the hard work conservatives have done to make things the way they are.

 
 

Joe Max and CRA, have you read this?

Close all private schools.

Admittedly, a most radical step that is politically unfeasible. But hear me out on this one! This step will force all students (the very rich, the very poor, the smart, the average, the disabled, the at-risk, and everyone in between) into public schools, creating overwhelming pressure to fix them at last. Imagine CEOs, for example, in New York City, Silicon Valley, Detroit, and Houston and Senators, Representatives, and Presidents—all sending their children to public school! Parents, no longer able to vote with their feet and pull their own children out of the publics, will push for radical reform. Only in that way, schools will matter for everyone — not just for other people’s children.

~

 
 

ITTDGY –

Won’t work. It will just segregate the public schools by class even worse than they are now.

 
 

Social class, of course.

 
 

Sounds good to me, thudner.

 
 

I don’t think she’s saying we should do this, she’s saying if everybody’s kids had to go to the same school, that school would be fixed damned quick.

She’s highlighting what the problem is: the people with the ability to get their kids away do so, and then it’s to hell with the kids left behind and their schools.

I.e., what happened in the big cities during the white flight to the suburbs in the latter part of the last century.
~

 
 

Reforming our education system (which, admittedly, was probably designed more as an indoctrination system than as a system to promote human potential), requires a shift in the entire foundation of what Americans are all about, so it ain’t gonna happen.

For one small example of the fucked-up, upside-down way we view the universe, let’s look at the teach profession.

The most crucial, demanding, and delicate stages of education begin in early childhood. An educator at this time in a person’s life needs to be able to handle nearly all subject matters, as well as have a solid understanding of human development. Early Childhood Educators need to be surrogate parents, social guides, and databases of knowledge in the widest range of subject areas. They need to understand not just facts, but fully grok underlying principles so as to adapt to each child’s learning needs. And the responsibility is unbelievable–children who don’t get a solid foundation in HOW TO FUCKING THINK, at the critical stages of development, are unlikely to pick it up later in life (as evidenced by the army of dittoheads plaguing us today). Early Childhood Educators have enormous demands of professionalism in order to function properly, and must be fast-thinking, flexible, creative, and confident every single day.

And yet, they are mostly treated as baby-sitters–bad pay, no respect, little job security, etc.

At the other end, we treat college professors as esteemed professionals and members of society–much better pay, job security, and high social status.

And yet, what the fuck are professors expected to do for all this? Merely “profess” the information they’ve crammed into their heads. They have no responsibility to ensure their students learn anything (or even come to class); they don’t have to teach thinking; they don’t have to give a shit about the development of the student–all they are required to do is show up for class and recite facts for an hour or two (and maybe review the papers their grad assistant graded).

I’m not knocking the profession of higher learning, per se. I know that there are well-meaning, and even excellent, college educators. But let’s face it, by the time people get to college, the damage is done. College educators are only rewarded for running the gauntlet, not for doing anything special.

My point is that education at the later stages isn’t very demanding compared with the responsibilities at the critical beginning of the process, yet as a society, our valuation of educators is inverse to the actual value they provide to society. The most professional and competent educators are needed at the beginning, with gradual lessening of responsibility and skills needed as the child develops into an adult, and yet the reward system is exactly opposite.

Giving humans a solid foundation is what gives society a solid foundation. Cramming facts in your head can come later (and is much easier with people who have been taught to think).

Until we can get our priorities straight we’ll continue to have a terrible system that only benefits those who have the means to opt-out (or are lucky enough to have parents and teachers who manage despite the challenges). And I don’t think we will get our priorities straight, because I don’t believe it is an accident things are the way they are. The Masters of the Universe are the only “real” people, and they seem to get what they need. The rest of us only get enough conditioning to press the buttons and pull the levers at the factories (or these days ring up the credit card machine).

 
 

I don’t think she’s saying we should do this, she’s saying if everybody’s kids had to go to the same school, that school would be fixed damned quick.

This is the same logic that people use to promote military draft–if everybody had to serve, no exceptions other than legitimate medical reasons, then maybe we’d consider warfare to be a last resort, rather than a diplomatic tool.

In both cases, the argument falls apart when you consider that humans are involved.

 
 

I don’t agree that either argument falls apart.
~

 
 

Yeah, me neither. I absolutely think a draft would prevent people from being so gung-ho about war.

 
 

After Vietnam they changed the structure of the armed forces so that we wouldn’t be able to go to war without activating the National Guard.

The idea was to make it more difficult to go to war – unfortunately this doesn’t seem to have worked.

 
 

Sorry, they are excellent arguments with which I agree, in principle.

I guess what I mean is that the arguments are purely hypothetical, because I don’t believe there would be a truly universal draft, any more than I believe our society will take education seriously–because people are overwhelmingly short-sighted, selfish fucks.

Just a cynical day. Don’t mind me. Optimists get hammered by reality, and we get discouraged sometimes.

 
bughunter, who still hasn't had time to read Cerb's post,
 

Rick Ungar at Forbes digs a little deeper and uncovers a little more stench behind Ohio’a e-voting. He asks:

And while I am not suggesting conspiracies or that anyone would get involved in any foul play here, most particularly the GOP candidate for President, how is it possible that so many people could exercise so much bad judgment?

This is how: They way they see it, it’s not bad judgment. It’s insurance. And it’s OKIYAR.

 
 

Cole-

Well, most college professors are also doing all the basic research that is our underpinning of understanding the universe. Not just all the science that leads to physical objects and medicines we see in the outside world, but also sociology, education theory, pedagogy theory, and history that helps steer how we teach at all levels and what we should be teaching and how the world works versus how we want to imagine it works.

So college professors are critically important as well and actually have an extensive amount of duties that extend beyond the teaching.

That said, the fact that “hey, you find out all the ways our companies can have anything new to talk about ever” is devalued to barely a middle class job and “hey, you have skills in about 20 different fields and are entrusted in educating our young to be productive, innovative, and non-sociopath adults with a firm grasp of how the world works is devalued to “really if you can afford food, we’re probably paying you too much” is sickening in the extreme.

But then what we value monetarily and the subsequent decision to decide that also correlated with real genuine value in this country is fucked up beyond the extreme.

In a functional society, teachers of all stripes would be among the highest respected class and certainly well compensated if not excessively compensated instead of being yelled at because a conservative once saw one being able to afford a house.

 
 

government-monopoly

I’ll have to remember to tell Momma Pryme that she’s part of a malicious government attempt to dominate that oh-so sought after industry known as education. If only Uncle Sam would just let the private sector provide our children with book learnin’ and math! I am personally envious of the education I would have acquired at Viacom High School.

 
 

I bring all this up because the term “charter school” has been nominalized into meaning “corporate run”. Like the “crunchy liberal” homeschoolers, who resent being lumped in with knuckle-dragging, quiverfull fundies, I cringe when “charter school” is used that way. Let’s say “corporate charter school” when that’s what we’re actually talking about.

I appreciate that your daughter is going to a very good school and that school is a charter school. Having said that, the Charter school idea, is one that is fundamentally unequal and is being used as a wrecking ball to dismantle the credibility of the the public school as an institution. Public schools do not have the liberty of selective admissions, they must accept every student regardless of ability. This puts them at a fundamental disadvantage compared to every charter school to which they have been compared. And while we can and should empower the talented and brilliant children out there, we also need to make sure, that in doing so that we don’t neglect educating the less talented students, or the ones with special needs. And that along with their hostility to teacher’s unions, is where the opposition to charter schools comes from.

 
 

The reasons for progressive hostility to conservative Christians are many and complex, but one of them is that, like the homeschool, the church is something outside of government control, a forum that the triple constitutional protections of religion, free speech, and association place beyond the range of Leviathan’s leash.

I thought it was because we made baby Jesus cry when we wished people “happy holidays” at new solstichrismaquanzakkahphany.

 
 

Oh no, mixed up kitty is mixed up, that’s why the gentle, loving Christers are hostile to us. Among other reasons, many but not-so-complex in that they all boil down to “you disagree with me and that’s agin my rights WAAAAH.”

 
 

I was specifically referring to the teaching part of the job, rather than all the other activities many college faculty are up to, but unfortunately, that didn’t come across due to my incoherence. In fact, my comment was a terrible piece of writing (born of frustration and discouragement) all around.

Shorter Cole = it is my observation that society values financial success and men, in general, and education is no exception. Early Childhood Education, arguably a very difficult thing to do correctly, and essential to creating a self-sustaining and productive citizenry, is seen as “wimmin’s work” and held in very low esteem, while the traditionally male vocation of higher education, which is far too late in the game to begin creating critical thinkers, is regarded as where all the real education takes place.

I didn’t, and don’t, mean to denigrate post-secondary educators–some of my best friends mount the ivory towers to battle Ignorance for a living. I meant to write that we need to hold the same esteem for all educators as we do for the post-secondary crew, but I don’t see that happening without a radical change in fundamental American misunderstandings about things. It’s not the system; it’s the operators.

 
 

@ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©: Re: close all private schools.

Does my daughter school for the arts count as a “private school”? It’s legally a charter school, but it’s administered by the Oakland Unified School District.

@Helmut Monotreme: It’s “exclusive” only in the sense that students must audition or submit a portfolio for admission. They have to admit everyone that passes the arts audition; academic grades have no bearing. My daughter went to a Oakland Public School for K-5, where she was one of the only 5% of White students, where my wife and I became officers in the PTA, and one year we joined picket lines with striking union teachers to protest budget cuts. (I’m a union member myself, CWA Local 919.) I agree with you in peinciple, but I don’t think special magnet schools for arts or tech, run by the public school district, are the problem.

 
 

If the funding mechanism for public schools continues as it is – by property taxes from a given area – closing private schools doesn’t do anything at all for inequity.

 
 

Holy, crap – too many comments for my poor mind to handle. So, just a couple things that have undoubtedly already been noted and commented on high, wide, and handsomely:

1. “homeschoolers drive the establishment bats.” Why is it always about driving your enemies nuts? Usually you don’t anyway, but is that your only justification? Jesus Christ, did your parents teach you nothing? (Oh, wait..)
2. “If homeschooling weren’t already legal — … — it is highly unlikely that most state legislatures would vote to legalize it.” (a), Do you actually have any evidence that this is correct, beyond your feverish imagination? (I know, I know – all you need is faith [dum de-dum de-dum]..), and (b) One word: “abortion”. How now, Brown Cow?

 
 

Why is it always about driving your enemies nuts?

It’s the only thing that gets them out of bed in the morning.

 
 

If the funding mechanism for public schools continues as it is – by property taxes from a given area – closing private schools doesn’t do anything at all for inequity.

Sure it does. As I said above, it makes the inequality worse.

 
 

Bonus case of IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION: the quote “others have sought to regulate it out of existence, for instance by declaring homeschoolers’ residences to be public schools and requiring them to meet attendant planning and zoning standards” is pretty much a perfect description of how TRAP laws try to shut down abortion clinics.

 
 

Also, new JanusNode last month has the revolutionary spirit.

You will not be able to fling the pretence.
The Revolution will not be exorcised, brother.
There will be no outsiders of thefts.
There will be no acceptances of feelings or consumptions of pleasures.
The Revolution will not be made, brother.
You will not be able to win the pearl.
The Revolution will not assassinate the imbecile, brother.
There will be no omens of injustices, brother.
You will not be able to win the desire.
There will be no civilizations of religions.
You will not be able to begin the stem.
The Revolution will be choosed!

 
 

This step [closing private schools] will force all students (the very rich, the very poor, the smart, the average, the disabled, the at-risk, and everyone in between) into public schools, creating overwhelming pressure to fix them at last.

To borrow a phrase, Sadly, no!

In my own city, the northern part of town is largely white, high-income and highly educated. The southern half of town is largely mixed-race, much lower income and poorly educated. Guess which part of town has the high performing, enriched educational opportunities and which has schools that are struggling and that have high dropout rates?

I’ve thought for a long time that there needs to be a “tax” imposed on extracurricular “enrichment” money raised for the wealthier schools, say 10%, that is distributed to the schools that draw from poorer neighborhoods. Raise $40,000 for your jazz program? $4000 goes to the kitty for the poor peoples’ schools. I know, socialamizm so it’ll never happen but it always annoyed me that our kids had everything they ever needed at school while the kids south of the Ship Canal had teachers buying school supplies because all they had to live on was the meager pittance they got from the district. Of course, raising property taxes for the district would accomplish much the same thing but that’s too easy to squash. When their own kids’ programs are at stake you bet the richies would pony up.

Also, Joe Max’s experience notwithstanding, charter schools don’t generally provide a better education than the public schools as has been demonstrated.

Finally, my little bit of anecdata is that every person I’ve know who homeschools is bugfuck to some degree or other. That includes the god botherers and the crazy libs.

 
 

The Revolution will be choosed!

i’m the decider!!!

 
 

Finally, my little bit of anecdata is that every person I’ve know who homeschools is bugfuck to some degree or other. That includes the god botherers and the crazy libs.

http://crookedtimber.org/2012/10/10/one-day-at-a-time/

 
 

Cole: I find this a good salve for bruised optimism.

http://new.livestream.com/FosterKittenCam/TheSpiceKittens

 
 

http://crookedtimber.org/2012/10/10/one-day-at-a-time/

Why do I find her posts about her kid so insufferable?

 
 

I’m naughty.

That was a great moment.

 
 

I’m naughty.

you’re awesome…

 
 

If the funding mechanism for public schools continues as it is – by property taxes from a given area – closing private schools doesn’t do anything at all for inequity.

That’s missing the point. It isn’t “We should close all the private schools”, and you say, “but wait, there’s all these loopholes in your solution.”

The point is that if we were all in the same boat together, the people with the wherewithal to prevent the boat from leaking and eventually sinking wouldn’t let that happen.

It’s not a policy prescription as much as it is an illustration of what the problem is: “We got ours, so fuck all you moochers!”
~

 
 

The point is that if we were all in the same boat together, the people with the wherewithal to prevent the boat from leaking and eventually sinking wouldn’t let that happen.

In New York, sure.

 
 

It takes a village global boat.
~

 
 

Tsam? Are you OK?

WARNING: Autoplay.

 
 

WARNING: Autoplay.

Another win for Flashblock!

 
 

You guys, did you hear Trump has “very big” news about Obama? I bet he’s going to tell us obama’s BLACK. Or FROM HAWAII.

 
 

HAWAII isn’t in the CONSTITUTION!
~

 
 

Why do I find her posts about her kid so insufferable?

Not enough pictures?

 
 

OK, I finally read Cerb’s most excellent post, and it took a while because I really don’t have an opinion on home schooling. [shrug] Sorry, but it’s about as interesting as comparing character development of 19th century French novelists.

However, as a product of public schooling, a parent of a public school student, and a friend of many, many K-12 educators, I have a pretty clear idea of what’s gone wrong with our public school system. It’s a twofold problem, and those two folds are 1) Administrators, and b) Politicians. Because in my experience, there’s not a whole lot of difference between them. With only a few notable exceptions, every school administrator I’ve known, from the office receptionist to the Board members, have been politicians first and educators second.

There are too many of both trying to decide how to teach our children. What the fuck happened to the idea that teachers should be the ones setting education policy?

And by ‘teachers’ I don’t mean some ivory tower narcissist who has a PhD in “Education” but hasn’t taught a single classroom day in a public K-12 school. And I don’t mean someone who last taught 20 years ago but decided he or she didn’t like it and would rather rise thru the administration ranks instead.

You wanna solve our education problems? Get rid of all administration. Let the teachers run the schools. Make everyone from the office clerk to the Chairman of the Education Board teach at least one class period in some academic subject (not PE, or Drama, or Contemporary Impressionist Basketweaving) every term.

The only people working at the school who need not teach should be the janitors, the maintenance techs, the cafeteria ladies, and the nurses.

 
 

at this very moment, wordpress is the recipient of all my hatred…

 
 

But let’s face it, by the time people get to college third grade and can’t fucking read, the damage is done.

Fixxorified for the truth. And yes, Mrs. Snob is a public school teacher.

 
 

They have to admit everyone that passes the arts audition; academic grades have no bearing.

In public schools you have “mainstreamed” mentally handicapped kids strapped into their wheelchairs with a dedicated gubmint supplied nurse/assistant.

Charter schools will never have to accommodate with those kids. Public schools do.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all for all truly public schools to eventually just become barely-funded warehouses for poor/unstable/disabled kids, with all other kids going to charters. I really hope I’m wrong.

 
 

Food pron; I’ve been playing with chestnuts after being gifted with a bunch. Roasted and then peeled and simmered some and pureed them in cream. Added some purée to the streusel topping for a paper bag apple pie, stirred a big scoop into the filling for a squash custard pie and mixed some into the stuffing for a chicken, all for a party later tonight. Would be interested in chestnut suggestions.

 
 

Chestnut pesto? I’m really not familiar with the flavor so can’t confidently suggest an herb other than basil or cilantro. But perhaps if you used a combination of celery greens and parsely along with a sharp cheese like romano, or perhaps spinach and a mild cheese like dry jack or a mild cotija.

 
 

Why do I find her posts about her kid so insufferable?

I think “insufferable” is way too fucking kind.

And reading down in the comments there I see evidence of a disturbing trend I’ve been seeing more and more of the last few years — the abuse of the “IEP” process by parents of (they think) “gifted” children.

If you don’t want to click the link, an “IEP” is an “Individualized Education Plan” that is meant to be put in place for disabled kids. These days parents like her commenters are using the system to get their special snowflake gifted children to have special treatment. It’s a legal requirement and every one of them put in place puts a burden on the school district and especially on the teachers (and takes away from the other kids).

We’re talking things like “Oh, Billy is super special and brilliant and misunderstood. He needs to be able to run laps around the room while singing his special song to be able to perform the best at math.” And “No, Jenny’s violent outbursts when asked to focus on her English assignment aren’t due to her being a sociopath, they’re due to low blood sugar. You must supply her with a snack before each lesson. She probably won’t try to stab you again after that.”

I guess it’s better that the crookedtimber person is homeschooling her special snowflake.

 
 

In case you hadn’t noticed this stuff kinda pushes my buttons.* I’ll stop now.

*Nah, too obvious.

 
 

Tsam? Are you OK?

WARNING: Autoplay.

The worst part about that video is that there’s a fucking DECORATED CHRISTMAS TREE in the background.

It’s not even Halloween yet, FFS! I hate “the holidays” so. fucking. much.

Ok, I’m evidently in a really stabby mood. Bring on the debate!

 
 

Ok, I’m evidently in a really stabby mood

me too…and now i hate facebook as well…

 
 

Someone give OBS a snack. Blood sugar evidently too low.

 
 

I guess it’s better that the crookedtimber person is homeschooling her special snowflake.

Hey, OBS…did you know her kid is BRIGHT? So bright and SCIENCY. He’s the specialist snowflake of them all!

 
 

Not enough pictures?

Hey, when I do it, it’s cute and charming.

 
 

WHO NEEDS STABBING?

yes, sometimes capslock is how i feel all the time
~

 
 

The thing about snowflakes is they’re all awesome if you look close enough. Imagine if we stopped being such cheap bastards and made sure every one got a great education.

 
 

If you don’t want to click the link, an “IEP” is an “Individualized Education Plan” that is meant to be put in place for disabled kids. These days parents like her commenters are using the system to get their special snowflake gifted children to have special treatment.

It depends on where you are and who’s doing it. I, for instance, am a special snowflake who did not get that kind of treatment and perhaps as a result I am vastly underqualified to judge the Ph.D’s I now lord it over. HA! HA!

My daughter is a special snowflake who needs help in school and will indeed disrupt her classroom’s order if something does not go “properly” (and as a result of that I am one of those evil and heartless parents who has her gulp pills).

Where I am I don’t see abuse of the system, I see parents who aren’t using the system enough (part of this is no doubt immigration-related as parents here often come from elsewhere and don’t understand the resources they have access to). That resources aren’t there is a political problem, not the child’s problem. I know who I vote for and what they’re doing.

While I’m driven by my culture’s eye-rolling instincts when I see people talking about their kids and their wonderful individualitiness, I’m also associated with those exceptions and I try not to take exception with anything parents say around that until, of course, I want to beat the hell out of their little monster.

 
 

The thing about snowflakes is they’re all awesome if you look close enough. Imagine if we stopped being such cheap bastards and made sure every one got a great education.

*applause*

 
 

Btw, JP, I talked to you in da last thread.

I will go retrieve. I’ve been mostly-offline since about noon CT, Sunday. With a periodic smattering.
.

 
 

Btw, JP, I talked to you in da last thread.

Yes you did, Brett! Yes! You! Did!

I probably mentioned it in the lastthread, but The 5 Spot is where we scooter hooligans @ scootnashville.com held our Saturday night party & raffle drawing from the 1st Inaugural Blue vs. Grey Rally this past June. It also got high praises from Rolling Stone as one of the more happenin’ music venues in these United States. My landlord’s various bands play there regularly, so it can’t be all that, now. 😉
.

 
 

It must be a hoot to see all local hotspots on prime time.

 
 

It must be a hoot to see all local hotspots on prime time.

It is, but remember that The Bluebird Cafe is one pretentious motherfucker of a club. I’ve been there once, and it is Asshole Central, really.
.

 
 

vs does not buttchug said,

Hey, when I do it, it’s cute and charming.

If you remove the word “not”…

 
 

I’ve been there once, and it is Asshole Central, really.

It must have smelled awful.

 
 

The Bluebird Cafe. If you go, make no noise. You will be shusshed to death. There are serious songwriters seriously pouring out their souls on that stage, and You Must Respect That. Open your lozenges before the performance, and dash for the front door if you feel the barest hint of a cough coming on.
.

 
 

It must have smelled awful.

Yeah. Like a Yves Saint Laurent tanker truck crashed through the wall an hour earlier.
.

 
 

I’ll owe vs a dollah is any of the following clubs ever feature in the series, Nashville:

1.) The Broadway Brewhouse (any of them);
2.) Flying Saucer;
3.) Blackstone.
.

 
 

Hmm, Mitt thinks Iraq and Afghanistan are mistakes and likes UN groups. Onwards!

 
 

The fact is, your Boy Obama is gonna loose this debate and the election. You liberals and your false God have no facts and logic. Patriots, job creators and the True God have them all. Get used to your free ride of laziness and socilism ending soon. I can’t wait to let the lazy starve.

 
 

Hey, somebody live-blog this so I don’t have to watch it.

 
 

BUT NOT GARY.

 
 

It’s thus far Mitt walking back all the saber-rattling in favour of suggestions that Obama’s doing.

Except for giving people bunches of weapons.

No score.

 
 

I am watching the two episodes of The Walking Dead I’ve DVRed, to minimize the violence and stupidity I’m exposed to this evening.

 
 

Mitt and the president agree again!

 
 

Jesus Christ, this is about nothing.

 
 

I’m not watching.

Yet I know S McG is right.
~

 
 

Romney: ”Schools that finally put the students and the teachers and the parents first…and the teacher’s unions are gonna have to be behind.”

 
 

Romney: ”Schools that finally put the students and the teachers and the parents first…and the teacher’s unions are gonna have to be behind.”

Sooooo Romney is actually Gary Ruppert?

 
 

They won’t talk about foreign policy which is a little better. But I don’t get why Romney bragging about Massachusetts doesn’t get a “How many terms did you serve?”

 
 

We do love him here…

 
 

He’ll take the state!

They won’t stop talking about domestic stuff. Robert Farley will be pleased about Obama saying the call to raise the navy to 1916 levels got “We don’t have the same level of horses and bayonets either.”

 
 

That is pretty good.

 
 

Yay, the president and Romney agree on Iran and Israel again. Yawn.

 
 

Romney would indict Ahmedinejad. Neato!

 
 

Indicting the Ahmedinejad.

 
 

So glad I decided to watch Gumby instead of the debate.

 
 

There’s lots of Pokey here already!

 
 

Obummer calls out Rmoney on the “apology tour” lie. Yes.

 
 

Hey, somebody live-blog this so I don’t have to watch it.

Needs maor dead-blogging from ZRM.

 
 

Oh man. For a second there I thought Big O was going to remind us of Mitt’s Fumble Tour. I was dancing.

 
 

It was close, but lotsa Osama bin Laden talk doesn’t hurt, and neither does reminding people that Mitt’s been all over the map.

 
 

Gee, Mitt seems glad that Obama’s done what he’d do in Afghanistan.

 
 

Jesus christ. Mittens reinforces the idea that his foreign policy will be the same as Obama’s “only louder.” Not helping himself.

 
 

OMG, I didn’t realize that we had such a drastic horse and boyonet gap!!! Obama’s definitely gotta go. But I don’t think Mitt is the answer either. We need McCain this time, he’s the only one who remembers how that technology works.

 
 

Willard agreeing with POTUS = WINGNUT DYSTOPIA ISR3AL!!!!!!//!!!

 
 

Ah, more leadership! From strong leaders! Acting leaderly! Wait…

 
 

Jesus christ. Mittens reinforces the idea that his foreign policy will be the same as Obama’s “only louder.”

Louder an more expensive, Mittens keeps saying he will spend a few trillion dollars more to do the job.

 
 

IMO Mitt’s just spinning his wheels, but that’s good enough in a debate where both guys seem to want to do the same thing. Dull dull dull.

 
 

Fucking flip-flop on China right in the debate. Mitt is such a weakling.

 
 

Mittens probably thinks he’s got it in the bag and doesn’t want to step on his own dick again.

Meanwhile…
~

 
 

Gumby ended and hubby put on the debate. There is no God.

 
 

Mittens probably thinks he’s got it in the bag and doesn’t want to step on his own dick again.

He is his own obstacle, it’s true.

 
 

Misery loves company, tigris.

 
 

MAKE IT STOP

 
 

Mitt’s a son of Detroit!

He is the real Slim Shady.

 
 

Screw this crap, I’m going to bed.

 
 

It is indeed crap. Now they’re on cars, and Mitt’s lying like a rug, so that’s a point.

 
 

The Walking Dead is fanfuckingtastic.

 
 

You wanna solve our education problems? Get rid of all administration.

Why limit this to education? Seriously, how many of you working stiffs have ever had a manger/supervisoroverseer who contributed anything useful to your co., dep’t. or whatever?

How many times has some fuck who dossn’t know shit from Shinola about what your dep’t. or whatever does been brought in because s/he is a “good manager who’ll really turn things around?”

 
 

Closing statements! Thank the lord.

 
 

Gumby ended and hubby put on the debate. There is no God.
There is no Gumby.

 
 

Oh good, Mittens wants to see growing peace in our country. Have I missed a civil war somewhere?

 
 

Wait’ll the vote counts.

 
 

Fabulously dull, nearly nothing of note.

 
 

There is no god and gumby is his son.

 
 

Seriously, how many of you working stiffs have ever had a manger/supervisoroverseer who contributed anything useful to your co., dep’t. or whatever?

Raise hand.

I actually have great managers at my gig. Knowledgeable, hard-working, with a firm understanding of what our department needs, and the ability to create a genuine team environment without BS “team-building” crap straight out of management guides.

Course…

That might have just a little to do with every last one of them rising out of the ranks of us common schlubs and being the type of cynical bastards who think “management techniques” deserve nothing but scorn.

So yeah, you’ve got a strong fucking point.

 
 

This nation cant afford a bayonet gap. WE NEED MOAR BAYONETS!

 
 

In the real world, nothing of note in the televised athletic competitions either beyond St. Louis getting creamed, & Dee-troit Motor City not looking too good.

Anyone threatened to take a swing at someone?

 
 

I considered making an exception for those who have risen from the ranks, but they so often “rise” by nothing more than ass-kissing & turn into little Hitlers as soon as they get there I decided not to.

 
 

Tomorrow’s wingnut spin.

(And tonight’s, the day after tomorrow’s, etc.)
~

 
 

M Bouffant-

Oh definitely. There’s a vast difference between “rose the ranks because legitimately competent and no one in way upper management cared enough to fuck it up” and “rose the ranks because evil mcasshole chose the evilest fuckwad he could from the ranks to replace him.”

 
 

I have had two good managers in the same place, and up from them, two more good managers. It’s pretty remarkable, really, and it’s part of why I am where I am.

 
 

I want to thank Cerb for keeping the snark alive

 
 

There was no mention of a job for Jeremy! The fuck?
There was no mention of Rafalca position in the new Navy Cavalry.
China is gonna get it when Mittens is in charge.
Other parts of the world are in TUMULT and Mitt thinks Obama did the right thing but also very very wrong, the big poopy head.
Also apology tour which ISRAEL NOTICED ACTUALLY!
12 million somethings and 3 trillion other things.
Eeeew once a poor person cried when she was talking to Ann.

 
 

another kiwi said,
October 23, 2012 at 5:43

ahhh…thank you for summing that up so neatly…i listened with half an ear while still struggling with FYWP and FuckBook…

 
 

Tomorrow’s wingnut spin.

(And tonight’s, the day after tomorrow’s, etc.)

they are so fucking lame…

 
 

I was disappointed that Obama didn’t say “The American people might forget what you have said and done but those foreign governments won’t.”

 
Journal of the Plague Year
 

Trash talking about school administrators?

Hoooooooooo Boyyyy! Have I such stories for you! Hmmm, how to choose, how to choose…

Okay, let’s start here (my personal fav). Lorna* (*not her real name, which is actually something really glamorous, like “Elspeth”) was waiting in line at a store one day with her school principal (Let’s call him “Bob.”). General chitchat ensued in which an item displayed on an endcap was noted.
“Oh, yeah,” said Lorna, “I’ve got one of those at home.”
“Me, too,” says Bob.
“Yeah,” says his son, rather proudly, “someone left it out with their trash! It was brand new!”
“No,” Bob replies sharply, “I bought it!”
“No, you didn’t,” the child insists. “You were so surprised that someone would throw that away!”
“No,” Bob says, ever more sharply, “I bought it!”
The kid finally takes the hint and shuts up. Lorna checks out and doesn’t think too much about the encounter.
Until…
A couple weeks later, Lorna was unexpectedly evaluated by the principal. Now, she had previously been something of a fair-haired favorite, and Bob had always given her very high marks. That day, however, Lorna was handed failing grades in everything. I think he may have even slammed her choice of footwear. He gave her a few days (and I do mean four or five) to completely change her teaching method and then exoriated her in another review the next week.
Since she didn’t yet have tenure, two failing reviews was enough to seriously put her job in danger. Ah, but wait, it gets better! Quite suddenly there were accusations, accusations from a child that there had been…violent behavior from Lorna. Cops were called and Lorna was escorted off school grounds.

Yeah, I know, what appears to be cause and effect could just be coincidence, but…really? How else can this be interpreted? Because Lorna knew Bob’s Great Trash Picking Shame, he had no choice but to destroy her. Not merely get her out of his school, mind you, but to ensure that she could probably never teach again. Fortunately, the superintendent’s office thought that the principal had lost his mind, which meant that Lorna kept her job and Bob was–in the great tradition of bureaucracies everywhere–simply transferred to another principalship elsewhere.
And to think, there are so-called reformers out in the world (New York, State and/or City?) who believe that giving principals the right to hire and fire teachers at will is a terrific idea!

 
 

The debate we deserve: Flying Death Robots vs. Zombies

The debate we got: Die Antwoord vs. Gaga

The debate we need: The Koch Bros vs. Merle Dixon

 
 

‘Educate all the brutes.’

 
 

Brutalize all the educated.

 
 

The debate we deserve: Flying Death Robots vs. Zombies

The debate we got: Die Antwoord vs. Gaga

The debate we need: The Koch Bros vs. Merle Dixon

I’d pay to see: Flying Death Robots vs. The Koch Bros

Preferably with Gallagher-style plastic sheets to keep the blood and entrails off the front-row audience.

 
 

There is no Gumby.

Hey man, you can’t fool me I’ve seen the historical documents.

 
 

> Hey, everybody, we’re exploiting the fuck out
> of the free labor of women in our communities!

Isn’t that one more step (at least) toward Virtue than exploiting the fuck out of the nearly-free labour of strangers far away, and being as mean as possible with the wages of anyone left employed locally?

You’ve just told them that they are approaching the condition of their ideal people, that is to say their masters and (unfortunately) ours.

 
 

Bloomberg supporting Brown will probably help Warren more.

 
 

Red-baiting is soooo 1956. I’d better go check the garage to see if my car grew tail fins.

 
 

educating the brutes…
brutalizing the educated…

ew, that last one is NOT sexy at all…

 
 

Proof once again that all this centrist, third party bullshit is just another conservative stunt.

enh…our local publisher believes that we should have ONE party…just have a massive primary and who ever wins that wins it all…can you imagine?

 
 

N__B said,
October 23, 2012 at 4:29

The Walking Dead is fanfuckingtastic.

I may give it a looksee.

 
 

enh…our local publisher believes that we should have ONE party…just have a massive primary and who ever wins that wins it all…can you imagine?

Because one-party systems have worked so well in other countries that have tried them?

 
 

The Walking Dead is fanfuckingtastic.

You guys are starting to scare me; we had a thing where I would talk about a show I liked and (just about) everyone would dismiss it as network/cable claptrap. I was have expecting the reaction to TWD to be: “A TV show with zombies? That’s dumb!”

Now this…my reality is coming undone!

 
 

You guys are starting to scare me; we had a thing where I would talk about a show I liked and (just about) everyone would dismiss it as network/cable claptrap. I was have expecting the reaction to TWD to be: “A TV show with zombies? That’s dumb!”

There’s an advantage to not giving a shit what anyone thinks. Hell, Y&R is one of tr best things on TV these days, as far as I’m concerned.

 
 

The best things on TV these days are Parks and Recreation, Breaking Bad, Sherlock, and Game of Thrones.

 
 

Parks and Recreation is great.

 
 

I like Sherlock, Boardwalk Empire, The Big Bang Theory and Modern Family.

Other than that we’re usually watching movies on Netflix.

 
 

Just saw “Prometheus.” Flawed but enjoyable.

 
 

There’s an advantage to not giving a shit what anyone thinks.

Very true, but my problem is with those types of deals, I have a switch instead of a dial. I go down that route, life will get isolated very quickly.

As far as shows, I usually pick 2-3 to watch regularly. Right now it’s The Walking Dead, Warehouse 13 and Avengers. Everything else is gravy. My biggest peeve with television is as soon as a show gets interesting, the execs wanna change things to “make the show more receptive to newcomers.” It’s hard to create a show where you can get a new audience every season, yet retain most of the die-hards. From what I hear, “American Horror Story” may be the closest to doing it.

 
 

Yeah, everybody hated Prometheus but I liked it. I thought it raised some interesting questions and I like how it didn’t spoon-feed us any answers. Yeah, it had severe problems, but it’s nice to see an ambitious mess over the typical boilerplate sci fi/action film we usually get.

 
 

I didn’t realize Warehouse 13 was still on. I watched it the first season and thought it was pretty good.

 
 

Pryme, I’m the same way. I usually have 2 or 3 shows that are must-see for me and then everything else is “see it don’t, no biggie.”

Hubby is very much enjoying “Boardwalk Empire.”

I liked “Prometheus” just because it was a sci-fi spectacle. It was compelling and creepy.

Also, haven’t seen the first episode of “American Horror Story” yet but really looking forward to getting into the series again.

 
 

Hell, Y&R is one of tr best things on TV these days, as far as I’m concerned.

um, yeah…if you think the young and the restless is the best thing on teevee these days, you obviously don’t care what anybody thinks…

Also, haven’t seen the first episode of “American Horror Story” yet but really looking forward to getting into the series again

oooooooh…it starts out right in your face…you’ll have to keep your eyes open for returning actors in different roles…and jessica lange is freaking amazeballs…the only thing is that i wish we wouldn’t have watched the first episode while hubbkf is off hunting…with the dog…i’m all by my lonesomes and we have a creaky old house…

 
 

People in soap operas seem to spend an awful lot of time in comas, at least when they’re not busy getting kidnapped.

I’m not sure how anyone gets any work done.

 
 

Walking Dead is no Sherlock or Breaking Bad but…it’s Atlanta’s greatest contribution to world culture since Gone with the Wind.

 
 

I’m not sure how anyone gets any work done.

They don’t work. They sit at desks, opening folders and drinking scotch.

 
 

People in soap operas seem to spend an awful lot of time in comas, at least when they’re not busy getting kidnapped.

also being possessed by demons…worst d.o.o.l. storyline EVAR…although the coming back from the dead such as they always do would be kind of awesome…a neat party trick…

 
 

They don’t work. They sit at desks, opening folders and drinking scotch.

i have binders full of women to do that for me…

 
 

I didn’t realize Warehouse 13 was still on. I watched it the first season and thought it was pretty good.

Season One: I liked it; one of the surprising things is how well the female characters are written.

Season Two: H. G. Wells. That is all.

Season Three: Let’s just say the rules the show made for itself start to…interact.

Season Four: I was onboard until “the reveal.” I was hoping it was not what I thought it would be, and when it turned out that I was right, I was a little disappointed.

Which brings me to The Walking Dead: the creator of the comic books has all but vowed that the show will deviate and keep people guessing.

 
 

um, yeah…if you think the young and the restless is the best thing on teevee these days, you obviously don’t care what anybody thinks…

I mean it’s extremely entertaining, not that it should sweep the Emmys or anything.

 
 

After the debate I watched Hoarders — where a woman in Bothell, WA was living in a house she had nearly completely filled with containers of her own feces and urine.

It was way better than the debate.

 
 

I mean it’s extremely entertaining, not that it should sweep the Emmys or anything.

oh, ha, ha…i thought one of the dudes said that which is why i was being snarky…and your point does stand…there is waaaaay too much formulaic crap in prime time nowadays…now hand me my remote and get offa ma lawn you whippersnapper!

 
 

After the debate I watched Hoarders — where a woman in Bothell, WA was living in a house she had nearly completely filled with containers of her own feces and urine.

if this is the one where she was developmentally challenged…we just discussed it the other night…it made me haz a sad cuz shit* like that shouldn’t happen…

my favorite episode however is the lady who had a homeless person living in her junk**…how awesome is that? sure beat the usual assortment of dead cats and possums under the furniture…

*yes, it works on a couple of levels…
**no…

 
 

also being possessed by demons…worst d.o.o.l. storyline EVAR

The best possessed by demons storyline I ever saw was on the Buffy spinoff Angel.

It involved a young boy who was possessed by a demon.

[ spoiler ]

It turns out that the demon was terrified and trying to get out because the boy was way more evil.

 
 

if this is the one where she was developmentally challenged…we just discussed it the other night…it made me haz a sad cuz shit* like that shouldn’t happen…

I think so, although they didn’t really spell that out. She was pretty damn bizarre, but the only thing they said was that she was “on disability” — they didn’t describe whether the disability was mental or physical.

I like watching Hoarders because seeing shit like that keeps my wife from complaining about the state of my garage.

 
 

I like watching Hoarders because seeing shit like that keeps my wife from complaining about the state of my garage.

it also makes me feel like a-one housekeeper…

 
 

I need to watch this show.

 
 

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
These are…The Days of the Week.

 
 

Also: Old Man complains about “cheap shots,” forgot he took similar “cheap shots” four years ago.

also, too…i liked how mccain got on the ‘not optimal’ (daily show interview obama) BEFORE it even aired…

 
 

After the debate I watched Hoarders — where a woman in Bothell, WA was living in a house she had nearly completely filled with containers of her own feces and urine.

It was way better than the debate.

The 3rd one being the only Soundbite Delivery System Debate that I watched end-to-end … THIS.

No amount of drama can hide that ugly ambient gaping void where meaningful content used to be. It’s already common knowledge that both candidate’s campaign teams had insisted on some topics being omitted (& to pre-approve those that would be included) before they’d agree to face off for a “debate.” People are turning ever more to focusing on the VP Debate because since it’s the lint-trap for all the subjects the Big Show won’t mention, it’s somewhat less of an empty futile exercise in elite camwhoring.

 
 

god, you guys shouldn really be here…my mom is “helping” me…she is the queen of non-sequiturs and keeps up a rambling monologue…also, why does i.t. think that i even remotely know what the hell i’m doing on my compooter?

 
 

You Americans and your love of monarchy.

 
 

why does i.t. think that i even remotely know what the hell i’m doing on my compooter?

Don’t tell anybody, but we don’t, we just like to watch you look silly.

 
 

You Americans and your love of monarchy.

Sorry, “monarchy” is two doors down — this is Kenyan anti-colonialism.

 
 

You Americans and your love of monarchy.

It’s a special moment in a young country’s life when it reaches monarch.

 
 

gads…now she is telling my office supply salesman her life story…

 
 

That’s to be preferred over her telling him YOUR life story.

 
 

“I was born a poor black child. One day I head my first Mantovani record and I said ‘This is my music. These are my people.'”

 
 

The road is long, with many a winding turn.

 
 

now she is rambling on to me…while she is wrapping up gift baskets for our event thursday night…she is so involved that she wrapped the tissue paper in the basket…

 
 

You Americans and your love of monarchy malarkey.

 
 

You should send her to Politichicks.

oh, jeez! she would fit in so well over there…not the brightest, but thinks she knows everything, always showing waaaay too much skin…

 
 

You Americans and your love of monarchy malarkey.

Close, we Americans are workshopping a new form of government called ‘malarchy’.

 
 

It’s doing better than Girl Pundit:

Aside from the fact that its been 2 years since we posted anything here, Girl Pundit still is a great site to inspire expression. The following thoughts are a case in point:

 
 

Aside from the fact that its been 2 years since we posted anything here

I bet they’re off partying with the Fafblog folks. I miss Fafblog.

Also: Yay! My posting schedule is way better than somebody! Woo! Go me!

 
 

I have found that a regular schedule of posting to my blog immediately before I masturbate…

Perhaps I’ve said too much.

 
 

Insert erection joke here.

NO NO NOT LITERALLY.

 
 

College professors by and large don’t want students who can think for themselves. They want students they can indoctrinate, but that’s hard to do with homeschoolers — homeschoolers push back.”

I’ve only ever met one home-schooled kid. Came to college a texbook red-state evangelical. Took a couple philosophy classes, found out to her astonishment that there were in fact other ways to think, and calmed the fuck right down. Still a Republican, but in a quiet, live-and-let-live kind of way. I guess the “pushing back” thing doesn’t work every time.

And yeah, no one gives a fuck if you home school your kids. Seriously. Liberals, teachers’ unions, no one. It doesn’t even make the Top 500 of things we bitch about when it comes to this country.

Sounds like this article was written by someone who, like many conservatives, is concocting a fantasy world in which the people who don’t give a fuck about him are actually violently hating and oppressing him. You know, a fairly smart kid in senior year of high school once told me that one of the big moments in growing up is when you realize that the world isn’t out to get you; the world just doesn’t care. A distinction most conservatives have yet to learn.

 
 

Er’bodee go to blog and read about the awesome Wingnut blog I found. Or read my review of tofu salad. Your choice.

 
 

posting to my blog immediately before I masturbate…

N__B needs to work on his multi-tasking.

 
 

I am now wearing a face shield when I read Riddled.

 
 

that the world isn’t out to get you; the world just doesn’t care

What!? But I’m a special snowflake!

 
 

Er’bodee go to blog and read about the awesome Wingnut blog I found. Or read my review of tofu salad. Your choice.

OK, but you’d make it easier if your “does not buttchug” nym link didn’t lead to a 404 errorl.

 
 

I have found that a regular schedule of posting to my blog immediately before I masturbate…

Perhaps I’ve said too much.

All those erect buildings do It for ya?

(Wont mention photos of Mini)

 
 

I don’t know what an errorl is but I’m sure it’s worse than an error.

 
 

I don’t know what an errorl is but I’m sure it’s worse than an error.

Error Flynn’s movies left me cold.

 
 

errorl
Portmanteau of ‘error URL’.

 
 

Errorl Wirl Rlobinson!

 
 

The iPrecious has just been replaced with the iPrecious 5. Expect an imporvement in my blog masturbation photos.

 
 

But not my spelling.

 
 

Malsturbation means UR DOIN IT RONG

 
 

But not my spelling.

You’re doing great for typing with one hand.

 
 

Er’bodee go to blog and read about the awesome Wingnut blog I found. Or read my review of tofu salad. Your choice.

So, word salad or tofu salad?

 
 

If you’ve read Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, or are interested in the history of science in general, then you’ll want to grab this.

 
 

bughunter reads Boing Boing?
Teh Baroque Cycle gets it RONG about Robert Hooke — in particular, about which surgical techniques were available to him for removing bladder stones. I had a disappoint.

 
 

You Americans and your love of monarchy.

Butterflies is purty.

 
 

oh jeez…just popped back into the office…we are decorating our venue for the fundraiser on thursday evening…my mom has just insulted the decorations…she may not be living when i get back there, but i know that there may be drunk posting on here tonight…

 
 

Yeah, because, you know, Riddled is weird but here there is drunken malstrubation posting and no one says a thing. UPSIDEDOWNIE BIAS!!!

 
 

The upsidedownies have already celebrated Mole Day I presume. Tell us what you did in honor of the day.

 
 

Mole Day was created as a way to foster interest in chemistry.

I’m sure all the moles are really grateful for those acid burns.

 
 

Boing Boing?

Slashdot.

 
 

Er, we did various activities related to chemistry and/or moles. Of course

 
 

It’s less the upsidedownyness that freaks me out than the concept of schroedinger’s Kiwi, simultaneously a fruit and a bird.

 
 

No Duck a l’Orange for the Beaumont table? I thought so.

 
 

simultaneously a fruit and a bird.

So, a lesbian?

 
 

This place is sillier than usual, this evening, I must say.
.

 
 

They’re all fapping to the court decision.

 
 

The Albany-area “juice bar”/gentlemen’s club
I would advise against having the House Special Juice.

 
 

I’ve spent a lot of time in Albany. I advise against drinking anything other than beer bottled elsewhere.

 
 

What could we do right now to minimize the role of disgust in our lives?

If you had to give up one or the other, would you prefer to give up religion or anger?

Would you prefer to be more cunning or more backbiting?

Would you rather visit Macedonia or Argentina? Why?

Which is a better band name: ‘Coalesced Grass Carps’ or ‘The Kissing Writhing Kaffir Lime’?

Is it better to die from a curable neuropsychiatric disorder, or from poisoning in Turkey?

If you had to give up one or the other, would you prefer to give up physical activity or alcohol?

If your father gave you a model of a toll taker cast in toilets as a gift, what would you give him in return?

Would you rather visit Burundi or Liechtenstein? Why?

If your spouse gave you a pile of bones plated with 7 molecules of silver mylar as a gift, what would you say to them?

What should people do to understand the role of death in their lives?

Which is currently bringing more value to the world: libertarian politics or late surrealists?

What would you do today if you were told you had two and a half hours to spend four hundred dollars?

Which would you prefer as a pet, a halfbeak or a terrapin?

What would you today do if you would lose the use of your knee in four days?

Would you rather name your child Dee Zouqutho or Dory?

How much money would you need to be paid to study religious sermonizing for one hour per day?

 
 

Which is currently bringing more value to the world: libertarian politics or late surrealists?

OOOH! OOOH! Mr. McGravitas! I know this one!

 
 

If you had to give up one or the other, would you prefer to give up physical activity or alcohol?
Some of us made that choice years ago.

 
 

Is it better to die from a curable neuropsychiatric disorder, or from poisoning in Turkey?

If it’s curable why would one have to die from it?

 
 

Would you rather visit Burundi or Liechtenstein? Why?
What are the respective sammich policies?

 
 

I don’t eat turkey so IN YOUR FACE DEATH.

 
 

If your father gave you a model of a toll taker cast in toilets as a gift, what would you give him in return?

A job studying religious sermonizing for one hour per day.

 
 

What would you do today if you were told you had two and a half hours to spend four hundred dollars? Get as people as I could to study sermonizing for one hour a day.

 
 

What would you do today if you were told you had two and a half hours to spend four hundred dollars?

Call my dominatrix and request “The Full Gitmo”.

 
 

Call my dominatrix

Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will she come when you do call for her?

 
 

If it’s curable why would one have to die from it?

You could just go to the emergency room. amirite?

 
 

People keep talking about salami being curable meat, but I have my doubts about resurrecting those animals.

 
 

Coulter’s retard comment is slobbered over in the comments and passed off as “edgy” over at The Blaze. No mention of The Holy Mother of Mooses that I could be see before I fainted from Too Much STOOPID

 
 

I prefer Charlie Pierce’s formulation: Princess Dumbass of the Northwoods.

 
 

Coulter’s retard comment

I’m sorry, but if you watch Romney and Obama interacting and you come away thinking Romney is the smart one, your shriveled walnut of a brain has committed suicide and there is no hope for you.

 
 

or from poisoning in Turkey?

When I was deployed to Turkey we had this thing we called the “SMA” which stood for “Screaming Monkey Ass”. You can probably imagine what it was. I think I may have had weapons-grade plutonium coming out of my bowels.

I would have 2-3 aircrew on any given day out sick with this stuff. Immodium or Pepto Bismol wouldn’t even slow it down. The docs had to treat it with antibiotics.

They never could figure out what caused it.

 
 

I had assumed that she was talking about Mitt ‘n Paulie

 
 

Coulter is a complete poser. And as her schtick ages, she’s becoming more and more desperate to remain relevant. But the only thing she knows how to do is double down on her gimmick. Thus comments like that one.

Perhaps she’s been posing as a rancorous regressive harpie for so long she really believes she is one, but I have always believed she has no real opinions of her own, other than that she deserves your attention.

 
 

“Screaming Monkey Ass”

Band Name!

Did you ever suspect the coffee?

I love the stuff, but if made with some varieties of bean, it goes thru me like a freight train.

And lately, my liver seems to have completely forgotten how to metabolize caffeine. If I drink a cuppa aifa turkey after noon, I will be awake until 4am.

Hell, a piece of flourless chocolate overload cake at 2pm did it to me last week.

 
 

Yeah it is completely unsurprising slurpee from her. The Blaze comments were surprising, I had thought that reverence for Our Lady of the Mooses would have had some bearing.

 
 

Retard comment pt. 2:

Indiana teabagger Richard Mourdock: “I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen”.

 
 

What would you do today if you were told you had two and a half hours to spend four hundred dollars?

Go to the grocery store. If there is any money left, put some gas in the car.

 
 

If I drink a cuppa aifa turkey after noon, I will be awake until 4am.

I need to get me some of that. It takes 3 or 4 cups to get me through a late night/early morning flight.

 
 

You don’t want that. I can’t eat chocolate after noon anymore, either, and especially not after dinner. And even cola or iced tea with dinner is too much.

It sucks, cuz I used to be able to drink diet coke and coffee all evening and still sleep like a baby, but I lost the capacity to do that seemingly overnight. I’m still getting used to it.

 
 

“Q: What would you do today if you were told you had two and a half hours to spend four hundred dollars?

A: Go to the grocery store. If there is any money left, put some gas in the car.”

Good answer. In my case, there would be time and money left. I can’t bear to spend hours shopping, and I’ve never spent more that $250 at a grocery store in my life.

You might say, “Dude, just make a third stop and blow that last chunk,” but no. That would make two and a half hours of shopping. It’s too much. The whole idea points to a lack of forethought. If research time counts, well then of course I could spend the 2.5. Haggling would be another example, but in a modern economy sub-$400 purchases are not haggled over.

 
 

I don’t think I could get the complete Frank Zappa catalogue from Amazon for $400, so… 30 seconds.
.

 
 

oh jeez…i just broke into my own house…actually harder than i thought which is comforting…

 
 

but i just ruined a new pair of tights…which sucks sine i either have to drive an hour to the nearest “shopping” center or order on line…damn, life in the boonies sucks sometimes…

 
 

Coulter’s retard comment is slobbered over in the comments and passed off as “edgy” over at The Blaze. No mention of The Holy Mother of Mooses that I could be see before I fainted from Too Much STOOPID

you have no fucking idea how much i want to annihilate those fuckers over there…i tried logging in to comment but couldn’t get it to work, so if any of you can do it, please ream their fucking asses so hard for me? really? the first comment i saw was that political correctness is so rampant that we can’t call a spade a spade (naturally referring to obama) so we should just be able to call every person we think is stupid a retard…you know what? my darling daughter could run fucking circles around those horrible excuses for human beings…i would really really love the daughter and i to meet fucking coulter and see what that fucking twunt has to say…

 
 

There’s quite a contrast to be noted
between people who’d freely give an earnest
or even a flippant or an off-the-cuff answer
to a Janusnodey question, albeit a good one,
and those who won’t answer even a query
tailored to them, their needs and interests,
without a fuller tally of what’s to be gained
and how the task is done most thoughtlessly.
These states of mind could be irreconcilable.
(I’m bitching about adult students, oh hi!)

 
 

fucking twunt

When you realize she’s just a pitiful robot, operating strictly on the reptilian level of her brain, driven solely by the need for attention, it’s less enraging and more amusing.

As for the commenters over there, they’re even simpler creatures… regurgitating tropes they read somewhere else… like a three year old saying things they don’t understand because they got a reaction out of the adults or other kids.

And thank you for adding to my vocabulary today!

 
 

When you realize she’s just a pitiful robot, operating strictly on the reptilian level of her brain, driven solely by the need for attention, it’s less enraging and more amusing.

oh i know, and i shouldn’t let it bother me, but holy fuck! it’s really, really hard sometimes to raise a child who is actually retarded and you have these fucking morons who think they are so much better than she is…my only consolation is that the darling daughter could take coulter down just by being herself…she is super-aware and honesty is her strongest trait…

 
 

And thank you for adding to my vocabulary today!

also, twunt IS super fun to say…and you can use it in mixed company…

 
 

Oh, and I’ve spent the last hour and a half re-passwording my WiFi and all my wireless devices (laptops, phones, kid’s DS, printers, and slave hubs) because some Twunt keeps hacking the password and sucking up my bandwidth using bittorrent. I know it’s BT because it makes my latency skyrocket like nothing else…

This happens regularly now, about every 3-6 months. I’m up to a 63-digit completely random password of upper/lower/numbers/symbols, but I’m beginning to think he’s sniffing it somehow… we’ll see how long it takes him to crack this one.

I wish I had a better option than WPA2.

 
 

“I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen”.

Capital-G “God” meant as the object of monotheism
is necessarily good. I wonder if an instance could be
found of a god without peer who is described as evil.
The notion is Lovecraftian in that his type of pantheon
could survive reduction to a single malevolent diety.

But none of the religions of the book share this feature.
God is good, one, alone in his qualities, and so we’re
left to make logical knots around whether He finds it
best and good for women to be raped and bear the
children thankfully, full of wonder at what good God
has plated for them. Raped is good, pregnant from it
better, because that marks you as chosen for trials?

In a godless world I can accept that we must find
meaning in a series of existential crises, or succumb
to nihilism and other ills. Decadence is best avoided.
But the atheist’s dilemma or challenge bears little
relation to the sadistic games we are led to believe
are the whole activity and passion of a “loving” god.

 
 

Oh, and I’ve spent the last hour and a half re-passwording my WiFi and all my wireless devices (laptops, phones, kid’s DS, printers, and slave hubs) because some Twunt keeps hacking the password and sucking up my bandwidth using bittorrent. I know it’s BT because it makes my latency skyrocket like nothing else…

wth? do you want me to hunt this twunt down and junkpunch them? cuz i will…i’m feeling pretty stabby right now…

 
 

“I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen”.

oh, you know it…as the song says, ‘our god is an awesome god!’

 
 

oh feck it…i’m going to bed…it’s been a long day…insane hyper-active event planner, neurotic helpless mother…marathon session of venue-decorating…wine drinking…breaking and entering (which has earned me some burning thighs from getting scraped on the crappy old window sill in the basement, so don’t let the movies fool you when a chick does heroics in heels and hose…DOES NoT WORK AS LOVELY)…

 
 

Just a friendly reminder that almost four years ago, we received this gift of prophecy:


Here is how it will go down next week. First, the results from Virginia and North Carolina will come in, and they’ll be declared for McCain. You’ll be disappointed, but “no big deal, change can’t come overnight” will be your comment. Florida will go red, and a little nervousness will creep in. The usual suspects will fall into the usual categories. As the night drags on, Ohio, Colorado, and (much to your horror) Pennsylvania will be too close to call.

My advice at this point to you will be to go to bed. You will wake up to a McCain presidency and the Great Liberal Freakout will be on.

Bookmark this, liberals, as this is exactly how it is going to go down. You will be wonder how the hell I was able to call this.

 
 

In all honesty, the McCain presidency hasn’t gone as disastrously as I thought it would.

 
 

God, four years, it seems like yesterday. I seem to remember that troll coming back to say that except from everything it had been spot on, or something. Did that happen?

 
 

Thanks, RedBadger, I was just looking for that.
I think the same guy’s over at BalloonJuice these days.

 
 

How we fell into the horse gap:

From Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right

Horses.
In 1864 President Lincoln requested 188,718 new horses.
And 120 years later, President Reagan – to his eternal shame – requested only 3

I’m still doing research on the bayonet gap.

 
 

Response to Coulter, well worth reading I thought.

 
 

And as to the Panglossian “God intended this horrible thing to happen,” tell that to a woman who’s covered in the blood of the child who just died in her arms. Then let me punch your fucking face off.

 
 

It’s unfortunate that because of her schtick, Coulter deliberately calculates the impact of her words to try to push buttons damn the collateral damage to people like Mr. Stephens there.

It really is more like High School politics than anything else for her.

 
 

Well, if Obama is so mentally challenged, what does that say for the Republicans? They select the from cream of their own ranks to come up with McCain, who loses to Obama and Romney who is struggling to keep up with Obama.

 
 

David Atkins at Hullabaloo, Rape and God’s Will.

Well done. Beats the free-verse-type musings I posted here late last night.

 
 

Any points for creativity is negated by the creepiness factor.

eck…i worked at our local theater for years…those floors are SOOO disgusting…i will give him kudos though, for 1) actually making body contact with the floor 2) not getting stuck on matted down dots and jujubes which have been soaked in soda…which, btw, is impervious to any attempts to remove…which gives me a great idea for getting my handheld shower attachment* that’s supposed to stick to the wall with a suction cup to actually stick to the fucking wall…

*SHUT UP…it was a set…and on sale!

 
 

Then let me punch your fucking face off.

madam, i like the cut of your jib! perhaps we can embark on some sort of vigilante attitude adjustment tour?

 
 

Little help? Pammycakes is running those subway ads on Trimet, our bus/light rail/streetcar service. Someone had suggested the perfect defacement. I am unable to retrieve it and the knowledge that one of you geniuses already achieved perfection makes me unable to ideate. Or maybe it was a link? Whatever, give me hand, wouldja?

 
 

If you ask me, Pammycakes already looks defaced.

 
 

Response to Coulter, well worth reading I thought.

tigris, thank you a million times for posting this…his response made me cry…but as i said in my comment over there, he also restored my faith in humanity…

 
 

I see (former?) Sadly “Actor212” is getting shoutouts over at Wonkette these days.

He might not be funny or likable but he’s prolific.

http://wonkette.com/487612/oregon-man-protesting-to-save-gods-precious-rape-babies-stabs-other-man-seven-times

 
 

That Downs Syndrome dude writes a mean op ed. Of course, unlike Coulter, he’s not just phoning it in for ill-gotten gains.

 
 

I see (former?) Sadly “Actor212? is getting shoutouts over at Wonkette these days.

hmmmm…i’ve been wondering where he’s been…oh, well, curiosity sated!

 
 

madam, i like the cut of your jib! perhaps we can embark on some sort of vigilante attitude adjustment tour?

tigris and bbkf on a tear? Sounds terrifying, but I see big money in the book and movie rights!

 
 

I find Actor funny and likeable except on religion, but it’s not like we don’t all have our button issues.

 
 

I find Actor funny and likeable except on religion, but it’s not like we don’t all have our button issues.

Mine is the Cubs, but I don’t have to worry too much about that with HTML Mencken out of the picture.

 
 

I find Actor funny and likeable except on religion, but it’s not like we don’t all have our button issues.

how dare yoU!?!?! i do NOT!!!

 
 

it’s not like we don’t all have our button issues.

I have zipper issues. And possibly velcro issues.

 
 

I find Actor funny and likeable except on religion, but it’s not like we don’t all have our button issues.

mine is stupid people, so, yeah…my buttons get pushed A LOT…which brings up a point…i wonder what amy alkon thinks about fellow conservative ann coulter’s horribly rude remarks?

 
 

I have zipper issues. And possibly velcro issues.

oooh…pull-on pants for a grown man are not optimal…also, i read somewhere that you have zipper/blogging issues?

 
 

also, i read somewhere that you have zipper/blogging issues?

Does he forget and zip his hand in there?

 
 

Does he forget and zip his hand in there?

yes…he considers it some form of malsturbation…

 
 

just got an email from a friend with some bad medical news for her, but this made me smile: non-chaulaunte …her spelling is pretty bad a lot of times which, you know…whatever…but i love it when people mis-spell a word and make it much harder than what it is…

 
 

So Trump’s big announcement is that he’ll give 5M$ to charity for college transcripts and passport info? Jesus. You know, I’m far more interested in how a guy who has filed bankruptcy so many times has that much money to squander.

 
 

Annette Funicello had Eric Von Zipper issues.

 
 

non-chaulaunte …her spelling

No way. I like that spelling–it’s FANCEE!

 
 

BTW, if bbkf and Tigris are going on a spree, I’m assuming they’re going around to give Ann Coulter and Richard Mordor a kick in the nuts. Yes. Both of them. A kick in the nuts.

 
 

No way. I like that spelling–it’s FANCEE!

ha, ha…that’s funneh because i always call her fancy nancy…

BTW, if bbkf and Tigris are going on a spree, I’m assuming they’re going around to give Ann Coulter and Richard Mordor a kick in the nuts. Yes. Both of them. A kick in the nuts.

care to make it a trio? i dare say there is plenty of nut kicking for three…

 
 

Another one bites the dust. Seriously, are blogs the only outpost left?

(I should be careful; the next time I come around here I’ll find out that Sadly, No! has been bought out by Viacom)

 
 

Hi. My name is Jacquie…..

oooh, also fancee!

LOVE & LONG LIVE THE BUTTON!!

this sounds dirty…

 
 

A kick in the nuts

nut kicking for three

Band name(s).

 
 

We can go shoe shopping for nut-kicker boots first. Then A SLUMBER PARTY!

 
 

Another one bites the dust. Seriously, are blogs the only outpost left?

Lame. I see “changed.org” is available — they should be forced to change their name to that.

 
 

Trump? A guy who thinks of himself as “self-made” in spite of receiving generous gifts of money and/or influence from family members? Born on third base, thinks he hit a triple Trump? It irritates me no end that people like that don’t have this pointed out to them loudly and forcefully every time he opens his yap, but get listened to as if they had some special insight. Why, yes, I’m also thinking of Rmoney and Junior, why do you ask?

 
 

I find Actor funny and likeable except on religion

Agree with the religion bit. And this clusterfuck of a thread is where funny and likable ended for me. Thank FSM for teh killfile.

 
 

Oh come on. This thread’s fine!

 
 

OBS: Huh? That link goes right back to this post. If we’re not doing it for you, just tell us and we’ll try to be funnier and more likable.

 
 

Agree with the religion bit. And this clusterfuck of a thread is where funny and likable ended for me. Thank FSM for teh killfile.

oooh…it MUST be bad…when i click the link i am FORBIDDEN to enter…yikes…

We can go shoe shopping for nut-kicker boots first. Then A SLUMBER PARTY!

YES!!! but i draw the line at pillow fights and braiding hair in our jammies…i am more traditional…get hammered and pass out…wake up in nut-kicking mood…

Oh come on. This thread’s fine!

that’s what the bear said…

 
 

A kick in the nuts

nut kicking for three

Band name(s).

Skwirl and the nutkickers.

 
 

Tomorrow I will be going to see this amazing movie!

 
 

Dammit. Linkfail

Aww, I missed that one! Looked PRODUCTIVE.

 
 

Looked PRODUCTIVE.

Productive was definitely not the word I was thinking of. You could probably even start a bit further down to save some scrolling.

 
Marion in Savannah
 

“I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen”.

It was mentioned on another blog (I’m much to old and senile to remember which one, sorry…) that even God His Very Own Self sent the angel Gabriel down to ask permission first…

 
 

Holy shit, some actual useful advice from Business Week.

 
 

Holy shit, some actual useful advice from Business Week.

I wonder if any of those weapons will find their way into next season’s “Burn Notice.”

FWIW, I always found Business Week one of the more useful general-interest business pubs, unlike Forbes, which seems to consist entirely of whining about what high taxes Steve Forbes has to pay.

 
 

But, look, I was right about stuff:

Major, bill Bennett was asserting that somehow men were being hurt by their buffoonish portrayals on TV. I was arguing that that it was a silly assertion. And it is. And actually proves something quite the opposite of what he was intending to prove.

The point is, Bill Bennett is wrong. About this and everything.”

 
 

That was a good thread. I kicked some major fucking ass.

 
 

I kicked some major fucking ass.

Leave Major Kong alone!

 
 

That was a good thread. I kicked some major fucking ass.

you did indeed…i recall that day with mixed feelings…

 
 

Leave Major Kong alone!

i’ve heard it’s a sick world and he’s a happy many…i think he would enjoy an ass kicking from vs…now a nut-kicking on the other hand…

 
 

Agreed on the kicking of ass.

Unrelated: this is pretty clever and amusing.

 
 

I’m rereading the clusterfuck thread and I ahve one question: where was I? Asleep or what?

 
 

Also, VS kicked ass.

 
 

Asleep or what?

I just assumed you were hibernating.

 
 

Never mind, I just remembered that polar bears don’t hibernate.

 
 

Just doin’ my job, sir.

 
 

Ok, makes a lot more sense if it follows N_B’s comment.

 
 

vs does not buttchug nor does she sing lullabies to hibernating polar bears.

 
 

“I’m rereading the clusterfuck thread and I ahve one question: where was I? Asleep or what?”

Come to think of it, I would have enjoyed your weighing in.

 
 

My opinion of Actor is that he has every right to his opinion as long as it’s nowhere near me.

 
 

Tomorrow I will be going to see this amazing movie!

Meh. We’re going to see “The Room” at Century 21.

 
 

Hey, check out what Sarah, Plain and Short said:

“President Obama’s shuck and jive shtick with these Benghazi lies must end.”

Is she confusing Obama for zombie Sammy Davis Jr.? ‘Cuz I’m pretty sure only black Jews have “shuck and jive shticks.”

 
 

Meh. We’re going to see “The Room” at Century 21.

You’re going to look at a house from one of those agents with the hideous jackets?

 
 

“President Obama’s shuck and jive shtick with these Benghazi lies must end.”

Maybe her badly-done racist dogwhistle indicates she doesn’t think he’s a Kenyanmuslimhitlersocialist anymore. Maybe.

 
 

“I’m rereading the clusterfuck thread and I ahve one question: where was I? Asleep or what?”

malsturbating?

 
 

Benesturbation is better.

 
 

Our story last week on just how the “CEO” of sanitary towel firm Bodyform

okay…sanitary towel? whoa…that’s even more uncomfortable sounding than sanitart napkins…

Benesturbation is better.

i will take your word for it sir, i have had my share of adventure recently…plus upper thigh fronts still a bit sting-y from windowsill…

 
 

sanitart napkins

Is that to keep the crumbs of your shirt while eating pop-tarts or something?

 
 

Is that to keep the crumbs of your shirt while eating pop-tarts or something?

hahaha…that was an awesome mis-spell!

 
 

sanitart napkins

Insert “clean pie” joke here.

 
 

I do not understand the joke tigris made and I request a detailed explanation of same.

 
 

See, the joke is that there was no joke, you’re supposed to think up something funny ON YOUR OWN but give me credit for it. I can’t lose!

 
 

Requesting… Still requesting…

 
 

Malsturbation

disturbation…

 
 

It’s gotta be tough for Big Hollywood:

The New York Times reveals today–in a classic buried lede–that Harvey Weinstein’s film about the killing of Osama bin Laden, set to air on the National Geographic Channel two days before the election, originally included a scene showing Gov. Mitt Romney “appearing to oppose the raid,” a complete fabrication of history.

Mitt just isn’t a consistently mad dog.

 
 

Now now, people, there’s no need to fight about it; both The Room and Birdemic: Shock and Terror are amazing cinematic masterpieces.

 
 

Another link that may help purge some of Coulter’s hate out of bbkf’s brain.

 
 

It’s gotta be tough for Big Hollywood:

sooooo…their panties are in a knot because of a film that does not excoriate obama being released before the election? and they’ve forgotten the other recently released obama film?

 
 

Another link that may help purge some of Coulter’s hate out of bbkf’s brain.

thank you…thank you…thank you…made me a little weepy, but it’s totally awesome!

 
 

oh jeeze…this exchange from the big poopywood link is hilariously wolverine-y:

it is too late, Americas fate has been sealed
what are you suggesting? Acquiesce? NEVER>

Despair is a sin. Abjure it.

Speak for yourself, Dejonn, If you don’t want to help us save our country get out of the way.

lead, follow, or get the he double hockey stick out of the way!

I agree-but ONLY if the the “Deceiver-in-Chief” gets re-elected! If you believe in a God, pray like you’d never done before. (In MY case, it was freshman Algebra-lol)

There is still itme! Stand up, act like men & women–REAL AMERICANS!!! FIGHT for the greatest country that has ever existed in this world!!! And VOTE….R/R2012!!

 
 

It’s gotta be tough for Big Hollywood:

and on further reflection…they took the unflattering mittens part out? i’m not sure what the problem is except for projection all the time…deafening, deafening projection…

 
 

I agree-but ONLY if the the “Deceiver-in-Chief” gets re-elected! If you believe in a God, pray like you’d never done before. (In MY case, it was freshman Algebra-lol)

From the writing I’d guess their last freshman algebra class was this morning.

 
 

A kick in the nuts
nut kicking for three
Band name(s).
Skwirl and the nutkickers.

Bbkf Tigris Pickett and the Nutkicker Five.

 
 

If you believe in a God, pray like you’d never done before. (In MY case, it was freshman Algebra-lol)

I see what happened in 2008. This person failed to pray harder than he/she did over freshman algebra. God noticed and reluctantly let the “DiC” take office.

I wonder about the content of these prayers. Some of them must be pretty awkward. You drop to your knees and start in reverently, and the shit that fills your brain just comes out all wrong. That Rush joke with a serious point to it: I just pray the point, right? Maybe some yeas and thous and arts would help. What’s more appropriate when addressing God: Obummer, or Barry Soetero? Etc.

 
 

i’ve heard it’s a sick world and he’s a happy many

Major Kong is legion? Major Kong has a legion?

 
 

Malsturbation
disturbation…

Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.

 
 

I always figured that Actor and T & U had eloped off to some secluded island somewheres.

Opposites, etc.

 
 

i’ve heard it’s a sick world and he’s a happy many

Major Kong is legion? Major Kong has a legion?

He is large. He contains multitudes.

 
St. Trotsky, Pope-in-Avignon
 

In Major Kong, there are many houses.

 
 

He is large. He contains multitudes.

Cool. I leave for a while and suddenly I have legions and multitudes.

 
 

You should put some unguent on those.

 
 

…or a hat.

 
 

So that’s what Gloria Allred is up to. Can’t wait to see how the whingers (autocorrect now suggests whingers, how cool is that).

http://mobile.alternet.org/alternet/?ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fpolitics#!/entry/50880862d7fc7b56702e0651

 
 

My mobile really doesn’t like that link, but it’s been behaving badly all day.

I really like whingersfor (I assume) wingers. It seems so appropriate.

 
 

“I AM LEGION”

In Scientology, a “Body Thetan is an alien thetan who is ‘stuck’ in, on or near a human body, and all human bodies are said to be covered in these misplaced thetans, or clusters of them.”–Wikipedia

I’ve always thought this was bizarre science fiction, but it’s just dawned on me that it’s not at all original, once the LRH jargon is removed:

“And Jesus asked him, saying, What is your name? And he said, Legion: because many demons were entered into him.”–Luke 8:30.

My tendency is to wonder at how people are caught up in L. Ron’s cult, which is so transparently silly. In this case, however, we see Hubbard borrowing themes that have proven very durable. I wonder how self-conscious he was in his cobbling together of found materials. Maybe he understood that while a cult might profit from a fresh skin, in order to resonate its substance would have to be old news already spread throughout the host.

 
 

VCarlson – it’s a link to alternet. Story is, Romney testified in his friend’s divorce proceeding that Staples stock wasn’t worth very much. the guy was CEO of Staples, which Romney had made a large investment in. Mere days after the divorce trial Rmoney and his buddy had their ipo or something wand walked away with gazillions from their “not worth very much” Staples stock.

Gloria Allred is representing the aggrieved ex-wife and is intent on opening the transcripts. Could be ugly for Teh Mittens.

 
 

I wonder how self-conscious he was in his cobbling together of found materials.

Since he purportedly created his cult on a bet (with Heinlein? Can’t be arsed finding out…), I’d say “very self-conscious.”

 
 

The great Ted Sturgeon said he was there when L.Ron Hoover said whatever it was he said about “there’s no money in writing (SF). If you want to make money you have to start a religion.”. Or whatever.

 
 

“The way to make a million dollars is to start a religion.”

L. Ron Hubbard is widely rumored to have said “The way to make a million dollars is to start a religion.” There are also variant rumors. For some reason, this is often mentioned on Usenet. Evidence is discussed below, but the short answer is that it’s almost certainly true.

The Church of Scientology has actually taken German publishers to court for printing this story. Stern won (see below).

One form of the rumor is that L. Ron Hubbard made a bar bet with Robert A. Heinlein. This is definitely not true. It’s uncharacteristic of Heinlein, and there’s no supporting evidence. There is, however, inconclusive evidence that Robert Heinlein suggested some parts of the original Dianetics.
[…]

On 9apr94, jittlov@gumby.cs.caltech.edu (Mike Jittlov) posted (about a conversation with Theodore Sturgeon):

Back in the 1940’s, L. Ron Hubbard was a member of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (when its old clubhouse was just north of Wilshire Blvd). Ted vividly recalled being a few yards from Hubbard, when he became testy with someone there and retorted, “Y’know, we’re all wasting our time writing this hack science fiction! You wanta make _real_ money, you gotta start a _religion_!
Though I didn’t ask, I think Ted would’ve mentioned it if the second person was Heinlein or another author of note. He had an extremely accurate memory, and I’d trust Sturgeon over anyone else’s account.

Reportedly Sturgeon also told this story to others. Theodore Sturgeon was one of the truly great science fiction writers, and someone whose word and memories were trusted. (John W. Campbell commented that Sturgeon should have written the definitive history of SF fandom.) Mike Jittlov is a respected Hollywood filmmaker and stopmotion actor, and can be found on the net at “alt.fan.mike-jittlov”.

I never had the good fortune to meet Ted but I knew several people who had who told me Ted told them the same steoy. I distinctly recall hearing Harlan Ellison relating that story in his room at a con circa 1976.

 
 

Oops – tagfail. The last paragraph is me.

 
 

And no, nothing of that sort of thing youre thinking went on in Harlan’s room. Just the usual booze and drugs.

 
 

It’s unfortunate Ellison didn’t start a religion. As long as it worshipped something other than him.

 
 

Since he purportedly created his cult on a bet (with Heinlein? Can’t be arsed finding out…), I’d say “very self-conscious.”

I can believe there was a bet, but it’s a very big tail wagging a tiny dog. Hubbard didn’t have to go so far to win a bet. I’m curious whether or how everything about the cult was consciously and strategically borrowed. The process would work something like this: you’d identify some aspect of a religion or other institution, and assess its potential for manipulating people:

Spirit possession, then: what are the known and potential uses of this concept, in terms of power and influence? Do I incorporate it into my scheme? What synergy or conflicts could exist between spirit possession and reincarnation, as tools of social control? … And so on, promoting a few concepts to the heart of the cult for practical reasons after analysis, rejecting other ideas in the process.

This sort of activity would be levels beyond the typical opportunistic efforts of elites to promote and shape religion, tradition, etc. insomuch as they serve elite interests. For example, U.S. conservatives struggle to reconcile the gospel of Jesus with the teachings of Ayn Rand, but if you foresaw that conflict and worked it out of the system ahead of time, there’d be no loose ends, less possibility of a schism …

 
 

Hubbard used his finely-honed conman’s intuition to decide what to steal from successful religions and what to steal from Freudian repressed-memory bullshit, rather than convene a focus group, but every component of Dianetics and then Scientology was consciously chosen.

 
 

It’s unfortunate Ellison didn’t start a religion. As long as it worshipped something other than him.
Now you’re asking the impossible.

 
 

New post.

 
 

Yeah, well, if you’re dumb enough to fork over most of your net worth so that you can be hooked up to an electrical device while a bunch of assholes scream personal questions at you, you’re probably getting what you deserve.

Discussion question of the day: Would the Republicans nominate a Scientologist if they thought he or she could win the general election?

 
 

Hubbard used his finely-honed conman’s intuition to decide what to steal from successful religions and what to steal from Freudian repressed-memory bullshit, rather than convene a focus group, but every component of Dianetics and then Scientology was consciously chosen.

Right, right, but focus groups don’t begin to describe how far you could take the preplanning.

 
 

I haven’t been keeping up. Is Clapton still God?

 
 

“I haven’t been keeping up. Is Clapton still God?”

Clapton is just Clapton now, and in terms of branding and marketing it works out fine for him.

 
 

Clapton has not quite worked out the “children are a gift from above” aspect of godhood.

 
 

(comments are closed)