Beating the bushes for a speaker in Denver

Look who they've dredged up in Denver to speak on school reform. This even though Jr. had backed out of his previous commitment. His handlers wouldn't let him get within 10 miles of WikiLeaks' founder Assange.

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Even though the president's jobs bill was DOA, Dems are pushing ahead with it piece-by-piece in order to force the hand of Limbaugh Party opposition-ists. Not a bad campaign strategy. First up is $35 billion for state and local governments to rehire teachers, police and firefighters paid for by a tax increase for millionaires and ending subsidies for the oil and gas industry. "Our expectation [is] that the first measure will be teachers," says White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

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I'm looking forward to hearing  John Carlos speak tonight with my favorite sports writer, Dave Zirin up at Northwestern.  For those too young or mis-educated to know, Carlos was the great Olympic sprinter who in 1968,  along with Tommie Smith, raised his fist in the black power salute, in open defiance, when he got to the medals podium. He's been an outspoken human rights advocate ever since. Zirin is co-author, along with Carlos, of The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World. Cornell West wrote the foreword.

In this morning's L.A. Times:

About 200 protesters gathered near downtown Tuesday to link the nationwide Occupy Wall Street-inspired protests to budgets cuts and layoffs in the Los Angeles Unified School District. “Occupy LAUSD” participants took on the district, education philanthropists and charter schools as well as giving voice to familiar themes such as opposing corporate greed and inequality. Many of the demonstrators had marched from the main Occupy L.A. campsite around City Hall, more than a mile away. English teacher Greta Enszer spoke at the school board meeting going on inside district headquarters and then addressed the crowd outside in similar terms.  

“This is not OK to lay off permanent teachers,” she told the school board. “This [job] is not a stepping stone to me. This is my profession. My students are very important to me.”