18 years of lies on Afghanistan revealed

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.” -- Napoleon Bonaparte

Three U.S. presidents, Bush, Obama, and Trump, have bought and sold this big lie to the public and built their failed foreign policies upon it.

A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable. -- Craig Whitlock, Washington Post

LOOKING BACK...On Oct. 2, 2002, then IL State Senator Barack Obama said in a major speech at an anti-war rally we organized in Chicago that "I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars." He referred to the Iraq War as his "dumb war" example in contrast to Afghanistan, which was billed as a winnable and necessary war to topple the Taliban government, drive out al Qaeda terrorists and install a pro-U.S. regime in Kabul.

"We must embrace America's singular role in the course of human events but we must also be as pragmatic as we are passionate, as strategic as we are resolute. 

Then there was...

Hillary Clinton supported the 2009 increase in U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan. During the administration's Afghanistan War review in 2010, Clinton endorsed General Stanley McChrystal's recommendation for 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, before endorsing a fallback proposal (ultimately accepted by Obama) for 30,000 troops. -- NYT

And regime-changer McCain...

Robert Kagan, a former adviser to his 2008 opponent John McCain, warned that a quick withdrawal threatens recent gains against the Taliban - and popular opinion could swing against the president if an emboldened enemy takes the speech as a cue to step up attacks.

"This is a political decision, not a military decision," he told POLITICO. "Americans are tired of this war, that's true. But they hate losing more, and if there's the perception that we're being run out of there, the public will turn on him fast." 

Since 2001, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 were wounded in action, according to Defense Department figures.

The government has not carried out a comprehensive accounting of how much it has spent on the war in Afghanistan, but the costs are staggering -- into the trillions.

Now, Trump says he's ready to engage in peace talks with the Taliban, in preparation for a U.S. troop withdrawal.

News of the talks came just before The Washington Post reported it had obtained more than 2,000 pages of government documents that it says show how U.S. officials have for years misled the public about the war in Afghanistan.

What an irony it would be if Republican Trump, facing impeachment and a difficult 2020 re-election campaign, ended the war that Democrats couldn't or wouldn't end. Shades of Republican, Richard Nixon in March of 1973, withdrawing his defeated army from Vietnam, only to be impeached in October of that same year.

I'm doubtful. Most likely, this is for media consumption.

The media has been complicit... The editorial board of the very same WaPo that this week revealed the pile of lies driving the Afghan war, opposed the war's end just months earlier.

The Washington Post’s editorial board (1/28/19) was similarly apprehensive at the prospect of US withdrawal. Lamenting what it considered a deal brokered “mostly on the enemy’s terms,” it proclaimed that “an end to the Afghan war is desirable, but not at the expense of everything the United States has helped to build there since 2001.” -- FAIR

Tell us, WaPo. What exactly has the U.S. built there? The truth, this time please.  

McCain was no 'hero' for labor or for public education

Former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Dick Cheney and Lynne Cheney at the memorial service for Sen. John McCain.

Okay, I understand why liberal pols, former presidents, congressional colleagues and union officials are being "civil" and paying their respects to Sen. John McCain. Some, like AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten, are spreading McCain-love around right now, in order to take shots at Donald Trump, his hated Republican competitor.

Others like neocon warmongers, Henry Kissinger, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman spoke adoringly at McCain's funeral in order to try and salvage something of what's left of the old GOP.

I'm okay with trying to take advantage of splits in the enemy's camp. I will even give McCain credit for being a voice for mild campaign finance reform and against the use of torture ("enhanced interrogation") of prisoners.  But gushing and going overboard in praise of McCain on the part of Democrats and union officials only makes them look like opportunists.

Case in point...Weingarten, who's not even running for office, lavished unnecessary praise on McCain, calling him "a hero of America". His heroism being all about his role as a village-bombing Air Force pilot and then a POW in Vietnam. I hope she can understand why those of us who fought so hard against that genocidal war, including many members of her own union, will take a knee on that one.

But the great irony here is that Randi's "hero" spent a career making war on organized labor, and teacher unions in particular. This piece from the N.C. AFL-CIO in response to the McCain/Palin 2008 presidential campaign, lays it out pretty well.

McCain rarely met an anti-union or anti-public-school bill he didn't like. He was the main sponsor of legislation supporting privately-run charters and vouchers. In his 2008 debate with Barack Obama, he called it, "the civil rights issue of the 21st century".

 And all this while more than 50,000 Arizona teachers were wildcat-striking for union rights and decent pay in one of the most anti-union states in the nation.

He was also okay with school districts opting to teach creationism. Supported the ban on teaching ethnic studies. Voted against the King holiday. And then there's his lifetime support of war, the greatest enemy of children and education along with massive defense spending, which takes billions of dollars directly out of American classrooms.

No, John McCain was no "hero" when it came to schools, teachers or their unions. Pay respects to the McCain family if you must. But no more B.S. please.

Not one iota of civility for a hero of America!!! Trump allies fume at McCain memorial addresses, urge counterattack - POLITICO https://t.co/c2gPymT0Xf

— Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten) September 2, 2018

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Belafonte, 90, tells Carnegie Music Hall audience in Pittsburgh,  “This will be my last public appearance.” 

Harry Belafonte

“We have achieved a lot in my lifetime. Dr King was not about nothing, Eleanor Roosevelt was not about nothing. I think in the final analysis that we shall overcome, because what we did is … we left a harvest that generations to come [will] reap. That they have not yet plowed. That they have not yet harvested.” -- Guardian

Parent at Success Academy Charter

“It’s like a military-style boot camp,” said one of the parents, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. -- N.Y. Daily News

 Prof. Erin Pahlke, Whitman College

...absent sufficient information for parents, choice-based education systems “penalize schools that enroll low-achievers rather than schools that offer poor instruction” and give school leaders a perverse incentive to focus on “making sure your school’s got the best kids” rather than improving school quality. -- The Atlantic

Barbara Ransby, UIC history professor

The Movement for Black Lives is distinctive because it defers to the local wisdom of its members and affiliates, rather than trying to dictate from above. In fact, the local organizers have insisted upon it. -- New York Times

Jimmy Carter

 Asked if Trump was responsible for souring America’s image in the world, he said “he might be escalating it but I think that precedes Trump. The United States has been the dominant character in the whole world and now we’re not any more. And we’re not going to be." -- Guardian  

John McCain

 “One aspect of the (Vietnam) conflict by the way that I will never ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest income level of America and the highest income level found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur." -- AZ Central

If you think journalists should never challenge statements of generals, I’ve got a great documentary series for you https://t.co/4QuzXyw0OX

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) October 20, 2017

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

They really cast the deciding vote on healthcare bill. 

Tim Hogan, spokesman for Our Lives on the Line

“The resistance showed up – we called, we came to meetings, we rallied in the rain, and last night we won a critical victory in the fight to protect our care. But we know that President Trump and [Senate majority] Leader [Mitch] McConnell’s reckless determination to imperil the wellbeing of millions of Americans has not gone away... We’re not waiting for their next attack.”  --Guardian

 NAACP

The conclusion of this set of hearings may have been best summed up by Chris Ungar, Past President, of the California School Boards Association:

Can charter schools be part of the solution? Absolutely. But that solution must be intentional, well-planned growth that takes into account the health and sustainability of the entire public education system, including the so-called traditional public schools that educate 90% of our country’s students. -- Task Force Report

Troy LaRaviere give report to CPS Board

CPAA Pres. Troy LaRaviere to CPS Board of Ed

“When has this district ever attempted to shut down three majority white schools in one year?” he asked before turning to [CPS second-in-Command, Janice] Jackson. 

Our principals love you, they’re very disappointed because you were one of us. When are you going to leave this cesspool and come back home? Come back home, sister.” -- Sun-Times

Fred Klonsky

"The morality is...all working people ought to have a pension, live a life of comfort, without worrying about health care or where they're going to live. That's what a humane system looks like. To treat old folks with dignity and with honor." -- Live From the Heartland Radio

Phil Kadner

All Americans deserve the same health care as Sen. John McCain. -- Sun-Times

Tony Sanders, CEO of IL's second largest school district

 “If prior bills failed because they took away from the rich to give to the poor, why would I support a bill that takes money from the poor to give to the rich?” -- Mark Brown's column in Sun-Times

Andy Borowitz

 Harland Dorrinson, who voted for Trump “because he promised that he would take my health care away from me on Day 1,” said that he was “very upset” that he will still receive that benefit. “I woke up this morning, and my family and I could still see a doctor,” he said. “This is a betrayal.” -- New Yorker 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Brandon Victor Dixon (Aaron Burr)

“We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir." --  Hamilton cast to Mike Pence

Alt-Right leader, Richard B. Spencer

“I do think we have a psychic connection, or you can say a deeper connection, with Donald Trump in a way that we simply do not have with most Republicans.” -- New York Times

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Trump election

"This is who we are. If you understand the history of this country, this is nothing new so we should not be shocked. If we look at 250 years of slavery, you look at Frederick Douglas during reconstruction seeing it overturned, you look at Ida B Wells going south to document lynching, and all the violence we always suffer. Then you would know it is the same country and we just need go get up in the morning and get ready to fight.” -- At NCTE

John McCain (Store this one away for future reference)

 “I don’t give a damn what the president of the United States wants to do or anybody else wants to do. We will not waterboard. We will not do it...What does it say about America if we’re going to inflict torture on people?”  -- Halifax international security forum

New Dem Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Sanders

“I’m not going to point fingers looking back. I think that is divisive. But Bernie makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways.” -- Huffington Post

 Dr. Martin Luther King on resistance (1963)

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. --  Letter from Birmingham City Jail

On issues of racism and bigotry, let me be very clear, there is no compromise. pic.twitter.com/anCFrunzGO

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) November 20, 2016

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Ken Griffin

Kent Redfield

“It’s certainly an indication of the increasingly large role that wealthy individuals are playing in American politics.” -- Sun-Times, Billionaire Ken Griffin gives Rauner record-breaking $2.5 million

Rev. Walter "Slim" Coleman

“We’re not suggesting that Rauner is a member of the Klan or that there were any Klansmen involved in his campaign or anything like that.  We were just saying that the forces that are unleashed by the - the current day Republican Party are very dangerous forces and very racist forces, and that we don’t want them to take over in Illinois.” -- WBEZ 91.5

Ray DeBerry

He sensed the injustice of having to climb to the gallery at the segregated Holly Theatre. He resented having to call the white kid behind the counter at Tyson's Drug Store "sir." "No one needed to teach you that," the 66-year-old DeBerry said. "It was just something that was in your DNA." So when a Freedom School opened in an unassuming white-frame building, DeBerry found his way there. -- 50 years ago, 'Freedom Summer' changed South, US

John McCain

Andy Borowitz

The Arizona senator stressed that the blame game must be “rigorous and far-reaching,” but said that it would exempt those in the Senate who voted to invade Iraq in 2003. “That’s ancient history,” he said. -- New Yorker

Mercedes Schneider

Teacher tenure is due process, not a lifetime job guarantee. -- deutsch29

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Pedro Noguera

"The way we are now as a country, not only aren't we living up to the Brown decision, we're not even living up the Plessy v. Ferguson of separate but equal." -- Up W/ Chris Hayes

Melissa Harris-Perry 

"I  live in the 7th ward of New Orleans, and I  don't like what I see happening there in the KIPP schools. I am distressed by the movement away from teachers unions that can actually fight for teachers." -- MSNBC

John McCain

Defending Romney's record at Bain Capital: "And yes, the free enterprise system can be cruel” -- TPM

Charles Blow

Louisiana is the starkest, most glaring example of how our prison policies have failed.  -- NYT, "Plantations, Prisons and Profits"

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Republican battle cry

"Drill, baby, drill" is now, "Hush, baby, hush." (Greenwire)

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony at L.A. May Day rally

“Everyone in God’s eyes is legal...Every time we have an economic downturn, there is a new attack on immigrants.' (NYT)

McCain's bashing of immigrants

What a difference the Tea Party makes. This time McCain endorsed his state’s new immigration law as “a good tool” and “a very important step forward,” and propagandized in favor of it with his widely ridiculed televised canard that illegal immigrants were “intentionally causing accidents on the freeway.” (Frank Rich)

 Report from the Venture Fund meet

Charters have also become a pet cause of what one education historian calls a billionaires’ club of philanthropists, including Mr. Gates, Eli Broad of Los Angeles and the Walton family of Wal-Mart. But for all their support and cultural cachet, the majority of the 5,000 or so charter schools nationwide appear to be no better, and in many cases worse, than local public schools when measured by achievement on standardized tests, according to experts citing years of research. (Trip Gabriel, N.Y. Times)

What happens when Democrats take their lead from McCain/Palin

"Drill baby, drill?"

The worst eco-disaster in U.S. history is taking place in the Gulf. BP Oil's race to the top has even got T-bagger politicians like Gov. Jindal crying for help from BIG GOVERNMENT.

But it was just three weeks ago that Obama and the Democrats themselves were calling on congress to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to the big oil companies. This was their way of  "reaching across the aisle" to the Limbaugh Party of No.

Watching the seemingly boundless glob of crude, now bigger than the state of West Virginia, washing up the mouth of the Mississippi and on to the eco-sanctuaries of Louisiana, destroying the fishing industry and everything natural in its path, I can't help but recall Diane Ravitch's comparison of the current Arne Duncan-led ed reform to an "educational tsunami," another pathetic attempt by Democrats, to echo the market-driven policies of the neo-cons.


It seems that whenever Obama stands up and acts the way he promised to act during the election campaign, good things can happen, ie. passage of the health care bill and now potentially Wall St. Reform. But when he and the Democrats cave in and mimic McCain/Palin, it's a national disaster waiting to happen--ie. expansion of the war in Afghanistan, drill, baby drill and test baby, test.

Quotables

The Teach for America Cult

As she [Wendy Kopp] continues to talk I realise that TFA is—in the best possible sense—a cult. It has its own language (“corps members”, “alums”), recruits are indoctrinated (“We tell them that it can be done, that we know of hundreds, thousands, of teachers attaining tremendous success”), go through an ordeal (“Everyone hits the wall in week three in the classroom”), emerge transformed by privileged knowledge (“Once you know what we know—that kids in poor urban areas can excel—you can accomplish different things”) and can never leave... (Education correspondent for The Economist)

Tom Friedman, McKinsey & TFA

Friedman has been wrong on so many issues. He is mighty lucky the NY Times doesn’t use a pay-for-performance model. Poor Tom would be eating at a food kitchen tonight. Big example: It was Friedman who was an early cheerleader for the war in Iraq. Today he claims he knows what to do about public schools: Get rid of them. He wants us to hand them over to the likes of Teach for America. He is wowed by the TFA model where urban schools are staffed by young kids for a couple of years before they move on to their real career. (Fred Klonsky's blog)

"Scared shitless"

Speaking to an affectionate crowd of Log Cabin Republicans on Saturday evening, Meghan McCain ridiculed the party her father headed this past election, declaring that "old school Republicans" were "scared shitless" of the changing landscape.... I think we're seeing a war brewing in the Republican Party (Sam Stein, Huffington)

Goodbye academic freedom

Banning Ayers

The banning of Bill Ayers has become a symbol of the collapse of academic freedom, residue from eight years of neocon power and the use of the politics of fear to push a conservative agenda in the schools.

Debra Pickett has a pretty good piece on Ayers in Chicago Magazine this month. It's good because it focuses on Bill Ayers the educator, not Ayers the cartoonish radical monster created by the Palin/McCain gang and then ratified in the media and even by many liberal educators and academics.

Writes Pickett:

Many of his tenets are hardly revolutionary—that parents and communities should control their own schools, that students learn better in “small learning communities,” that teachers are most effective when they ask questions and facilitate projects and discussions, rather than simply lecture or drill. These ideas in particular have become components in most major school reform efforts across the country, influencing not only educators but also private philanthropists and public policymakers.

But even though the elections are over, Ayers the caricature, is being banned from speaking at schools and public meetings across the country. Ironically, those doing the banning aren't mainly the right-wing Palin types any more. All too often they are liberals who are quick to abandon academic freedom and 1st Amendment rights out of fear. Shades of the '50s.

The most recent cases: the principal of Naperville (IL) High School where Ayers was invited and then dis-invited to address only those students who had signed parent permission slips. And then at Boston College, where Ayers' invitation was yanked and where even his virtual speech via satellite was virtually (I guess) banned.

A sign of the times

Just to show where the country is at right now, there was even serious talk about banning Pres. Obama from speaking at Notre Dame because his position on abortion and stem cell research upset the church hierarchy. Somewhere, the late senator from the state of Wisconsin is resting comfortably in his grave.

One voice that leaves me with some hope, is that of UMass Professor David Lisak who was scheduled to give a lecture at Boston College later this month. In the wake of the College’s decision to ban Ayers from campus, I received a copy of an email Lisak sent to the individual who had invited him to campus:

Dear Dr. Marchetti,

I am very sad to have to cancel my colloquium at Boston College, “The Undetected Rapist: Exploring the Causes and Consequences of Interpersonal Violence,” scheduled for April 27^th. I do so because I cannot, in good conscience, provide a lecture to the Boston College community in the immediate wake of the College’s decision to block Mr. William Ayers from speaking on campus, and to further prevent him from being heard by the campus community. Freedom of speech is a critical component of vibrant public discourse and a pillar of our democracy. When it is attacked – and I view Boston College’s decision as such an attack – it is incumbent on each of us to take whatever steps we can to challenge such actions. Unfortunately, the step that I can take creates an inconvenience for individuals who likely had no part in the College’s decision, and who may strongly disagree with that decision. For that I am truly sorry, and I ask you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

David Lisak

I thought McCain lost the election

Then why does he get a seat on the Senate's powerful HELP Committee that includes (E) control of the education agenda? Answer, according to pal Lindsey Graham--"He wants to be a player."

The HLP part stands for health (he's against it), labor (he's against it) and pensions (against). I mean, he had nothing to say on the subject of public education all the way through the campaign, even with all that Gates Ed in '08 money floating around. He was too smart to make an issue of his bent towards teaching creationism. He left his pro-voucher politics at home as well. But now that the elections are over and everyone's reaching across the aisle, John McCain, with the EEP No Excuses crowd behind him, intends to be the main voice for more testing and less money for schools.

Says PoliticsK-12 blogger Alyson Klein:

For a guy who barely ever mentioned schools on the campaign trail and included a program already in law as a key part of his pre-K plan, McCain has been surprisingly visible on education issues lately.

McCarthy blames profs for the Obama youth vote

Andrew ("The Other McCarthy") McCarthy blames the "tenured radicals" in the academy for Tuesday's massive youth vote. It seems we teachers indoctrinated millions of kids with notions of participatory democracy. Gee, thanks McCarthy. We tried our best. But I think you give far to0 little credit to Bush/Cheney, their eternal-war, end-of-hope policies and Bush-onomics which collapses the future of every young person in America. Oh, and you get some credit as well for being one of McCain's attack-dog bloggers who tried to keep the kids home on election day with your Swiftboating tactics but despite yourself, only gave them more energy to drive the Obama landslide.

See how they run

According to the Washington Times, McCain’s people are now blaming Palin for the failed Bill Ayers strategy. “She went rogue,” they claim. Like rats from a sinking ship they are denying culpability. Are they afraid of an Ayers suit, a reader asks? You betcha.

My other blog...

Under the bus

McCain/Palin’s bevy of wing-nut bloggers are going absolutely wing-nuts over my blog. Not this one so much, although they have wildly increased SmallTalk's readership (a shout-out to All-American Blogger, Maggie’s Notebook, someone named Steve Diamond, and all my new wing-nut readers). Rather they're all chattering about the one I ran for a while on BarackObama.org. I guess they don't have all that much to talk about these days and not much of an audience.

They call it, “Obama’s official campaign website” but actually anyone can blog on it. You don’t need official permission and there is no monitoring or censoring. Wow, what a democratic idea! I enjoyed it. But the problem I had, was running two blogs at once. And since I had way more readers here on SmallTalk, I moved all my blogging over here.

The wing-nuts went postal, claiming that Obama had "censored" me and thrown me “under the bus” to hide our long, close relationship and the fact that Obama is a secret socialist, terrorist, muslim, Annenberg/Klonsky money funneler. This bogus story is now repeated on every wing-nut blog site across the U.S.--over and over again. With each posting, a little more is added.

Hey, did you know? Klonsky and Obama shared the same office? Yes, and President Obama is going to appoint him Secretary of Social Justice.

As you can tell from the polls, this bogus campaign strategy isn't really working. But at least the nut jobs are persistent.

******

Runnin' on empty...

Headline, not from The Onion, but from today’s Sun-Times:

Obama would fill courts with ACLU zombies

Ah, perfect for Halloween.

Or how about this From UPI:

Poll: 1 in 4 Texans say Obama is Muslim

My mind has just slipped into the gutter thinking, what else do 1 in 4 Texans do?

Here's my favorite bit of anti-Obama educational paranoia:

From Sara Lester at Intense Debate:

“If Barack Obama becomes president, he and his cohorts have every intention of forcing our children into public schools to be taught "social justice," i.e. that because God created them with light skin, they are inherently evil murderers.”

Yes you little light-skinned devils. Go to the board and write the words social-justice 100 times, or no pizza for you.

Another reason McCain is losing Florida

Parent protests rocked Miami's Edison High this year

If you’re watching the news, you will see images of long, long early-voting lines in the key state of Florida. By all accounts, this is a good sign for Obama who was trailing badly in this state but now has pulled slightly ahead in the polls. If McCain loses Florida, there's little hope for him of winning this election.

Why has the momentum shifted?

The NYT and Boston Globe get some of the reasons right: 1) Obama has put boots on the ground, some 600 paid organizers to manage 160,000 volunteers. This is a state in which Obama didn’t even campaign during the primaries and where the Democratic Party traditionally has had a weak organization compared to Republicans. It’s also one which the McCain organization took for granted; 2) the housing crisis which has mangled Florida’s economy under the watch of two Republican governors, including Bush brother Jeb; 3) McCain and Gov. Christ are at each other’s throat over McCain’s choice of Palin over the more moderate Christ; and 4) the state’s once-powerful coalition of right-wing Cubans and Jewish retirees, which heavily supported Bush in 2000 and 2004, is in disarray. For many in the Cuban community, the economic crisis is trumping U.S. policy towards Cuba, as a voting issue, according to the Miami Herald.

But from my own work in the Sunshine State during the past seven years, I can tell you another reason for the growing grassroots support building for Obama . It’s a reason the national press hasn’t yet picked up on. It’s in large measure a response to the dismal failure of Republican education policies, especially NCLB and its testing madness which has hit here especially hard and caused havoc in many Florida districts.

Schools that have been deemed failures under NCLB’s grading system have been getting A or B grades under the former governor Jeb Bush’s grading system. The life-or-death FCAT exam has resulted in tens of thousands of kids, especially in heavily-populated Dade and Broward counties, being held back, unable to graduate on time and ultimately dropping out.

Florida has some of the largest high schools in the nation, many holding as many as 3,000 to 5,000 students. The state also has the nation’s highest dropout rate. No coincidence there.

Education privateers run wild down here and charter schools are handed out to patronage clients like Halloween candy. Then there's Neil Bush’s great Florida schools software swindle using his family connections and political clout to push his Ignite Company, which bilked schools out of millions of dollars.

Parents are upset and are taking it out on the Republicans. There is also widespread anger in Miami’s black community over the pushing-out of Rudy Crew as schools superintendent.

In the final analysis, it may be that these smoldering education issues are what push Obama over the top in a close race.

Quotables

Butch & Sundance

Joe Biden, speaking in West Virginia:

John McCain is now attacking the Bush budget and fiscal policies. Folks, this is as crazy as the Sundance Kid attacking Butch Cassidy! They were in this together."

'Toothless bloggers...'

Mary Mapes, blogging on Huff

…And yet for all McCain's effort, for all his compromise, for all the cost of turning his back on what we thought was his personal value system -- it's not working. Americans aren't responding to the old plays -- the fake fears, the faux outrage, the conservatives who yell "Communist" at the news cameras, the pompous right-wing bloggers who once held such sway. I know all too well how scary and effective these old tactics were in 2004. Today, they are toothless.

Kids, watch your lunch money!

Guess what? Lots of those really smart folks who brought us the current global financial crisis are now looking for work. Guess where they’re heading?-- from Wall Street directly into teaching jobs.

"These big moments — and I think Sept. 11 was the last big moment — cause people to look for work that has meaning to them," says Tim Daly of the New Teacher Project, which recruits teachers nationwide.

Blue Moon

Every once in a while, Russo is right.

A different angle on the debate

What took MoveOn.org so long?

MoveOn.org has been added to the RNC’s Barack Book. Harkening back to Nixon’s “enemies list,” the Republicans have assembled this collection of Obama’s “radical” associates on facebook (tagged as “just for fun politics”--a kind of digital McCarthyism. According to the RNC’s news release:

The most recent friend update includes Barack Obama's notable association with MoveOn.org, a radical civil action group whose top donors include the likes of billionaire George Soros. MoveOn.org has endorsed Obama, made fundraising pleas for Obama's presidential campaign, and has spent at least $463,152 in pro-Obama and at least $676,102 in anti-McCain independent expenditures.

With all that Soros money, it still took MoveOn.org a week longer than it took me to make it into the Barack Book. Better work a little harder, MoveOn.org. Rust never sleeps.

Today's quotables

Socialists endorse McCain

Barbara Ehrenreich unmasks the Socialist International Conspiracy from hell.

After months of studying the candidates' economic plans, we have determined that one of them, and only one, can be relied on to complete the destruction of capitalism...

******

Front page EDWEEK headline about Chicago’s Annenberg Challenge reads:

“Backers Say Project Not ‘Radical.’”

Too bad.

Bill Gates on “creative capitalism”

Gates talks to Harvard business students about the powers of,

"Creative capitalism - it is not just about dollars, it is about the power of innovation. Capitalism has done a great job, but the foundation takes to areas where the mechanism has fallen short," said Gates. "My view is that every company should take 5% of their deep innovators, their researchers and really get them to see the needs of the poorest- in their area of work."

Gee, 5% vs. 95% still doesn’t seem like a fair fight to me.

Ouch!
Leo “The Plumber”Casey at Edwize breaks out the old Roto-Rooter and does a job on Joe Williams, Whitney Tilson, and the hedge-fund Democrats at DFER.

“Democrats for Education Reform? Sure they’re Democrats and for education reform, the same way that Joe the Plumber is a plumber.”

******

Barry Crimmins’ blog is one of my favorite reads. Here, with one burst of classy writing, he pulls the pipe wrench out of the hands of Samuel (“Joe the Plumber”) Wurzelbacher,

“...who owns no business as of the moment and obviously is a few mountain ranges away from Obama's tax increase threshold,” and the carpet out from under “loopy old men like McCain telling us our children should be taught by soldiers who have been spared the cruel and unfair regulations that require people to get an education before becoming educators.”

Powell asks: 'Why do we keep talking about Ayers?'

Here's why...

Colin Powell on Meet the Press, Sunday, said that McCain’s negative campaign was one of the main reasons he’s backing Obama. Powell told reporters that the thought of attacking Mr. Obama for Mr. Ayers was “over the top.”

"This Bill Ayers situation that's been going on for weeks became something of a central point of the campaign," Powell said. "But Mr. McCain says that he's a washed-out terrorist. Well, then, why do we keep talking about him?"

******

I'll try and answer that question for you, General Powell. It's because the Bill Ayers mania goes way beyond the election campaign. In fact, if anything, it has turned off most voters, including yourself. The real victim of the witch-hunters is academic freedom and democratic education, things I know you value.

Case-in-point: the banning of Ayers from attending an education research, school-reform meeting at the University of Nebraska last Friday.

University officials claimed they were receiving death threats against Bill Ayers’ and cancelled his scheduled speech on small schools and urban education, at a research conference at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Nebraska’s Republican Gov. Dave Heineman—not a big believer in academic freedom or the First Amendment—went even further:

"Bill Ayers is a well-known radical who should never have been invited," Heineman said Friday. "The people of Nebraska are outraged."

Hopefully, he will find out what the people are really outraged about, come election day.

Heineman, won the Republican primary in 2005 with a demagogic immigrant-bashing appeal to rural voters and support from the NRA. He’s already cast some doubt on the supposed death threats excuse, making it pretty clear that Ayers was banned purely for political reasons.

Heineman, appearing on Fox News late Friday, said he was pleased with the decision and skeptical about the stated reason behind it. “I’m not saying I’m buying into it either,” he said. “But the bigger issue is we wanted this event cancelled.” Heineman had called on NU President J.B. Milliken and Chuck Hassebrook, chairman of the NU Board of Regents, to tell Ayers to stay home.

Hassebrook called Heineman’s move “crass opportunism to try and jump on board and look good.” Chancellor Harvey Perlman also defended Ayers' selection, noting UNL, like any university, makes an effort to host speakers of a variety of political opinions.

"In this instance, it is unfortunate that a lecture directed toward an academic subject has become implicated in a political campaign. However, Professor Ayers is clearly regarded as a national expert in his field and can contribute to the understanding of this topic for our faculty and students. Nothing in his presence suggests that the university supports his personal or political philosophy or condones any of his former conduct."