Category: 2004 US Election

MJG’s Political Blog » Reflections:

I do admit, I talk a lot of trash. I went to Grab The Mic because it expressed/s good Kerry/liberal point of views, and started to post comments on that site to have a ‘sort’ of rivalry between sites. However, instead of my trash talking rivalry idea, I got people personally upset at me.

Well, perhaps not everyone is into trash-talking, name-calling, and the like. I admit I called this guy a dweeb and a troll (he fits the Jargon File defintion to a T, even by his own admission) but it’s hard to react civilly to someone who writes broadsides about you on his website but never finds a good reason to sign his name to anything, anywhere. I’m not into anonymity, especially if you want to be taken seriously.

As for debate, his own site is just a bunch of “rip-and-read” press releases from the BC04 website or the GOP. Not much original thought there. That and falling back on “if you don’t agree with me you’re clueless and ignorant.” How insightful.

One of the things that’s becoming clear to me is that ideologues like this guy assume that since they take their leaders seriously and brook no debate or dissent, that the other side is just as blinkered.

Sadly, I’m slow to realize this, but it has always been one the truisms about the liberal vs conservative ideology: liberals argue amongst themselves, bicker, and in general look like anything but a political party. Conservatives, by contrast, favor discipline first and foremost: internal debate is muted and outward dissent is forbidden.

Underlying this is the reason, perhaps, why one gets involved in politics in the first place: for progress or for power. Not for nothing are liberals called progressives, and I don’t think anyone can reasonably argue that conservatives are more interested in power than policy.

So Mark J. Graham (hmm, Google finds someone by that name in Springfield OH: wonder if it’s him?), otherwise known as MJG, doesn’t want to debate unless it’s on his terms, where he can accuse people of spinning or direct his little friends to visit websites he hangs out in for “trash talking.” And evidently one or more of them decided to pollute my logs with a couple of hundred bogus requests, and then talk about my comments on it (sadly, their IPs were blocked by then, so they may not have seen it). He may not have asked them to do it: I would never claim that, but perhaps some of his dimmer contemporaries mistook his playful sense of humor as real animus. I don’t much care.

It’s not he’ll be missed. And if any his vast readership links through to me, they’ll be referred to MoveOn.org [heh heh].

And at the end of the piece [Novak] writes::

“Schachte said he never has been contacted by or talked to anybody in the Bush-Cheney campaign or any Republican organization. He said he has been a political independent who votes for candidates of both parties.” Apparently, he’s the kind of independent who gave George W. Bush a thousand bucks in 2000 and in 2004. He’s also the new law partner of one of the guys running the Republican National Convention.

As I’ve said before, I think, I got out of journalism years ago, and one of the reasons I didn’t like it was all the fact-checking and due diligence: I wasn’t trained in the field so I was picking it all up on the job and I found it was hard work. At the time, I lacked the perseverance to keep asking “why” until I ran out of things to question. Now, I see that if I have just held on, I could have gotten a job at any large media outlets and never worried about facts or intellectual curiousity again. In the case of far too many big league reporters, taking things at face value seems to be par for the course. They never suspect they’re being spun or even flat out lied to: they just write it up and file it.

In this case, Novak could have gotten an intern to look into this if he felt it was beneath him: the facts were there.

Well, not really. I’m thinking more of a concept album/lampoon (how 70s can I get? concept album?) that documents the life of a mediocre son of a political dynasty as he finds himself caught in the headlights of history.

So what comes to mind is something like Randy Newman’s Faust: a collection of strong individual tracks, different styles, all telling part of the story.

Some faux country to describe a WASP pretending he’s a Texan, some thumping disco to relive the cocaine-fueled 70s, a little heavy metal/hard rock to capture the esprit de corps of being a fighter pilot . . . you get the idea. From the headlines I’m seeing, any number of first-rank artists would fit right in.

My cross-Sound neighbor picked up on the discussion of charter schools and their failure to live up to their promise.

What do tests test?:

It is well-known, if not explicitly stated, that many public schools now teach for standardized tests. School test scores are monitored and also used as a part of the No Child Left Behind legislation implemented by each state. Teachers and parents alike are aware of this pressure.

This is perhaps not the most representative pull-quote, but it just struck me as odd somehow: I can remember the week-long ordeals of standardized tests from my school days 30 years ago, so they’re by no means new. Perhaps state tests are, but national ones have been around a good long while. Was that not the case everywhere?

I don’t have a lot of patience with charter school backers. As poorly funded as public schools are now — our PTA pays some teachers’ salaries and covers various expenses that were fully-funded when I went to school — it makes no sense to setup these little experiments at running schools as profit centers. That money should go to the system that is in place, and if anyone feels it’s being wasted, they should go and see how the money is spent. Students of history may recall that many frontier towns and even established communities took pride in establishing school boards, building schools, and recruiting teachers. Those days of active involvement and investment seem to be a distant memory.

If they did spend some time in their local school, they might understand how schools benefit from an infusion of lower-income kids who are eligible for free and reduced breakfast and lunch, rather than by keeping them out (hint: it’s about allocated funding per child). They should take a look at the food that these kids are given and assess how much of it represents solid nutrition and how much of it is the product of agricultural subsidies. In my school they could see how the addition of a part-time tutor/classroom assistant makes for a much-improved student:teacher ratio without building new classrooms or hiring teachers. They would look in vain for a full-time music teacher in most public schools. They may well miss the art teacher who is also unlikely to be there full-time. And they should take note of how many parents they see in the building. If they have a student in the school, they should see how well-attended the PTA meetings are and how many parents are members.

Are public school perfect? Not by a long shot. Are they doing a good job? Not all of them, no. But I think it would make a difference if we could all say that we were working on it instead of undermining the system.

Julie, who got me thinking about this when she linked to me, is a home-schooler. I’m sure there are as many reasons for doing that as there are people doing it. I could never do it: my kids are too good as scholars for me to keep them motivated. My son was reading at 3 1/2 and my daughter right at 4: at 7 and almost 6, they’re reading about 3-5 years ahead of expectations. They’re other skills are also on track or ahead of the curve, and that’s a lot to handle: I’m sure I could find ways to keep them busy and happy, but I don’t know that I have all the right skills and gifts of a professional educator.

Perhaps if our choices were limited, if we lived in an isolated area or one that didn’t offer a great experience, it would be worth considering. But here in Seattle, where you can choose any school in the district, I don’t need to fall back to doing it myself.

I”d assume the schools on Bainbridge Island are pretty good, based on the fact that it’s an affluent community and from what I gather, people live there for quality of life reasons. What makes it a good choice for the Leung girls is that they have both parents around a lot, since Ted works from home: I have a lot to say on single-income households or some way of having a parent around as much as possible.

The bottomline is to make an informed choice. Don’t assume the schools are as good or as bad as you remember your own schools. Meet the principal (your kid may become known to them, as mine have [ouch]), meet the teachers, find out what works and what doesn’t. Only then can you decide if it’s a good place for your child to learn. We spend more time researching cars or appliances . . . . does that make sense?

Interesting to think of how much more comprehensive this test is than anything I remember from my school days. I have another somewhere around here that’s similarly difficult.

This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina, KS, USA. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, KS, and reprinted by the Salina Journal.

8th GRADE  FINAL  EXAM

Grammar (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no Modifications.
3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of lie, lay and run.
5. Define Case, Illustrate each Case.
6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.
7 – 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How      many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per meter?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

U. S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U. S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620,
   1800, 1849, 1865.

Orthography (Time, one hour)
1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic, orthography,
   etymology, syllabication?
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph,
   subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
4. Give four substitutes for caret ‘u’.
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final ‘e.’ Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word:
   bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name
   the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell,
   rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)
1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of North America.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.

 

I wonder how an updated version of this would fare as a standardized test?

Interesting article (it was originally posted in the Financial Times) and a lively discussion to follow. Some of it seems familiar: the anecdote about flashing $14,000 to cover a $41,000 hospital bill, with odds the hospital would mark it as paid in full, sounds familiar. I recall reading through a several page bill and noting thousands of dollars in “miscellaneous” charges, some repeated verbatim. I marked the bill down accordingly and paid it, with nary a murmur from the hospital. As I noted in an earlier entry, when you have this complicated chain of relations, there’s no accountability and none of the usual pressure to control costs.

CNN NEWSNIGHT WITH AARON BROWN:

The co-author of the book “Unfit for Command,” former swift boat commander John O’Neill said Kerry made up a story about being in Cambodia beyond the legal borders of the Vietnam War in 1968.

O’Neill said no one could cross the border by river and he claimed in an audio tape that his publicist played to CNN that he, himself, had never been to Cambodia either. But in 1971, O’Neill said precisely the opposite to then President Richard Nixon.

O’NEILL: I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border on the water.

NIXON: In a swift boat?

O’NEILL: Yes, sir.

Seems like these guys have a small credibility problem . . . is there anyone in the swifty group who hasn’t been caught in a lie? Was he lying then (to his lord and master? I doubt it) or is he lying now?

Some jackass is pinging my site with bogus referer information, all from the same couple of IPs.

68.93.137.224 – – [24/Aug/2004:20:49:23 -0700] “GET /wordpress/ HTTP/1.1” 200 73894 “http://www.fjrp.com#comment-1165” “WWW-Mechanize/0.48”

207.243.118.1 – – [24/Aug/2004:11:22:03 -0700] “GET /wordpress/ HTTP/1.1” 200 73894 “http://www.fjrp.com#comment-1144” “WWW-Mechanize/0.72”

<yawn> banned for now. I’ll figure out if I need to do anything further.

<update> I made the refers results page restricted access which is what this is all about somehow: spamming my referers with junk.

And I got an email from the owner of the site that stands to benefit most: he denied anything to do with it or knowledge of it, though I think of the president (an object of worship for my correspondent) and his unaffiliated attack groups. They’re not under his control but they might as well be. . . . .

Why would you bother if you know your reputation will be shredded by the same people you served with?

A thorough debunking of all the Swift Boat liars’ claims, with the following commentary:

It has struck me lately what a terrible indictment of the military these charges are and how once again the Republicans have absolutely no limits in terms of how fully they are willing to trash the American institutions they allegedly love in order to win. What these people are saying is that the US Navy awarded some of its highest medals for bravery to a coward. The many officers who signed those glowing fitness reports and awarded those citations are either liars or they are incompetent. The word of his shipmates, even the man whose life he saved, are worth nothing. You can’t believe military documentary evidence.
[ . . . ]
For puny, partisan reasons they are accusing the military of widespread corruption — merely to excuse the behavior of their less than stellar candidate.

And then we have this:

Today [retired Senator] Bob Dole [R-ViagraKansas] suggested that one or more of John Kerry’s Purple Hearts may have been fraudulent in some way because they were for “superficial wounds.”

As Josh Marshall points out, Dole knows better than that. Whatever respect he might have deserved as a Senator, as a veteran is gone.

I have fooled around with ecto 2 for a couple of days now and I like it just fine. The interface is completely different but somehow familiar.

The only gotchas I have found had to do with posting times and image uploading. For some reason, I couldn’t get posts to publish as they were posted: there was a 7 hour (difference from GMT) offset, so they were scheduled to publish 7 hours hence. I ripped out the whole install (suspecting I had perhaps not removed ecto 1’s various config data properly) and reconfigured it. After that, everything worked just fine.

Image uploading in WordPress now works, but that was never ecto’s fault: it was a missing feature in WordPress, but just last week I found a patch to address that and it works like a champ. The only thing I haven’t figured out is how to control the size of the thumbnail that gets generated. I knew where that was in the original ecto, but I’m not finding it now . . .

So far, so good. It’s solid and featureful without being bloated.