You win a prize if you can read this whole blog. Dinner at my house.

With each passing day of summer, as I have more time to study what's happening in our country, I become more alarmed at the right-wing take-over of the government.

With the current make up of the districts in the house of representatives, it is estimated that the incumbents cannot lose in 380 of the 435 districts. Don't expect much to change in the fall elections, or ever.

Some years ago the Southern Baptist Convention was a happy little gathering of religious leaders from among the 14 million or so Southern Baptists spread across the country. They were all conservative, but the most conservative pastors of some of the larger most independent churches got together with the intention of shaping the convention so that it would serve their interests at the expense of the interests of all others.

In those days, no one knew who was going to be the next president of the convention. Representatives of the churches would caucus at the convention and nominate members who seemed worthy and after a few ballots, someone would get elected. This person shouldered the responsibility of nominating the "committee on committees." This committee then nominated everyone else. Although no one realized it, this was a critical flaw in the design of the political system of Baptists.

A few conservative leaders devised a plan to reshape the convention in their image. Their goal: elect the president every year for ten years. Since there had been practically no campaigning in the past, the first year was easy. They simply got people organized and recruited more delegates (messengers) than normal to all come and vote in lock step and they won. No one really noticed much.

Another flaw in the convention structure. Each participating church in the convention has the same number of votes: 10. If you have 7000 members or 17 members in your congregation, if you give 700,000 dollars to the convention or 7 dollars to the convention, you can send 10 messengers to the convention. The ultra conservatives, hereafter referred to as the fundies for their self described "fundamentalist" approach to the interpretation of scripture (you might also call this simply an ignorant approach to interpreting scripture), liked winning and got more organized the next year. The big fundie churches couldn't do it by themselves because they only got 10 votes. They began a huge "fear" campaign sending out newsletters and speakers to little tiny churches all around the area where the next convention would be. They warned of dotrinal hereseies at the seminaries and immoral behavior and beliefs of denominational employees. They started taking names of who was in Chapel and secretly tape recording seminary classes, searching for a doctrinal misstep. Though their claims were bogus along the lines of FOX "news" reporting, they did make ignorant people in small congregations afraid that the world was indeed unraveling.

Then they did a generous thing. They contacted the small churches who actually hardly ever sent delegates and said they'd pay the way for 10 messengers to come to the convention from those tiny churches. They recruited thousands of messengers, sent a charter bus to pick them up, payed for their hotel and meals and drove them down to the convention to vote for the fundie preznit. Surprisingly the convention went from 5 thousand in attendance yearly to 10 thousand. Their candidate won handily. Then the oddest thing, right after the vote for preznit, everyone left. They didn't stay around for the business of the convention, the buses took them home and the place was empty.

Moderately conservative members noticed. They were disturbed. They did a little organization of their own. Only a little though. Many thought it was unseemly to organize like political organizations. The newsletters, hate mongering, and scare tactics grew larger every year from the fundie side. They said that seminary professors didn't believe the Bible. But wait! I went to "The" seminary. I had the classes with those professors they mentioned. I heard them speak in chapel. I knew the fundies were lying.

One of my favorite of their dirty tricks came once the moderates began to come in force to vote for their candidates. The fundies had lots of oil money and they simply bought all the hotel rooms within a hundred miles of the convention. You could only get a room through them, and only if they were pretty certain how you would vote. Convention attendance swelled to 20,000 on the vote date, only to fall back to nothing an hour after the vote. After the vote it was a moderate convention because the fundies all went home.

What's the purpose of all this you ask? Over 10 years, with their preznit selecting the "committee on committees" which did all the nominating for trustees and boards of directors, they controlled each board. They fired seminary presidents and deans and replaced them with rightwing crazies who were yes men to the dozen or so fundie pastors who were actually running everything.

The Southern Baptist Convention totally changed. It was "taken over" by fundie leadership. The literature changed, the seminaries became "bible schools", professors were fired or quit in disgust. Moderate students began to go elsewhere. Moderate churches withdrew from the alliance and eventually formed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. CBF sort of runs like the old Southern Baptist Convention.

The lesson is: The conservatives found a flaw in the polity of the church that allowed a take over.

The exact same people have found a flaw in the constitution of the United States of America. Control the courts and you control everything. Don't allow congress to appoint nominees during Democratic administrations and then complain about the backlog of unfilled appointments during Republican administrations. You may think the opposite of this has been happening because that is what the GOP noise machine has reported in the press, but it's not the Democrats who stalled nominees, it was the Republicans, and the courts have been packed with GOP yes men.

Now if you have a problem with a law. Take it to court. When it gets to the top, it will go our way. Have a problem with an election? a treaty? Take it to court. We can't lose.

This time the moderates (and liberals) have no place to run. We can't form our own country. It's time to get organized and fight back.

I'm ready to march in the streets.

This is a cool website for cartoons.

There are also some interesting thoughts:

"According to the Department of Education, one in every five teachers leaves after the first year, and almost twice as many leave within three. If any business had that rate of turnover, someone would do something smart and strategic to fix it. This isn't any business. It's the most important business around, the gardeners of the landscape of the human race."


The first year. . . the first day . . . the first hour of teaching is lonely and tough. It get's better over time. I think it's a bit like white water rafting. The surface is constantly shifting. There are rocks. Spray hits you in the face. Keep your cool; don't turn over. Your temperature will rise. Constantly changing. First day you wonder can you get to the end of the run. Finally the bell comes. You made it. Tomorrow, you must run the same course again. But the water is different each day, higher, lower, faster, slower. And the administration will throw you curves as well. Changing bell schedule, money to take up, check off students who have done this, collect proof of residence. Counselors drop new students, often unhappy, in your lap.

After a week, new teachers are wondering, "What have I done? How am I going to live like this?" Many go home and cry. They have spent a week in chaos and their "mentor" teacher came by on Thursday afternoon after school and said "Everything going okay?" and left after 2 minutes. "Well gotta go." Actually my mentor teacher forgot to ever come by. Never met her. I was just in the room alone, everyday, struggling.

The cool thing about the school system is that they give no raises until you are in your fourth year. That means that fifty percent of all teachers only make the lowest salary on the schedule. What does it take to get that raise over 30K? First you put in 1000 days.

Years ago when I did not teach, I had some friends who were bitter older teachers. They talked to me in such negative terms about their students and their administrators all the time. I didn't want to be their age and be angry all the time like they seemed to be.

Well I'm their age and I see where the bitterness comes from. It is equal parts state legislature, county office, local administrators, uninspired students, and irate parents. The reward? Hey I've been teaching 10 years now. I make the big bucks. And there are the inspired students.

Karl (LSU), Bryan (LSU), Anne (UTenn), Lauren I. (GA So), Diana (GSU), Lauren W. (LSU), Deidra (So Miss), Elizabeth C. (Mercer), Kaitlyn (GSU), Amber (LSU), Kristy (LSU), Laura S. (GA Col), Emily R. (LSU), Danielle (GA Col), Pedro (GA So), Kelechekwu* (MTSU), Shawn (GA So), Ashleigh* (Mercer, Texas Tech), Sarah* (GA So), Emily M.* (West GA), Talia* (LSU), Elizabeth D.* (LSU), Bethany* (Berry), and Michelle* (UGA)--all either holding their bachelor of music degrees* or working on them. Composers, conductors, professional opera singers, professional musical theater performers, music teachers. Everyone who went to LSU went on full scholarship! Wow! Most of the others have some scholarships as well.

And so I continue to teach. For now there are others depending on me. Ellen, Craig, Carli, Morgan H., Morgan S., Grant, Laura, Samantha, Garrett, Kelsey, Jenny, Nicole, Whitney, . . .

So much for the "Boy Crisis."

Isn't it FUNNY that last week's plan by the CUT AND RUN Democrats is . . .

This week's plan for REDEPLOYMENT by the administration. Let's see. When to start bringing them home. Uh is two month before the election soon enough? Isn't it a bad idea to make war a political game for political gain.

The preznit is a CUT AND RUN coward. Oh wait. We already knew that (shades of Alabama National Guard).


Say, the preznit's numbers are up up up. Killing Al-Zarqawi, a quick photo op trip to Bagdad, and the capture of that horrible terrorist cell in Miami have cheered the base. Things are going well in the War on Terror.

Truth is, things are worse than ever in Iraq. The eternal campaigner is always campaigning somewhere (Does he ever work?). And the Miami seven are an incredible joke. What are they gonna charge them with--talking ugly? No weapons, no plans, Christian not Muslim, angry young black men. Why don't they arrest all the young black men? Did you hear the FBI guy say that one of them had "been to Chicago once?"

"More aspirational than operation." I'll bet money there is a file on me for writing this blog.

I certainly don't want the life of a bird, but they seem like a happy lot. The more I live in my current home, the more I like it. On summer mornings like this I have the back door open and can hear a host of birds chirpping. They flock to our feeder in family groups and flit to the foliage of our bank to do whatever birds do, which in the morning seems to be mostly sing. I identify with that.

So I'm working on literature for next season. So far the new choices are:

Weep No More by David Childs from LSU for Chorale?

Laughing and Shouting for Joy (Ich jauchze, ich lache) Bach for Treble and perhaps Chorale could do it in German?

Sound the Trumpet/Purcell for Treble

Amor de mi alma/ Stoope a 16th century Spanish text/ for Chamber

Cheek to Cheek/ Berlin arr. Kirby Shaw for Singers. Kirby is a winner of an arranger. It's because he sings all the time in a group with Vijay Singh, so they know what works.

Like anybody cares! But you will later when you hear the music!

You probably didn't watch the news conference yesterday given by the Gateses and Warren Buffett. The enormity of what they are doing is beyond comprehension. Buffett is giving away 37 Billion dollars to the Gates Foundation for them to give away the money that is earned on the corpus. With the resources that Gateses already had, that gives them 60 Billion and they must spend 3 Billion a year. The most impressive thing about questioning by the press was how both the Gates and Buffet handled every question with aplomb. They sounded like such normal people as they spoke. Some of the questions were insulting, some accusational. Nevermind, they trio just responded non plussed.

How will you make sure all the money is well spent? Well we'll try. Sometimes we'll fail. But we'll just keep trying.

Why give the money to Gates? They'll do a better job giving it away than I will.

Why give the money to society instead of to his children?
"Huge fortunes tat flow in large part from society should in large part be returned to society."

They mentioned that Ted Turner had started all this by giving away a billion and challenging other rich people to join him.

Projects they are taking on: eradication of Malaria; hunger in Africa; elimination of AIDS.

Gates said governments don't have the resourses to tackle these kinds of problems in an election cycle and don't have the will to go longer than an election cycle.

Surely the GOP will find a way to investigate this.

There was a time when Gates was listed as the least philanthropic of all rich people. I guess that bothered him.

Would that the uber rich spoke to the Republican party and said, "Hey, we want to pay more taxes to take the burden of debt off of the country. Anyway, we don't need the money." Maybe Gates and Buffett will pick them off one at a time. Are you listening Gallo, Walton, and Mars families?

I have a lot of questions today.

I'm getting pretty tired of the "It's a time of war so I can do anything I want to protect the American people."

I mean didn't Karl Rove come up with the whole "war" idea? Was the attack on the twin towers the only terrorist act that has ever been committed against Americans? Did we go to war against Libya? Did we go to war against domestic terror after the Oklahoma City Bombing?

Are we at war now? Isn't it a war when two armies are fighting? Where is the other army? Wasn't there a war that lasted about a week? What we have now is really the American military occupying a foreign country. Are we surprised that people over there are trying to kill members of our occupying army? Am I a terrorist because I ask questions?

Why is the president's criticism of newspapers for printing that he has started a questionably legal program to monitor financial transactions news, rather than the story that he and top offials conspired to lie to the American people and to the U.N. in order to start a war in the middle east with a country who could do us no harm?

Do I feel like the American colonists when they were being kicked around by King George with no regard to their rights as Englishmen? Are there any rights left for Americans or has King George seized them all?

On a local level, how can the Christian right in Georgia support Ralph Reed? It's so evident that he is a criminal and not a Christian. His own emails condemn him and point to his part in the conspiracy. He just uses the Christian mojo to manipulate the Christian right. Shouldn't they get a new boy who actually IS as Christian and cast Reed out? I mean they really envision him as Sonny's successor don't they?

The funny papers (Prickly City) quote Bertand Russell today.

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."

I thought the thing about George W. Bush that made him such a good presidential candidate was that you could trust him to tell the truth and do the right thing.

It's clear that the higher ups were warned and lied anyway. And Colin Powell? They used him like "step and fetch it, boy." It's all in the Washington Post so I won't even start here.

Go back and read Russell again. It answers all the questions.

Well there is a big hullabaloo in Atlanta over a cartoon in the AJC by Mike Luckovich's cartoon a day or so ago. I can't figure out how to copy it here or I would. Here's a link that works today. Go there and scroll down.

I have been aghast that under the current president our government is becoming more and more like the government of the soviet union during my formative years. It's now okay to spy on our citizens, kidnap and torture people we are suspicious are our enemies and hold them without trial. Our news media outlets just report propaganda in many cases (of course most notably FOX news). Elections are as suspect as in banana republics, and the poor and elderly are being robbed and disenfranchised. Georgia plans to disenfranchise over 600,000 of the poor and elderly prior to the next election in the fall. We have made war on a country that could not threaten or make war on us, without provocation. We give a contracts without bids. Whoever heard of that?

I've always thought the world at least thought that the USA stood for right over wrong. But it's clear the the world is not holding that opinion of us today. I'm ashamed of many of our policies too. The torture policies of the administration are beyond belief. How can we stand for it? We must go back to being America again. The American empire must go.

Roman Berry says it way better than me in today's AJC letters.

Capitalism is what generates the amazing wealth of our country.

Yet, it does not turn out to be an equitable system. There must be some checks on it. The ever increasing poor and the shrinking middle class are taxed to death on their only wealth, the sweat of their brow, first by income tax and then by sales taxes. They struggle on.

The rich however, get richer. Rather than take a salary, they take say . . . stock, or stock options. There is no tax on their dividends any longer. The congress didn't think that was fair. So your income is taxed, theirs is not.

Or perhaps they have a trustfund. It makes money. Big money. But it does not pay taxes. Perhaps it buys land. Some of our congressmen have recently made killings on land deals. When the uber rich get old and pass away they want to transfer their largess to heirs with no penalties. So the house of representatives if working hard to make that possible for them. The monies that are being passed on have never been taxed and they are certainly gifts or income for the uber rich who will inherit them, but there is no income tax for these people. Only for you and me. The poor pay. The rich go on vacation.

The New York Times has more.

The Democrats don't have a plan. The Democrats don't have a plan.

The media is chanting this at the behest of the administration. Here's the thing. The party that does not have an executive NEVER has a plan. They have 20 people who are dreaming about being an executive and all of them have half a plan. There won't be a plan from the "other " party until there is a choice for executive from the other party. Then and only then (ah geometry, 9th grade, if and only if phrases for theorems, remember them?) Then and only then will there be a Democratic plan. . . DUH.

BUT it seems to me that just stopping doing everything the Right wing wants would be a good start.

Let's get out of Iraq.

Did you see that half of the illegal aliens in the country entered the country legally! They came on visas and simply have not gone home again. Nothing in the immigration reform seems to address this. We are only interested in keeping poor Mexicans from sneaking over the border at night. Rich Canadians who drove over. They are welcome.

Hope for the future. A politics of hope instead of a politics of fear. Yes I'm using Barak Obamas line.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/17/AR2006061700736_pf.html

Here is an interesting place to visit regularly. A number of different voices and points of view. Their common goal is trying to tell the truth about issues.

http://voxverax.blogspot.com/

John Murtha was on Meet the Press today. He is passionate about admitting the wholesale mistakes of the interaction of the United States in Iraq and making new plans to create a new strategy to achieve something in Iraq.

Murtha said what the administration will not admit because they are bullies who can't even imagine themselves to be wrong. There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction. There was no Al-qaida link. There was no threat to America. The war was unnecessary. Our soldiers have been put under fire without just cause. We need to drastically change strategy in order to retreat. We need to develop and international coalition to manage the reconstruction of Iraq.

The cut and run talk of Karl Rove is something that I wish he would bring into my living room. There I, a pacifist, would beat him bloody with my arthritic fists, until he cut and ran. He is a liar and a coward.

I see that Sir Paul McCartney is 64. It made me sad that his bride recently spilt with him. I am a Beatles generation kid and was profoundly influenced by them I suppose without ever submitting myself to Beatlemania. I never had a Beatles album growing up, but you have to realize that I didn't have a record player either. Nor did I have any money to speak of. When I bought a stereo system in 1969 and could buy recordings on my own I began to buy symphonies and art songs and still had no money for Beatles. But I had a radio and I played it and listened to them and memorized many of the songs. The other night on PBS I saw a one man special on Paul McCartney, playing different instruments, singing, building a song on the spot, and you know what, the guy is a talented musician and has a real understanding of composition and orchestration. I do have a doctorate in music and I can evaluate that. I was glad to see how much he knew and could demonstrate spontaneously to an audience. I know that his training has been through experience, meaning that he hasn't had the benefit of examining Bach and Mozart with a teacher to see how they put it together, but has had to figure out what makes music cool on his own. He understood that the division of the beat had to be evident in the music and that the subdivision of the beat made the music "hop." I don't know if he understands that he knows those things, but he certainly could demonstrate those concepts as he composed and recorded a song with the help of an audience. In fifteen minutes there was a lovely recording.

Even though your girl has left you, we still love you when you are 64, Paul.

Digbysblog.blogspot.com made some clear points the other day. With the Republican Party going all out into their campaign mode, "hurray for war, Bush smiling in Bagdad." Folks everything really is about Bush.

Digby's points:

Remember: Bush really is incompetent. And the American public sees it now.

Remember: Bush really has governed above the law. And the the American public understands that now.

Remember: Bush has bogged this nation down in an insane war. And the American public understands that now.

Remember: Bush does not have a genuine plan to deal with Iraq, nor is he capable of creating and implementing one. People are dying because he doesn't know what he's doing. And the American public understands that now.

Remember: Bush's supreme callousness and negligence led to the hiring of the incompetents in charge of FEMA during Katrina. And the American public knows it.

back to me:

So if we can stay on track and not chase rabbits that will be released daily to the media, and promoted by the Republican faux-media machine, it should be clear to voters that the preznit can be stopped in his tracks by the vote in fall.

Don't know if I have blogged about this article before or not. But it is powerful. The governor thought he could create more quality teachers by letting any degreed person take a summer course and then throw them in the classroom. Here's Nicky Lancaster's story from the AJC (Atlanta Journal and Constitution).

I have worked in high stress situations before--Wall Street, television, radio. But never have I experienced a workplace more fraught with demands, deadlines and accountability than in a classroom full of second-graders.
I went into teaching with high hopes and expectations. Sadly, after a year I am no longer in the classroom, and I thought I would be. In the end I was overwhelmed, worn down and exhausted.

After a day with my children in school I had nothing left for my own family--nothing. This was the hardest job I had ever done, with very few resources or support. Had there been more meaningful support available in the classroom, I would still be there.

I applied to the Atlanta Public Schools' "fast track" teacher training program, and amazingly was one of 70 (out of 3,500) midcareer professionals accepted. After only five weeks of intense training, reality hit me. Every day from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. I was at the school. (Forget the myth of teachers leaving at 3 p.m.)

After school were meetings, planning and coursework. From 7:50 a.m. each day, I was on my feet, performing, entertaining, inspiring, energizing, while being constantly vigilant.

I was responsible for teaching a rigorous curriculum to a class of 16 children with a variety of skill levels. I had one child reading at sixth-grade level, while others did not speak English. How was I supposed to teach these children?

We were given a lot of theories in the five-week course about "differentiated instruction." Theory and reality are two different things. Juggling 16 children with different skill levels is not easy. I am a typical middle-class overachiever. I am used to success. Here I was drowning. Sixteen children were bringing me down, and there was no help in sight.

My class was half African-American and half Hispanic. I had been given little, if any, instruction on how to teach and reach Hispanic children, most of whom did not speak fluent English. The school system has yet to fully comprehend the impact of the new racial mix in our schools.

Unfortunately, I do not s peak Spanish, which in my school would have been very helpful. There were many frantic times when I had three children all trying to interpret to a desperately unhappy and concerned parent why her angel was failing in math, or why her angel was not cooperating with the teacher and losing classroom privileges.

My responsibility to these children weighed heavily. I was on my own in the classroom and I had to deliver. Five weeks of training was not going to cut it. Between trying to figure out how to deliver instruction, how to manage the classroom so that I could deliver instruction, coursework, administration meetings, workshops and paperwork, it wiped me out--blew away the dream. We had been promised support, mentoring--someone to assist us. It never came.

Many of my colleagues have left teaching and the program. I now have enormous respect for excellent teachers. They manage the impossible, and no one has a clue. People can fuss all they want about test scores, standards, failing schools, successful schools, legislation and more, but in the end it is the teachers--the front line in our classrooms--and they are all alone.

I'm glad they caught up with Zarqawi yesterday. He seems to have been a really rotten guy. I don't know how much difference it makes however. Reality-basededucator.blogspot.com can give you a look at the insignificance of the event in the whole scheme of things.

All I can think is that we have lost a lot of high ranking officers in this battle and we aren't thinking about leaving, so I doubt the other side is giving up either. Just think of all the guys who just got a battlefied promotion because there was an opening above them. They are all gung-ho today.

Iraq was a really really bad mistake. I think it may be the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of the United States.

On a personal note. We are off for North Georgia to make wedding plans for our daughter today and tomorrow I sing for some friends and oh yes, for President and Mrs. Carter. Cool.

This article is taken from the Georgia Association of Educators Summer 2006 magazine. It is particularly interesting to me because Mrs. G taught in this school for one year. She resigned at the end of the year without having secured a position in another school because conditions regarding student discipline were at such a level that it was clearly an unsafe place for her to work. She was both threatened and assaulted by different students during the school year and filed charges against one student who was later found guilty of assault.

"Clayton County Teacher Exonerated in Using Self-Defense Against Student Attack

The GAE member was a fifth-grade teacher at Pointe South Middle School in Clayton County. A female student in the hallway refused to go to class after being instructed by the teacher to do so. The hallway video shows the student angrily mouthing-off and gesturing in defiance. The student had to be held back by friends. The video shows the student breaking away from her friends and hitting the teacher in the face with a closed fist and throwing several punches until the teacher defended herself by striking the student once to prevent further attacks. The teacher clearly acted only in self-defense. Remarkably, the school's Resource Officer took out a criminal warrant for the teacher's arrest. The Clayton County Magistrate Judge dismissed the criminal case against the teacher after hearing the evidence. Ultimately, charges were brought by the same School Resource Officer against the student, who pled guilty. GAE legal counsel represented the teacher throughout the proceedings in reaching the dismissal of any criminal charges."

I have felt that Ann Coulter's writing in the past has been angry and vicious. Her intolerance for any point of view but her own has led her to make unspeakable charges. Yet her followers, like those of Falwell or the ever ridculous Pat Robertson will not cast her down even though they themselves must be aghast at her latest comments.

I have been married almost 33 years. You go past loving someone during that length of time. They just become part of you. Without them you cannot imagine even the simplest things like eating dinner or getting a spot out of a shirt or planting a flower. I don't know how Papa makes it day after day without Mama these last 3 years. He has little shrines to her memory around the house so that she is never far away from him.

Ann, it is one thing to disagree with people, but quite another to not be able to imagine that any righteous person might have an opinion different from yours. You are an ungodly woman and totally self absorbed.

And me? I am a God fearing liberal.

We have mass transit down here in Peachtree City. Everyone uses it. They are called golf carts. No we don't play that much golf. Our carts are configured so there are two seats on the front, where you'd expect them to be, and two more on the back, where golf clubs would go, if we played golf. Of course four seats won't accomodate everyone, so some carts are extended, like limos, with an extra set of seats. The six seater is so common that you don't notice them. For some reason, and this is hard to understand, people don't ride in golf carts alone. They ride in groups. Twos and threes for sure, but fives and sevens are just as common. Oh and the dogs come along too. Big dogs, small dogs, sometimes two dogs, but rarely cats.

Where do we go? We go everywhere. There are 100 miles of golf cart paths in our city. We own about 10,000 golf carts. You can drive them supervised at age 12 and unsupervised at 15. Drivers education instructors say Peachtree City kids are the best drivers they've seen in cars because they've had so much golf cart experience. The kids make it interesting. They drive too fast always and come whizzing past you on the narrow pathways. It's as though they have not yet become acquainted with the brake pedal. When I asked my 9th grade girls chorus last year, "How many of you have been in a golf cart wreck?" They all raised their hands. Yes some do have seat belts, but most don't. The speed limit on most cars is 19, a governor slows you rolling down hill, and many many of them will not go that fast, but still, running into a tree at 19 mph can give you quite a jolt.

The other evening we rode to the lake just before sundown to look at the evening. I had a spot in mind where I wanted to sit and view. When we got there we had to laugh out loud, for there were 20 other groups who were already there on their carts, feet up, watching the sunset.

The weirdest thing of all is that for years I worked here and didn't live here and I never saw the golf carts. The paths wind through the green belts and emerge in the back of parking lots at Krogers or McDonalds or the local churches. So carts line the parking areas, but they slip into the woods and disappear without you even seeing them go. Most have utilitarian carts, but ours looks like a rolling circus wagon. It's bright yellow with a yellow striped top and green and yellow piped leather seats. We turn heads. Many have radios, but we prefer the quiet. Most have rain gear that rolls down, and headlights for getting back home at night. And this will get you. They almost all have the same key so almost everyone is on the honor system not to "borrow" someone else's cart.

I live in Peachtree City, but people here call it "the bubble."

Go ahead, call me a liberal.

"Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things, ­ every one. So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator. Because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor."

Matt Santos on the West Wing
from the Debate episode

Okay, so I saw this while out blog hopping this morning, but boy do I want to say this to a lot of people too. Yes I'm liberal.

And I'm conservative too. I believe in building up education and balancing the budget. I believe in working hard and paying taxes and not complaining about it. I believe in holding bureaucrats accountable for their decisions. I believe in saying I'm wrong when my ideas don't work out.

In the AJC this week on the opinions pages:

"In all too many cases, students don't view school as a place to prepare for responsible adulthood, but merely as a convenient locale to socialize, defy authority, flout common-sense rules of decent behavior, and waste valuable resources bought and paid for by the U.S. taxpayer."

Boy is that ever the truth.

Then in regard to the Republican administration's penchant for railing against anyone who criticizes them:

“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who haven’t got it.”

George Bernard Shaw

To James about school choice.

Look James, we already have school choice. There are lots of schools. Most people consider the local schools when they move into a community. They move close to a public school they think will be good for their children or perhaps near a private school that they would prefer.

If you talk to people whose children are in public schools about their schools, most are satisfied that their child is getting adequate opportunity to learn. They are rarely happy with everything, but they are generally okay with what is offered for their student. I've been in a lot of parent teacher conferences and it is usually clear to everyone that failing students have made a choice to fail. Parents and teachers have tried everything and nothing will motivate the students.

To give more choices, many systems have a variety of special schools: charter schools, magnet schools, international baccalaureate schools, fine arts schools, etc.

Why then are there any private schools? I wonder. As a teacher, here is what I've seen. Often children are moved because there grades are low or failing. Maybe a change will help. They are moved because they are associating with the "wrong" crowd. (Usually a drug or alcohol problem, or pregnancy). The are depressed and need couselling. They move to participate in outstanding athletic or fine arts programs when they are dissatisfied with those programs at their own schools.

There are some people who never come in the door of public schools. They have their own issues. Executives don't want their children growing up with the children of their employees. Affluent employees want their children going to school with the bosses children. The deeply religious, Hebrews, Mennonites, Roman Catholics, et al, have historically insisted on religious education as a part of students' daily routine.

Just a generation ago, the supreme court gave an enormous boost to private schools with its decision in the case Brown vs. the Board of Education. With the implementation of this decision, conservatives across the southeast withdrew their children from public school and created a dual system of black and white schools across the south. I remember asking about the schools in Montezuma, Georgia, back in 1975, when I interviewed for a job there. I was told there was an excellent private school that my children could attend. The public schools were all black. (I remember going to the public pool in Folkston, Georgia as a child. One year we could not go anymore. Once they were forced to admit black children, Folkston simply closed the pool.) Across the south, the support of the white community was withdrawn from public schools. All those thousands of dollars in fund raisers evaporated. All the corporate donations stopped.

We could go on with the history and changes, but this is the origin of the majority of the private schools in the southern states. With the change in Republican Party that have come to include these same people as a part of their coalition, school vouchers and school choice became issues. The issue was originally race and it is still race. They want to remove their children from the influence and even the presence of black and hispanic children. Furthermore, they don't want their tax dollars to support public school. They feel no debt to provide public education for all. Instead, they want the government to mandate through taxation relief, a way for them to pay for private (usually completely segregated) school for their children. This is the core issue. No matter how many other righteous complaints you may bring together. The central issue is race, fear of black and hispanic children, or children who speak foreign languages. Dress it in any costume that you want, but I was in school in the 60's and saw the changes. I remember those first 4 black students and how we stood and looked at them. Wow. Black people. I had no idea where they lived. Today that school is 100% minority: black, asian, hispanic. White students either went to private schools or moved to districts with few black children.

Why does Carter think that school vouchers are a race issue? Because they are.

The world is not as it should be. There is so much, so wrong, that it is difficult to respond to anything. Corruption and graft are overwhelming. Why not eliminate contributions by lobbyists to elected officials? I can't think of a reason. I guess it goes back to the line, "Could I take you to dinner so I could talk to you about some issues?" That sounds reasonable. But now it's "Can I fly you and your family to Scotland for two weeks, pay all your expenses? And shoot, I'm not even going to be there to talk to you, but you know how I want you to vote."

I didn't notice the announcement about ABC news becoming a Repubican party mouthpiece. They are much more subtle than Pravda (Fox "News"), but they are now consistently more kind to the preznit than other news organizations. Reality Based Educator pointed out that yesterday their financial wizard told us that things were going really well financially, whether ordinary citizens believed it so or not. We are making less (talk to a Delta pilot), we have lost health benefits, pensions are shrinking or disappearing, corporate big wigs make 250 million a year, (because they work really hard). [Wait I work really hard too. I'm so tired on Saturday that all I can do is lay around and try to recuperate.] So your health care deductable has gone up to $500 a person this year, and your premium has also gone up. And you are complaining because the medicine your doctor wants you to take isn't covered under the plan and they are $15 a pill. ABC's polls always show more support for the country's leadership than any other outlet. How do they do that? It looks like they'd accidentally have numbers in the pack sometimes. Do they actually take a poll or just revise Gallup's numbers up a few points?

Republican based government corruption seems to be at all time highs for corruption by anyone. Perhaps the Democrats had been at the trough so long that they had learned to skim off the top without creating a stir. The poor Republicans came to power in '94 and have been so joyful at their newfound positions after decades of being on the outside that they have gone crazy lapping up the public dole. No more taxes for the rich. Huzzah! A six figure job for every crony, and hey, don't even bother going to work. No-bid contracts for billions to our favorite companies and campaign contributors, and don't bother building anything with the billions. It can just be "missing" and we'll call it war related losses.

My head is swimming in the financial excesses of these people. How did Republicans turn us from "in the black" to "a sea of red." And don't say 911. Totally a bunch of bull. That's not where the money has gone. We've airconditioned garbage trucks in Des Moines with our 911 money. Whoo ha! Line up at the trough. Slurp, slurp.

And we are supposed to justify this rampant corruption and waste by crying out "abortion, welfare, gay marriage, the GOP will save you."

And did I mention that there is a war. Just take 60 seconds and think about the war in Iraq. Come on, you can do it. Pause. . . . . . . . How are we going to justify this? Don't you know that troop withdrawals will be showcased in September and October to build up support for the election.

Can you remember back to the Nixon tapes? Nixon asked Kissinger if we should go ahead and get out of Viet Nam before the election. But Kissinger said no. We need it as a campaign issue. You might not be re-elected if you end the war. So they waited. Thousands died, but the Republicans maintained the executive office.

Things are even worse now.

It makes me want to cry out.