On another subject . . .

A cooling rain came to north Georgia last evening and it is still coolish this morning. A nice change. Over an inch of rain fell with the initial thunderstorm and the drizzle that followed for most of the night.

Oddly, this is the last day of summer for us. Tomorrow brings the return of teachers to their tasks. It seems a bit early to me. There are so many holidays planned in this new calendar. I think I'd rather work on through and have a longer break. Much that I had wanted to do during the summer remains undone. But much needed rest has been taken. A new energetic assistant has arrived. We are looking at a year filled with promise. I shall do this six or seven more times and then lay down the baton I think. It will all come down to the post-Bush economic recovery. Just dollars and cents.

I had Karl, Carli, Bryan, Ellen, Grant, Diana, and Anne over for dinner on Friday. It was quite a party and went on for about 5 hours. They all talked at once and we listened to singers on CD and DVD for much of the time. Grand fun.

I feel like Yoda. Exhausting it is . . . keeping up with the agressive dismantling of American government by the this Republican administration. If I read all the alarmed journalists and bloggers, heralding illegal intrusions, lack of enforcement of laws, no bid contracts, edited scientific reports, lies that lead to war, and easily fifty other alarms, then I can do nothing but read alarms and write political blogs. Exhausting it is.

In my short life, 54 years, there has been a turning point in U.S. history with the appointment of dubya as preznit. Every aspect of the government is turned on it's head, from national parks to the IRS and estate taxes, to military actions. They grabbed the whole bag of government and turned it upside down and shook it. A small portion of Americans are getting enormous riches from this action. Their families will be rich for a thousand years. They are creating dynasties.

I'm not sure Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson would have liked the creation of such wealth or the lawless oligarchy that we have become.

With all the concern about immigration coming from the Republicans in the last few months, you'd think this was a core issue for them. If you look at things though, you'll find that they have stopped enforcing the laws against illegal immigration. Without enforcement, what difference does more border patrols make?

Lou Dobbs has the data over on CNN:

. . . The federal government is also undermining the rule of law in this country when it comes to enforcement of our immigration laws and securing borders and ports.

The Bush administration in its first four years was responsible for 318 fines against employers who hired illegal workers, an average of fewer than 80 each year. That's down from 5,587 fines against illegal employers during the eight years of the Clinton administration, according to the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, an average of 698 each year. And the problem is getting worse; in 2004 only three employers received fines for illegal hiring. [Boldface is mine].

Work site arrests have fallen even more drastically under this president. From 1995 to 1998, there were between 10,000 and 18,000 work site arrests of illegal aliens each year. But during the Bush administration, work site arrests fell to just 159 in 2004.

Apprehensions along the border averaged 1.05 million from fiscal year 2001 to 2004, according to the independent, progressive group Third Way, down from 1.52 million from 1996 to 2000. Border apprehensions have plummeted more than 30 percent, despite a doubling in the number of Border Patrol agents over the past decade and the rising number of attempted crossings.

Back to my comments: If Bush has been ignoring enforcement of immigration laws throughout his administration, how can they claim they want to make it an issue now. Not only is it a smokescreen for the horrible Iraq conflict, (notice I don't call it a war, because wars are between two countries), it is a lie on their actual intentions and their real concerns.

Excuse me while I go throw up.

Thanks to my brother-in-law for calling my attention to the July 25th Wall Street Journal article by Charles Murray on their opinion page entitled "Acid Tests." Murray would like for the No Child Left Behind Act to support "school choice," but his investigation shows the testing is of no use. Furthermore when looking at the "Texas Miracle" in education, he showed that even that was totally a deception. The method of reporting the Miracle was designed to make it look as though there was improvement in state scores when actual analysis of the scores showed that they had remained the same as always. In otherwords, it was an intentional deception on the public. Or you could just say what we've seen in this president and his administration. He lied.

That's the point of view of a Republican in a conservative newspaper. Some of them are beginning to wake up.

I am unable to provide a link because I am not a subscriber, but I've read the article clipped from the paper. Most of the lengthly article talks about the way the statistics were missused in order to project the image that the party wanted. They skillfully made no misstatements, rather, they put the non-mathematician public in a position to totally misunderstand the facts. I guess we always assumed something was fishy, but now it's been shown in the Wall Street Journal.

Wow! Some of the conservatives are coming around. You must see this article by conservative talk show host Doug McIntyre.

He mentions quite a few things that have totally fallen out of the news, like Katrina and Harriet Myers. He has taken up the cause that we as Democrats have been saying for years now. You wonder how a president can veto a bill that has the support of 70% of the country is for, stem cell research. How can it be okay for embryos to be discarded, but not okay to use them for research to save lives? I suppose McIntyre will be drummed out of the club now, but at least he can live with himself.

Want to do an internet test on your political leanings. Surprisingly mine came out right where I'd expect it to be, right in the middle of democratic party, just outside the "centrist" category. Robert Redford, Hillary Clinton and I could have a little party. Want to take your own political temperature?

Everyone should know that the preznit and his boys are using a back door approach to attack the estate tax since their attempt to eliminate it through the congress has failed. They have laid off HALF of the lawyers who examine estate tax returns, effective in 70 days. These federal employees are the most productive of any federal employee, detecting $2,200 of money owed to the government per hour that they work! Apparently tax evasion in the estate tax area is a massive and growing problem in the past 10 years. How can the preznit and his boys help the situation? Why we'll just look at half as many estate tax returns and then more of the wealth will slip through untaxed, helping America's wealthiest to keep their father's money without paying the taxes owed on the cash. Where does the liberal media report this scandal? A New York Times article is buried on page 9 of today's AJC. Read the article here.

It doesn't seem like this could be the last of the summer, but for me, it is. On Monday I must begin working at school in earnest. The following Monday is the official beginning of "pre-planning" when we must all report.

We are lucky to have visitors from Jacksonville today, my cousins. We have enjoyed touring PTC by golf cart and sampling the fare at Partners II. They had potato pizza and a calzone.

The weather is hot and muggy today, real Georgia summer, where the wind blowing on your face is hot! But a little lightning and thunder have brought a few cooling drops for the grass and flowers too.

If I am lucky, someday I will retire and not be anxious about the approach of school bell. People look at me and say "Dr. G how could you stop doing what you do?"

I don't know. But I might give it a try to find out.

Okay. It is absolutely clear to everyone isn't it, that the preznit's historic first veto today was part of a scam put together by the GOP, all for the purpose of letting some of the Republicans in close races in the fall say, "I'm in favor of stem cell research"? "See I voted for it back in July." It moves those few senators over toward the center. Oh and too bad, they were three votes short of a majority that could overturn the veto. Are you kidding me or what? Are we supposed to buy this for a second?

Easy to vote for it when you are assured before you begin that it won't go through. That way the wingnuts don't get their dander up. The preznit protected them. He's their guy. A win/win situation.

It is only political posturing. They better hope they have their vote stealing machine working for November because they are going to need it.

If you read my blog you know I don't have a very high opinion of private school education. Basically private schools are run like a saw mill. When they turn out a high quality product, it is because they have controlled their raw material. Anything that is not going to make good lumber is turned away at the door or cast aside when the flaws become evident.

If you want to know what is going on in our country, you should study what research is announced by this administration on Friday afternoons. Why then? Because the commercial news goes on break on Friday afternoons. They don't cover those stories and the regular news is down on Saturday and Sunday. On Monday, they may pick up some of that Friday stuff, mixed in with weekend events, or . . . they may just skip over it because it's old news.

On last Friday afternoon the administration "put out the trash" which included an educaiton study that shows that private schools are not doing quite as good a job as public schools in every area except 8th grade reading, where they did better. In math they were significantly behind.
John Tierney of the New York Times was on the attack today and his vitriole even carried down here in the South on the AJC's editorial pages. What is his complaint? Since he can't refute the evidence, he calls the evidence "spin." He also attacks the "unions" and those evil "teachers" for their role in spinning. Their crime is that they called attention to the Friday afternoon trash.

How does Tierney spin it? Unable to refute the facts, he changes the subject. Well, he says it costs twice as much for the public schools to do the same job. Hmmm let's see. We'll pay teachers less, let them be less qualified, not require the schools to own build or maintain their buildings, we'll control the raw material, we'll not require the testing that public schools do, and see if they can do about the same.

I work at the public school. I double dog, snake, cat, dare you to come in and show where we are wasting half our money. And you can forget about your union spin down here in Georgia buddy because collective bargining is against the law for teachers here. Uh oh.

What actually happens here is that the kids go to their parochial schools up into high school and then they transfer in, finally giving up their daily prayers and their segregated classrooms because they want our name on their diploma. As though they have the same education as those who went all the way through in our system, which they don't. At least they only had to sit in class with the Muslim kids, the Japanese kids, and the Black kids, and the Hispanic kids for a season or two.

I see today that the administration has a big new voucher plan it is touting, once again aimed at destroying public education.

I miss my mom. She would love to go up to see her great- grandchildren, twins Grace and Elizabeth. And she would come and visit us in our garden home in PTC. We have shocking flowers all about right now. My neighbor Mildred has so many things in her backyard. Some sort of trumpet flower, giant hybiscus, and roses. We got these two hanging baskets of petunias back in April. Sounds cute right? They look like the bed of flowers you'd hang over the Kentucky Derby winner. Then there is a butterfly bush gone crazy with purple, two crepe myrtles in the front and three in the rear, impatiens in red and pink, geraniums, an orange hybiscus, pink and purple hydrangia, and believe it or not, sunflowers. That's what is in full bloom right now. In the mornings it is pretty cool and I open the back door and feel the breeze coming through and hear the birds singing in the garden. I can't get Dad to come up and visit, but Mama would have liked it.

Cousin Selma and her daughter Elyn are coming on Friday. Is it any wonder that I like the summer?

Okay, so you have heard the story that millions and millions has been wasted in Iraq, but you don't really believe it. Surely they are working hard, it's just that conditions are difficult in the extreme and so some of their efforts are fruitless. I imagine power plants being worked on by day only to be sabatoged by the insurrection at night. I've even heard, "two steps forward, one step back" parrotted on the news. Truthfully though, that is not what is going on. Remember Katrina? Remember FEMA. Remember the leadership installed by this administration and their qualifications for the job? Now think forward to Iraq. Sixty minutes broadcast this during the winter, but I missed it. The re-run showed up last week. Here is the down and dirty story of where the money is going in Iraq. . . to war profiteering. Millions is given away in cash with no accounting for what gets done and not even a legitimate contract. Okay if you are hiring a guy to steam clean your sidewalks, maybe you have him write the contract on a napkin, but is that the kind of contract you should have for 15 million dollars? Click on the link and step into the real world of Republican contracts.

No child left behind is working against schools with diverse populations, calling them failing schools no matter how high the actual average achievement of the students at that school. Could it be that an intentional purpose of "No child left behind" is segregated school systems? Don't think the GOP isn't thinking about what they are doing and their legislation is just dumb. They have goals, including segregated education and destroying public education. My congressman, Lynn Westmoreland, was the boob who appeared on the Colbert Report and couldn't name the ten commandments. He also said he'd help balance the budget by eliminating the Education Department. [Lynn is in a 75% + GOP district that I unfortunately also live in. I write him regularly reminding him he has Democratic constituents too. Thanks a lot Georgia legislature for making the districts immune to change. But hey, I'm chasing a rabbit here.]

The AJC shows the idiocy of "adequate yearly progress" as defined in the GOP's testing rubric, designed to prove, regardless of the facts, that public education is failing. Lakeside High School in DeKalb County has long been one of the country's best high schools. People move to get in the district. It's a campus with diverse ethnic groups and language groups, yet they succeed year after year. Their average SAT score is 1092! They failed to make adequate yearly progress, likely because some non-English speaking students, new to the system did not pass this year. Meanwhile the homogenious (segregated) schools passed.

"Southside High School in Atlanta has an SAT average of 812, but the school met the state's testing goals. (Southside also got a state "gold award" for improving passing rates on state tests.) Almost all the school's students are African-American, and most are economically disadvantaged, so it had fewer subgroups to contend with. Southside passed."

Read the whole article.

By the way. Somehow our small system in Fayette County managed to have every school pass. There were only a handful of systems in the state that managed to do this. Our school's average SAT last year was 1117. 1105 the previous year. It's always in that range.

Finally. . . third place. Look out Doug, my boys are still rising.

"Muther. Our son is an actor."

We got to witness Carter's work in "The Dining Room," tonight. Although the show was originally off Broadway, I think you'd call this production, off, off, Broadway. He did not appear to be acting and I understood everything he said. I think those are compliments. The show was entertaining. His last appearance as a thespian was in 2nd grade with his role as the professor in "The Wackadoo Zoo."

I may have already said that the crepe myrtles are extraordinarily beautiful this year, but they continue to be stunning. Our combination white and pink bush in the front yard is in full bloom. I bought a new pair of Mephistos. Brown sandals. They feel good.

There is so much to despair about with the appalling lack of leadership by our government that I am worn down with the stories that are being ignored by the "liberal" media. If there is a liberal media, I'd like to know where they are. I saw commercials by Ralph Reed yesterday where he stood there calmly and said that it had been proven that he'd never done anything wrong in his career and he was being smeared by the "liberal media." He's counting on a lot of Republicans not having read all those emails that he wrote conspiring to hide gambling money he took as payment for manipulating Christian groups in order to fight other gambling interests.

The middle east is becoming a conflagration and all I can see that we are doing about it is smile that gas prices have risen higher again.

Have you noticed that the people who make the decisions about education are not closely involved with education? Senators and Congressmen have mostly never taught and now only remember being students. Superintendants haven't taught for quite a while. Researchers often have never taught, rather, they have only studied teachers in those amazingly dry studies that are often so fatally flawed. Teachers must be the reason that students aren't learning. Couldn't be home life, ipods and phones in class, disrespect for adults in general, drugs or poverty. The solution to all problems is more dedicated teachers.

Thanks to NYC Educator for pointing out this terrific article in the Times about the issue.

We are looking hard at literature for this year now. I've found a few good things but not too many great ones.

We bought a new computer. It is fast. That's good. My old one was slow and crashed a lot. We are hoping to clean it off and start it over afresh. Perhaps that will lead it to be something useful in the future. The new one has one of those bright screens and boy is that different.

The new assistant director of our program is here from NY and staying with Mrs. G and I. We went shopping with her today for appliances and it was fun to spend her money! This evening we've been picking out music for next year and have had great fun playing duets at the piano, oooing and aaahing at chord changes and such. It was fun. We laughed a lot.

Tomorrow I say goodbye to Dr. R from GSU. He's moving out of the city. I have appreciated his friendship, advice, and his praise of my efforts to occasionally create art. Florida's gain is my loss.

My fantasy baseball team is inching forward and we are only one point out of 3rd place today and only 2 out of 2nd place.

So if this is a "Peach of a Scandal in Georgia," how come the Atlanta Journal and Constitution is not running this article? Don't Atlantans need this message, not just people in Illinois? Come on AJC, it's Garrison Keillor, a name respected even in Georgia. Run the article!

The sorry thing is that Reed had a display in our parade on Tuesday and some of my sweet kids were marching along wearing the lying devil's T-shirts, smiling and waving, just because somebody at their church, probably their Sunday School teacher enlisted them to do it. The saddest part is that Reed is typical of what the Republican party is putting forward as leadership at this time.

Ralph Reed needs to get out of the race and get out of sight.

You should read Digby's blog for July 4. And . . . read the comments too.

Saw tons of people at the parade. Annie, Ashley, Laura, Brian, Joey, Karen, Carli, Elise, Shelbi, Shelby, hahahaha, C.C., Hannah, and many more. Have you ever seen 5000 golf carts in the same place? All flying flags! So many kids, so many dogs. And horses, and politicians!

We also went to the fireworks tonight. We sat out on the golf course with a few thousand others. Fireworks were spectacular though we were about 3000 feet from the boom. One of the most interesting finales I have ever seen. There was so much in the sky that it looked like bubbling liquid. We saw lots more kids: Brad, Adam, Chris, Gordie, Meghan, Stephanie, Leah, Ashley and her little sister, another Shelby, who will be in Treble next year. A surprise since she is coming back to public from private school. But yea! What great stock she is from. She was excited about being in chorus. There were others seen at a distance.

It rained a bit but it was so warm it was no matter. We got in a huge golf cart traffic jam when trying to leave. I shoulda gone a different way but didn't want to experiment in the dark.

So many things to write about on July 4.

It's the middle of the summer vacation down here in Georgia. Schools start back on Aug 7. And yes. I am rested and beginning to be anxious to work again. Still I have many days of preparation left to do. My assistant director for the last 5 years has moved to Virginia. My new assistant director arrives from New York on Thursday.

The crepe myrtles have begun to bloom in ernest and I don't recall them ever being more beautiful. The long stems are packed with pink and white blooms. On my morning walks I see bluebirds and hear mockingbirds heralding my approach. I guess they are more open area birds for they don't come to the feeders which are dominated right now by cardinals and house finches. There is an occasional gold finch as well.

There's no doubt that the rhetoric has ramped up to threat level orange! The Republicans are really feeling the heat of the low poll numbers now. I haven't seen any local level polls being quoted. I wonder if there are Republican congressmen who have realized that their district is about to make an historic swing to the left? I was amused that the independance day holiday should be chosen for the viscious and blatantly partisan charges of treason against the NY Times. No one even bothers to mention that the Wall Street Journal printed the same story. No one cares that the information, while more specific than previous administration comments is just revealing the same tactics the administration has already proclaimed.

So the whole point of the conflagration (treason! gas chamber! hang the NY Times), is to attack the media. They are falling back on another of their old war horses, "the liberal media is ruining the war and putting our lives in jeopardy." I'd insert profanity here if I were that kind of fellow.

This is just drawing attention away from the fact that the Cut and Run policy of the Democrats has become the actual policy of the Republicans in the last week. Why don't they just say, "You are right, let's begin a withdrawal." I think that might raise their poll ratings. But they are going to stay the course of never admitting and error. Arrogance will be their downfall.

The emperor not only has no clothes, he has no war. Oh he has troops stuck in a foreign country and can't get them out. But he has no enemy to fight there. We are just targets for angry Iraqis. And since our policies there have led to the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis, there are a lot of angry Iraqis. The whole war talk thing "I am a war president" is bogus. It's the ultimate power grab. If the emperor were able to put the Times in jail, he really would be emperor and might even proclaim himself thus in order to "protect the American people against terrorism." (Did you see that the homeland security money for NYC was reduced by 40%?) Gotta have more air conditioned garbage trucks in another more Republican district.

Well I'm off to the Fourth of July Parade, flags unfurled on the golf cart, wearing my star spangled banner shirt. Woohah!

You hear an awful lot from the Republican Party about the woes of welfare. Boy it is terrible to give money to poor people. It robs them of their self esteem and creates a culture of helplessness. Isn't that about their story?

Check out the AJC today for an item on welfare for the rich that costs 50% more than the dole that the GOP is so concerned about.

"The federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all, according to an analysis of government records by The Washington Post.

Some of them collect hundreds of thousands of dollars without planting a seed. Mary Anna Hudson, 87, of Houston has received $191,000 over the past decade. For Houston surgeon Jimmy Frank Howell, the total was $490,709.

"I don't agree with the government's policy," said asphalt contractor Donald R. Matthews, 67, whose 18-acre suburban lot near El Campo receives about $1,300 in annual "direct payments," because years ago the land was used to grow rice.

. . . the payments have grown into a . . . subsidy that benefits millionaire landowners, foreign speculators and absentee landlords, as well as farmers. . .

The cash comes with so few restrictions that subdivision developers who buy farmland advertise that homeowners can collect farm subsidies on their new backyards. . .

In 2005 alone, when pretax farm profits were at a near-record $72 billion, the federal government handed out more than $25 billion in aid, almost 50 percent more than the amount it pays to families receiving welfare.

The Post's nine-month investigation found farm subsidy programs that have become so all-encompassing that they have taken much of the risk out of farming for the increasingly wealthy individuals who dominate it."


So can someone explain to me why welfare for the rich is not a concern of the GOP? And don't even get me started on the money for the highway department which can't be diverted to mass transit.

A systematic review of the hullaballo about the revelations of tracking terrorists' money is in the New York Times. You can find the article on Rozius.

Why do you think the preznit is attaching the NY Times so hard when the same stories were also published in the LA Times and in the conservative Wall Street Journal at the same time?

"yet another ruse to distract Americans from the wreckage in Iraq. He and his party, eager to change the subject in an election year, just can't let go of their scapegoat strategy. It's illegal Hispanic immigrants, gay couples seeking marital rights, cut-and-run Democrats and rampaging flag burners who have betrayed America's values, not those who bungled a war."

Add the liberal media to the problem.

Rush out and search for the Foreign language film, "The Chorus." I don't care that you hate subtitles. It will be hard to find. They will only have one copy. Chorus changes people. Singing in a group is a lifechanging process. Notice that music is not supported by the administration. It empowers the director and administrators don't like teachers with power. In the end the musician seems to lose, but in the life long view, he wins.

"Les choristes" or "The Chorus"