For the first quarter or so it seemed that the Rams San Francisco game might be a game to watch...but it quickly turned into a car wreck.
Mistake after mistake seems to plague the team. Halfway through the third it looks like San Fran is putting on a skills clinic.
- Murphy
The response from the DNC about wild-eyed Republican furor over Obama's education address is pretty funny (via Washington Monthly).
“What this absurd episode shows is that the GOP can in fact come up with new ideas. For example, it’s now clear that the new Republican education platform will argue against personal responsibility, hard work and staying in school.”
Cheeky it may be, but very appropriate for opposing a President who wants to talk to kids directly and encourage them to do well in school. It helps that it would have come from a President who didn't descend from a legacy or a well-heeled family.
Remember when having the President as a messenger of the positive effects of school was a widely accepted notion?
- Murphy
There is certainly one aspect of this tempest in a teapot that students could benefit from, they have cat-bird seats for the decline of modern political discourse.
Now, American politics has always been a rough game. And the insults and accusations have even involved trading charges of adultery (see the war between Jefferson-Hamilton in those esteemed days of the founding fathers).
But the immediacy of modern communications, compounded by the declining standards of the major news networks, has allowed the sideshows of politics to be elevated to acceptable dialogue.
There have always been heated debates over contentious topics. These debates often draw in the fringe, like moth to a flame. It's why meetings about Airline security are interrupted by 9/11-truthers claiming President Bush was part of the CIA conspiracy. It's also why folks who claim the government will off everyone over 65 who gets sick show up at Congressional town hall meetings and work themselves into a froth.
Yet in the past these claims were treated for what they were: baseless accusations that evolve from an overheated imagination. The media would listen and even check out those things that could be checked out, even if it sounded outside the realm of possible ("It's true! The law says everyone will be required to donate one kidney. Everyone!"), and would dismiss the rest (trust me, if you have ever attended public meetings as a member of the media, you will meet no end of people with pamphlets and theories-all as convinced as former Governor Sarah Palin of their correctness).
Now, however, the fact that a charge has been made is reason enough to let it stand in the daylight. Engaging reason and asking for evidence draws accusations of bias-something no mainstream journalist is apparently able to stand up to.
To go even further, to stop providing a forum for those who consistently repeat false statements is apparently even more heinous, verging on black-listing. Just because it is a prominent figure blowing smoke, doesn't obscure the truth any less.
This is not to place blame on journalists entirely. Those with an axe to grind have found the modern media a fine whetstone. They have learned how to game the system and have turned its some of its fine attributes (openness and even-handedness) against itself.
Others have simply built their own Trojan horse and let it lose in the world of journalism. They can then reference their own broadcasts as justification for continuing the spiral. The ultimate in self-reference.
The ultimate in dust-jacket credibility.
If students of today are going to have a shot at having a future in which they can be proud to get involved in public life, they are going to have to learn the value of critical thinking, the skills to educate themselves about an issue, and the confidence to stand behind their ideas.
The current climate of public discourse is currently providing them with a template not for the rebirth of civil society but for its further cheapening.
- Murphy
While I am sympathetic to the concerns of School Board members who don't wish to be drawn into a manufactured controversy, it is somewhat surprising that they aren't embracing an effort by the President of the United States to highlight education.
That said the one concern they seem to share, according to today's Post-Dispatch report, falls under the headline of "does it fit the curriculum." In a the modern public school world, educators have little time to do more than prep their students for the next round of NCLB-required tests and worry whether a small drop in performance will hang a scarlet letter around their otherwise acceptable curriculum.
It makes sense that rather than be drawn into some debate spurned-on by fringe-minded, conspiracy types, they would rather be left to teach their students.
While an address by the President lauding the benefits of education and encouraging kids to stay is school may not count as the standard supplemental materials, I think it certainly falls in-line with any good civics curriculum.
- Murphy
While the most recent North Korean missile launch was notable for less for its aeronautics than its ability to broadcast underwater (the missile fell into the sea shortly after launch-despite N. Korean claims to the contrary), Defense Secretary Gates is giving the Norks the benefit of the doubt that they may achieve something closer to success in their next (rumored) launch.
The initial Japanese media reports that the N. Korean government has plans to test a ballistic missile was not a surprise, but its intended flight path-in the direction of Hawaii-was.
Despite the lack-luster track record of N. Korean ballistic missiles, Gates is taking the threat seriously and has decided to deploy the experimental missile shield radar to Hawaii.
Gates decided against deploying the missile shield during the March N. Korean missile test, despite some reports that he might due so for monitoring purposes. At least part of the evident reasoning was that it was in dry-dock for maintenance. The March missile's aquatic ambitions bore out Gate's decision.
Now however, the radar is out of the shop and while it is unlikely there has been no great advancement in N. Korean missile tech to point to any major concerns, the opportunity of another test plus the N. Korean threats certainly warrants a watchful eye.
The folks over at Arms Control Wonk have some great information on history of N. Korean tests, and will also be keeping a close eye on events (likely including some deep-in-the-details trajectory analysis).
- Murphy
The web has been a great source of stories, photos and video documenting the protests that have upturned modern Iranian society. The one issue is narrowing down the volume of information.
Here are a few good sources to start:
The Field: Al Giordano Reports America - Giordano provides a mix of analysis with up-to-date reports. He has even gotten the early word on some important events, such as the unions declaring solidarity with the protestors.
Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan - Commentator Andrew Sullivan has been keeping tabs on a variety of Twitter feeds and YouTube channels and reposting them on his website.
- Murphy
The many tools of the internet have begun to demonstrate they are actually worth a least a portion of the praise heaped upon them by those who promise kittens and flowers and peace, if only everyone had high speed internet access available.
Even the lowly Twitter-which is actually an appropriate adjective to describe some of the most avowed acolytes of the tool-has shown itself to be a veritable life-line for many inside and outside of Iran.
Thanks to the distributed nature of its architecture, there is no single point for the Iranian regime to clamp down on, as when the blocked access to Facebook after students flocked to Mir Hossein Musavi's page (the former prime minister challenging Ahmadinejad for the Presidency). Their only recourse is to shut down entire networks, which it did to the text-messaging network on the day of the election.
While we are likely to quickly regret the proliferation of the term "Twitter revolution" there is little doubt that it and the proliferation of quick and comprehensive (text, voice, video) communication available through the modern networks has helped coordinate the efforts of the Iranian protestors as well as spread the word to the wider world.
Let's let the Iranians decide what to call their efforts. After all, despite the integral role of pamphleteers in fomenting and organizing the American rebellion, no one called the War of Independence the "Pamphleteer Revolution".
- Murphy
The Autobus Workers Union has joined with the Auto Workers Union in criticizing the ruling government's brutal crackdown of the students, shopworkers, businesspeople and parents who have taken to the streets in the wake of what many believe to have been a rigged election.
In a stunning rebuke to the threats issued by Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini that the violence that meets the protesters will be of their own making, thousands have taken to the streets u. In doing so they will have to dodge the batons of the Iranian police and the bullets of the Basij-a brute squad made up of irregulars and thugs who form the steel toe of the ruling class.
In addition to the world-wide rebuke that would follow a violent suppression of the protests (which the already blighted regime may swat aside), the efforts of the industrial workers and others to cause slowdowns or even strikes may turn a protest into a full-blown revolution.
The people of Iran who have taken to the streets did not do so to overthrow the government, they merely wanted to see what little legitimacy existed return to the elective process.
Mousavi, the man who challenged the sitting President Ahmadinejad, is known to be a hard-liner himself. In his previous role as prime minister in the 1980's. Mousavi is believed to have given the approval to obtain the centrifuges used for uranium enrichment.
In the Iranian sphere, reformer is a relative term.
Yet the regime may have taken its game to far, tossing aside any pretense of self-rule. Thus, those who saw their country's future diminish under the Ahmadinejad presidency-the young, the reformist, the realists-saw the specter of their fate in the regime's meat-paw manipulation of the election.
- Murphy
One of the great sources of funding for the entrepreneurial class in both the private and public sector has been through federally-funded grants. The grants spur research and development in areas as different as preventing friendly-fire incidents on the battlefield and helping address infant heart disease.
In this time of tight credit and wary investors, federal grants can provide the seed money to help get new businesspeople from the drawing board to the board room. They can also help expand existing programs and businesses by allowing them to hire new researchers or employees or to launch that new idea.
To help those ambitious folk here in Missouri, Sen. Claire McCaskill held a grant-writing workshop today in Columbia, Mo. Representatives from a dozen or more agencies were to be on-hand to help the hopeful craft their proposal.
Anecdotally, Talking Points Memo managing editor David Kurtz (who is based here in Missouri) wrote that his wife was going to attend, but after seeing the crowd of people, decided against it.
- Murphy
