Mr. Tony Judt has passed away at an entirely too young age, he will be sorely missed.
In his book he talks about using new words to have discussions - since the old ones have been demonized and their meanings changed.
I like the method of Melissa Harris-Lacewell. An example of her doing this was recently on the Rachel Maddow Show. The discussion was around women’s reproductive rights and the tea party's various radical positions. Melissa never used the “a” word, instead she spoke of 'termination of a problem pregnancy'. By avoiding the “a” word – she also allows us to actually hear her arguments instead of jumping to the normal knee-jerk framing we ALL have around that word.
We need to replace a lot of other words like that: liberal, socialism, etc with words like “people centered” and “good of the community” and so on.
Gotta start with each one of us individually – so maybe make a pledge not to use the “a” word anymore, or the ‘L” word, or the “s” word…
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Race to the Bottom
This past week we received the news that 200 teachers were being fired in Washington, DC because they were "failing to perform".
Okay.
So the next time you are looking for teachers to work in those poor, inner-city, low-functioning schools you are going to find them where?
The problems with Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind are multitudinous. Let's just start with the kids.
In both cases, these programs assume that all children are ready for school at age 5. They assume that kids will have been read to, have books in their homes, and parents who value education. It assumes that these children live in homes where the parents are not doing drugs, fighting constantly including with physical violence, gang members, prostitutes, or serving time. These programs also assume that these kids have enough to eat every day, a warm and safe place to sleep, and clean clothes and a way to keep themselves clean as well as a stable, long-term place to live.
Unfortunately, for a lot of kids in inner cities and poor rural areas too, kids live in the kinds of homes described above - not in some Mr. Rogers neighborhood.
So what happens when these kids come to school? First off, pre-school experiences (being read to, having their own books, having parents who value education) mean children are either very well prepared for school, or they are simply not. The work that has been done before a child reaches the school classroom cannot be underestimated when looking at educational outcomes.
Kids who are not fed are not able to learn. They are hungry, sleepy, distracted, and they just cannot learn unless they are well nourished. That is the main force (and science) behind school lunch and even more importantly, school breakfast programs. The nutritional status of kids goes even beyond the day to day in that if their mothers were not well-nourished during their pregnancies, it can result in the lost of IQ points for the child, and even more drastically if the child is born prematurely or underweight. Or drug-addicted.
And finally, children raised in homes where there is constant fighting and violence do not do well in school for several reasons. First, they may not be getting adequate sleep due to fears for their own safety or the safety of siblings or even the safety of their parent(s). Violence in the home causes PTSD-like symptoms in young children, resulting in kids who are withdrawn, paranoid, fearful, or who act-out, are irritable, etc. In the latter case, many of these kids are wrongly diagnosed with ADHD/HD and medicated to make them more calm. ADHD/HD medications create their own obstacles to learning.
Funding for Head Start and Early Head Start has never been adequate to the task since it is funded on a block-grant basis. What this means is that even though a child may be eligible - only about 50% of kids actually receive funding to participate. In recent years both these programs have been under intense attack because by the fourth grade the Head Start kids are no different from their peers. Which is the exact result you should be expecting - but the conservatives have decided that somehow these kids who start out behind the starting line should not only catch up but actually sprint ahead of their peers. That was never the expectation, and the science simply does not back that up as an outcome. Never has. Parity was always the goal.
So at this point we have huge numbers of children entering school in DC. The school system there has its own set of special problems. Since DC is the capital of the US, and is not part of any state, its funding does not have the state property tax flow of all other school districts in the country. Instead, DC must rely on funding when and if Congress gets around to it. And the Representative, Eleanor Norton, has no vote. She is just there to speak (if they let her) and then observe if anyone chooses to do anything. As we have all seen recently, expecting Congress to do the right thing is an exercise in futility.
As a result, the schools are crumbling around the ears of the students and faculty alike. There aren't computers in the classroom. Most of the kids don't have books to take home to help with their homework. In many cases they don't have pencils, paper, or any of the other "normal" supplies kids need to do their work. So the schools rely on donations from local merchants, parents who have no money, or the teachers buy the stuff out of their own pockets. What a way to help kids learn.
The next thing that happens with these so-called school reform programs is the Orwellian "accountability" provisions. Some commission that has no educators on it has set standards for achievement for every school in the entire country. No adjustments are made for poverty or wealth, for regional differences, for culture (Native American springs to mind), or for language. (Let's not get into the immigration wars here - in some communities with LEGAL immigrants like San Francisco, there may be as many as 50 different languages spoken as the primary one for kids in some districts). And perhaps even more importantly, there is no account taken for where the students are/were on Day One of these programs.
I'm sure you can see that if the students in Burlingame California (one of the wealthiest districts in the entire country) are at level 80 on Day One, and the students at the Five Valleys District (on an impoverished Indian reservation) are at 25 on Day One, the likely outcomes when you set the bar at 85 for the end of the first year are going to be quite different. The kids at Burlingame will make the new goal with ease - having to only achieve 5 points on the test after a school year of excellent instruction by teachers with MS and PhD degrees, each child with their own set of books and supplies furnished by the school, their parents encouraging them to do their homework, and a computer on every desk.
On the other hand, that goal is impossible for the Indian kids. Even if they double their previous scores (from 25 to 50) with teachers who have a BA, no books, no supplies, no computers, and with all the other problems living in poverty causes, the school is still deemed to be failing. So it gets put on probation. At that point, all the parents in the school are offered to have their kids bussed to a different school that is performing better. So the kids whose parents are concerned about their education (usually the smart kids) will opt out of the school district. This has the effect of depressing the overall scores even further since the poorest, and the poorest performing students are the ones left behind. Oh, forgot one thing. The underperforming school district is required to pay the transportation costs of the students who are leaving the district.
And then....wait for it...the standard is moved up from 85 to 90 for the next year. The cycle repeats itself, and now the Five Valleys School receives a huge cut in its funding to "punish it for not doing better". That's all it takes to make it do better - right?
And in the third year, Five Valleys School can expect to have all of its dedicated teachers and the principal fired. Now the school will be taken over by the State, or turned over to a private company to run. The teachers and administrators are now on unemployment on a reservation where the unemployment rate is already over 80%. Due to the history of the school, and the distance it is from other towns in the area (45 minute drive in the summer, roads impassable due to downed trees and landslides in winter) how do you recruit teachers? Any teachers? And no private corporation wants to take over a school like this where they can't make money off it.
What to do?
In this case, what the Five Valleys School District did was admirable. But most inner city districts don't even have this option. The local Tribal Council voted to set up a casino. They used the casino money to offset ALL federal and state funding and told them both to take No Child Left Behind and stuff it.
Then they cleaned up the school, raised the salaries of the teachers, and implemented a number of cultural programs, like teaching the kids their own language, and traditional arts and crafts. They set a goal of having each individual student make 10 points of progress each year. If they didn't, tutors and other mentors were brought in to help these individual children. And guess what - the school is doing much better. They still aren't at 95% (where the bar is today) but they are above 50% now. And that's quite an achievement.
If these mass firings, cuts to funding, privatization and other schemes such as this continue, we will have no more public schools. Millions of kids will be left behind - illiterate and completely unemployable. Is this what we really want?
President Obama says that education is an economic issue. That is correct. But the simple cost-benefit analysis does not work for education. How do you measure the value of a child learning to love learning? How do you measure the value of a child enjoying a finger-painting class? (Those disappeared along with all other art, music and physical education classes). How do you measure the value of kids who don't know how to understand critical thinking? (Not taught in K-12 under either regime) There are hundreds of positive aspects of a well-rounded, positive education that simply cannot be measured in dollars and cents. And basing teacher firings on test scores on tests that do not measure a child's true learning - or their potential for future learning is not helpful in the least.
Arne Duncan is really pushing hard for charter schools. The verdict is in on them. Some are better, some are worse, and most are the same - just like public schools in general. And charter schools are unaccountable, discriminatory, in a majority of cases, religious. Where the real advances are is in Magnet Schools. These schools are accountable to the voters, are run by public school districts, and achieve far greater results with their focus on real-world application-type learning. Magnet Schools are by almost every measure - far better than regular public schools and charter schools alike.
I don't know what the best way is to reform our schools. But the way we are going now is only going to ruin everything. In this Race, far too many of our children are truly being Left Behind.
Okay.
So the next time you are looking for teachers to work in those poor, inner-city, low-functioning schools you are going to find them where?
The problems with Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind are multitudinous. Let's just start with the kids.
In both cases, these programs assume that all children are ready for school at age 5. They assume that kids will have been read to, have books in their homes, and parents who value education. It assumes that these children live in homes where the parents are not doing drugs, fighting constantly including with physical violence, gang members, prostitutes, or serving time. These programs also assume that these kids have enough to eat every day, a warm and safe place to sleep, and clean clothes and a way to keep themselves clean as well as a stable, long-term place to live.
Unfortunately, for a lot of kids in inner cities and poor rural areas too, kids live in the kinds of homes described above - not in some Mr. Rogers neighborhood.
So what happens when these kids come to school? First off, pre-school experiences (being read to, having their own books, having parents who value education) mean children are either very well prepared for school, or they are simply not. The work that has been done before a child reaches the school classroom cannot be underestimated when looking at educational outcomes.
Kids who are not fed are not able to learn. They are hungry, sleepy, distracted, and they just cannot learn unless they are well nourished. That is the main force (and science) behind school lunch and even more importantly, school breakfast programs. The nutritional status of kids goes even beyond the day to day in that if their mothers were not well-nourished during their pregnancies, it can result in the lost of IQ points for the child, and even more drastically if the child is born prematurely or underweight. Or drug-addicted.
And finally, children raised in homes where there is constant fighting and violence do not do well in school for several reasons. First, they may not be getting adequate sleep due to fears for their own safety or the safety of siblings or even the safety of their parent(s). Violence in the home causes PTSD-like symptoms in young children, resulting in kids who are withdrawn, paranoid, fearful, or who act-out, are irritable, etc. In the latter case, many of these kids are wrongly diagnosed with ADHD/HD and medicated to make them more calm. ADHD/HD medications create their own obstacles to learning.
Funding for Head Start and Early Head Start has never been adequate to the task since it is funded on a block-grant basis. What this means is that even though a child may be eligible - only about 50% of kids actually receive funding to participate. In recent years both these programs have been under intense attack because by the fourth grade the Head Start kids are no different from their peers. Which is the exact result you should be expecting - but the conservatives have decided that somehow these kids who start out behind the starting line should not only catch up but actually sprint ahead of their peers. That was never the expectation, and the science simply does not back that up as an outcome. Never has. Parity was always the goal.
So at this point we have huge numbers of children entering school in DC. The school system there has its own set of special problems. Since DC is the capital of the US, and is not part of any state, its funding does not have the state property tax flow of all other school districts in the country. Instead, DC must rely on funding when and if Congress gets around to it. And the Representative, Eleanor Norton, has no vote. She is just there to speak (if they let her) and then observe if anyone chooses to do anything. As we have all seen recently, expecting Congress to do the right thing is an exercise in futility.
As a result, the schools are crumbling around the ears of the students and faculty alike. There aren't computers in the classroom. Most of the kids don't have books to take home to help with their homework. In many cases they don't have pencils, paper, or any of the other "normal" supplies kids need to do their work. So the schools rely on donations from local merchants, parents who have no money, or the teachers buy the stuff out of their own pockets. What a way to help kids learn.
The next thing that happens with these so-called school reform programs is the Orwellian "accountability" provisions. Some commission that has no educators on it has set standards for achievement for every school in the entire country. No adjustments are made for poverty or wealth, for regional differences, for culture (Native American springs to mind), or for language. (Let's not get into the immigration wars here - in some communities with LEGAL immigrants like San Francisco, there may be as many as 50 different languages spoken as the primary one for kids in some districts). And perhaps even more importantly, there is no account taken for where the students are/were on Day One of these programs.
I'm sure you can see that if the students in Burlingame California (one of the wealthiest districts in the entire country) are at level 80 on Day One, and the students at the Five Valleys District (on an impoverished Indian reservation) are at 25 on Day One, the likely outcomes when you set the bar at 85 for the end of the first year are going to be quite different. The kids at Burlingame will make the new goal with ease - having to only achieve 5 points on the test after a school year of excellent instruction by teachers with MS and PhD degrees, each child with their own set of books and supplies furnished by the school, their parents encouraging them to do their homework, and a computer on every desk.
On the other hand, that goal is impossible for the Indian kids. Even if they double their previous scores (from 25 to 50) with teachers who have a BA, no books, no supplies, no computers, and with all the other problems living in poverty causes, the school is still deemed to be failing. So it gets put on probation. At that point, all the parents in the school are offered to have their kids bussed to a different school that is performing better. So the kids whose parents are concerned about their education (usually the smart kids) will opt out of the school district. This has the effect of depressing the overall scores even further since the poorest, and the poorest performing students are the ones left behind. Oh, forgot one thing. The underperforming school district is required to pay the transportation costs of the students who are leaving the district.
And then....wait for it...the standard is moved up from 85 to 90 for the next year. The cycle repeats itself, and now the Five Valleys School receives a huge cut in its funding to "punish it for not doing better". That's all it takes to make it do better - right?
And in the third year, Five Valleys School can expect to have all of its dedicated teachers and the principal fired. Now the school will be taken over by the State, or turned over to a private company to run. The teachers and administrators are now on unemployment on a reservation where the unemployment rate is already over 80%. Due to the history of the school, and the distance it is from other towns in the area (45 minute drive in the summer, roads impassable due to downed trees and landslides in winter) how do you recruit teachers? Any teachers? And no private corporation wants to take over a school like this where they can't make money off it.
What to do?
In this case, what the Five Valleys School District did was admirable. But most inner city districts don't even have this option. The local Tribal Council voted to set up a casino. They used the casino money to offset ALL federal and state funding and told them both to take No Child Left Behind and stuff it.
Then they cleaned up the school, raised the salaries of the teachers, and implemented a number of cultural programs, like teaching the kids their own language, and traditional arts and crafts. They set a goal of having each individual student make 10 points of progress each year. If they didn't, tutors and other mentors were brought in to help these individual children. And guess what - the school is doing much better. They still aren't at 95% (where the bar is today) but they are above 50% now. And that's quite an achievement.
If these mass firings, cuts to funding, privatization and other schemes such as this continue, we will have no more public schools. Millions of kids will be left behind - illiterate and completely unemployable. Is this what we really want?
President Obama says that education is an economic issue. That is correct. But the simple cost-benefit analysis does not work for education. How do you measure the value of a child learning to love learning? How do you measure the value of a child enjoying a finger-painting class? (Those disappeared along with all other art, music and physical education classes). How do you measure the value of kids who don't know how to understand critical thinking? (Not taught in K-12 under either regime) There are hundreds of positive aspects of a well-rounded, positive education that simply cannot be measured in dollars and cents. And basing teacher firings on test scores on tests that do not measure a child's true learning - or their potential for future learning is not helpful in the least.
Arne Duncan is really pushing hard for charter schools. The verdict is in on them. Some are better, some are worse, and most are the same - just like public schools in general. And charter schools are unaccountable, discriminatory, in a majority of cases, religious. Where the real advances are is in Magnet Schools. These schools are accountable to the voters, are run by public school districts, and achieve far greater results with their focus on real-world application-type learning. Magnet Schools are by almost every measure - far better than regular public schools and charter schools alike.
I don't know what the best way is to reform our schools. But the way we are going now is only going to ruin everything. In this Race, far too many of our children are truly being Left Behind.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Ill Fares The Land
I just finished reading Ill Fares The Land by Tony Judt. I know I and many of the folks I talk to constantly wonder how we got into the state we're in. The country that is. Judt has done a great job of explaining that it was perhaps inevitable that we would wind up here. Our country was founded on suspicion of government - it has just taken a completely sinister turn from mere suspicion to downright hostility in the last couple of decades.
As for what to do...that he doesn't do such a good job at explaining. He talks about how we need to have discussions - but the trick is how to do that when the words we normally would use have all become demonized and distorted and discredited.
Take the word socialism for example. This word is now a desccriptor of evil incarnate - at least according to the far right wing. The issue is that we already have socialism in this country. Every country does. It is how the country, state, or community does things that no single individual could possibly do on their own. Think freeways, fire departments, police, airports, water and sewer systems, and so on. Socialism is how individuals join together to do projects FOR THE COMMON GOOD.
Of course, common good has become another of those demonized terms. Judt discusses the phenomenon of gated communities where the residents feel they are enclosed in safety, completely self-sufficient and not really part of the larger community in which they are located. However, the gated community is not any safer than the open community - in fact, if something happens, the private security personnel must often call upon the official police department or sheriff's office to actually deal with crime. If a home catches fire - the 'outside' fire department will respond. The roads on which they drive in and out of the gates are paid for by all of the rest of us too - and they get to use them. Their water comes from the same place as the rest of ours, and their sewage winds up in the same place.
One point Judt makes about our society is worth considering seriously, and that is the idea that people want their government to make moral choices. This is not the same as religious values. The idea that people should not kill or rob each other is not a religious value, it is a common moral value. The same applies to government. Moral choices, like the one to provide some sort of assistance to people unable to work, are not necessarily cost effective in an economic sense. But Judt argues that economic efficiency is not always the best choice.
Judt uses the example of railroads (passenger) to demonstrate that although they usually are never profitable, there are clearly high values of a non-monetary sort to be gained by the government subsidizing trains as a means of transportation surely, but even more importantly, as a link between more rural and poor areas with the rest of the country. This link is important for building a sense of community - and even though in the US we prize individuality above all else, we cannot survive without our communities supportiing us. There are really almost no persons in this society that are completely self-sufficient. And the supports often come from the government whether we want to admit it or not.
I highly recommend that everyone read this book - it is a really good starting point for a conversation. And we really need to start having this conversation - even if we have to make up new, untainted words to describe what we want!
As for what to do...that he doesn't do such a good job at explaining. He talks about how we need to have discussions - but the trick is how to do that when the words we normally would use have all become demonized and distorted and discredited.
Take the word socialism for example. This word is now a desccriptor of evil incarnate - at least according to the far right wing. The issue is that we already have socialism in this country. Every country does. It is how the country, state, or community does things that no single individual could possibly do on their own. Think freeways, fire departments, police, airports, water and sewer systems, and so on. Socialism is how individuals join together to do projects FOR THE COMMON GOOD.
Of course, common good has become another of those demonized terms. Judt discusses the phenomenon of gated communities where the residents feel they are enclosed in safety, completely self-sufficient and not really part of the larger community in which they are located. However, the gated community is not any safer than the open community - in fact, if something happens, the private security personnel must often call upon the official police department or sheriff's office to actually deal with crime. If a home catches fire - the 'outside' fire department will respond. The roads on which they drive in and out of the gates are paid for by all of the rest of us too - and they get to use them. Their water comes from the same place as the rest of ours, and their sewage winds up in the same place.
One point Judt makes about our society is worth considering seriously, and that is the idea that people want their government to make moral choices. This is not the same as religious values. The idea that people should not kill or rob each other is not a religious value, it is a common moral value. The same applies to government. Moral choices, like the one to provide some sort of assistance to people unable to work, are not necessarily cost effective in an economic sense. But Judt argues that economic efficiency is not always the best choice.
Judt uses the example of railroads (passenger) to demonstrate that although they usually are never profitable, there are clearly high values of a non-monetary sort to be gained by the government subsidizing trains as a means of transportation surely, but even more importantly, as a link between more rural and poor areas with the rest of the country. This link is important for building a sense of community - and even though in the US we prize individuality above all else, we cannot survive without our communities supportiing us. There are really almost no persons in this society that are completely self-sufficient. And the supports often come from the government whether we want to admit it or not.
I highly recommend that everyone read this book - it is a really good starting point for a conversation. And we really need to start having this conversation - even if we have to make up new, untainted words to describe what we want!
Saturday, January 2, 2010
January 2 - What Are The Questions
Before we can really make changes, we must learn to ask good questions. If we want to do (or undo) something, the question should be "why". And then why again. And again, until we find the deep and true reason that has been buried in our hearts.
The next question is how. The self-help gurus say to write lists of goals and steps and timetables. For some of us, this doesn't work. We use the steps and deadlines as weapons to beat ourselves up - or to pretend that we're in control.
Well, we're not in control. The Universe is - and that is precisely why we get sidetracked so easily. So we're back to one-day-at-a-time. Eat healthy just for today. Exercise just for today. Do whatever chore just for today. Or don't smoke just for today. Don't tell a lie just for today.
Yesterday is over. We cannot change it. Tomorrow isn't here. We can't do anything about that either. So, just for today I will...
The next question is how. The self-help gurus say to write lists of goals and steps and timetables. For some of us, this doesn't work. We use the steps and deadlines as weapons to beat ourselves up - or to pretend that we're in control.
Well, we're not in control. The Universe is - and that is precisely why we get sidetracked so easily. So we're back to one-day-at-a-time. Eat healthy just for today. Exercise just for today. Do whatever chore just for today. Or don't smoke just for today. Don't tell a lie just for today.
Yesterday is over. We cannot change it. Tomorrow isn't here. We can't do anything about that either. So, just for today I will...
January 1 - What's Next?
It is a time for new beginnings. They say that each new day is the first day of the rest of your life. It's true. But at times it seems as if the endless starting over can almost become self-defeating. So we solve that by symbolically starting over only once each year. We make resolutions - most of which are given up by the end of the first week.
Then we choose Monday as a starting over day. But Mondays are fraught with their own perils. So by Wednesday we are defeated again.
What's next?
We all know the things we'd like to change in our lives. We make lists and post them on the refrigerator or on the bathroom mirror in an attempt to remind ourselves to do or be or don't or whatever. How long until we look right at these lists and don't even see them anymore?
I think for this next space of time I will take a page from the twelve-stop programs and start living my life one day at a time. I will decide when I wake how I will be and do and don't and whatever. Just for today.
And tomorrow I will decide again.
Then we choose Monday as a starting over day. But Mondays are fraught with their own perils. So by Wednesday we are defeated again.
What's next?
We all know the things we'd like to change in our lives. We make lists and post them on the refrigerator or on the bathroom mirror in an attempt to remind ourselves to do or be or don't or whatever. How long until we look right at these lists and don't even see them anymore?
I think for this next space of time I will take a page from the twelve-stop programs and start living my life one day at a time. I will decide when I wake how I will be and do and don't and whatever. Just for today.
And tomorrow I will decide again.
It's Been A While
My health issues caught up with me again, along with a bout with depression. So I took a sabbatical from the news and blogs and all that.
I've decided to retrain my focus a bit here and hope to be posting more regularly. Hope you all had happy holidays and that your New Year will be a good one!
I've decided to retrain my focus a bit here and hope to be posting more regularly. Hope you all had happy holidays and that your New Year will be a good one!
Friday, April 17, 2009
How Does Wasserman-Schulz Show US Hypocrisy?
In an interview with Rachel Maddow Friday night, Debbie Wasserman-Schulz (D-FL) discussed the torture memos and relations with Cuba. In this discussion, she showed the absolute hypocrisy of the US in both cases.
On Torture: Wasserman-Schulz made the statement that while she disagrees with 'torturous' policies, we (meaning her), absolutely don't feel sorry for the detainees who were tortured because they are the absolute most heinous criminals in the world and we cannot feel sorry for them.
Really.
Since none of these detainees have ever had a hearing, a trial, or a conviction, how can we say this? Oh. Just because they are detainees that automatically makes them guilty of whatever we say they did. Even if they did nothing.
Abu Zubayda was one of the detainees subjected to most of these 'torturous' procedures. He was waterboarded, 'walled' (had his head slammed repeatedly into the wall while being held around the neck with a towel or a collar specifically manufactured for that purpose), put into a small containment box and told that poisonous insects were being placed in there with him (apparently he has a problem with insects), and subjected to sleep deprivation for periods up to eleven days in a row, among other things.
And, now we're hearing that he's not the guy we thought he was. That instead of being "Al Quaeda's #2 guy" that he was not even a member of Al Quaeda. Ooops! Oh well. He's one of those heinous terr'ist crim'nals.
On Human Rights: Wasserman-Schulz discussed Obama's new policies towards Cuba and was saying that the Cuban government was guilty of the worst human rights violations of any country on earth. The example she gave was of the Cuban authorities allegedly arresting a 12-year-old for not joining the Communist Party. Okay. We never do stuff like that here in the good ol' USA!
Except for arresting a 6-year-old and charging him with sexual harassment for kissing a playmate. Or arresting a 9-year-old on weapons charges for bringing a knife to school when her grandmother put the knife in her lunch so she could cut up an apple, and the 9-year-old brought the knife to her teacher and turned it in. Or arresting a 10-year-old for being a drug dealer because she gave a classmate a cough drop. I could go on.
Oh yeah. We have lots of room to criticize other countries at this point in time. Methinks we need to clean up our own back, front, and side yards as well as the basement, the attic, and maybe even the kitchen, living room and bathrooms before we start yelling about other people.
Crossposted at Firedoglake
On Torture: Wasserman-Schulz made the statement that while she disagrees with 'torturous' policies, we (meaning her), absolutely don't feel sorry for the detainees who were tortured because they are the absolute most heinous criminals in the world and we cannot feel sorry for them.
Really.
Since none of these detainees have ever had a hearing, a trial, or a conviction, how can we say this? Oh. Just because they are detainees that automatically makes them guilty of whatever we say they did. Even if they did nothing.
Abu Zubayda was one of the detainees subjected to most of these 'torturous' procedures. He was waterboarded, 'walled' (had his head slammed repeatedly into the wall while being held around the neck with a towel or a collar specifically manufactured for that purpose), put into a small containment box and told that poisonous insects were being placed in there with him (apparently he has a problem with insects), and subjected to sleep deprivation for periods up to eleven days in a row, among other things.
And, now we're hearing that he's not the guy we thought he was. That instead of being "Al Quaeda's #2 guy" that he was not even a member of Al Quaeda. Ooops! Oh well. He's one of those heinous terr'ist crim'nals.
On Human Rights: Wasserman-Schulz discussed Obama's new policies towards Cuba and was saying that the Cuban government was guilty of the worst human rights violations of any country on earth. The example she gave was of the Cuban authorities allegedly arresting a 12-year-old for not joining the Communist Party. Okay. We never do stuff like that here in the good ol' USA!
Except for arresting a 6-year-old and charging him with sexual harassment for kissing a playmate. Or arresting a 9-year-old on weapons charges for bringing a knife to school when her grandmother put the knife in her lunch so she could cut up an apple, and the 9-year-old brought the knife to her teacher and turned it in. Or arresting a 10-year-old for being a drug dealer because she gave a classmate a cough drop. I could go on.
Oh yeah. We have lots of room to criticize other countries at this point in time. Methinks we need to clean up our own back, front, and side yards as well as the basement, the attic, and maybe even the kitchen, living room and bathrooms before we start yelling about other people.
Crossposted at Firedoglake
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