Author: Trish

Jeb Bush Put the “F” in FCAT

Trish

If anyone needs more proof that Jeb Bush and his despicable FCAT have shredded public education in Florida, it’s in Jacksonville’s Florida Times-Union:

College-bound students in Florida and across the country are leaving high school unprepared for college-level studies, according to ACT entrance exam scores released today:

Only 21 percent of Florida students met the standard in science, compared with 26 percent nationwide.

And only 37 percent of Florida students met the standard for math, compared with 41 percent nationally.

Nearly half of Florida’s students would struggle with courses that require extensive reading, such as history, sociology, literature and business, close to the national average, according to the testing data.

Sixty-four percent of Florida students did meet the benchmark in English. That’s compared with 68 percent nationally.

The scores suggest that many Florida students will struggle with college classwork or will need remediation.

[…]

Vince is Going Back

Trish
But we do contemplate it, all of it. Somewhere deep inside we know it’s happening RIGHT NOW, and we think about it. It’s a weight around our hearts, pulling us down, and hurting, hurting, hurting. Cindy Sheehan reminds us of this hurt. President Bush ignores it, goes on about his dude ranch holiday, puts one foot in front of the other, head down. But we know. We know.

We have a problem. We have a black cloud over our head, a shadow over our conscience, and a question mark over our future. Iraq is sucking the joy, the spirit, the courage out of us.

I bet you’re like me. When you get pissed off about the traffic and your idiot fellow drivers and long check-out lines and people who seem to be taking out a mortgage instead of twenty bucks at the ATM, a little voice in your head says, “Yeah, but at least I have electricity. At least I can buy stuff. At least I can drive down the road without bombs going off.” And like me, you feel more guilt than gratitude.

I work part-time at UPS. One of the drivers and I have a thing, a fun thing, where we pretend to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Vince is black and at least 10 years younger than my 40-something white self. If I look nice one day, instead of just saying, “You look nice today,” Vince says, “Baby! Did you wear that for me?” and I assure him I did. When I rag him about an irate customer and her petulant demands, he cuts me off and asks, “I’ll see you at the house later, right Shorty?” and I assure him he will.

We kicked off our friendship when I was unknowingly the third person to message him about the same annoying thing on a bad day and he called me from the road to tell me exactly how much I pissed him off. After he hung up on me, I found out he was right to be indignant and messaged him my regret. In the meantime, he thought about it too and reached the same conclusion, but in reverse, so when he came in that night he apologized to me for, “getting all Army on your ass.” I asked him what that meant.

Vince has already been to Iraq once, at the start of this mess. That should have been enough, but he spent three weeks in Georgia in July training for redeployment. He knows this is the deal he made. Vince has two years to go before he has his 20 years in. His little girl just turned 4, and from the pictures he’s so proud to show, is the spitting image of her dad, only prettier. His partner doesn’t want him to go back but knows she can no more end his service than his annual Kentucky Derby bets.

I don’t want Vince to go back. I don’t want anyone to go. I don’t want one more single, solitary person to go. It hurts to even think about it.

I want Iraq to just stop. I flinch when a 38-year-old guy in the reserves, like Vince, is killed because I know he’s got a family, a community, a good life in progress. The picture on the news of the just-killed 19-year-old hayseed with a grim expression posed in front of the flag makes me imagine the parents somewhere who never saw this coming, never thought he’d die after all the hard work of raising him was just easing off. The dead female soldiers – who smile radiantly in their pictures no matter what their age, young mothers or not – are especially hard. And it’s just too painful to think about the vast Iraqi death toll.

But we do contemplate it, all of it. Somewhere deep inside we know it’s happening RIGHT NOW, and we think about it. It’s a weight around our hearts, pulling us down, and hurting, hurting, hurting. Cindy Sheehan reminds us of this hurt. President Bush ignores it, goes on about his dude ranch holiday, puts one foot in front of the other, head down. But we know. We know.

Harris Hearts Novak; ‘Bullshit’ is Right Up Her Alley

Trish

Rep. Katherine Harris is looking like a born entertainer, able to charm crowds with her malapropisms and general battiness.

On his blog, St. Petersburg Times political reporter Adam Smith quotes Harris on the campaign trail in Sarasota, Florida:

“Bob Novak, my good friend and defender, I sure do wish he were here. But I think he’s still locked in a blue room somewhere,” she quipped, apparently referring to the green rooms where TV guests cool their heels before going on the air.

I got one word for you, Katherine, and it’s straight from Bob Novak: “Bullshit.”

U.S. Supplied Iraq with Anthrax

Trish

Back when Saddam Hussein was our friend and the Ayatola Khomeni the only bad guy, the United States looked upon weapons of mass destruction more fondly. In fact, the Times of London reports, the United States actually supplied Iraq with biological weapons of mass destruction back in those halcyon days.

A British cow that died in an Oxfordshire field in 1937 has emerged as the source of Saddam Hussain’s “weapons of mass destruction” programme that led to the Iraq war.

An ear from the cow was sent to an English laboratory, where scientists discovered anthrax spores that were later used in secret biological warfare tests by Winston Churchill.

The culture was sent to the United States, which exported samples to Iraq during Saddam’s war against Iran in the 1980s. Inspectors have found that this batch of anthrax was the dictator’s choice in his attempts to create biological weapons.

Well, what do you know? We were certain Saddam had WMDs because we gave them to him. It all starts to come together.

The odyssey of the Iraqi anthrax was unravelled by Geoffrey Holland, a politics student and antiwar campaigner at the University of Sussex. The exact batch chosen by Saddam was disclosed in the CIA report by Charles Duelfer, the former UN weapons inspector, last autumn.

“Iraq declared researching different strains of B. anthracis, but settled on the American Type Culture Collection strain 14578 as the exclusive strain for use as a BW,” Mr Duelfer said.

A congressional investigation into Gulf War syndrome by Don Riegle had already uncovered invoices showing that this batch was shipped from the United States between 1986 and 1988.

The English, our only real ally in the current Iraq mess, are a little hot under the collar about all this.

The discovery has angered some British politicians. Austin Mitchell, the Labour MP for Great Grimsby, has renewed his call, supported by 126 MPs in the last Parliament, for a UN investigation into whether Washington broke a weapons control agreement. “It just makes them look more hypocritical than ever,” he said.

Human Cadaver Museum Exhibit – Amazingly – Draws Debate

Trish

File this under “Too Bizarre to Pass Up.”

Florida’s attorney general Charlie Crist – one of several Republicans trying to succeed Jeb as governor next year – is being asked to stop a museum exhibition…of human cadavers.

Southwest Florida St. Petersburg Times:

The Tampa Museum of Science and Industry wants to host “Bodies, the Exhibition,” featuring 20 preserved, posed cadavers and an additional 260 organs and parts that’ll give people an inside view to human workings.

Premier Exhibitions of Atlanta owns the exhibit and obtained the bodies from China’s Dalian Medical University of Plastination Laboratories, which took in unclaimed and unidentified bodies.

The bodies, according to the company, are from years ago, obtained legally, and where possible, with family members’ permission. Besides, it’s not like anyone’s trying to use the bodies to make a fast buck or something.

The company has more than a decade of experience with museum exhibitions, notably with artifacts from the Titanic. “We’re not a company that came in last week to pick up a quick dollar on bodies that are exhibited,” Geller said…

According to SEC records, the company this week notified shareholders it intends to authorize the sale of up to 10-million additional shares, raising the maximum number of shares from 30-million to 40-million. Each share cost $1.76 Thursday.

The money will be used for “operating costs” and so forth. The show is set to open Aug. 20, so Crist needs to hurry up and decide what to do about it. I bet if he could pick a dream election issue, this wouldn’t be it.

DeLay’s Sugar Daddy, Abramoff, Has a Seriously Mean Side

Trish

Boy, Tom DeLay sure knows how to pick ’em. We already knew Jack Abramoff, DeLay’s sugar daddy, was a Genuinely Bad Man, but even we are shocked by the latest revelations.

Southwest Florida Herald Tribune:

Jack Abramoff, a once-powerful Washington lobbyist and a key figure in ethics investigations involving House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on fraud charges stemming from an ill-fated deal for a fleet of gambling boats.

Abramoff and a partner in the $147 million purchase of SunCruz Casinos, New York businessman Adam Kidan, were named in a six-count indictment by the grand jury in Fort Lauderdale. Prosecutors say they concocted a fake $23 million wire transfer to defraud two lenders out of about $60 million to finance the deal.

“That document was counterfeit. The defendants never transferred these funds and never made a cash equity contribution toward the purchase of SunCruz,” said U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta of Miami.

They never intended to pay the money? The document was counterfeit? And they thought they wouldn’t get caught? Don’t see how that could work, unless they were going to kill the guy when he found out or something.

The partners bought SunCruz from Greek-born entrepreneur Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis for $147 million in September 2000, but the deal soon fell apart. Amid bitter legal fighting over the sale, the 51-year-old Boulis was shot to death five months later in 2001 what police called a gangland-style hit that remains unsolved.

Oh. They DID kill the guy. Yikes.

Now what was it my mother always said about the people you hang out with? Birds of a feather, maybe, or something about apples and trees.

GOP Dream Ticket for 2008: Dick Cheney & Montgomery Burns

Trish

Cheney and Mr. Burns: Separated at Birth?

There’s an uncanny resemblance between one Dick Cheney and dreaded Simpsons power plant owner Montgomery Burns. Besides their obvious physical similarities, the two share the same philosophy, the same outlook on life. Just read these quotes from Mr. Burns and see if they don’t remind you of a certain someone:

“What good is money if it can’t inspire terror in your fellow man?”

“Smithers… we have to stop dumping our nuclear waste in the playground, all those bald children are starting to raise suspicion.”

“Smithers, this is a golden opportunity. If we get him alive, we can put him on Broadway. Dead and we can sell monkey stew to the army!”

“Just give the great unwashed a pair of oversized breasts and a happy ending, and they’ll ‘oink’ for more every time.”

“Oh, so Mother Nature needs a favor? Well, maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys. Nature started the fight for survival and she wants to quit because she’s losing? Well, I say Hard cheese!”

O.K., Mr. Burns doesn’t have the Cheney potty mouth nailed down, but there’s still a LOT of similarity. I think Dick is leading a double life.

2000 Co-Conspirator Surfaces in FSU Mascot Battle

Trish

Who went to hell and left the gate open?

Yet another demon from the 2000 Presidential election has emerged from the netherworld.

Florida State University – and Jeb Bush – declared they will fight the NCAA over the right to use Florida Seminoles as the theme for the university’s various athletic franchises. And guess who’s going to help?

St. Petersburg Times:

FSU president T.K. Wetherell has said he also will pursue all legal avenues and told the Associated Press that prominent attorney Barry Richard, who successfully represented George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential recount in Florida, has agreed to represent FSU.

What is UP with these 2000 people surfacing lately? Do they swarm, like cicadas or desert frogs? John Roberts, Adam Goodman (see earlier story), now Barry Richard. Can Florida never have any peace?

Jeb, for his part, scoffed at the idea that anyone would find using Hollywood symbols of ethnicity for licensed athletic teams, events, and merchandise offensive. And no one can scoff quite like Jeb.

“How politically correct can we get?” Bush told reporters Tuesday morning before a meeting of the state Cabinet. “To me, the folks that make these decisions need to get out more often.”

I always laugh when a Republican claims to hate being politically correct. The folks who coined “faith-based” have no right to call anyone else politically correct. Ever.

Meanwhile, I wonder how Jeb would feel if FSU picked a different symbol. His wife, Columba, is from Mexico. How about if FSU adopts “Pepe” instead of “Chief Osceola” and instead of wearing garnet and gold “war paint” and riding a horse (never seen one of THOSE in the Everglades), Pepe will wear a fringed sombrero and a striped garnet and gold serape and before every game, he’ll run out on the field barefoot with a Corona in one hand and a pistol in the other? It’s all just good, clean fun.

Too bad FSU didn’t pick a symbol that everyone can get behind, like a native reptile in colors you can’t miss, like orange and blue.

4-Star General Secretly Sacked

Trish

This sounds interesting.

Seattle Post Intelligencer:

In an extraordinary move, the Army sacked a four-star general who was the subject of a Defense Department investigation into alleged sexual misconduct, officials said Tuesday.

Gen. Kevin P. Byrnes, commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command, was approaching retirement when the decision to relieve him of duty was made by the Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker.

The Army announced no specific allegation against Byrnes, but a senior official said it involved unspecified sexual misconduct. The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the allegation.

Disciplinary action against officers is not rare, but it is extremely unusual in the case of a four-star Army general…

Byrnes, 55, a Vietnam veteran who entered the Army in 1969 as a second lieutenant, ranked third in seniority among the Army’s 11 four-star generals.

And from ArmyTimes.com:

In April the Pentagon announced that Lt. Gen. William Wallace had been nominated for a four star and assignment as commander of Training and Doctrine Command, to succeed Byrnes, but he has not yet been confirmed by the Senate. There was no public indication at the time that Byrnes was under investigation.

Harris Hires 2000 Co-Conspirator Who Overbilled and Destroyed Files

Trish

Funny how so many toadies from the 2000 Presidential election are coming out of the woodwork again. First there was John Roberts, who gave so “freely” of his time to strategize a Supreme Court case in favor of Bush. He was recently paid back in full, with a nomination for a lifetime appointment on that very panel.

Now there’s Katherine Harris’ faithful lackey, Adam Goodman. The St. Petersburg Times paints a portrait of Goodman, who will help Harris run against Sen. Bill Nelson, today:

Amid the public snubs from top Republicans and the grim poll numbers showing Nelson drubbing Harris are the whispers from fellow Republicans that Goodman is just out for a buck. Word is that his firm, the Victory Group, stands to make more than $1 million on the race.

“Ka-ching,” said Rick Wilson, a political consultant who used to work with him. “It would be hard to ignore the temptation of that much money, even if you cared about the odds.”

Goodman…hinted that his deal with Harris called for him to get a bonus if she wins.

Back in early 2001, according to democrats.com, Goodman and Harris were trying to figure out how to bill Florida for something surely all states would have wanted to pay for – helping get George Bush installed as president. But the two had a little trouble arriving at the right price.

Secretary of State Katherine Harris tried to have the state pay $12,000 to a Republican operative who she has maintained was a volunteer working out of her Capitol office during last year’s presidential recount…

She was responding to an April 3 note from Goodman suggesting that she pay him $20,000 from an as yet nonexistent campaign account for his work…

[I]n her April 9 reply to Goodman, she wrote: “As we discussed in DC — You said $12,000. I am not trying to be weird about this because I want to pay you what you deserve, but they have been working on this since I returned. Now you say $20,000. I am confused — they will be, too. This is a delicate matter.”

It is unclear in the correspondence who the “they” were that Harris referred to.

Probably the same press corps who doctored her photos with all that extra make-up. Goodman never did get paid that time, but it sounds like he learned his lesson and plans to make up for it now. We might have gotten a further preview in 2000 of the lengths to which he is prepared to go.

[Harris] returned to the headlines last month thanks to The [N.Y.] Times article, which reported that Harris’ lawyers said the computers Goodman and Stipanovich used had essentially been wiped clean — a possible violation of Florida’s public records law. Harris’ office later recanted that story and, after initial resistance, allowed a media consortium including The Post to hire a nationally known data recovery company to examine the computers.

That review found hundreds of documents that had been deleted, including a political speech written by a Harris press aide in early 2000 endorsing George W. Bush for president as well as draft memos of a public statement that showed her position shifting over a span of hours from one that favored Gore to one that helped Bush.

Whatever works, I guess. Look out, Bill Nelson.