My Beauty Best Teacher

For some reason, my blog has been getting very popular in Ukraine recently- after the US, the second largest source of readers of my blog is coming from Ukraine over the past month, and all-time, Ukraine is the 5th biggest nation of readers of my blog. Why Ukraine?

Perhaps it stems from a post I wrote in January 15, 2010 supporting Yulia Tymoshenko for President of Ukraine. You see, I keep my eyes on a lot of different subjects (just in the last several weeks alone I have written In Praise of NASA's Curiosity Mission, About Black Friday and why Obama, Robert Frank, and Other Liberals are Wrong for Hating It, and about Teaching and Brain-Dead Liberal Students), and one of the nations that I've always been fascinated with is Ukraine. So during the 2010 Presidential Elections in Ukraine, I read about all the candidates (it was a three-way race- between then-current President Viktor Yushchenko, then-former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, and then-current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko), and came out in support of Tymoshenko.

Tymoshenko ended up losing the race to Yankukovych. Via wikipedia, you can read what happened next:

...In the first round of the presidential election on 17 January 2010, Tymoshenko took second place with 25% of the vote and Yanukovych took first place with 35%. The two proceeded to the runoff round held on 7 February 2010 in which Yanukovych was elected President of Ukraine with 48.95% of the votes, Tymoshenko received 45.4% of the votes. Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc members immediately claimed that there was systematic and large-scale vote rigging in this run-off. However Tymoshenko herself did not issue a statement about the election until a live televised broadcast on 13 February 2010 in which she said that she would challenge the election result in court. Tymoshenko alleged widespread fraud (according to Tymoshenko, a million votes were invalid) and said Yanukovych was not legitimately elected.

...On 3 March 2010 the Ukrainian Parliament passed a motion of no confidence in the second Tymoshenko Government in which the cabinet was dismissed with 243 lawmakers voting in favour out of the 450 (207 against).... Tymoshenko resigned from the Prime Minister post on 4 March 2010....

...Ukraine's prosecutor's office re-opened on 12 May 2010 a 2004 criminal case against Tymoshenko on accusations she had tried to bribe Supreme Court judges.... Tymoshenko also claimed that she was told by "all the offices of the Prosecutor General's Office" that President Yanukovych had personally instructed the Prosecutor General's Office to find any grounds to prosecute her....

...On 15 December 2010 the General Prosecutor's Office instituted a criminal case against Tymoshenko, alleging that she misused funds received by Ukraine within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol. She was officially charged on 20 December 2010. Tymoshenko denied the money had been spent on pensions and insisted it was still at the disposal of the environment ministry and called the investigation against her a witch-hunt....

...A third criminal case against Tymoshenko in connection with alleged abuse of power during the 2009 Russia–Ukraine gas dispute was opened on 10 April 2011.[215][216] This case was labelled "absurd" by Tymoshenko. On 24 May 2011 prosecutors charged her in connection with this (third criminal) case. She was not arrested....

...Tymoshenko's trial (she was charged in May 2011) over abuse of office over a natural gas imports contract signed with Russia in January 2009 started on 24 June 2011.... On 5 August 2011 Tymoshenko was arrested for 'ridiculing the court proceedings'... On 11 October 2011, the court found Tymoshenko guilty of abuse of power, sentenced her to seven years in jail, and ordered to pay the state $188 million. She was convicted for exceeding her powers as Prime Minister, by ordering Naftogaz to sign the gas deal with Russia in 2009.] The judge also banned her from seeking elected office for her period of imprisonment (disqualifying her from participation in the 2012 parliamentary and 2015 presidential elections)....

...A 2001 criminal case on state funds embezzlement and tax evasion charges against Tymoshenko was reopened in Ukraine on 24 October 2011. Since late October 2011 Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating whether Tymoshenko was involved in the murder of Yevhen Shcherban. With that Tymoshenko was under criminal investigation for ten criminal acts; prosecutors have claimed she had committed more criminal acts. On 4 November 2011 the Ukrainian tax police resumed four criminal cases against Tymoshenko. She was charged for these cases on 10 November 2011...

You can see for yourself exactly what is going on- Tymoshenko is a pro-democracy former businesswomen who rejects the communist approach of keeping the masses poor while the elites proposer, and the elites manipulated the voting processes and the masses to win, and then turned around and have imprisoned her and likely will kill her while she is in prison. She's one of the good guys and deserves our support. Under Yankukovych, the President of Ukraine has assumed more and more powers and has acted in an ever more autocratic manner, demonstrating that he intends to centralize more power, freedom, and property under his control and his allies control so that they can live good live while the people of Ukraine are poor and taken advantage of. Equally before the law, rule of law, and civil-rights protections have been trampled on, investment in Ukraine has dropped off considerably, economic growth has staggered to a halt, and relations have fallen apart with most nations of the world.

Yulia Tymoshenko is a political prisoner, and deserves the support of every decent nation and the support of the Ukrainian people.


For more information, check out this story from the Telegraph, or a recent letter that Yulia Tymoshenko was able to get out from prison and publish in the Wall Street Journal.

Mama's birthday was yesterday. Three years a go we didn't know if she'd live to see another one.

Somehow all my other worries are little things.

My present is her presence.


Take a minute to think about the big things and how sometimes the many things we get so stressed out during the day aren't quite as big as we make them out to be.

Perspective helps.

I just had to say this before November turned into December. It was on my mind.

• The C Word: Salve or Sandpaper, Which are you? - October 2008
• Put your finger to the saw. How much do you trust technology? - December 2008
• Life is Fragile - Meet My Namesake - Aunt Vicki - July 16, 2008

In spite of being a conservative libertarian Republican who wants to drastically reduce government spending, I've always had a soft spot for NASA- I know, everyone has 'their agency' or 'their sacred cow of spending', and that's why the budget is never cut, but in this case, and NASA is mine, so it does need to have its funding cut and do more with less and all that, but I still think is my favorite agency. And even though it's budget is only about $18 billion/year (out of $3456 billion/year total US spending), it is still able to deliver some amazing results.

From BBC News:

NASA is about to launch its latest Mars rover, nicknamed Curiosity, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. At nearly a tonne, the six-wheeled vehicle dwarfs all previous robots sent to the surface of the planet. The machine carries a suite of sophisticated instruments and tools, including a hammer drill and a laser, to find out whether Mars is, or ever has been, suitable for life....

Lift-off is just the start for what Nasa hopes will be a multi-year campaign at the Red Planet.... The rover is equipped with a plutonium battery and so should have ample power to keep rolling for more than a decade. It is likely the mechanisms on MSL will wear out long before its energy supply.... MSL will use its suite of 10 instruments to study the local rock, soil and atmosphere....

This mission looks very cool, and a description of it doesn't do it justice. Check out an animated video for this mission- it should make you feel very proud to be an American to imagine that in spite of our economic downturn, we can still do things like this (at the relatively bargain cost of $2.5 billion, or 1/1382th of the budget for 2010):

I've written about NASA before- check out my posts Obama's New NASA Policy- Yet More Broken Promises and Lies or Obama too Busy to Appoint Public Officials- but mostly check out my post Nuclear Power and Manned Space Flight: Victims of Democrat's Progress Backwards? where I wrote (in part- read the whole post):

Today I watched the movie Apollo 13 for perhaps that hundredth time. As I watched that wonderful movie, I grew a little emotional, but it wasn't because of the drama of the movie- it was because I am upset and angry and sad that America has abandoned manned spaceflight in my lifetime, and seems to be abandoning the larger future too, a future where man would harness the power of an atom splitting and travel among the stars, a future of dreams and inspiration. America instead is collapsing on the weight of promises made to generations past, ruled over by elitist politicians who seek only to control us, and everyday our nation moves farther away from living a prosperous life in the stars in freedom and liberty, however preposterous or unlikely that future may have been.

The current leadership of our nation speaks of 'progress,' but they are abandoning nuclear power and manned spaceflight in favor of providing healthcare insurance to people who are encouraged not to purchase it and spending money they don't have to support railroads and electric motor carriages and windmills. The future that Obama, Democrats, liberals, and Republicans that go along with them is not a future full of cheap safe energy and man roaming freely in the stars- it is a future with man going backward, remembering that once, long ago, before I was born and before my students were born, man built generators that were powered by the atom splitting and man walked on the moon.

Man once walked on the moon! Nuclear power plants were once built! Say it- and then realize that these are events of the past- that the new normal and likely new future of America and the world is a long, slow slide backwards into tyranny, injustice, and confiscation of property by elites. Oh, I know it is 'nice' to give out healthcare to anyone who asks and that we all want teachers to be paid a million bucks and that no job should be insecure and that energy should be provided from dancing on the suns rays or blowing gently on flowers, but that is not reality! The reality is that the future is slipping away, and much like the greatness of Rome was the standard for centuries or the might of Britain was to be envied for generations, ours is a time that is slipping away, slipping away based on the policies pushed for by Democrats like Obama, Granholm, Stabenow, Levin, Rogers, and others. Modern day liberalism has failed to move man into the future- rather, man has been moved backwards through its policies of standing in the way of human liberty and freedom, by embracing the killing of life and babies, and by stealing other peoples property....

Obama and the Democrats may be intent on making America average and poor- but at least NASA continues to dazzle us with great work like this Curiosity program!

Here are some great NASA products to buy! When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions (Limited Edition), Nasa: The Complete Illustrated History, From the Earth to the Moon - The Signature Edition, The Space Shuttle: Celebrating Thirty Years of NASA's First Space Plane, or America in Space: Nasa's First Fifty Years.

It is hard for a fussy teacher (or parent) to teach. Our negative body language is hard to overcome. Kids need to know we care. When I find myself going down this thorny path, this is what I do:

1- Start smiling
You feel better and somehow forget about the reasons you had to be fussy in the first place.

2- Do something kind and totally random
Find a stewardess or service person and call the company to give an honest compliment. Call a product support line of something you love just to tell them.

3- Give a public compliment to a person who has no clue it is coming.
Blog or tweet about someone. (@angelamaiers' hashtag #youmatter is a great one to include!)

4- Go "Little House"
This is what my family says I do. When I overload and I go home, I put on my favorite soft socks and sweats and crawl in my bed to watch a few episodes of Little House on the Prairie on the Lifetime Channel. I let myself go to sleep early. This uplifting show gives me perspective. The extra rest helps too.

Have a favorite feel good show or movie? Use it to help give you perspective.

5- Make a gratitude guide

The old wagon trains out west left deep ruts that others followed. This is using a rut in a positive way. Keep a page in your planner of the thoughts that get you back on track. Make it hard to get too negative.

I list the things I am thankful for. As a Christian, I take these to My Father in thanks. I was having a pity party just this past week about having 4 stitches from some very minor skin surgery when I remembered that just 3 years a go I didn't know if Mom would survive her cancer- it puts life in perspective.

It is easy to get cranky and tired this time of year. Students are ready for the break and teachers are too! Take time to save your thoughts from taking you away from all the good times you can have this season.

Your present is your positive presence. If you are always cranky you aren't leaving a good legacy for others to remember.

Live well! Have a great day.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

• International classroom collaboration on the worldwide web

  An overview of International collaboration on the World wide web. It does mention our Flat Classroom projects, although they left out our biggest projec t- "A WEek in the Life" elementary project which is almost topping 1000 this semester! 

  tags: education flatclassroom globalcollaboration

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Due to minimum wage laws, child labor regulations, more restrictions on driving, and additional costs imposed on employers due to laws passed in recent years, many of my students have been unable to find employment. These government-created barriers to their desire to work has prevented them from making money and paying for college expenses, but even worse, these government-erected barriers have prevented these young students from gaining needed work experience and job skills that will help them in the future.

At a recent speech in New Hampshire, Newt Gingrich took aim at some of these child labor laws, saying that kid janitors “would be dramatically less expensive than unionized janitors.... I’m not suggesting that they drop out of school and become janitors, I’m talking about working 20 hours a week and being empowered to succeed.”

He went on to call child labor laws “truly stupid” at an appearance at Harvard University, saying that he would propose extraordinarily radical changes to these laws that would fundamentally transform the culture of poverty. He further said that children in the poorest neighborhoods are “trapped in child laws” that prevent them from earning money.

The reaction to his comments has been swift and largely negative. Many have accused him of attacking union jobs, suggesting that only unionized employees have the skill set to accomplish all aspects of being a janitor, but these sorts of accusations are not grounded in reality. Of course it would be essential to have a unionized master janitor to supervise and direct the young kids, but many other tasks (such as sweeping, cleaning boards, picking up trash, etc) could be performed by young students without any sort of prior skills. These students could gain job skills, make a little bit of money, and build pride in their school.

Others have accused Gingrich of being insensitive the to the needs and pressures of young children and have tried to paint him as some sort of evil industrialist suggesting that little kids go to work in the mines. This criticism also is misguided- in their desire to protect children from being taken advantage of in the workplace, these kids are being deprived of a chance to make money and earn skills that they want- prevented from doing so by rules and regulations pushed by well-meaning adults that backfire and instead hold kids back and increase their poverty.

My own theory is that many reacted so negatively to Newt's comments because they are trying to protect the monopoly on education and learning currently enjoyed by schools in America. Teachers, administrators, liberals, and Democrats have for years attempted to limit student's abilities to learn outside the classroom, burdening them with massive amounts of homework, making it difficult for these students to miss class to spend time at internships or job-shadows, and putting in place laws and regulations which prevent them from getting jobs. They do this because they want to control what sorts of education and learning these students receive, and recognize that if students were go get out in the real world and begin paying taxes and earning their way in life, they would no longer be as dependent on their teachers and the educational establishment and would be less controllable by administrators.

Much like the communists in Russia and China recognized the threat that religion represented to their absolute control, the educational establishment reacted negatively to Gingrich's suggestions of reforming child labor laws because it is jealously guarding its territory, trying to block students from learning about the outside world so that they will be forced to learn all their information from unionized teachers in the public school system.

UPDATE 11/29: In response to those who are asking me who I endorse... I already wrote about Ron Paul, I don't think Bachman or Huntsman or Santorum have high enough polling numbers to consider further, and Hermain Cain should drop out of the race now before anything else comes out about him. That leaves Gingrich, Romney, and Perry, and Perry demonstrated an inability to communicate his message combined with horrible stumbles in debates, so it's either Gingrich or Romney.

UPDATE 12/2: So, apparently Newt is continuing to work on this theme- memeorandum has linked to several stories now that go along with Newt's getting kids back to work theme- check out Jonathan Capehart's article in the Washington Post called Newt Gingrich's disgusting remarks about ‘really poor children’ or Nick Kalman of Fox News' article Newt: Poor Children Have “No Habits of Working”.

As I think about being thankful, I'm grateful that I get to write. Here I am sitting in the den, watching the screensaver on my Roku box paint the plasma into a rainbow because I'd rather write than watch.

As I look back over this year, there are some blog posts that I'm thankful to have written. These are the posts that help people. In case you missed them, here they are, in order of most traffic:

1. QR Code Classroom Implementation Guide - May 5, 2011
2. Facebook Friending 101 for Schools - May 25, 2011
3. Finding Your Beautiful Moment the Last Week of School - May 21, 2011
4. 10 Ways to Be a Terrible Teacher - October 20, 2011 (trending to be one of my most popular posts ever)
5. Top 10 Coolest (mostly free) things for Teachers - April 15, 2011
6. iPad apps for Teachers - January 25, 2011
7. 50+ Fantastic Tools for Schools - November 11, 2011
8. 11 Lies Social Media Hides - November 21, 2011

• Diigo It! | 21C Global

  I love Suzie Nestico's explanation of how we use Diigo for the Flat Classroom projects and her alignment with the common core writing standards. (She's a social studies teacher, by the way.) She impresses me more and more.

  tags: education flatclassroom diigo

• One in Four Hackers Works for the U.S. Government | Techland | TIME.com

  25% of hackers work for the US FBI.

  tags: education hacking

• The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education | Center for Social Media

  An excellent guide from the Center for Social media for Fair use in the classroom. I use this as a go-to source for my student work.

  tags: education fair use copyright

• 53 percent of online Americans use Wikipedia | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

  A study from this past January shows that 53 per cent of online Americans use Wikipedia. In order to improve the accuracy of Wikipedia and other sources like it, we need to teach students how to collaboratively edit.

  tags: education collaboration wiki wikipedia wiki_book bestpractices

• Literature and Latte - Scrivener

  I have to admit that I love Scrivener and am using it for my second book on collaborative writing in the cloud from Eye on Education. Here is the link to their new windows version. If you do script writing or book writing it is great.

  tags: education writing

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The holidays arrive
and I wonder how I'll survive.
So many things to do
how will I every get through?

Grading period ending
and holidays are pending.
Red rover, red rover, send her right over
right over the top pushing up clover!

Mom of three
teacher of many
I'll take some holiday cheer
if you've got any.

But, I must stand back and look
these times are too short.
Life is so fleeting
and life's not a sport.

In three years,
I'll have two off at school
my house will seem empty
and the car will be cool.

I will take time to enjoy the time
where life is just nuts
the joy's in the busyness
and there are no ruts.

Though I often long for a moment
to breathe and be me
it is best if I take the time
to see the joy under my tree.

Christmas started with a Person
and it continues with four more
my biggest present is their presence
coming through my door.

Family is the present
their laughter is my bow
I'll rejoice they are with me
and enjoy the holiday's glow.


Photo credit:
Big Stock Christmas Tree Cutting Family

• E-WOT

  A teachers's pondering on QR codes with some nice links.

  tags: Qrcodes education paperless

• Nook App Love - Teacherbytes - johnwoodring

  Information on using the nook in the classroom.

  tags: education tablet

• Phonics Phase 3 Christmas Activity - Resources - TES

  This lesson uses a letter from Santa to provide phonics reinforcement and reading.

  tags: education phonics english teacher

• 12 days of Christmas numeracy - Resources - TES

  A counting and numeracy activity based on the 12 days of Christmas. These are two word documents you can download and use in the classroom.

  tags: education lessonplan christmas holidays

• Teaching Resources, Classroom Resources & Lesson Plans - TES Resources

  A pile of activities, downloadables, and IWB activities to use during the holidays.

  tags: education christmas holidays

• Ride the Polar Express

  This elementary teacher has made a web page pull of things relating to the polar express including counting by 5's, 10's and 2's and other activities. If you're using a movie during the holidays, look for lesson plans that fit with them.

  tags: education holidays christmas lessonplans

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Shocked and agast, my son's pants were agape. Last night was the final game on the season and, the 26th straight win for the Westwood Wildcats and my son blocked a 270 pound behemoth with his pants flapping in the breeze.

My Westwood Wildcats Football Team 2010, 2011 State Champs winner 26 straight football games

We were picked to lose by 13 or 20 points depending upon who you asked. They had 10 boys over 200 pounds and one over 300 and we had barely 2, maybe.

My son's pants ripped during the last football game. When I say rip, I mean a big old tear from crotch to way up the back. My son's gray sliding pants were his only salvation from indecent exposure.

Last week I had snatched up the pants and was preparing to mend them when my son interrupted emphatically:

"We're wearing the orange pants for state, Mom, don't touch 'em. They'll get fixed in the off season when they send them in to the shop."

OK, so the word "shop" should have let me realize that I was being taken to the cleaners. Imagine my shock when I look at those boys coming out of the locker room and there I see my son's grey sliding shorts and those pants and the big old rip traveling quietly up towards the waist band in the back like spilled syrup on my kitchen counter.

Isn't it funny how we're not shocked at our children as much as we say,

"What is everyone going to say about his Mama, not fixing his pants like that?"

But after the game. After we won a second state championship in a 33-21 nail biter (it was tied 21-21 with 2 minutes to go in the fourth quarter), he sheepishly said,

"Mom, it would have been bad luck for any of us to fix our pants. We all agreed to leave the tears in our pants. When you're winning, you keep doing what you're doing until it doesn't work any more."

At that point, I didn't care what anyone said about his Momma, I was just glad they won (and very glad he was OK.) But his words echoed in my ears.

Fixing What Works Breaks What Works
Sure, it was to the point of superstition and but all I could think of was some teachers I know caught in very nonsensical situations.

For example, in the state of Georgia, there were some schools that were climbing in Math scores but the state required them to move from Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, etc. to Math I, Math II, and Math III and many of the best math teachers were lost in some districts.

They tried to fix what wasn't broken for some schools to fix what was broken for others.

In the south the saying goes,

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

But we don't listen to that in education. Here are just a few examples I can think of:

• An amazing teacher does a great job at a certain grade level. She hits her stride and is really doing a great job after a year or two. But "they" decide it is time for a change and give her a new grade level even though she's already taught that grade level at another school and knows it isn't a great fit for her.
  
• A reading program works incredibly well but there is a new curriculum director and she wants to change it because she's "heard" another one is better.
  
• A history teacher has a phenomenal history program and has a book he loves. He's aligned the book with videos and has written quite a bit of content to go along with the book for his students. It is "time' to update the book and "they" go with another program and he looks at the new curriculum to decide if he really feels like starting over. The new book isn't just a new book but a whole new way of teaching it.
  
• A school decides that everyone is going to now be "on the same page" so the teacher who loved to quickly teach more "boring" topics (which were mastered, by the way) to accelerate into some great things that are more advanced is held back because the other teachers in the group don't want to do it that way.
  
• A good teacher is now given a script so administrators can know exactly what is being taught in every classroom over the complaints of those teachers who feel scripts stifle the good teaching they've been doing for more than 20 years. These teachers are told they will be replaced if they can't go with the new turn teaching has taken.
  
• I teach keyboarding with a class average of over 70 words per minute (or gwam as we say.) I use the same textbook my Mom did and teach it the "old fashioned way" because it works. We don't go into software until after I've taught them all the keys. My friends in other schools who were forced to move to a software-based approach run about 30 words a minute and the kids look at their fingers. Many don't care about the right way to teach typing, only that software makes it easier. I'm happy with my circa 1994 textbook and don't want a new one! I'll do it the old fashioned way because it works but in many schools, I wouldn't be allowed to be so "backwards." My students are still blogging, making videos, using QR Codes and doing incredible things but I just need a book to teach typing. (See my 8th Grade keyboarding portfolio using QR codes)

"Get better and better every day in every way."

• Books and Glitter: I Symbaloo--do you?

  Many teachers are raving about symbaloo, here is a another one.

  tags: education app teaching web2.0

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

President Obama, like most liberals and the party it controls (the once-proud Democratic Party), doesn't like the fact that you make decisions regarding your life- he wants to make them. And now that he has the power of trillions in taxpayer money and thousands of employees, he has the means to tell you how to live your own life. And so he has decided that he doesn't like big stores that thrive by providing goods and services to people in efficient and low-cost ways; rather, he likes small stores and so is going to go around the nation and pay for his administration to fly around the nation making speeches ordering you to not shop for great deals and save money at the big stores, but rather to shop at smaller stores, because he wants you to.

Liberals, being the elitists they are, don't really like Black Friday- as E.D. Kain describes it, these liberals reject Black Friday and the larger consumerism that accompanies this season (regrettably) for two reasons

...first, a sense that such overt consumerism is the hallmark of capitalism and that capitalism is somehow morally insufficient; and second, a distaste for the aesthetic of Black Friday – all those plebes rushing about buying things like so much chattel- these denizens of midnight Walmart sales are just icky...

It is the second thing that I believe really strikes me as the case, because most liberals think they are so much smarter than the rest of us and look down their noses at us, wanting to govern and manage us because they don't understand liberty, freedom, private property rights, capitalism, religion, morality, civic mindedness, charity, and all the other hallmarks of the conservative heartland of America. Because they don't understand these concepts, they reject them, pretending that they don't really exist, and that instead everyone who believes in them must be stupid or dumb, and so they wave around their Ivy League diploma's and listen to their pretentious public television or radio, use big words, scold everyone for not having proper grammar, and make fun of all the 'average people' scurrying about on Black Friday getting good deals and saving money and making our economy go around.

You see, you won't catch Barack Obama or other liberals out on Black Friday- he'll be joining the other Occupy Wall Street protesters in boycotting it, because they have enough money not to need deals, they have enough time to spend hours looking for a great deal, and they generally are not thrifty and efficient spenders enough to care about saving money as a family and getting the best deal.

Robert Frank is a great example of the sort of liberal who forms the intellectual backbone of modern day liberalism, the sort that dominates the Democratic Party today. He had time and money to go out and get several degrees in math and statistics, taking time off from his studies to work in government and give lectures, before he settled into an Ivy League school to lecture other elitists and write columns for snooty New York Times and write books with Ben Bernanke. For most of his life he has written and talked about how wealth and prosperity for all has somehow made the poor in America even more poor, and he sees no hypocrisy in doing so as he has flown around the world, eaten in nice restaurants, and lived in a nice house.

In this week's New York Times article How to End the Black Friday Madness, lectures those whom he sees as beneath him with a contempt just hidden (unlike the contempt that I hold him in that I am not hiding). He writes:

ADAM SMITH’S most enthusiastic modern disciples insist that the recipe for economic progress is to push government aside and let unfettered markets work their magic. His invisible hand theory does provide a tidy account of how market incentives can generate enormous wealth. But as Charles Darwin saw so clearly, unbridled competition doesn’t always promote the common good....
....In recent years, large retail chains have been competing to be the first to open their doors on Black Friday. The race is driven by the theory that stores with the earliest start time capture the most buyers and make the most sales. For many years, stores opened at a reasonable hour. Then, some started opening at 5 a.m., prompting complaints from employees about having to go to sleep early on Thanksgiving and miss out on time with their families. But retailers ignored those complaints, because their earlier start time proved so successful in luring customers away from rival outlets...

Frank, being an educated liberal, employs here the usual judgement of other people, feeling that he somehow gets to decide what is a 'reasonable hour' for stores to open, even though he does not run any sort of stores and has never served as a manager of any sort of store at any level his whole life.

From this place of supreme unwisdom and experience, guided by a piece of paper saying that he knows something, he has decided to play God and decide when people should start shopping. He then ignores the overtime that these employees are paid and has no knowledge of the many people hired just for this day- people who are not regular employees but who are given a paycheck on this day purely because the hours are not regular- and with this lack of knowledge of what is going on he has decided that it isn't becoming of employees to go in to work at a job that they choose to be at. Don't worry workers- with a guy like Frank on your side, he'll push for less jobs and less overtime and less hours, and in so doing make you more poor. He's like all other liberals, and the Liberal-in-Chief President Obama, in his utter failure to understand economics, math, statistics, people, or anything else about this world.

Frank believes that if we were all to empower him with the ability to control the world, the collective will would be better served by him controlling when we shop and how much items sell for and all the other sorts of personal decisions made by private individuals that he doesn't understand or know about.

I've never been a big fan of Black Friday, but if the liberals and Obama and Robert Frank are against it, I think that I need to change my tune, and do a little bit of online shopping tonight!

Stick it in Frank and Obama's eye- buy something tonight! Here are a couple suggestions...
Shop Amazon's New Kindle Fire
Shop Amazon's Holiday Toy List
Shop Amazon's Gift Cards - Perfect Anytime
Shop Amazon's Christmas Corner - Holiday decor, tableware, and entertainment

UPDATE: Welcome readers from The Village Voice! Take a look around and learn something!

One thing that has troubled me this election cycle is the portrayal of some on the right or conservative side of the ideological spectrum of Mitt Romney as some sort of flip-flopping, unprincipled moderate who would be an enemy to conservative and libertarian interests. In articles, blog posts, and comment sections, many on the right argue that voting for Romney is 'essentially the same thing as voting for Obama' and that 'Romney is the same kind of guy as John McCain or George Bush.' The problem with this portrayal is that it is not accurate.

As reported by Micheal Medved:

...In February, 2008, the most influential (and persuasive) right winger of ‘em all threw his all-important support to Romney’s then struggling candidacy. “I think now, based on the way the campaign has shaken out, that there probably is a candidate on our side who does embody all three legs of the conservative stool, and that’s Romney,” he told his massive audience. “The three legs of the stool are national security/foreign policy, the social conservatives and the fiscal conservatives.”

After Rush highlighted the de facto endorsement in his newsletter with the headline “One Candidate Now Represents All Three Legs of Conservatism” the rest of syndicated talk radio (Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck) largely followed suit. Laura Ingraham introduced Mitt at CPAC as a “true conservative” and “a conservative’s conservative.” Only one lonely, courageous voice among the top-rated national hosts (and that would be me) openly dissented and proudly (and perspicaciously) endorsed McCain. Even Jim DeMint, the most conservative member of the US Senate, fell in line behind the Mittster...

So, if Mitt Romney was a 'true conservative' and 'represented all three legs of conservatism' in 2008, he would have had to have swung considerably to the middle in recent years for conservatives and libertarians and right-wingers to reject him so strongly. But yet, he hasn't- if anything, he has become more conservative since then. As Medved says:

...On no major issue did he move to the center in the last four years and on several (like Medicare reform, or environmental regulation) he moved decisively, even boldly to the right. The conservative commitments he made in 2008 (on social issues and other matters of policy) remain firmly intact, and the notorious flip-flops with which his thinking “evolved” over the years have receded further into the past (mostly before 2005) and so should seem less relevant, not more so.

Furthermore, as a candidate Romney has vastly improved with his self-assured, focused and coherent debate performances and a more genial and engaging, less plastic and patrician, personality. Looking at tape from four years ago and comparing it to the polished, capable candidate on display today, it’s easy to find reasons to rally to Romney’s cause this time, but impossible to discern any change for the worse...

So why don't conservatives like him this time around? Medved continues...

...Romney looks suspect to many activists on the right not because he isn’t conservative enough but because he isn’t angry enough. His real problem isn’t a question of ideology, it’s a matter of attitude. Mitt can’t keep himself from looking self-possessed and unflappable, cool and collected, reasonable and restrained. Rage isn’t part of his emotional repertoire: even when visibly frustrated by Rick Perry’s boorish disregard of all rules of debate in the Las Vegas slugfest, he came across as more pained and perplexed than infuriated.

Like most seriously successful businessmen, Mitt is a pragmatic problem solver, a sensible fixer, a technocrat. It’s easy to imagine him rolling up his perfectly cuff-linked sleeves to begin a process of cooperative, institutional repair in Washington but it’s tough to visualize the perfectly poised governor at the head of an avenging conservative army, laying waste to the opposition in a merciless effort to smash the remaining redoubts of their power....

Michael Medved is the author of The 10 Big Lies About America: Combating Destructive Distortions About Our Nation and Right Turns: From Liberal Activist to Conservative Champion in 35 Unconventional Lessons.

• acrosstheglobe - home

  This across the globe wiki was created as a result of the "Create the Future" workshop in Japan in 2010 as a result of the work of Kim Cofino and Julie Lindsay. This wiki is still active and full of recommended books for middle schoolers.

  tags: education flatclassroom

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Earlier this week I wrote about the incoherence of liberals in my post Teaching and Brain-Dead Liberal Students. Today I direct you to Victor Davis Hanson's article The Imaginarium of Barack Obama, where he touches on the incoherence of the Grand Marshal of the Liberal Parade of Economic Doom, President Barack Obama:

The presidency of Barack Obama is full of funny things that need not follow any sort of logic. Images and ideas just pop in and out, without worry of inconsistency, contradiction, or hypocrisy. It’s a fascinating mish-mash of strange heroes and bogeymen, this imaginarium of our president.

In the imaginarium there are no revolving doors, earmarks, or lobbyists. So Peter Orszag did not go from being OMB director to a Citigroup fat-cat. Once chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel did not make $16 million for his well-known banking expertise. The more you damn the pernicious role of lobbyists and the polluting role of big money, the more you must hire and seek out both. Public financing of campaigns is wonderful for everyone else who lacks the integrity of Barack Obama who understandably must renounce such unfair impositions.

Those who now vote against raising the large Obama debt ceiling are political hucksters and opportunists; those who not long ago voted against raising the smaller Bush debt ceiling were principled statesmen. “Unpatriotic” presidents borrow $4 trillion in eight years; patriotic ones we’ve been waiting for can trump that in three.

Catching known terrorists and putting them in Guantanamo is very bad; killing suspected ones by drone assassinations — and anyone unlucky enough to be in their general vicinity — is exceptionally good. Tribunals, renditions, preventative detention, and all that were bad ideas under Bush-Cheney, but could become good ideas under Barack Obama, the law professor who often sees no need to follow the law when an immigration or marriage statute is deemed regressive.

A million Iranians protesting a soon-to-be-nuclear theocracy is false revolutionary consciousness and to be left alone; a few thousand Israelis wanting to buy apartments in the Jerusalem suburbs is subversive and worthy of presidential condemnation. And when atoning for supposed American lapses, what better place to begin apologizing than in Turkey, the incubator of the Armenian, Greek, and Kurdish mass killings? We need to deny history to make the case that America is not exceptional, and to invent it to persuade us that the Muslim world is extraordinary....

...There are lots of ways to bring Americans together across class and racial lines. One in the imaginarium is to focus on the “teabag, anti-government people.” Another is to encourage Hispanics to “punish our enemies” — or have the attorney general lambaste Americans as racial “cowards” and to defend “my people.” Joining foreign governments to sue a fellow American state is no more red/no more blue state unity. Still another is to divide up the people between the suspect who make over $200,000 and the noble who make less, or yet again target the dubious “1%” at “the very top” who do not pay “their fair share,” a mere 40% of the aggregate income tax.

Inside the imaginarium, the way to demonize the “1%” is to vacation among them — whether at Martha’s Vineyard or Costa del Sol. Buying a corporate jet is a waste of the people’s money — unlike daily flying on a much bigger private jet paid by the people....

...The president regrets that we are not innovative any more, and have gone “soft” and “lazy.” You see, his efforts at ensuring cradle-to-grave health care entitlements, of granting 99 weeks of unemployment insurance, and of extending food stamps to nearly 50 million are apparently incentives that should have led to a “hard” and “industrious” populace that was more self-reliant and willing to take risks on their own. “Spread the wealth” is a time-honored way of galvanizing people to become more self-disciplined and sufficient....

...In the imaginarium, community organizer Barack Obama never lived in a small mansion. John “two Americas” Edwards never lived in a big one. “Earth in the balance” Al Gore never lived in a few of them, and yacht owning John Kerry never lived in lots of them. You see in the imaginarium of Barack Obama you can be whatever you wish to be. Just wishing and saying something can wonderfully make it so.

FYI: Grand Marshal of the Liberal Parade of Economic Doom is going on the list of nicknames for Obama that I've been compiling.