Granby01033

My principal appointed me to chair a committee reviewing our school's mission statement. One of our charges is to review it in light of what are being called 21st century skills. One of those skills is familiarity with foreign cultures. While there is no way we can prepare our students to be deal with every [...] Read more »

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He Who Must Be Read politely points and laughs at President Barack Obama's bipartisan dream.  Krugman knew it. Even I knew it. There is no compromising with people willing to lie and people who believe lies.  And when you have so-called moderates like Sen. Chuck Grassley trafficking in the wingnut fantasies of death panels that will [...] Read more »

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I don't have a problem with guns. I don't have a problem with Massachusetts gun laws either. The crazy gun lobby, however, them I have a problem with. When it comes to the Bill of Rights, they tend to favor state's rights. When it comes to the 2nd  Amendment, they are suddenly willing to forego it.
T0 the [...] Read more »

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There are still some people not associated with The Worst Presidency Ever who believe it was necessary for us to invade Iraq. Sen. John McCain is one. He calls Operation Iraqi Freedom a success. Recently released FBI reports suggest another scenario. The severely weakened Saddam Hussein lived in mortal fear of Iran and supposedly considered [...] Read more »

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Robert Reich writes:

A new president -- even one as talented and well-motivated as Obama -- can't get a thing done in Washington unless the public is actively behind him. As FDR said in the reelection campaign of 1936 when a lady insisted that if she were to vote for him he must commit to a [...] Read more »

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He Who Must Be Read opines about President Barack Obama's cautiousness when approaching major policy issues. Obama's brilliant, articulate, and gosh, darn it, people like him, but much depends on whether he has the cojones to get the job done. The majority of the GOP has gone off the rails, and Obama's trying to work with them. [...] Read more »

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The success of Obama's health care initiative depends on the existence of a public health insurance option. Pharmaceutical and insurance companies, however, are working hard behind the scenes to make sure the American people can choose only from what the profiteers want to offer for choices. When it comes to the free market, business is [...] Read more »

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I was looking at the New York Times this morning, and decided to click the link that offered the paper's international edition. And what did I come up with? A story about a Texas river race.
Aside from the  Texas as foreign country angle, the story has everything to interest me: a crazy boat race with [...] Read more »

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It's a strategem, according to Robert Reich. President Barack Obama's move to crack down on offshore tax havens that allow multi-national companies and rich American's to avoid paying their share is more than just an attack on unfairness. It's a tactic aimed at wrenching enough money out of corporations to fund universal health care.

The President [...] Read more »

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When the going gets tough in American, the ultraconservatives look for someone to blame. With communism no longer a threat, marriage equality a growing reality, and no terrorist attacks since 2001, the Far Right still have illegal immgrants to blame.
I'm not saying illegal or undocumented immigrants don't present problems, but the swine flu isn't one [...] Read more »

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As much as I admire President Barack Obama, he has an Achilles Heel: his caution. Centrists love this about him. He may have some liberal policies, but tempermentally, he's conservative. That's conservatives with a small c. The kind of conservativism that has almost nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with how we [...] Read more »

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The scary thing about evil is that it rarely looks as ugly as it is. Take The Craig's List Killer. He looks like the guy next door (and oddly enough, like a young Marlon Brando). He didn't walk through his everyday life wrapped in caution tape or a blinking yellow light. Even Jeffrey Dahmer looked relatively normal in [...] Read more »

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Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) has suggested the Lone Star State might take all of their marbles and go home. It's a crazy idea. The last time a state seceded from the Union was before the Civil War, though the idea is alive and well and has been living in Alaska up until now.
What has led Perry [...] Read more »

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Conservative education scholar Diane Ravitch writes, "Obama has given Bush a third term in education policy.”
What she doesn't write is the fact that education policy has been remarkably coherent since she was serving as Assistant Secretary of Education. What's happening now is nothing less than the extension of the Reagan Presidency's educational policy and the major educational report [...] Read more »

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Lead makes kids stupid, hyperactive, and shortens their attention spans. That's why the pediatrician conducts lead tests on your kids when they are at the age when eating paint chips seems like an interesting thing to do. David Berliner identified lead poisoning as one of the out of school factors that afflicts the learning of [...] Read more »

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I'm all for the humane treatment of animals. Most people are. I'm all for animal rescues too. Both of our dogs, Katie B. and Cody B., were rescues. Cody happened to be a pure bred lab, but his genealogy was a matter of circumstance: he was the puppy the girls fell in love with when we went [...] Read more »

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When he ran for governor in 2006, Deval Patrick amassed a database of supporters. It morphed into DevalPatrick.com and promptly went nowhere. I never thought it would do much. I couldn't imagine how it would work as a non-campaign tool. It's easy enough to excite people during a campaign, but it's hard to motivate people about [...] Read more »

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I recently came across CREW, an organization dedicated to exposing corruption in Congress. It issues a report every year on our nation's most corrupt lawmakers.
CREW reviews "news media articles, Federal Election Commission reports, court documents, and members’ personal financial and travel disclosure forms" and then looks at them through the lens of  "federal laws and regulations as well as [...] Read more »

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For those of you looking for a reason to thank Gov. Deval Patrick (like me), look no further than $168 million he personally secured for keeping educators educating.  Patrick and Wisconsin's Gov. Jim Doyle were instrumental in getting economic stimulus money to minimize layoffs and cuts to schools.
The Globe reports:

School districts in Massachusetts would win a [...] Read more »

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America is facing tough times. Our economy is in need of repair. Millions of Americans are out of work Fortunately, President Obama has offered a plan to get our economy moving again. A responsible plan to create jobs by investing in health care, energy independence and schools. What are the Republicans offering? Nothing. No plan [...] Read more »

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