We Texans love y’all, but we’ll have to take action since Obama won
president over McCain. We’ll miss you too. Texas has given all those
complainers plenty of time to get used to the results. After seeing the
whiners along the campaign route, the folks from Texas are considering
taking matters into our hands.

Here is our solution:

#1: Go ahead, Elect Barak Obama President of the United States . (All 49
states.)

#2: George W. Bush becomes the President of the Republic Of Texas.

So what does Texas have to do to survive as a Republic?

1. NASA is just south of Houston, Texas . (We will control the space
industry.)

2. We refine over 85% of the gasoline in the United States.

3. Defense Industry.. We have over 65% of it. The term, “Don’t mess with
Texas,” will take on a whole new meaning.

4. Oil – we can supply all the oil that the Republic of Texas will need for
the next 300 years. Yankee states? Sorry about that.

5. Natural Gas – Again we have all we need and it’s too bad about those
northern states. Al Gore will figure a way to keep them warm.

6. Computer Industry – we currently lead the nation in producing computer
chips and communications. Small places like Texas Instruments, Dell
Computer, EDS, Raytheon, National Semiconductor, Motorola, Intel, AMD,
Atmel, Applied Materials, Ball Semiconductor, Dallas Semiconductor, Delphi,
Nortel, Alcatel, etc., etc. The list goes on and on.

7. Health Centers – We have the largest research centers for Cancer
research, the best burn centers and the top trauma units in the world and
other large health planning centers.

8. We have enough colleges to keep us going: UT Texas, A&M, Texas Tech,
Rice, SMU, University of Houston, Baylor, Texas Women’s University. Ivy
grows better in the South anyway.

9. We have a ready supply of workers. (Just open the border when we need
some.)

10. We have control of the paper industry, plastics, insurance, etc.

11. In case of a foreign invasion, we have the Texas National Guard and the
Texas Air National Guard. We don’t have an army but since everybody down
here has at least six rifles and a pile of ammo, we can raise an army in 24
hours if we need it. If the situation really gets bad, we can always call
Department of Public Safety and ask them to send over a couple of Texas
Rangers.

12. We are totally self sufficient in beef, poultry, hogs and several types
of grain, fruit and vegetables; and let’s not forget seafood from the Gulf.
And everybody down here knows how to cook them so that they taste good.
Don’t need any food.

This just names a few of the items that will keep the Republic Of Texas in
good shape. There isn’t a thing out there that we need and don’t have.

Now to the rest of the United States under President Obama: Since you won’t
have the refineries to get gas for your cars, only Mr. Gore will be able to
drive around in his 9 mile per gallon SUV. The rest of the United States
will have to walk or ride bikes.

You won’t have any TV as the space center in Houston will cut off your
communications. You won’t have any natural gas to heat your homes, but
since Mr. Gore has predicted global warming, you will not need the gas.

Signed, The People in Texas

You are absolutely correct with regard to self esteem. Don’t get me started on the self-esteem philosophy in education and in too many homes today. Self-esteem is earned by working hard and succeeding. In schools today it is handed out for just showing up. Gives children an over-inflated ego.

Parents are also concerned with and protective of student self-esteem or there would be a policy of holding back failing students and social promotion would be replaced with grade retention.

I totally agree with trying to motivate kids more. Opportunities shamelessly abound in this country and we all seem to spend our time whining about how there’s never enough ‘for me’! I saw this documentary called “Two Million Minutes” about the approximately 2 mil minutes a kid has in the formative high school years and what they choose to do with them. It compared an American, an Indian, and a Chinese kid–guess who was living the good life and who was working their butts off? The thing is we assume we will always have the luxury to go on like this–we are setting our kids up to be left in the dust.

Now we have a PE who is all image, no sacrifice, and the media thinks its just grand. We are beginning to believe our own cultural narrative. The icing on the cake for me was Caroline Kennedy’s coming out for the NY senate seat with obviously zero preparation. Do we really believe it is so easy to achieve the things we want in life?

Applying a “10,000 hour” standard, the Fab 4 (or 3) would have needed to play together 10 HOURS EVERY DAY for 3 years to achieve their magnificent burst onto the world scene in 1964. And that’s a conservative estimation. Gladwell’s own figures (or is it Lennon’s own conflated recollections ?) dispute this down by half or more. He must be under the impression other bands in Hamburg at the time were plausibly equal in talent, even more preservering, but unjustly lacking in lucky breaks. The reader need not dig very deep to get to the patently absurd.

There are several things about Asian children being better at math and just learning period. As a former teacher I think it has a lot to do with EXPECTATIONS.

Asian parents value education (and I don’t mean just saying they value it) and EXPECT their children to learn. And they do not particiapte in the old American game of blaming the teacher first. In Asian homes the parents believe it is the child who must learn and who must study.

It always amazes me when Asian children became valedictorinas and such and people say how smart Asian children are. They seem not to realize it was the VERY SAME educational system that produced these children as produced so many American failures. WHY IS THAT? Why doesn’t someone look into that? The same school system that American children do not flourish in produces briliant Asian graduates.

I believe it is that Asian parents expect and demand the kind of hard study and work that is required to succeed. American parents today simply do not believe that it takes hard work and sweat to succeed. They want everything handed to them on a silver platter. Just give me that ‘A’ ’cause I deserve it. Obama is the poster child of this generation of children.

And yes, I know, sometimes it is the teacher and the school system. There are poor teachers and poor systems. I am not over looking that fact.

He totally lost me when it got to the ‘rice vs. wheat cultures’. I’ve lived in several places in Asia and can tell you the mathematical skills of the students there may be encouraged by the work ethic of the culture but do not come without a huge price. In Hong Kong you could read a different story every week about a kid jumping out of his/her high rise window because of the incredible pressure placed on them by their parents. To infer their achievements are due to some sort of ‘cultural DNA’ ignores the fact that a) they have very different motivations to push their children so hard and b) they also risk suffering these grave consequences for their actions. It minimizes these efforts and actions.

I tend to agree with Winston–this journalist (Gladwell) is only creating a narrative, in his case to sell books. Speaking of a narrative, I know this seems shallow and stupid, but what part does this guys’ wacky hair play in his success? I mean, if he was just ‘normal’ looking would his ideas sound as interesting? We do a lot of evaluating via images and Gladwell seems to nurture the nerdy, outlying, ‘genius’ persona for himself. *blink* Just sayin’…

“The impact of such testimony on the criminal investigation would be the same regardless of whether a witness is called by the committee or by Governor Blagojevich,” Fitzgerald wrote. “Accordingly, we ask that the committee refrain from issuing subpoenas for testimony by those four individuals (or others) which would overlap with the subject matter of the pending criminal investigation” [snip]…
Fitzgerald wrote. “Accordingly, we ask that the committee refrain from issuing subpoenas for testimony by those four individuals (or others) which would overlap with the subject matter of the pending criminal investigation.”

.(Rick Pearson Chicago Tribune 12/27/08)
The 4 people are on the BO team. Any questions?