As Bronwyn reported yesterday, my governor, Nikki Haley, endorsed Romney on Friday. This is important since our primary is the third one in the New Year. Romney was glad for it, too, saying people were “lining up outside her door” to get this coveted endorsement. Below is a good interview with Gov. Haley, conducted by Greta van Susteren (h/t Bronwyn):

Nice, right? But then things went downhill pretty quickly. Check out this sexist description of Gov. Haley in WaPo. Apparently, for this writer, Ned Martel, a woman is either Church Lady” or a “Real Housewife”:

[snip] In person, she cuts an indefatigable and glamourous figure. She eschews a Church Lady mien for something more Real Housewife: fit, attractive and encased in suits that stop just below the elbow and just above the knee. And she says often how her job is sales, selling corporate chief executives on South Carolina with many lures. [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Welcome to being a woman in politics in the United States.

The second story is bad (h/t to The New Agenda). It could easily be entitled, “Whistleblower Slamdunked,” but it’s headline is this: “Former N.B.A. Employee Says Sexual Harassment Concerns Were Ignored.” And why is he a “former employee”? Because he had the audacity to stand up for the women who were being sexually harassed, that’s why.

Now, I should say at the outset that I have very little respect for the N.B.A. I used to watch it, but over time, it seems to me that a number of players are just a bunch of thugs. Arrests have piled up, fights on court, all kinds of actions that have marred the game. Unfortunately, this attitude is now being evidenced in the college game, with the melee between Cincinnati and Xavier Universities recently. To label it as unsportsmanlike is a gross understatement. One of Xavier’s players, Tu Holloway, said in a press conference afterward that some Cincinnati player was calling them out before the game. He said, “We got disrespected a little bit before the game…We are grown men over there. we got a bunch of gangstas in the locker room, not thugs, but tough guys on the court…”

I beg to differ. You are a bunch of thugs, and the last ten seconds of the game showed that clearly.

Now, back to the N.B.A. Security official, Warren Glover. This is a long story, with one incident after another occurring to women who had the misfortune to work for this organization. I recommend you read the whole thing to get an idea of the depth of sexism, misogyny, and sexual harassment inherent in this organization. It is truly shocking, and appalling. Here is just the beginning of it:

A former N.B.A. security official says that he repeatedly warned his superiors that women in the office were being sexually harassed or discriminated against, but that his concerns were ignored and that he was ultimately fired for his actions on the women’s behalf. He is suing the league for lost wages and damages.

Warren Glover, 50, was fired as a security director in July, after 10 years with the N.B.A., despite a glowing performance record for most of his tenure, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday morning in New York State Supreme Court. In the suit, Glover accuses senior N.B.A. security officials of creating a “hostile work environment” in which he was “demeaned,” “treated differently from other employees” and denied promotions because of his willingness to speak out.

In one instance, Glover said a senior security official made sexual advances toward a female colleague, then demeaned her publicly when she rejected his advances. In another, a different security official proposed using sexually inappropriate material as part of a presentation to N.B.A. players. [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

It gets much, much worse when you read the extent of the sexual harassment women to which women have been subjected there. I would like to commend Mr. Glover for doing the right thing. He is truly a stand up guy.

And now for the ugly, though the story about the “student-athletes” brawling would qualify. But this is about the OWS “protesters,” and again, they, too could qualify as thugs. In Seattle recently, not only did they try to block the ports (and really, just what the hell were they trying to accomplish with impeding the rights of workers to work???). The “protesters” were throwing paint at the police, which isn’t the worst part, except they hit a police horse with it, and that pisses me off. In addition to paint, they threw BRICKS and REBAR. You know, rebar, “reinforced steel.” Yeah, I’d say the “thug” moniker is well deserved, not to mention CRIMINAL. Enough with this crap. Throw them all in the slammer, I say. They interrupt workers? Throw them in jail. Impede traffic intentionally? Throw them in the slammer. Hurl dangerous objects at police and others? Throw their asses in jail and charge them with assault with a deadly weapon, because bricks and rebar would certainly qualify. Enough with this crap already.

Yuck, blech. With the exception of the first story, I realize this might leave a bad taste in one’s mouth. Allow me to end, then, with a little holiday cheer. This combines one of my favorite songs, and my love for “Glee”:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Whew, I feel better. Hope you do, too. Have a good weekend, everyone.

Good grief.

Here are the particulars from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Across Atlanta Public Schools, staff worked feverishly in secret to transform testing failures into successes.

Teachers and principals erased and corrected mistakes on students’ answer sheets.

Area superintendents silenced whistle-blowers and rewarded subordinates who met academic goals by any means possible.

Superintendent Beverly Hall and her top aides ignored, buried, destroyed or altered complaints about misconduct, claimed ignorance of wrongdoing and accused naysayers of failing to believe in poor children’s ability to learn.

For years — as long as a decade — this was how the Atlanta school district produced gains on state curriculum tests. The scores soared so dramatically they brought national acclaim to Hall and the district, according to an investigative report released Tuesday by Gov. Nathan Deal.

In the report, the governor’s special investigators describe an enterprise where unethical — and potentially illegal — behavior pierced every level of the bureaucracy, allowing district staff to reap praise and sometimes bonuses by misleading the children, parents and community they served.

The report accuses top district officials of wrongdoing that could lead to criminal charges in some cases.[snip]

This is just mind boggling. For once, I am practically speechless at the depth and breadth of cheating that went on from the highest levels down for as long as it did. At the very LEAST this is unethical, egregious, and reprehensible. Wow.

There is so, so much more to this story, including this:

[snip] For teachers, a culture of fear ensured the deception would continue.

“APS is run like the mob,” one teacher told investigators, saying she cheated because she feared retaliation if she didn’t.

The voluminous report names 178 educators, including 38 principals, as participants in cheating. More than 80 confessed. The investigators said they confirmed cheating in 44 of 56 schools they examined.

The investigators conducted more than 2,100 interviews and examined more than 800,000 documents in what is likely the most wide-ranging investigation into test-cheating in a public school district ever conducted in United States history.

Holy crap. This just boggles the mind, doesn’t it?

And what about this Superintendent of the Year, Beverly Hall? Oh, I am sure you can guess:

The findings fly in the face of years of denials from Atlanta administrators. The investigators re-examined the state’s erasure analysis — which they said proved to be valid and reliable — and sought to lay to rest district leaders’ numerous excuses for the suspicious scores.

Deal warned Tuesday “there will be consequences” for educators who cheated. “The report’s findings are troubling,” he said, “but I am encouraged this investigation will bring closure to problems that existed.”

Interim Atlanta Superintendent Erroll Davis promised that the educators found to have cheated “are not going to be put in front of children again.”

Through her lawyer, Hall issued a statement denying that she, her staff or the “vast majority” of Atlanta educators knew or should have known of “allegedly widespread” cheating. “She further denies any other allegations of knowing and deliberate wrongdoing on her part or on the part of her senior staff,” the statement said, “whether during the course of the investigation or before.” [snip]

Oh, I am sure Ms. Hall denies all of the charges. And of course, that two different governors investigated what happened in Atlanta means nothing. Surely, she did nothing to deserve this level of scrutiny. Ahem:

[snip]Hall preferred to spend her time networking with philanthropic and business leaders rather than walking the halls of her schools, the investigators found.

But when the scandal erupted, she withheld key information — state data on the suspicious erasures — even from executives and civic leaders who the school board, at Hall’s urging, appointed to conduct the inquiry.

“In many ways, the community was duped by Dr. Hall,” the report said. “While the district had rampant cheating, community leaders were unaware of the misconduct in the district. She abused the trust they placed in her.

“Hall became a subject of adoration and made herself the focus rather than the children,” the investigators wrote. “Her image became more important than reality.” (Click here to read the rest.)

I encourage you to read the rest of this article – there is so much more in it, and to this story. Teachers were threatened with loss of livelihood if they told what they saw, and were generally threatened or intimidated.

This was the bottom line for what happened in Atlanta:

[snip] “In sum, a culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation permeated the APS system from the highest ranks down,” the investigators wrote. “Cheating was allowed to proliferate until, in the words of one former APS principal, ‘it became intertwined in Atlanta Public Schools … a part of what the culture is all about.’ ”[snip]

I can only imagine how long it will take to clean up this “culture of corruption.” I don’t envy them the task. But it is one that must be done, for the sake of the children, and of those teachers who did not willingly conspire to cheat, cheat, and cheat some more. I can only hope that justice will be swift and unwavering in dealing with (former) Superintendent Hall and her minions. They deserve nothing less for the insult they have brought upon the institution of education, and Atlanta. Shame on them.

As it turns out, about half of the adult population in Detroit is functionally illiterate. Almost HALF. That is a staggering number.

How in the sam hill can that possibly be? I am serious – how in the world, in the United States of America, can this be? Here are just some of the issues they face:

“The National Institute for Literacy estimates that 47% of adults (more than 200,000 individuals) in the City of Detroit are functionally illiterate, referring to the inability of an individual to use reading, speaking, writing, and computational skills in everyday life situations,” a report from the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund reads.

Karen Tyler-Ruiz, the Fund’s director, explained the difficulties this presents to the average illiterate.

“Not able to fill out basic forms, for getting a job — those types of basic everyday [things]. Reading a prescription; what’s on the bottle, how many you should take…just your basic everyday tasks,” she said. “I don’t really know how they get by, but they do. Are they getting by well? Well, that’s another question,” she told WWJ Newsradio 950. [snip]

Uh, yeah – not being able to fill out basic forms is a bit of a problem.

Who is to blame for this deplorable condition? Well, depending upon whom you ask, it is either the teachers’ union, or the city. Let’s start with the union:

In a town where unions rule, some have pointed to the teachers’ union as a possible reason for the city’s high illiteracy rate.

Andrew J. Coulson, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, told The Daily Caller that the teachers’ union monopoly has contributed to much of the educational deterioration in the city.

“Apparently [the school system is] not learning that the cause of the problem is the monopoly because they would have gotten rid of it by now. That is the big message from this report, [it] is not what this particular organization is doing to try to alleviate the problem,” Coulson told TheDC. “What they need to do is get rid of the monopoly.”

According to Coulson’s calculations, Detroit spent $15,945 per pupil for the 2010-2011 school year. By comparison, the average per pupil expenditure during the 2007-2008 school year nationally was $10,259.

It is embarrassing as hell for a city, and its teachers, to have this result, especially since they pay over a THIRD more per student in Detroit than the national average. Sounds to me like they are not getting their money’s worth there. Ahem. Wow.

Who do the teachers blame? The city:

The Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT), however, is adamant that the problem actually lies with the city’s failure to effectively enforce school attendance.

“I don’t think that that the teachers’ union has a responsibility for making sure that adults can read,” DFT president Keith Johnson told TheDC.

“I think the unfairness of the criticism [against the union] comes from the fact that there is a direct correlation between student attendance and student performance,” Johnson added. “During the 2008-2009 school year, the average Detroit school student — you ready for this — missed 46 days of school. That was on average. There were 10 percent of our students that missed 100 days or more. It may shock you to know that Detroit public schools do not have an attendance standard.”

According to Detroit’s attendance policy statement in their “Orientation Kit,” students are expected to attend 92 percent of classes, or miss no more than 14 days annually. Johnson believes there have to be harsher consequences for those who miss significantly more days.

Uh huh. Okay. Well, there may be some truth in that since students do need to be there.

But there’s one more group who deserves some blame:

Some say the responsibility for the absentee epidemic falls at the feet of parents who fail to supervise their children. Richard Rivers, a counselor at Cody’s Academy of Critical Thinkers and Medicine and Community Health, said that the best way to fix the literary problem is to get parents involved.

“I talk to truants all the time, and I call their parents,” he told the Detroit Free Press. “I do believe that truancy can be prevented when parents are working with me to get the students to school every day and on time.” [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Indeed, parents must be active participants in the education of their children, especially when it is something so basic, so necessary, as literacy.

It sounds to me like there is plenty of blame to go around. The citizens of Detroit are certainly not getting their money’s worth, not with this outcome. Whatever the truancy policy is, it sounds like it might use some revamping. And parents need to get involved with their own children and what they are learning (or not). Regardless of with whom the lion’s share of blame lies, something needs to change, and now.

Speaking of reading, I just have to quickly share this article with you. My aunt sent it to me yesterday, and I just could not believe my eyes. Here is the headline: ‘Burn a Bush’? Michelle Obama Invites Rapper Common To A Poetry Reading.

Say wha? Oh, yes:

[snip] First Lady Michelle Obama has scheduled a poetry evening for Wednesday, and she’s invited several poets, including a successful Chicago poet and rapper, Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr., AKA “Common.” However, Lynn is quite controversial, in part because his poetry includes threats to shoot police and at least one passage calling for the “burn[ing]” of then-President George W. Bush.

[...]

By the way, ‘Uzi’ is slang for a compact machine gun:

A Letter to the Law

Dem boy wanna talk… [indistinguishable]

Whatcha gon do if ya got one gun?

I sing a song for the hero unsung

with faces on the mural of the revolution

No looking back cos’ in back is what’s done

Tell the preacher, god got more than one son

Tell the law, my Uzi weighs a ton

I walk like a warrior,

from them I won’t run

On the streets, they try to beat us like a drum

In Cincinnati, another brother hung

A guinea won’t see the sun

with his family stung

They want us to hold justice

but you handed me none

The same they did to Kobe and Michael Jackson

make them the main attraction

Turn around and attack them

Black gem in the rough

You’re rugged enough

Use your mind and nine-power, get the government touch

Them boys chat-chat on how him pop gun

I got the black strap to make the cops run

They watching me, I’m watching them

Them dick boys got a lock of cock in them

My people on the block got a lot of pok* in them

and when we roll together

we be rocking them to sleep

No time for that, because there’s things to be done

Stay true to what I do so the youth dream come

from project building

Seeing a fiend being hung

With that happening, why they messing with Saddam?

Burn a Bush cos’ for peace he no push no button

Killing over oil and grease

no weapons of destruction

How can we follow a leader when this a corrupt one

The government’s a g-unit and they might buck young black people

Black people In the urban area one

I hold up a peace sign, but I carry a gun.

Peace, ya’ll.”

Wowie zowie. Gosh, so glad the Lefties got Laura Bush to cancel HER scheduled poetry reading of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and Walt Whitman, those crazy rabble rousers (and I oughta know. Cough, cough.)

Who here is surprised by this? Yeah, me neither. As my aunt noted, such a classy, classy bunch the Obamas are. Not. And, I might add, this is what passes for poetry these days? Yikes. I’ll stick with my Maya Angelou, Willa Cather, Emily Dickinson…

But that is not the point of this post, believe it or not. No, rather it is this: at the very same site, there is this article, “PROFESSOR: Sarah Palin Probably Staged A Gigantic Hoax About Being Trig’s Mother.”

I am not kidding, and it is not a tongue-in-cheek article, either. Oh, Andrew Sullivan must be SO happy that some professor at Northern Kentucky University is taking his assertion to heart. (And I am sure the parents who send their kids to school there are so happy to learn that one of the professors seems to be spending time “proving” that Sarah is not Trig’s real mother.) From what I can tell, the conclusion reached by Scharlotte was mere conjecture, but hey, that’s better than nothing, right? Ahem.

It does make me wonder one thing: just what is it this professor teaches exactly? I mean, with all this time on his hands to delve into such ground-breaking research, and all, it’s gotta be something important, no doubt. (That is snark, by the way.) Actually, he teaches journalism. Yes, journalism. Now you have a glimpse into why our media is in such bad shape, presuming this is representative of the professors in this field (he is also very upset that some “Palin Flack” is trying to squelch discussion on this critical issue facing us today. Again, not kidding.) Uh, yeah. THIS is what he is so concerned about the media not covering now, during this tumultuous time. Wow.

Oh, you’re probably wondering who IS Trig’s real mother according to Scharlotte (and Sullivan). Well, it’s Bristol, of course. C’mon, that’s as clear as the nose on your face, people!

What is really hilarious to me, though, are the comments at this article. The exact same people who demean, belittle, and attack those who would like to see Obama’s birth certificate act like this is a matter of National Security. You know, because Palin ran as the Vice Presidential candidate, so who her baby mama is matters a LOT. Hey, say what you will about Birthers, at least the desire to see an actual birth certificate is to fulfill a Constitutional requirement. And it is a requirement other presidential candidates have fulfilled, I might add.

But this has zero to do with the Constitution. This has to do with Palin Hatred veiled as outrage at a lackluster media, one that hasn’t done its job in reporting this “earth shattering” story:

[snip] He (Professor Scharlotte) concludes two things:

* First, that the “conspiracy theory” is likely true–Sarah Palin staged a huge hoax, and, second,

* The American media is pathetic for not pursuing the story more aggressively
[snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Oh, yes – where has the media been? You know, the one that aggressively pursued Obama’s connections to Tony Rezko, or Bill Ayers, or Jeremiah Wright, or James Meeks, or his college/grad school records, or why there were ZERO paper recrods from the entire time Obama was in the IL Senate, or how he got everyone thrown off the ballot the first time he ran, or how he got the sealed divorce records of the two front-runner US Senate candidates unsealed right before the election, or any NUMBER of red flags about Barack Obama.

Oh, wait – they didn’t. But this man thinks what they SHOULD have been doing was going after Palin even more. Because the boatload of reporters who descended on Wasilla to turn over every rock they could, or the 11 reporters the AP assigned to check her book, is not the least bit aggressive in its efforts. Kinda makes you wonder how many they have assigned to “fact check” Obama’s books, huh? Yeah. I’m not holding my breath for that to happen, either.

It is just comical the complete and utter hypocrisy contained within this one site on such a related issue. And the utter lack of recognition of the hypocrisy, too, is a bit comical.

Yes, by all means, let us spend lots of time and media resources on whether or not Trig is Sarah Palin’s son, because that is of the utmost importance. Never mind Obama’s real back-story – he’s only the President after all. Hey, we have to have our priorities with our media, right? Right. Budget crisis? What “budget crisis”? I need to know who is really the mother of that kid, don’t you?

If you’ll excuse me, I have to go read “People” magazine now to get the REAL news…

There was another hero in the room last night, School Board member, Ginger Littleton. What she did was unbelievably courageous, and brave:

Isn’t that amazing? Of course, her daughters are right – she could have been killed doing what she did. But it was her immediate response that she could not allow these fellow school board members to sit there like ducks without trying to do something.

And then for the miracle part of this whole encounter. The following video has some difficult scenes in it, just to warn you. But what is really remarkable, as retold by the superintendent, Bill Husfelt, is what happened when the gunman opened fire on the school board members:

This was truly a miracle. Husfelt is convinced that God stepped between him and the gunman’s bullets. I know I was shocked that the superintendent was not hit. Thank heavens.

As noted, it could have been so, so much worse, considering students and their parents had just been there. Wow. A miracle indeed.

Recently, Larry Johnson gave us a pleasant surprise – a flash “mob” singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” at a food court in a Canadian mall. Many people wondered if that kind of thing would happen in the States.

Well, it did. The Opera Company of Philadelphia engaged in a “random act of culture” at Macy’s in Philadelphia, which is home to the largest pipe organ in the world. As the daughter of a church organist (and choirmaster), who awakened to the sounds of my dad practicing the organ every Sunday morning, this was particularly moving. And it is incredibly beautiful:

I’d say that’s another miracle,, of a different kind, wouldn’t you?

And while this doesn’t quite rise to “miracle” status, it is my favorite organ piece, and is just beautiful. I used to turn the pages for my dad when he played it. It is performed here by Diane Bish, widely considered one of the greatest organists in the world:

May your day be filled with beauty and miracles.

You may have heard about a recent outbreak of trash-talking on Facebook between Willow Palin and a young man who allegedly went to school where the Palins do, Tre. Tre was talking smack about Willow’s mom after the premier of the TLC show, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.” (Palin’s show was the most watched premiere in TLC history, garnering 5 million viewers.) Willow took umbrage, and used a couple of homophobic slurs in her responses to him, calling him “gay,” and the f-word (the 6 letter one, that is). Apparently, Bristol weighed in, too, though did not use similar language.

Yikes.

Bristol regained her composure, though, and wrote this:

[snip] “Willow and I shouldn’t have reacted to negative comments about our family. We apologize. On a nicer note, thank you for supporting the great competition in Dancing With the Stars!”

Needless to say, this has raised a firestorm about Willow, and the Palins in general. The HRC has been one such organization to take aim at 16 year old Willow, though not everyone in the blogosphere is happy about that:

Some bloggers have said that as a minor, Willow should be off-limits. They also said the Palin cub was simply defending her “mama grizzly” in the inappropriate and misinformed style of a teenager.

“Willow Palin is a child, and she is not fair game,” Tommy Christopher wrote at Mediaite. “Willow and her Facebook playmates weren’t thinking about the rash of suicides related to anti-gay bullying, including young kids who were not, in fact, gay. They didn’t create a world where gay equals unequal, they are a product of it.” [snip]

Now you know I am not condoning anyone using that kind of language. Not even close. But, I do know that using those kinds of slurs are common with young people. That does not excuse it, but it is a reality, unfortunately. Heck, my own godson, who has TWO out lesbian godmothers, has been known to say things like, “that’s so gay.” He’s not the only one – other friends of mine have used that phrase to me, but claim it isn’t intended as an insult. Um, well, maybe not, but it is.

Anyway, that is all to say, Willow is 16. I said some pretty stupid stuff at 16, too, but I didn’t have it writ large on a national level. Again, not excusing it in any way, shape, or form, but I do see how it can happen. And how it is NOT a reflection on the parents themselves.

Two prominent gay and lesbian conservatives are furious with HRC and their attacks on Willow Palin. In this Daily Caller article, “Bigotry: The Selective Outrage Of The Gay Left,” Tammy Bruce and Christopher R. Barron go after HRC.

As an aside, you may recall that I was a long, long time member of the HRC – over 25 years – until they endorsed Obama over Hillary Clinton. They had just presented Clinton with a huge award for her work on behalf of the LGBT community, and they endorse the man with the virulently homophobic associates – Meeks and McClurkin come to mind – instead. Wow.

Anyway, back to the article, and the response from these two GOProud members:

For days now, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which holds itself out as the “largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization,” has shamefully used the issue of anti-gay bullying as part of a cheap political smear against former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. HRC, never shy about doing the bidding of the Democratic Party, issued a November 18th release blaring, “HRC to Sarah Palin: Two Days of Silence, Will You Speak Up?” Is this a release demanding Palin speak out about an issue of substance affecting gay people? No, this childish call-to-arms is about trash talk issued by a 16-year-old in a flame war on a social networking site.

The “controversy” surrounding inappropriate language used by the Palin daughters on Facebook shows again how selective the gay left is in expressing outrage over perceived “bigotry.”

Politicizing the serious issue of anti-gay bullying in order to score political points is morally reprehensible. Bristol apologized on behalf of herself and her younger sister — and that apology should be the end of the story, but it’s not because the real target of this faux outrage is Sarah Palin, a woman who represents an existential threat to both political machines.

No one is condoning the use of obscenities or derogatory terms, but no one who has seen the Facebook exchange in question can seriously claim this behavior had anything to do at all with “bullying.” It also has nothing to do with Willow Palin or the substance of what she wrote. Make no mistake; this is all about destroying Sarah Palin by friends of Obama and by any means necessary.

The irony here is stunning. The adults who run HRC are participating in a morally-reprehensible organized political hatchet job on a teenager all in the name of defending the victims of bigotry. [snip}

Can the case be made that the HRC is itself engaging in bullying against a child? And if so, it seems the motive is likely political:

[snip] The nature of the attacks on Palin reveals much about what motivates her critics. HRC’s press releases are ripe with misogynistic attacks on the Governor. HRC refers to the Governor as a “reality TV show star” — a transparent attempt to diminish Palin’s almost 20 years in politics. In a November 17th release, Joe Solmonese, the man at the helm of HRC, made a thinly veiled accusation that the Facebook exchange somehow showed Palin failed as a mother — “Anti-gay language by teenagers often starts at home…” [snip]

The authors discuss how that is not quite accurate – as I noted above, it is unfortunately far too common in our schools to use this kind of language. Sad, but true, even among those who should know better.

Bruce and Barron then target the Gay Left for their silence in regard to the homophobic, misogynistic tenets of radicalized Islam:

[snip] Last June, when President Obama delivered his much ballyhooed speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, he made no mention of the treatment of gays and lesbians living under Muslim regimes — even though in Egypt, the country where Mr. Obama spoke, gays have been subject to arrest and imprisonment for simply being gay. The reaction from the gay left? Nothing. No outrage, no harshly worded statements, and certainly no around-the-clock vigil waiting for an apology.

Last September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bravely took to the floor of the United Nations and criticized the treatment of gay people in Iran. After speaking with such moral clarity about the need to protect gay people from violence and death, if you expected praise from the gay left you would be wrong. Indeed, the powers that be at HRC pretended like Netanyahu’s speech never even happened.

The behavior of the gay left, and in particular HRC, is shameless and disgusting. Governor Palin certainly does not owe anyone associated with HRC an apology; indeed it is HRC who should apologize. They should apologize to Governor Palin for their vicious and unfounded smear, to the real victims of anti-gay bullying who they have cheaply exploited, and to gay people world-wide for the blind eye they have turned to the barbaric treatment of gays by radical Islamic regimes. (Click HERE to read the rest.)

Interesting comparison, is it not? How is it that the Left now thinks its cool to support radical (not moderate) Islam that treats women as worse than chattel, and gays even worse than that, yet take on a teenager for some crap she wrote on Facebook. One could argue their priorities are a bit skewed.

Again, by no means do I condone the language used by Willow on Facebook. The level of bullying occurring in our schools is troubling, indeed, whether those children being bullied are gay or not. The outcome is the same.

Bristol Palin has apologized for her sister’s comments. They were out of line. But are her comments worthy of the ire of an entire organization, one that is going after a teenager? Is the HRC minimizing the very real, and troubling, number of suicides by gay teens by their demand? Are they targeting not Willow, but her mother? Will being told something is “so gay” ever be seen as POSITIVE? Perhaps that is for what we should be striving instead of being so upset when someone uses it in that kind of context (hey, I can hope, can’t I?)?

Maybe instead of the HRC focusing on some Facebook exchange between the daughter of a prominent Republican, they could push Obama to do more than give lip service to the LGBT community. Focus on repealing DADT. Focus on obtaining the same federal benefits for the LGBT community that the rest of the citizenry in this country enjoy. Push Obama to stop praising countries who treat their gay citizenry like criminals without mentioning same. You know, stuff like that.

And we need to do more sensitivity training in our schools – all of them. Our children need to know that this kind of name-calling is hurtful, regardless if the child is gay or not. It needs to stop. Adults need to stop using that kind of language, too (in a derogatory manner, that is). We need to teach our children that bullying is wrong no matter what. Period.

So, how about you. What do you think about this?

An old friend of mine sent me an article recently from NPR, “Teacher Suspended After Stopping Anti-Gay Talk.” My friend was a high school teacher for many years (and now teaches on the community college level), so naturally, this would pique her interest. Mine, too.

But the headline is a bit misleading, I think. It makes it sound like a kid was bullying by using homophobic language. That was not the case:

[snip] On Oct. 20, McDowell told a student in his classroom to remove a belt buckle with the Confederate Flag, the symbol of the southern confederacy that seceded from the United States over slavery, kicking off the Civil War in the 1860s.

She complied, but it prompted a question from a boy about how the flag differs from the rainbow flag, a symbol of pride for the gay community.

“I explained the difference between the flags, and he said, ‘I don’t accept gays,”’ said McDowell, 42, who was wearing a shirt with an anti-gay bullying message.

McDowell said he told the student he couldn’t say that in class.

“And he said, ‘Why? I don’t accept gays. It’s against my religion.’ I reiterated that it’s not appropriate to say something like that in class,” McDowell said Monday.

McDowell said he sent the boy out of the room for a one-day class suspension. Another boy asked if he also could leave because he also didn’t accept gays.

“The classroom discussion was heading in a direction I didn’t want it to head,” McDowell said.

McDowell soon received a reprimand letter from the district that said his actions violated the students’ free speech rights as well as school policy. It also said he “purposefully initiated a controversial issue” by the wearing the T-shirt featuring the anti-gay bullying message.

“I thought it was a really great, teachable moment,” McDowell said of his decision to remove the student from class. [snip]

I have a few problems with the way the teacher handled this situation. It did not seem to me that the young man was gay-bullying, but giving his religious belief, which he is allowed to have, much as I (and apparently, the teacher) disagree with him. As long as he was not bashing anyone, that is. A number of mainstream religions teach that homosexuality is a sin, and a number still do not ordain LGBT people. That this student holds such a religious belief is his right, as long as he does not take it out on anyone. Again, much as I disagree with that religious belief, the student has the right to his beliefs.

I think the more “teachable moment” would have been to keep him in the classroom. Maybe discuss how, even if our religious beliefs differ, we can, and should, treat people with respect, and stand up for “the least of these,” to couch it in language the young man may have understood. It was a perfect opportunity to discuss the bullying that has been occurring in our school across the country, and how it isn’t just against gay kids, but “nerds,” small kids, etc. That was the teachable moment in my mind.

I think the t-shirt the teacher wore was provocative, even if it was in support of ending the recent bullying cases making the headlines. Given that he was clearly stating a position, he should have expected that some people might have taken umbrage with it. And, he should have been willing to engage, and really TEACH, rather than dismiss.

And I think this was a discussion more suited to a Social Studies class than an Economics class. While I appreciate – very much – the teacher’s intent, he infringed upon the young man’s rights by, well, being intolerant of the student’s beliefs. In his attempt to stop bullying, he, in essence, bullied this kid. Since the teacher had the power, he was able to toss out someone with whom he disagreed rather than have a real discussion.

That is to say, this teacher seemed to violate the student’s right to free speech, which is also the conclusion of ACLU attorney:

[snip] Jay Kaplan, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) Legal Project, credits McDowell for trying to create a “welcoming environment for all students.” But Kaplan said the “teachable moment” would have come if the students stayed in the classroom.

“We believe, based on those statements — as offensive and upsetting as they were — they were protected speech,” Kaplan said. “The only way we’re going to create a better environment in schools is to start talking about this.”

Kaplan said Howell schools have expressed interest in accepting the ACLU’s offer to provide in-person training to students, faculty and staff. He said such training could provide a better understanding of what can be said and done. [snip] (Click HERE to read the rest.)

That sounds like a positive step for the Howell schools, and a better way to go about creating an atmosphere conducive to these kinds of discussions. I am glad to learn they are open to this

I’m glad Md. McDowell is aware of this issue, and doing what he can to end gay-bashing/bullying in his school, but there are ways that are more effective than others to accomplish that goal. The kind of intolerance he demonstrated by kicking the student out sends the wrong message, and will simply breed resentment, not enlightenment.

At least that’s what I think. What do you think?

Now we have women governors, senators, representatives, and Secretaries of State. I can only imagine what out founding mothers would have thought of that, the joy, the excitement, the relief. No doubt, things have changed in this country for women. Not that women are treated as full equals yet in the United States. The sexism and misogyny evidenced by one of the two major political parties in 2008 made that abundantly clear. But things are better. We strive, still, for equal equal pay, for equal representation, for our first woman president, but there is no denying we are better off now than we were 90 years ago.

Indeed, our foremothers worked hard for this, as many of us have in the intervening years. But there are other countries, like Afghanistan, for example, where girls are in danger for merely trying to get an education. Yes, on Wednesday of this week, a girls’ school had poisonous gas spread throughout the school, sickening a number of the girls and teachers. Who would do such a thing? The Taliban would:

[snip] Wednesday’s incident follows a similar pattern seen in other recent attacks at girls’ schools involving an airborne substance which officials say could be some form of gas.

Those have raised fears that the Taliban and other allied groups who oppose female education are using a new method to scare them away from classes. [snip]

Wow. I scarcely know how to respond to this. It is despicable. And it is a pattern with the Taliban:

[snip] “This has happened a couple of times before, mainly in the northern province of Kunduz. At the time, it was also said, that these girls were poisoned and officials pointed the finger at the Taliban and rightly so,” she said.

“However, there is still no hard conclusion on who is behind this attack and what kind of poisoning is taking place.”

The Taliban banned education for girls during their Afghan rule from 1996-2001, but have condemned similar attacks in the past.

They have, however, set fire to dozens of schools, threatened teachers and even attacked schoolgirls in rural areas.

In one attack in Kandahar in 2008,around 15 girls and teachers were sprayed with acid by men on motorbikes.

In parts of southern and eastern Afghanistan, particularly in Taliban strongholds, schools for girls still remain closed. [snip] (Click HERE to read the rest.)

This attitude toward women and girls is a bitter pill to swallow. As is this headline from The Hill, “Sen. Kerry: ‘Very active’ efforts under way to reach settlement with Taliban.” What? How? Why? Kerry explains:

[snip]“I can report without being specific that there are efforts under way. They are serious, and I completely agree with that fundamental premise — and so does General [David] Petraeus and so does President Obama — there is no military solution,” he told NPR. “And there are very active efforts now to seek an appropriate kind of political settlement.”

U.S. officials have acknowledged that some sort of political settlement must be reached with the Taliban — a loosely affiliated group of Islamic insurgents that control large swaths of territory in Afghanistan — in order to bring an end to the almost nine-year-long U.S. war there.

The beginning of settlement negotiations represents a significant development in terms of Western involvement there…

Kerry said any “appropriate” settlement would have to include “a renunciation of al Qaeda,” a “reduction of violence,” a “recognition of the constitutional rights of both Pakistan and Afghanistan and greater efforts to reduce sanctuaries for insurgency.”[snip] (Click HERE to read the rest.)

And what about the women and girls, Senator Kerry? What about them, in your “negotiations” with terrorists? Yeah, I know – who gives a damn about them? They are just “casualties,” I suppose, necessary capitulations to this woman-hating group.

How it is Kerry, and Obama, think having active negotiations with the Taliban is a good thing? What are the chances, really, that, if they can even get some of these groups to come to the table, they will even keep their word should a compromise be reached?

And what about these women, these girls? The ones gassed by members of the Taliban to prevent them from learning? Or, the Taliban members who throw acid in the faces of these girls in an attempt to force them our of school? Oh, yeah – these sounds like just the kind of people with whom we should be engaging in “very active” negotiations. You know, since we are choosing to negotiate with terrorists in the first place.

I cannot help but be reminded of this powerful moment (again) of CJ Craig on “West Wing”:

Wow. Yep, that sounds a little too familiar…

Indeed, I am thankful, grateful, and humbled for the work our foremothers did to secure us the right to vote in this country. For the women who fought to make this possible: Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and all the other remarkable women who enabled for us to have this right, thank you.

May the young girls and women of Afghanistan one day be allowed to learn, to study, to be educated. And may they, one day, one day soon, be full participants in their country. Sadly, that day is not today.

One other note – almost 200 women and 4 boys were raped near a UN Peacekeepers camp in Congo. And what has the UN said about it? They’re looking into it. Well, it only happened three weeks ago, so you can see why it might take them a while to come out with any kind of statement. Right. Sec. Clinton spoke out about this atrocity, and you can read her remarks HERE, but this sums it up:

[snip]“Sexual violence harms more than its immediate victims. It denies and destroys our common dignity, it shreds the fabric that weaves us together as humans, it endangers families and communities, it erodes social and political stability, and it undermines economic progress. These travesties, committed with impunity against innocent civilians who play no role in armed conflict, hold us all back. [snip]

Amen to that.

Why? Well, I bet you can guess if you think about it for a minute. Give up? This headline by Brent Baker at Newsbusters will make it clear, “Newsweek Ranks U.S. the 11th ‘Best Country’ – Bush’s Fault, Obama Can Stem The Tide.” Yep, it’s all Bush’s fault, but Obama the Messiah can right this listing ship:

Newsweek, recently sold for one dollar by the Washington Post Company but still in its hands, ranked the United States 11th, just behind Denmark, in this week’s “The Best Countries in the World” cover story which put Finland at #1, followed by Switzerland and Sweden. There’s hope for improvement, however, thanks to George W. Bush’s departure from the White House and Barack Obama’s arrival. Michael Hirsh explained the beyond the top ten rank:

America hasn’t recovered from the serious blows to its stature delivered by nearly a decade of policy debacles. As Obama never tires of reminding the American public…he inherited a Herculean task: the Augean-stable-size mess left behind by George W. Bush.

The August 23 & 30 two-week edition cover story package certainly reflected Obama’s policy agenda. A sidebar (apparently not online) on the nations with the best health care, which put Japan at the top, touted fourth-best Spain where “universal coverage is a constitutionally guaranteed right, and there are no out-of-pocket expenses aside from some prescription drugs.” The U.S. wasn’t even one of the top ten countries listed (the full list online has the U.S. at #26 in health, tied with the Czech Republic and Chile and behind Slovenia.) [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Blech. Seriously, these people need to put down the Hopium pipe, and you know they’re on it. How else to explain selling a magazine for a BUCK? I mean, I know things are tight right now, but c’mon! Ahem.

Perhaps it would interest the authors of this piece to learn that Bush is actually more popular in some major “frontline” districts than their Revered One. It seems those areas are ones of great concern to Democrats since they currently hold the seats there. Oops!

But back to being Number 11 – woohoo, celebrate, woot, woot! I’ll let Stephen Colbert have the last word on this (again), and Newsweek, too:

You know, when I saw the CNN report, I just knew that CNN was under-reporting the numbers of those opposed to the mosque being built near Ground Zero. And CNN made it seem as if there were a couple hundred protesters on BOTH sides. I knew they were full of crap:

[snip] Hundreds of critics and supporters of the proposed center in New York showed up despite an overcast and drizzly sky to express their views amid the national debate over the facility.

Police estimated that supporters of the center numbered up to 250, and critics numbered about 450 during the demonstration. [snip]

Uh huh. Nothing like inflating the numbers on one side, and deflating them on the other. Oh, you just gotta love the LMSM (Lame Mainstream Media). Or not.

By the way, if you think for one second Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf did not know that the landing gear from one of the planes flew into that building, and the relevance of it being so close to Ground Zero, you are sadly mistaken. That is why he picked that location, and why Muslims started coming to that building to pray. At least according to this December 8, 2009 NY Times article, “Muslim Prayers And Renewal Near Ground Zero“:

[snip]But for months now, out of the public eye, an iron gate rises every Friday afternoon, and with the outside rumblings of construction at ground zero as a backdrop, hundreds of Muslims crowd inside, facing Mecca in prayer and listening to their imam read in Arabic from the Koran.

The building has no sign that hints at its use as a Muslim prayer space, but these modest beginnings point to a far grander vision: an Islamic center near the city’s most hallowed piece of land that would stand as one of ground zero’s more unexpected and striking neighbors.

The location was precisely a key selling point for the group of Muslims who bought the building in July. A presence so close to the World Trade Center, “where a piece of the wreckage fell,” said Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the cleric leading the project, “sends the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11.” [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Nope, that site was no accident. It was chosen PRECISELY because it is close to Ground Zero, and because part of the landing gear fell.

Again, to those who keep acting like this is just some random site and those opposed to it are off our rockers, here’s the proof. From Imam Rauf’s own mouth. Satisfied yet? Yeah, that’s about what I expected – no amount of facts will matter. Whatever.

And then there is this story. It is no secret that California has been struggling mightily with its budget and deficits. That makes the following story even more disturbing than it would be otherwise:

Have these people lost their minds? Marble? In a public high school? While they are having to cut back on Education? That is just nuts.

Okay, one more, if you can stand it. This is the former head of the DNC, failed presidential candidate, and former governor, Howard Dean, giving advice to the Obama camp. Wait until you hear it. There is a bonus discussion about an organization funding Republicans:

Oh. My. Gosh. A bit of advice, Governor Dean – put down the Hopium pipe. You have had way too much…

And George Soros doesn’t hide behind an organization? Really? Huh. Is there an organization he funds that supports Democrats that has his name in it? If so, lemme know.

There ya go – a few stories of the day. Feel free to talk about these, or any other, stories.

The Democrats have literally taken food out of the mouths of babes, the elderly, and numerous needy people in between. Literally. They have cut $12 BILLION from the Food Stamps Program to support the Teachers Union. And Wall Street is responding with a free-fall. Why? Because this $26 Billion will pay for about 8 – 9 months for the teachers and Medicaid, but we will be taxed for TEN years to pay for it, according to Stuart Varney of Fox Business News:

That is a sobering report, is it not?

And get this justification for the cut to Food Stamps:

[snipDemocratic rank and file members, including Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, say the cuts won’t take effect until 2014 and will merely return food stamp benefits to pre-stimulus levels. [snip]

Here’s a newsflash, Reid – people have been losing their jobs at a rate of almost half a million per WEEK, with fewer jobs being created. People NEED Food Stamps to LIVE.

WTH is WRONG with these people?? But hey, don’t take my word for it. Their own government bureau says the same thing:

[snip]According to U.S. Department of Agriculture figures, the number of people on the food stamp rolls has been growing to record levels for 18 straight months. Nearly $5.5 billion in aid went out to beneficiaries in May alone. The number of May recipients marked a 19 percent increase from a year ago and the USDA projects that next year’s enrollment will reach about 43.4 million.[snip]

Rep. Paul Ryan voiced what many Republicans were saying:

[snip]“It is basically taxpayers from fiscally (responsible) states bailing out fiscally irresponsible states. … Medicaid funding, teacher funding, the more popular of the public unions, what this is, it’s a bailout to prevent states from doing the necessary spending prioritization that they need do,” he said. [snip]

Yep, pretty much. There is so much more to this issue and article (click here to read the rest), and the fallout will surely continue, as it should. Wow…

Original post of “Oh, Who Really Needs Food Stamps In This Economy”: Apparently, that is what the Obama Administration thinks, according to this very disturbing story, Obey: White House Suggested Cutting Food Stamps to Pay for Education Program. The headline really says it all.

But you may be surprised by who is saying this. It isn’t anyone from the Republican Party:

This entire interview with Rep. Dave Obey (D-Wis.), the head of the House Appropriations Committee and a powerful veteran member of Congress, who is retiring this year, is worth a read. But one passage is particularly striking. Obey is discussing his proposal to divert funds from the Obama administration’s Race to the Top education program to save teachers’ jobs. Due to the states’ fiscal crises, as many as 200,000 local government employees, many of them teachers, might lose their jobs in the coming year.

The proposal made it in to the House war-funding bill, which needs a Senate vote. The White House has threatened to veto the war-funding bill if it contains Obey’s change. [snip]

We have not heard much about Obama’s “Race For The Top” Education plan. That is interesting since it is proving to be as much of a failure as Bush’s “No Child Left Behind.” We heard about the latter quite often, but the former? Not so much. Gee, cannot imagine why.

But let’s get back to Rep. Obey and what he has to say about Obama’s budget:

Here is the quote, from an interview with The Fiscal Times:

The secretary of education [Arne Duncan] is whining about the fact he only got 85 percent of the money he wanted .… [W]hen we needed money, we committed the cardinal sin of treating him like any other mere mortal. We were giving them over $10 billion in money to help keep teachers on the job, plus another $5 billion for Pell, so he was getting $15 billion for the programs he says he cares about, and it was costing him $500 million [in reductions to the Race to the Top program]. Now that’s a pretty damn good deal. So as far as I’m concerned, the secretary of education should have been happy as hell. He should have taken that deal and smiled like a Cheshire cat. He’s got more walking around money than every other cabinet secretary put together.

It blows my mind that the White House would even notice the fight [over Race to the Top]. I would have expected the president to say to the secretary, “Look, you’re getting a good deal, for God’s sake, what this really does is guarantee that the rest of the money isn’t going to be touched.” We gave [Duncan] $4.3 billion in the stimulus package, no questions asked. He could spend it any way he wants. … I trusted the secretary, so I gave him a hell of a lot more money than I should have.

My point is that I have been working for school reform long before I ever heard of the secretary of education, and long before I ever heard of Obama. And I’m happy to welcome them on the reform road, but I’ll be damned if I think the only road to reform lies in the head of the secretary of education.

We were told we have to offset every damn dime of [new teacher spending]. Well, it ain’t easy to find offsets, and with all due respect to the administration their first suggestion for offsets was to cut food stamps. Now they were careful not to make an official budget request, because they didn’t want to take the political heat for it, but that was the first trial balloon they sent down here. … Their line of argument was, well, the cost of food relative to what we thought it would be has come down, so people on food stamps are getting a pretty good deal in comparison to what we thought they were going to get. Well isn’t that nice. Some poor bastard is going to get a break for a change.

[snip] Click here to read the rest.

Wow. So Obama wants to LITERALLY take food off the tables of some of the poorest people in our society, as this quote highlights:

Well, it ain’t easy to find offsets, and with all due respect to the administration their first suggestion for offsets was to cut food stamps.

That is telling, telling indeed. Kinda makes you wonder just who was behind this push, doesn’t it? Regardless, there have got to be better places from which to get money than taking food out of the mouths of babes.

Hey, I have an idea – how about cutting back on all of the czars Obama has put in place, including his latest Pastry Czar? Oh, that isn’t his official title, but the Obama’s chef has now been elevated, behind closed doors, to Senior Policy Adviser for Healthy Foods Initiatives, aka, Food Czar. I am just going to guess that came with an increase in salary. Is it any wonder D.C. residents make the most money in the U.S.?

Yet Obama wants to cut Food Stamps? Really??

The irony would be too rich if it wasn’t so despicable.

Now, let me say right upfront – I had a number of absolutely outstanding teachers during the course of my education. I had teachers who encourage, supported, believed, and pushed me to believe in myself. Their efforts helped me to rise to a high academic level. I have nothing but respect for the majority of teachers, their hard work, their care, their out of pocket expenditures for their students, and their passion for teaching. Those were the kinds of teachers I was fortunate enough to have, from first grade on up. I was fortunate to grow up in a state (NC) that had an outstanding public school system, as well as outstanding state universities.

But I know not all teachers are like the majority of the ones I had, unfortunately. And it is to that point that Brooks writes:

I started covering education reform in 1983, with the release of the “Nation at Risk” report. In those days everybody had some idea for how we should reorganize the schools or change the curriculum—cut school size, cut class size, create vouchers, create charters, get back to basics, do less basics, increase local control, increase the federal role.

Some of the reforms seemed promising, but the results were disappointing, and tangential to the core issue: the relationship between teacher and student. It is mushy to say so, but people learn from people they love.

Today, aided by the realization that teacher quality is what matters most, a new cadre of reformers have come on the scene, many of them bred within the ranks of Teach for America. These are stubborn, data-driven types with a low tolerance for bullshit. The reform environment they find themselves in is both softhearted and hardheaded. They put big emphasis on the teaching relationship, but are absolutely Patton-esque when it comes to dismantling anything that interferes with that relationship. This includes union rules that protect bad and mediocre teachers, teacher contracts that prevent us from determining which educators are good and which need help, and state and federal laws that either impede reform or dump money into the ancien régime.

Ah, and we have come to the crux of the matter – the unions:

The past few years have seen an absolute change in the correlation of forces. It used to be that a few policy wonks would write essays assailing union rules that protected mediocre teachers; these pronouncements were greeted with skepticism in the media and produced no political movement. Now powerful political players, most notably President Obama, are making such arguments. The unions feel the sand eroding under their feet. They sense their lack of legitimacy, especially within the media and the political class. They still fight to preserve their interests, but they’ve lost their moral authority, as we’ve seen in New York City, Denver, Chicago, and even Washington, D.C.

The battle is not over, not by a long shot. Although the environment for change is more fertile now than ever before, we have yet to see what it can yield. An education reformer sent me an e-mail a few months ago saying he had never been so optimistic about the state of education reform—and yet never so pessimistic about the government’s ability to solve fundamental problems.

As I was saying above – there are concerns about this new Plan of Obama’s being little different from Bush’s in the overall effect. And, of course, the issue of unions protecting teachers who shouldn’t still be teaching (or in some cases, never allowed to start).

That brings me to the article that was in my paper on Sunday. What I didn’t tell you was the full headline, particularly the subheading, which, frankly, brought me up short: Literacy Rates Show Improvement; In Charleston County, fewer incoming freshmen reading at fourth-grade level or worse. Did you catch that? High school students reading at a fourth grade level or BELOW. To me, it begs the obvious question – how in the HELL did they make it to high school??? Honestly, this just does not compute.

I might add, this is being said in a positive way. Here’s more:

The Charleston County School District’s new and aggressive campaign to improve students’ reading already has sparked notable improvements, with the superintendent calling the gains a “great reflection of progress.”

New figures show the percentage of next year’s freshmen who read at a fourth-grade level or worse has dropped from 18 percent to 14 percent. Last year, nearly one in five students couldn’t read better than a fourth-grader. This year, it’s one in seven.

“When they came to me with these numbers, it was the best day I’ve had in a long time,” said Superintendent Nancy McGinley. “It proves when we focus on something, we can get it done.”

School officials learned about students’ weak reading skills last year after The Post and Courier requested this analysis. The superintendent and school board responded by making literacy the district’s top priority, and the emphasis on reading has permeated every school.

Oh, yay! But here is the take home message:

Still, while this year’s results seem promising, it will take several years to know whether it’s a one-year blip or part of a long-term trend. The district didn’t track this information until last year.

Which begs another question: why not? Had the Post and Courier not asked them, they wouldn’t have known how many of their Senior High school kids could not read the level of material for the class they were in?

But here’s my favorite part:

Schools always have worked on literacy, but teachers and principals received a clear message this year that they would be accountable for students’ reading skills, McGinley said. She said she thinks this year’s results reflect several years of attention on the issue.

All evidence to the contrary, apparently. I am just saying, to claim they have “always worked on literacy” when such a large number of students cannot read anywhere CLOSE to a high school level, is laughable.

The good news is, though, they are going to work harder at it:

District officials made new efforts this year to promote literacy, and they plan to roll out a more expansive, intensive, multi-million-dollar plan this fall to identify and help weak readers.

The programs for struggling readers will be mandatory instead of voluntary, and the district will expand its reach to include first-graders and sixth-graders across the district. McGinley said she expects to see more progress among students as those plans take effect. (Click here to read the rest.)

I would certainly hope so.

Bear in mind, this is but one county here in SC, and holds one of the most beautiful and historic cities in the country within its confines (not that I am biased). To learn the level of literacy (or lack thereof) here is just astonishing.

Or is it? Maybe we’re doing better here in Charleston County than I thought judging from this study, which has higher numbers for literacy (or illiteracy). Wow. This just blows me away.

Let me add that it isn’t like I didn’t know illiteracy was a problem in our country. I remember well working with prisoners and discovering they couldn’t read (which meant they couldn’t read the legal documents I presented to them), and being very surprised by the numbers (higher than I thought they would be). That was in MA, back in the ’90′s. But it was still a shock to realize how many people in this country, are reading far below the levels they need to be.

How about in your area? For the teachers in the crowd, what are the issues that get in the way of our children learning how to read and be functionally literate? What is happening in our schools that one-fifth of our students can’t really read by the time they get to high school (again, how are they getting to high school???)? And what can we do to change these numbers? I look forward to your responses.

UPDATE: This article was in my paper today, a follow-up to the one mentioned above, “Failing Our Students: Exam Illustrates Literacy Hurdles.”

But I am not writing about any of those issues today, except to say my heart goes out to those in the Gulf States, as well as Tennessee and Kentucky. I might add, kudos to those in New York for their quick action.

Rather, I want to mention a recent report that is a good news/bad news report that came out in April. The report, taken from Census results, claims that women are now on a par with men in advanced degrees. Wow – that is quite a step! That’s the good news. Ready for the bad news? I am sure you can guess: we still don’t get paid the same. Nope, different day, same result:

Women are now just as likely as men to have completed college and to hold an advanced degree, part of an accelerating trend of educational gains that have shielded women from recent job losses. Yet they continue to lag behind men in pay.

Among adults 25 and older, 29 percent of women in the U.S. have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 30 percent of men, according to 2009 census figures released Tuesday. Measured by raw numbers, women already surpass men in undergraduate degrees by roughly 1.2 million.

Women also have drawn even with men in holding advanced degrees. Women represented roughly half of those in the U.S. with a master’s degree or higher, due largely to years of steady increases in women opting to pursue a medical or law degree.

At current rates, women could pass men in total advanced degrees this year, even though they still trail significantly in several categories such as business, science and engineering.

“It won’t be long before women dominate higher education and every degree level up to Ph.D.,” said Mark Perry, an economics professor at the University of Michigan-Flint who is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank. “They are getting the skills that will protect them from future downturns.”

While young women have been exceeding men in college enrollment since the early 1980s, the educational gains have now progressively spread upward to older age groups. That could have wide ramifications in the workplace: more working mothers, increased child-care needs and a greater focus on pay disparities among them.

Women with full-time jobs now have weekly earnings equal to 80.2 percent of what men earn, up slightly from 2008 but lower than a high of 81 percent in 2005.

So, why the continued disparity in pay, then? If we are on a par with men in terms of education, why are we not getting paid the same as they are? And if women are going to overtake men, will pay go up for women, or will it just come down for men? I guess we’ll see, but it is infuriating that this disparity continues after all these years. When will the time come that women will be treated as truly equal??

And that brings me to this story. Now, you know I am a huge baseball fan, so when I saw this headline, it caught my eye,
Joe Niekro’s Knuckler Lives Through Arm of 12-Year-Old Girl. Say whaaa? How can that be? This is how:

As an organ donor, pitching great Joe Niekro left his eyes behind so another man could see. He left his liver, kidneys and heart so three others could live today.

He left a unique and special gift — his famed knuckleball — to a precocious little girl who could be on the verge of inspiring a whole new generation of baseball players.

Chelsea Baker, only 12, has learned to make that pitch dance, to magically make it move like a butterfly on its way to home plate, baffling and befuddling young hitters. Like Joe taught her, shortly before his death in 2006 (the two are seen in the photo above, courtesy of Rod Mason).

“Joe would be so proud, so really proud,” said Debbie Niekro, Joe’s widow who has watched Chelsea pitch several times. “He really liked Chelsea. He loved the way she listened, and learned at that age. He knew she was going to be something special.”

Niekro was 61 when he died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. At the time, he was helping coach a Little League team on which Chelsea and his own son played in his adopted hometown of Plant City.

Wow, what gifts Niekro left behind, from being an organ donor, an issue near and dear to my heart (my mom received a liver transplant almost 25 years ago, which allowed us to have her for all those years before her death in January), to coaching Little Leaguers, to treating this little girl like she was just as worthy as any of those boys on the field. That is no small thing. Nor was the way in which he inspired this little girl:

Chelsea was 8 when he died, too young to quite understand how final death would be, but old enough to understand the gift that Niekro had left her. It gave her a passion for the game, and specifically for the pitch.

“I bugged him to teach me because I never could hit that knuckleball when he would throw it to me in batting practice. He always said it was a secret, but he finally taught me, and we worked on it a lot,” Chelsea told FanHouse last week after a game. “I love throwing it. My catcher says it’s so nasty.”

And the batters can’t touch it. Although there are many young girls peppered across America now playing Little League Baseball with the boys, there are only a few who can dominate as Chelsea does.

She has thrown two perfect games within the past year, including one in an All-Star Game. She is unbeaten this season in nine starts, throwing 54 innings and striking out 103 batters while allowing only four runs. She also is hitting .569, playing third base when she doesn’t pitch.

“When she first came to me for instruction, I was thinking ‘OK, here is a girl I can help,” said Keith Maxwell, a hitting instructor who played 12 years of professional baseball, including five with the Pittsburgh Pirates organization. “But after two weeks with her, I was like ‘wow.’ She has an incredible pop in her bat. She isn’t just a pitcher. I thought, ‘This is probably going to be the first girl to play Major League Baseball.’ And I don’t say that lightly.”

Holy cow, wouldn’t that be SOMETHING? I would sure love to live to see that day, a woman playing in the Big Leagues. Just think about this: baseball players, football players, and basketball players make MILLIONS of dollars a year – if they are men. Women do not have access to those kinds of salaries as professional athletes with the exceptions of tennis and golf. Professional women soccer and basketball players are not signing multi-million dollar contracts right out of college, that’s for sure. The disparity is glaring and extreme. For women to finally have access to those kinds of salaries would be a big deal indeed.

Back to Chelsea:

She already is being recruited to play for the Sparks, a girls baseball team based in the Northeast that tours nationally playing against the best boys teams in the country.

Chelsea, average size for a 12-year-old girl, is unusually athletic with a powerful arm and a fastball that comes close to 70 mph. Yet it’s Niekro’s knuckleball, and the passion he sparked, that makes her so special.

It’s why in the fall, when her sixth-grade history assignment was to do a project on “Someone Who Changed The World,” she selected Joe Niekro as her topic. She already had all his old baseball cards. She had several pictures of her and him on the baseball field together.

“I got an A on the project. The teacher told us it had to be about someone you felt strongly about,” she said. “And I knew how famous Coach Joe was. I miss him. I remember before every game I pitched, I had to give him a kiss on the cheek before he’d give me the ball.”

Niekro pitched 22 seasons in the major leagues for seven different teams. He won 221 games. He and his brother Phil Niekro combined for 539 wins, the most of any brother tandem in history. Chelsea knows all those numbers now.

Some of his time in the Bigs was spent in Atlanta, my favorite NL team, with his brother, Phil. He and Phil were also in the Pinstripes of the New York Yankees while I was living in New York. What a career. Chelsea could tell you all about it:

She is the one who wrote the moving passage that was used as part of Niekro’s obituary tribute. It brought friends and family members to tears.

“Coach Joe taught me so much in the few short years I new (sic) him. He taught me how to have pride in myself, and to be humble. Most of all, he taught me to throw his famous knuckle ball. . . . . I miss seeing him . . . . . . and his happy face at the ballpark. I will always remember and love you. – CHELSEA BAKER.”

It was also Chelsea who came to the funeral viewing services and left a baseball in Niekro’s open casket. And it wasn’t just any baseball, either. It was a scuffed baseball, with four tiny and barely visible fingernail marks along the seams, exactly where he taught her to grip it.

“He taught me how to hold it like this,” she demonstrated last week. “I usually wait until I have two strikes. They can’t hit it. He told me that’s how it would be.”

She is merely a seventh-grader, but watching her pitch or watching her play, or hearing her speak about Niekro, she seems much older. For all her accomplishments — she will make her sixth consecutive All-Star team in Plant City — she is surprisingly humble.

Now THAT is something to celebrate. An accomplished athlete who makes good grades AND is humble. Wow. This pretty much says it all:

Some of her teachers at Turkey Creek Middle School don’t even know she plays baseball. Most of the boys do, because they’ve been playing against her for several years, accepting her as one of the best. It’s when she travels, as the only girl in her league, that occasionally she hears remarks about her being a girl. Mostly it’s from the grandstands, from other parents.

“I still hear parents from other teams say, ‘When is she going to start playing softball?’ ” said stepfather Rod Mason, who helps coach her team now. “And it kind of ticks me off. So I usually just say, ‘When she stops striking out your little Johnny.’ ”

Well said, Mr. Mason. Well said, indeed. How fortunate Chelsea is to have such supportive people in her life:

Mason and wife Missy have followed Chelsea’s baseball from the start. She started with baseball because that’s what Mason’s sons played. And she just happened to be so good at it.

“I’ve had other parents tell me now that they couldn’t get their girls to practice until they saw Chelsea play,” Mason said. “I think her success will help other girls. She’s just so unbelievably focused. I never ask her to practice. But she always comes to me.”

Home-plate umpires often come to Steve Gude, manager of her team now, and apologize for missing calls when Chelsea pitches. Her knuckleball often darts out and back into the strike zone when she keeps it low — like Coach Joe taught her.

Joe never taught her this trick, but it’s one she can do if you ask. She can stand out in center field — and her arm is so strong — she can throw a knuckleball all the way to home plate, giggling as it flutters through the air.

“Joe was really good to her,” Mason said. “He went out of his way to help her. He was such a giving guy with all the kids, always willing to help. But I think he knew Chelsea was kind of special.”

Women are graduating with advanced degrees in equal numbers with men. Our pay still lags behind the men. Good news, bad news. And the bad news is simply unacceptable in this day and age. Women must get the same pay as their male colleagues. Women must learn to stand together and demand the same salary as the guys with whom they are graduating. It is not going to be something handed down from on high. This battle has been dragging on far too long.

But then there is Chelsea Baker, a knuckleballer who throws as hard as Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield, who can also hit, and may well be the first woman to go up to the Big Show. Oh, who is also a good student and humble to boot. Here’s hoping she is one of many to shatter that glass ceiling. How ironic would that be – to have a woman in the Big Leagues before we have a woman president? Looking like that might be possible. It’s a start, though, a glimmer of hope. I’ll take it.

Wow.

Well, to make matters worse, not only did they initially cancel the other one, but after some, um, “consideration,” provided an alternative. Except it wasn’t really: McMillen: I Was Sent to Fake Prom. Bear in mind, this is a high school girl. What were these people thinking? I contend they were not:

Constance McMillen confirmed to The Advocate that she was sent to a “fake prom” while the rest of her class partied at a secret location at a parent-organized event.

To avoid Constance McMillen bringing a female date to her prom, the teen was sent to a “fake prom” while the rest of her class partied at a secret location at an event organized by parents.

McMillen tells The Advocate that a parent-organized prom happened behind her back — she and her date were sent to a Friday night event at a country club in Fulton, Miss., that attracted only five other students. Her school principal and teachers served as chaperones, but clearly there wasn’t much to keep an eye on.

“They had two proms and I was only invited to one of them,” McMillen says. “The one that I went to had seven people there, and everyone went to the other one I wasn’t invited to.”

Last week McMillen asked one of the students organizing the prom for details about the event, and was directed to the country club. “It hurts my feelings,” McMillen says.

No kidding. If course it hurt her feelings, which anyone, especially a PARENT should have known:

Two students with learning difficulties were among the seven people at the country club event, McMillen recalls. “They had the time of their lives,” McMillen says. “That’s the one good thing that come out of this, [these kids] didn’t have to worry about people making fun of them [at their prom].”

In March, after the Itawamba County School District refused to allow McMillen to bring a female date to the prom, the district canceled the event altogether. McMillen and her lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union challenged that decision in court, and a judge ruled the district could not bar McMillen and her date.

The judge declined to force the school district to hold the prom because a parent-sponsored, private prom was being organized — and the understanding was that McMillen and her date were invited to that event. But Hampton says McMillen was never invited and organizers made it very difficult for her to find information on the time and location. That prom was later mysteriously canceled, with the Friday night event at the country club officially replacing it.

These people are THAT intimidated by two little lesbians? Holy cow, people – get a grip already! What did they think she was going to be doing at the prom besides dancing? And it isn’t like high school kids don’t know homosexuality exists or anything. So cruel – incredibly cruel – of them to have treated her this way.

When your high school, your school district, your classmates, and their parents, all treat you like a pariah simply because of your sexual orientation, yeah, it’s gonna hurt your feelings just a tad (and no wonder suicide among L/G/B/T youth is four times – I said FOUR TIMES – as high as it is for heterosexual kids). I am glad Constance is standing up for herself, though. What a lot of strength this young woman is demonstrating. That kind of intestinal fortitude should put her in good stead as she makes it through life.

In the meantime, shame on the people in her town, the parents and the school district members, especially. If someone treated their child like Constance is being treated, they wouldn’t like it one little bit. And they wouldn’t stand for it.

And they shouldn’t expect Constance to stand for it, either.

Update: Meileen commented below that the parents at this school are teaching hate, while those at another school dealt with attempts to sow hatred very differently:

Thanks, Meileen – I think this says it all!

It is not just that Ms. Goggins was the first black woman in the South Carolina legislature. It is what she accomplished in the legislature during her tenure. Her history, and her passing, are woven together in this narrative:

When Juanita Goggins became the first black woman elected to the South Carolina Legislature in 1974, she was hailed as a trailblazer and twice visited the president at the White House.

Three decades later, she froze to death at age 75, a solitary figure living in a rented house four miles from the gleaming Statehouse dome. (AP File Photo, 1974)

Goggins, whose achievements included key legislation on school funding, kindergarten and class size, had become increasingly reclusive. She spent her final years turning down help from neighbors who knew little of her history-making past. Her body was not discovered for more than a week.

Those neighbors, as well as former colleagues and relatives, are now left wondering whether they could have done more to help.

How tragic. Freezing to death might make more sense given the winter parts of our nation have had, but this was the Upstate (as we call it), near the capital. More on this below.

But it was how she lived her life that was so inspiring:

“I’m very saddened. People like her you want to see live forever. She had quite a gift for helping others,” said state Sen. John Land, a fellow Democrat who was first elected to the House the same year as Goggins.

Goggins, the youngest of 10 children, grew up the daughter of a sharecropper in rural Anderson County, about 130 miles northwest of the capital. She was the only sibling to earn a four-year college degree. Her bachelor’s in home economics from then-all-black South Carolina State College was followed by a master’s degree.

She taught in the state’s segregated schools, married a dentist and got into politics. In 1972, she became the first black woman to represent South Carolina as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Two years later, she became the first black woman appointed to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

“I am going to Columbia to be a legislator, not just a black spot in the House chambers,” she told The Associated Press in 1974 following her victory over an incumbent white man from a district just south of Charlotte, N.C.

Wow – what a stunning statement. I love her spirit in that declaration. And she had a reason for phrasing it just that way:

Voters “were weary of poor representation. They were ready to accept a person who was sincere and concerned about things. Those feelings go beyond color,” Goggins said.

She sat on the powerful House budget-writing committee and was responsible for funding sickle-cell anemia testing in county health departments.

The former teacher also helped pass the 1977 law that is still the basis for education funding in the state. Her proposals to expand kindergarten and to reduce student-teacher ratios in the primary grades were adopted after she left politics in 1980, citing health issues.

“She was not bashful or anything. She liked to talk. I used to say she could sell an Eskimo ice,” recalled Ilese Dixon, 88, of Pendleton, Goggins’ last surviving sibling. “She was just lively and smart. She thought she could fix the world.”

That is quite a resume Coggins amassed in the Legislature. Clearly her passion for education was reflected in the law she helped pass, and thankfully so. Education has not been the strong suit for South Carolina, I’m afraid.

But what of her life after the Legislature? Here is more:

Her colleagues say they never learned the specifics of her illness and, since she didn’t talk about it, they didn’t press.

Several years after leaving the Legislature, Goggins divorced and then moved to Columbia in the early 1990s, renting the brick ranch house in a quiet neighborhood off North Main Street where she lived for 16 years.

Her son said she worked several years as a case manager for the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, although a spokesman said the agency had no records of her employment. At one point, she also started a nonprofit tutoring service called the Juanita W. Goggins School of Excellence.

Neighbors said she was always a private person. One neighbor said she would return her waves, but refused to let visitors in the door.

Last year, about the same time the Legislature voted to name part of a state highway after her, Goggins was mugged near her home. She changed the locks on her door and stopped taking walks, according her neighbors and landlord.

Good heavens – how horrible that she was mugged in general, but the injury to insult of it happening around the time her name was associated with the state highway seems obvious to me.

Sadly, Ms. Coggins was alone when she died:

Police found Goggins’ body March 3 — two weeks after she was last seen. Her landlord contacted police after a next-door neighbor realized he had not seen her lights on in some time.

Coroner Gary Watts said she died of hypothermia, probably about Feb. 20, and said he found indications of dementia. When she died, during a cold snap, Goggins was wearing several layers of clothing, yet her heat was working at the time.

She had money to pay her bills, but the utility company said it shut off the electricity for nonpayment Feb. 23. Watts said it appeared Goggins was using Sterno to cook, but her stove was still functioning when police climbed through a window and found her.

Wow, this is just so sad, on so many levels:

“I miss her,” said Erskine Hunter, an 83-year-old neighbor who ensured Goggins’ lawn was mowed and hedges were trimmed. “I don’t know why I didn’t go over there and hammer on the door.”

Hunter said Goggins occasionally came to his home and visited with his granddaughter. She refused to let anyone drive her anywhere, and refused rides to and from the bus stop, so he often went to the grocery store for her. But he had not done that in several months.

State Sen. John Scott, whose realty company owns Goggins’ home, said he and his sister tried to take care of Goggins as best as they could without prying.

“We lost a great trailblazer,” said Scott, a Democrat from Columbia. “Our family’s very saddened this happened to a person who’s given so much.”

His sister who manages the property, Linda Marshall, said Goggins declined help from the county.

“She needed someone to assist her, but anyone who tried to get close, she’d block them off,” she said. “She was very fragile. This was something I always dreaded.”

Why she withdrew remains a mystery even to her son. He attributes it to her illness, which was never fully diagnosed.

“That’s something I’ve been trying to get my head around for the last 15 years,” said Horace Goggins Jr., 42, of Powder Springs, Ga.

He last saw her about six months ago. She would not let him help her either, he said.

He wants to focus on her accomplishments and the good times at his mother’s funeral Friday in Rock Hill.

“I would like for her to be remembered as a woman who cared about her community,” he said. “I want her to be remembered as a positive role model, not only for African-American girls, but also any young girl who has a want and a desire to make a change and do something positive.” (Emphasis mine.)(This version CORRECTS the age of Goggins’ son to 42, not 43.)

And so, that is how Ms. Coggins will be remembered, as someone who worked hard to make something of herself, but who did not stop there. She went on to live a life filled with good works on behalf of others, especially children, to try and ensure they had the best start in education possible. That is no small feat. Add to that her work on sickle cell anemia, and her contributions were invaluable.

We mourn her passing, and extend deepest condolences to her family and friends. And yet, we celebrate the many gifts Juanita Coggins brought to so many in this state. May she be a role model for all girls, regardless of race,regardless of locale, to let them know they, too, can make a difference with their lives. Juanita Coggins rightfully takes her place in this Women’s History Month for her accomplishments, and her efforts on behalf of others. May she rest in peace knowing she lived a life of giving.