Fact-esque

While It's on My Mind

Every week Susan G. at dKos and Roxanne each do a great job of finding blog posts and stories that may otherwise be lost and bringing them to the attention of a large group of readers.  SusanG combs through the dKos diaries to perform daily what she calls Diary Rescue.  Roxanne's has frequently run posts under the title "For Your Reading Pleasure" for a long time now.  Saturday's was an epic effort. 

I don't know how they manage to read and write so much good stuff at the same time. 

StDLH: I'll Do What I Can Version

Rob at Realtique has two great finds.  One is the suggestion that officials at Gitmo were conducting show interrogations for the benefit of visiting dingitaries.  Not surprising. 

The other is a good catch from BushCo's whining press conference last night, which I haven't read in any of the corporate media's coverage of the Piratization Roadshow's big Prime Time debut.   Hint: When are Treasury Bonds a worthless pile of IOUs and when are they a valuable way for risk-adverse people to invest with the backing of the full faith and credit of the US government? 

StDLH: I've Been Falling Down on the Job Edition

Rules and regulations here.

So busy. Here are a few blogs new to me:

Bats Left, Throws Right by Doghouse Riley. I'd seen Doghouse's comments everywhere, but didn't find his place until he blogged something positive about a comment I left at Rox's. Yes, I'm exactly that vain. Not finding him sooner was my loss. Yesterday I found out that he remembered Bessie Smith's birthday and how she died, he has a novel Friday Random Shuffle and he's on M*ch*ll* M*lk*n's back.

Freshman44 by Kathy. (another Chatty Kathy!) I found Kathy threw a comment she left at Doghouse's place. She has a son in 6th grade too so I was an immediate fan. She's also going back to school to get a second BA after already earning a JD. Smart, funny, great writing. And she's a baseball fan!

Don't know what's going on with the UK elections? Kathy at What do I Know does and she's blogging all about it and other interesting things - like a demonstration against poverty organized by Radiohead's Thom Yorke. There was tea! I want us to organize demonstrations against poverty - tea is optional.

Ron Moore's Blog. Ron Moore is the head writer of Battlestar Gallactica, currently getting all sorts of good press in Blogtopia. I don't watch the show, but I'm starting to wish I did. If you like Battlestar, Moore's blog is a chance to see what the chief cook and bottle washer was thinking when, for instance, he had Lee shoot down a civilian ship knowing full well that it was probably filled with innocent human beings.

And he doesn't need links, but I really like Zach Braf. His Garden State blog is a an obvious promotional vehicle, but it's also a good read. He gets up to 3,000 comments for a post. What is it about celebrities? Do people throw themselves completely into their songs, films and television shows because they think they mean more than politics or because they think they mean less?

On that topic, check out John Edwards' blog. He's the closest thing to Zach Braf we've got so far. Let the corporate media blather about Sen. Clinton and '08. Edwards is my candidate. He's practically been Eugene Debs lately. I know I'm easy, but I'm in love.

And where are the NYT stories about the post-election acivities of Edwards, Dean and Kerry? All three have kept their profiles high among the faithful and have cearly staked out their hallmark issues for '08 - and, god willing, '06. Edwards is all over poverty and union issues. Dean's got the reaching out to the Southern voter covered. Kerry, typically harder to figure, seems to be mumbling about election reform. (Great. MY issue gets Kerry to sell it. ) Seems like there's a story worth writing in there.

* To be fair to Kerry, I read that he's also working on tracking down a money trail similar to the work he did with BCCS back in the day. If I can find the link, I'll post it. No promises.

StDLH Saturday - Follow the Money Edition

Friday got away from me. The kids were home from school. The husband had the day off. I had planned a different Subvert the Dominent Link Hierarchy list for today but I'll put that one off until next week since I found something via the excellent progressive edublog, An Old Soul, that is a one-stop, one-issue link list of blogs you may not already know.

Shari, who runs An Old Soul, writes:

... I quietly lurk in two huge blogging circles which rarely intersects: the 'edublog' world and the progressive blog world. My own personal goal: I want bloggers in these two worlds who identify with our agenda to know about each other.

Now there's a great goal. There are three areas that the Republican Radicals are currently trying to gut: Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and Public Education. Those three policy areas are where the money is and they want to get their mitts on it. It's that simple. (They've already essentially killed Organized Labor, but they're still kicking the body and getting ready to nail the coffin shut) The first two targets, especially SocSec, get all the press because that's the way the Radical Republicans want it to be. The distraction helps them make progress on the destruction of Public Education, among other institutions crucial to the country's survival.

Read this story about a bill that just passed the Texas legislature. (link via NoNCLB.org):

As public education advocates see it, one of the most frightening features of the school finance bill that limped out of the House last week is a provision that could spell the beginning of the end of public schools in Texas. This unraveling process would start by empowering the state education commissioner to turn over control of low-performing schools to private, for-profit companies. If the bill were in effect today, some estimates reflect that as many as 375 school campuses would qualify as candidates for private takeover.

This is just one of the things about House Bill 2 that worries Rep. Mark Strama. The Austin Democrat had at one point considered supporting the bill, if only because of the property-tax relief it would bring to people in his middle-income swing district in northeast Travis Co. But in the end, Strama concluded, "You shouldn't have to hold your nose to vote on the most important issue of the session." Strama had in fact gone back and forth on the bill until an hour before the second-reading vote last Wednesday evening. He had spent the day wearing a look of visible anguish as he moved across the House floor, conferring with one senior colleague or another. Every once in a while he would study a running stream of notes, or add a new entry, like this one: "Takeover of public schools by for-profit corporations ... could affect several Travis County schools, including Connally HS, Johnston HS, Lanier HS, Reagan HS, McCallum HS."

Coming soon to a state near you!

If I learned one thing as a teacher, it's to keep an eye on California and Texas to see what new education ideas will be coming down the pike. Now, instead of new reading and math programs, it looks like we can see wreckless privatization careening towards us. Thanks to Jim, who writes a blog called Shut up and Teach, and Shari, we can all get a heads up about what's going on in education across the country by reading a weekly list of important education posts compiled at Shut Up and Teach. I'm stealing this week's list for my StDLH Saturday. Here it is.