VirusHead

We are letting down our children by not teaching them critical thinking.

I have since lost my collection of astoundingly bad writing (all teachers seem to have them), but here are some sentences sent to me today.

Don’t worry, I won’t give you away, my dear teaching friend! These were written within the last month by university students – I won’t say where (not here, although I’ve seen even worse). Behold the following syntactical and logistical nightmares:

The story really touches a lot of places where usually one story can only cover.

All religions come out of the Bible, so whoever is or has been religious has a connection with the Bible.

People only read the facts because all of the things you find in a great book you could find on a lot of cable television.

Through the television we are displayed a picture which describes the scene or the picture of a person in great detail, yet only to the detail of another person, not your own.

The human interaction with media is an everyday occurrence it is all around us we can not get away from it.

After the death of one of the greatest drivers of NASCAR (Dale Earnhart) the sport had to make these improvements to assure that others would never have to go through this tragic accident again.

When you stop communicating between other people and worrying more about what you have you don’t see what is truly right in front of you.

‘Nuff said?

Articles posted at Common Dreams

I have long been a fan of the novels of E.L. Doctorow, and he comes through again here. (Pssst… read The Book of Daniel, World’s Fair, The City of God of any of the other remarkable novels, short stories, and if I remember, even a play or two, to see what a treasure he is).

E.L. Doctorow | The Unfeeling President

He is the president who does not feel. He does not feel for the families of the dead, he does not feel for the 35 million of us who live in poverty, he does not feel for the 40 percent who cannot afford health insurance, he does not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of the chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay their bills – it is amazing for how many people in this country this president does not feel.

But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all sincerity he is relieving the wealthiest 1 percent of the population of their tax burden for the sake of the rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is decreasing the quality of air in coal mines to save the coal miners’ jobs, and that he is depriving workers of their time-and-a-half benefits for overtime because this is actually a way to honor them by raising them into the professional class.

And this litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when just what he and his party are doing to our democracy is choking the life out of it.

…How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given the stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.

Other recent articles posted at Common Dreams include

Jimmy Carter: ‘The War has Been Unnecessary’

Views

Arianna Huffington | Bush’s Toxic Campaign Mix: God, Country and Perpetual Fear

Haroon Siddiqui | Kerry Should Drill Bush on Security

Nikki Finke | When Might Turns Right – Golly GE, why Big Media is pro-Bush

Farnaz Fassihi | From Baghdad

Headlines

Protesters Prepare for Chase as Plutonium Ships Near UK

Loopholes Allow Arms to be Sold to Blacklisted Regimes

US Republicans Facing a Revolution in Little Havana

US-Backed Warlords Big Threat to Afghan Elections

US is Retreating From International Legal System, Study Finds

U.S. & Coalition/Casualties

CNN keeps a running tab on the Iraq war dead – at least in terms of US/Coalition fatalities.

As of today there have been 1,195 coalition deaths: 1,056 Americans, 68 Britons, six Bulgarians, one Dane, two Dutch, one Estonian, one Hungarian, 19 Italians, one Latvian, 13 Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and nine Ukrainians, in the war in Iraq.

The list presents names of the soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors and Coast Guardsmen whose families have been notified of their deaths by each country’s government. At least 7,532 U.S. troops have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon. The Pentagon does not report the number of non-hostile wounded. This list is updated regularly.

A photo is posted if available, with name, age, unit, hometown, and basic details of how they died.

There is also a POW/MIA list.

Debate this

Stuff you won’t learn about in tonight’s debate, or, half a dozen ways you’re getting screwed, from Molly Ivins is her usual terrific kind of rant. A couple of points that particularly caught me:

The price of a barrel of oil went over $50 for the first time early this week, and the price of gassing up my vehicle, Truck Bob the Ford, is now $36 a pop. According to oil-ologists, this is on account of the unrest in oil-producing countries and rising global demand destabilizing world energy markets. Don’t you love the jargon? The petro experts say this ain’t gonna get better. Also Not Helping — in fact, headed in completely the wrong direction — is U.S. energy policy under You Know Who. More than half the oil we use today is imported, much of it from such stable, democratic regimes as Iraq. The Energy Department predicts this will rise to 70 percent in 20 years. The Natural Resources Defense Council has just put out a new study showing that the five biggest oil companies (ExxonMobil, Total, Shell, BP and ChevronTexaco) reported a $5.5 billion, or 16 percent, increase in profits (emphasis added) during the first half of 2004 compared with the same period last year, which was no slouch either. Both ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco posted record second quarter profits in 2004.

GET IT???? Profits up, costs up, imported? Can you connect a few dots, silly nation? Still wanna drive those big big vehicles? Still want that break on a SUV, bimbo box, hummer?

How about this?

The 6 million of you who will lose overtime pay under the new Department of Labor regulations — a pet cause of business groups — will not be pleased to learn that although the House of Representatives voted against the regs (’tis the season for elections), the R’s are fighting against a Senate vote and Bush says he’ll veto the bill even if it gets passed.

And just a few other nuggets…(thank you Molly)

Forget the bull about "a middle class tax cut" as a pre-election gift from Congress. The Urban Institute reports the middle 20 percent of earners will get an average tax cut of $162 in 2005 — the top fifth of earners will get an average cut of $1,317. Same old, same old.

Bush promised at the Republican convention to spend $1 billion to enroll "millions of poor children" in CHIP, the federal health insurance program. Too bad, this week he’s returning $1.1 billion in unspent CHIP money despite pleas from the states that they really, really need it. That would cover 750,000 uninsured children nationwide.

Molly Ivins is my favorite take on Bush. She’s been watching since Texas years – want more? Check out her archive or read any of her books. They are witty, pithy and accurate.

Act for Change is a subsection of the Working Assets Group. There are several such online action groups now, of course, but I thought I’d post these alerts (below) and also recommend the WorkingForChange online journal where I usually read the latest stuff from Molly Ivins and look at the comic (grin).

A couple of important current actions at Act for Change:

Beware the PATRIOT Act Trojan Horse

Attorney General Ashcroft and his allies in Congress are using the 9/11 Commission report (which you remember that they fought tooth and nail) as cover for new government powers that would infringe on the rights of Americans and foreign guests. The new vehicle for their ill-advised efforts — a new bill in the House of Representatives — would likely create what amounts to a national identification card, drastically curtail basic fairness in the nation’s immigration system and expand on the PATRIOT Act.

Tell Glenda Hood: Resign Now, For Democracy’s Sake

Partisan elections must be administered by non-partisan election officials to ensure they aren’t tempted to use their power to influence the outcome. Unfortunately, the chief election official in Florida, Secretary of State Glenda Hood, is a fierce and unapologetic partisan whose actions indicate a willingness to take audacious actions in support of the Republican Party’s efforts to win Florida for President Bush.

Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood was hand-picked and appointed by Governor Jeb Bush. She came up through party ranks as a Republican mayor who campaigned for President Bush in 2000. Like her role model Katherine Harris, Secretary Hood tried to use a purge of tens of thousands of presumed felons to disenfranchise thousands of African Americans until several lawsuits and public pressure forced her to suspend the effort. She is also a strong advocate for a new Florida law that outlaws manual recounts entirely and has passionately championed the use of paperless touch screen voting machines. Glenda Hood’s actions demonstrate her partisan bias. In order to restore faith in American democracy, Glenda Hood must resign, and a
truly non-partisan replacement must be selected immediately. Our democracy depends on it.

Act for Change