Whats Been Goin' On?

Contributed by Jersey McJones

Well...  hmmm...  let's see... There was the latest poll of greatest Presidents, as usual American education was put on display as the lousiest in the Free World.  Reagan?  I mean, REAGAN???  Ahead of WASHINGTON???  TR????  FDR??? ANDREW JACKSON EVEN???  Hell, Taft was a better laizze faire puppet than Reagan was!   The polls proved one thing, though, "Do you remember the bills you have to pay, or even yesterday?" was Bowie's greatest contribution to American critique.

Eminent domain has been back on the block in CT, Hawaii, NY, and a couple other places.  The CT case in front of the SCOTUS today.  I have an idea about that - instead of fair market value, they should have to give homeowners a cut in future developement profits.  How's that for an "Ownership Society"?  The ACLU, the NAACP, and even a couple of conservative groups have stepped in on the side of the homeowners in this fight.  It should get interesting.

Malcolm X was remembered this weekend.  It's been 40 years since he died.  Time flys, huh?  His life points up the change from militant nationalism to culturally referenced self-determination in the Civil Rights movement.  It's arguable what all this added up to in the end.  His famous quote, "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us!" seems more timely and broadly applicable today more than in quite a long time in American history.

Hockey's demise came as no surprise to most, but the real story there has been conspicuously missing from the scene:  a little socialism is not only not always a bad thing, and sometimes it is vital to a happy and healthy society.  Football, and to a lesser extent Basketball, are perfect examples of socialistically structure cultural institutions.  Like PBS.  Thanks to a fair balance of free agency, salary caps, and profit sharing, football is now more popular than ever.  And it's popular everywhere, not just in the few big cities so dominant in American life.  Yes, it can cost money (take Basketball this year - the big city teams are losing and so the whole league is losing some money - this year...), but in the end, like I've said for years, NOT EVERYTHING PROFITABLE HAS VALUE AND NOT EVERYTHING VALUABLE IS PROFITABLE.  Dummy overzealous capitalists miss that point.  That all said, I blame the players in the case of Hockey (I suspect the Russian mob has a hand in this desire of these erstwhile poor foreign nationals demanding these insane salaries).  So I'm fair.  ;)

Margeret Spellings, the creator of "No Child Left Behind" has stepped up as Education Secretary.  So we can certainly expect American education to continue to sink in the mud.  The real problem with education is that it is locally controlled and the parents are too involved.  GET THE FUCKIN PARENTS OUT OF THE SCHOOLS!  This stupid federal testing does nothing to improve education.  If anything, it threatens the lousy 6% of federal moneys the schools get now, mostly for lunch & breakfast programs and brick & mortar issues.  The federal government can only hurt with this and not help.  Pointless and stupid.  As for Spellings, a slob of the lowest order, she's been a Bush pilot fish for years.

Then there's the Syria/Lebanon thing.  This could get hot.  If the US gets involved, we could have yet another war.  One more war, and we're sunk.  One more war and gas prices will explode forever, and that's just for starters.  Our debt will explode too, and China and India, and the rest of the world may just start cutting their losses on the dollar, leading to a depression that makes the 1930's look like the 1950s.  The good news is - Syria looks like they'll do the right thing in the end here.  We shall see...

Chalabi backed off the Iraqi presidency.  That's good.  He's a slob if there ever was one.  Good news for the war.

That enough for ya'?