Thank you Berkeley for this. Too often our society forgets public shool teachers who work long hours under hard conditions for little pay and even less appreciation from those of us who can read and write and add and appreciate literature, science, and so much more. They truly are heroes, and they deserve more.

A question that occurs to me is how long it will take some "conservative" to show up to bash recognition of what they see as extortionist union members and bureaucrats in socialized education who deserve even less pay and recognition. Sadly, they are out there, you know...

That answers that question.

The Republican party has spent the last six years running roughshod over the American landscape and excusing their every trespass with endless repetitions of 9-11, 9-11, 9-11. They have inculcated fear, they have smeared opponents, and they have stooped lower than many thought possible...but this...How can anyone excuse so tactless an indecency against the dead as this? Can you imagine how they would attack any Democrats who would pull something like this? This is simply beyond the beyond, even for those reprobates.

I really don't get the Right Wing's logic that it is somehow wrong to actually, you know, pay for things. They are seriously attacking the Democrats for wanting to actually pay for this war that the Right thinks is so important. In what universe that does that make sense? How is it that there are people who still take these clowns seriously? Gee, yeah, it is utterly ridiculous that taxes be levied on the current generation to pay for expenses incurred by the government of the current day in service to the current generation (that said, I got a question read on Diane Rehm a couple of years ago when she had on a neo-con policy adviser. I basically asked about the morality of the sticking the war's cost to the next generation. The fellow had the gall to say that it was perfectly moral, given that the war was for the benefit of the next generation, and the next generation should thus be expected to pay their fair share). Something is really wrong if this argument gets traction. It would indicate the US has decided that taxes are to only be paid in the nebulous future if ever - basically the kind of financial sense that predominates among high school students and college freshmen.

You know, the problem with this item is that it seeks to refute the absurd "conservative" belief in the all-powerful liberal media with evidence (anecdotal, but still evidence). What does this accomplish? Liberals and independents already know that the whole liberal media thing is a lie. "Conservatives", on the other hand, simply will not belief what reality says. Your typical "conservatives" and Republicans are so indoctrinated by their party masters that any attempt to convince them that a news source is not liberal simply because it does not only give the "conservative" point of view. To them, there is no reality save for that perceived through the lens of "conservative" propaganda. There is no point in trying to convince them otherwise. It is pretty much the same problem you would have had with a true-believing Communist. There is no way you could convince such a person that Pravda (i.e. the Communist Fox News) was not the absolute, unvarnished truth, nor that all other media were contaminated by counter-revolutionary, capitalist reactionism. Good try, though.

I was listening to Diane Rehm a few weeks ago, and they had one of those typical Republican talking heads who manages to sound insufferably smug and self-satisfied, while doing nothing more than repeating party talking points over and over again. He at one point started whining about how often Republican candidates are portrayed or caricatured as being dumb. I know that this line with Thompson will provoke similar whines ad nauseum. I wonder, though, if they really believe in this whine, or if they realize that it wouldn't pop up so much if the Republican establishment didn't so favor anti-intellectual stances. They like their candidates to seem un-informed and not terribly bright whether or not this is the case. Take note: if you don't actively try to seem stupid, you won't often be portrayed or mistaken as stupid.

Unless you know nothing about Teddy Roosevelt, what he believed, and what he did, you should know that he would never be a Republican in this day and age. Were he alive today and pushing his same agenda, the right wingers would be going into sputtering convulsions while crying at the top of their lungs about him being a radical leftist communist traitor dedicated to the country's destruction (because, well, everyone who tries to actually do good for this country is dedicated to its destruction in your twisted world-view). TR was a Republican, but the party was different then. He would be likely a left-wing Democrat today (don't forget the whole Bull Moose Progressive party thing), just as James Buchanan would be a Republican today, rather than a Democrat.

Going back to the original point, though, it will be possible for a Republican president or vice president to win a prize for advancing peace, but that will not be for a few decades. The party first needs to shed its dead skin of hate-mongering luddites whose brains have rotted due to excessive exposure to virulent right wing propaganda.