Educating Congress
The Onion had an amusing piece on the DC hostage crisis: Emergency Team Of 8th-Grade Civics Teachers Dispatched To Washington.
It’s a funny concept, but it wouldn’t work as 8th-Grade Civics is too advanced for many members of Congress, like my Congresscritter, or Alabama’s Senators. No, what is needed is 537 copies of the Schoolhouse Rock! DVD collection [they have aides who can deal with the complexities of DVDs]. That’s one for every member of Congress, plus the President and Vice President.
Some might limit the order to the America Rock series on history and government, but, after watching them, it’s apparent that they need math, English, and science help too. We have these people talking about the government budget with no proof that any of them know how to balance a checkbook, or can tell the difference between different car loan options.
12 comments
Yeah! Right! 🙄
And let us not forget that your fool-in-charge was a *teacher* for 12 years at the University of Chicago Law School. Actually, I found a good article a while back that explains Obama to some extent.
Senator Obama as a Teacher at the University of Chicago Law School
Like these little gems. Seems the fool-in-charge hasn’t changed much.
Come on, the guy was raised by his grandmother, who was a banker. His first job after graduating from college was working as an editor for a financial newsletter.
He went to the most exclusive private school in Hawaii, and then to Occidental College, a private liberal arts school in Los Angeles for two years before transferring to Columbia University in New York to finish his BA. After a short time working in New York, he went to Harvard Law School. He wasn’t hanging out with the ‘common people’.
His community involvement was more of a job requirement of the Chicago law firm that hired him after he graduated from Harvard.
His wife attended Princeton and Harvard Law and they met at the law firm. She was a vice president of the University of Chicago Medical Center when he was elected President. Her parents were senior civil service employees with major ties to the Chicago Democratic Party.
We are not talking about people with any real roots in the working class, or liberal politics. The Chicago political machine has never been liberal, and while it has always presented itself as working class, it was the right wing of the working class. If you want a short course on the machine just look up the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago.
There is nothing in Obama’s background to suggest to any reasonable observer that he would be anything other than what he is – a conservative. That’s why I didn’t vote for him.
He proved in the 2008 primary that he knows how to fight, but he doesn’t because he doesn’t want to. He is getting what he wants.
I watched TDS (yesterday’s ep actually) and Jon had one of the Chicago Boy’s, Austan Goolsbee, on as guest. Apparently, Goolsbee is leaving his job at the Whitehouse and going back to Chicago. As Jon said, Goolsbee seems as *giddy as a schoolgirl* and on ecstasy to be leaving Washington. Goolsbee said that you can only stay there for so long. 😆 And he also said that there are people in Washington whose tray tables are not in the full upright and locked position. (It’s the first laugh I’ve had for a couple days). 😉 😛
Anyway, I thought it was an interesting interview for a few reasons. It was a relatively long one also, starts about mid way. 🙂
TDS: August 03, 2011 – Austan Goolsbee
Wonder if any of Obama’s other *best buddies* will abandon ship? It could be a measure of their relative intelligence. 😉 😆
Tonight’s Countdown was also a good program.
Austan Goolsbee is one of the authors of this mess, and one of the people who blocked a reasonably sized stimulus package to deal with the meltdown from being proposed by Obama. Oh, he is very glib and amusing, but he is part of the criminally insane group of economists who created the hell we live in. He has been Obama’s principle economic advisor since 2004, and is another Ivy League ‘maroon’.
Goolsbee has been on TDS a lot, and also on Colbert. While he teaches at the University of Chicago, he was raised in California. He attended Yale and is a member of the Skull and Bones like the Bush family.
He has never had a real job in the real economy, but he tells everyone how it works.
Yeah. That was the impression I had of Goolsbee also. I’ve heard him on TDS before, and remember a couple last year where I thought he sounded like another ideologue. Wasn’t very interested in the *opinions* of others, he didn’t like it when Jon mentioned Krugman for example. Says a lot…
In the interview above, he says the right words about *what needs to be done*, but never mentions how (apart from visiting manufacturers for a nice little chat). I’m glad Jon had a go at him for that (albeit, indirectly). He’s personable. One can like him as a person, but not agree with his ideology or methodology. It’s indicative of the problems in the Whitehouse. Obama has, as did Bushmoron, surrounded himself with *yes men*.
The University of Chicago is a center of the ‘fresh-water economists’, the clowns who have gotten everything wrong and missed the global meltdown. Obama surrounded himself with ‘fresh-water’.
Goolsbee is a great dinner party guest by all accounts, and a skilled debater. So was William F. Buckley, but that doesn’t make either of them any less wrong, based on the facts. They fit right in among the Washington crowd, but their ideas are a disaster for anyone not independently wealthy.
If Australia would like to really worry about deficits, they could start looking at China. The Chinese don’t release the real numbers, but experts can figure them out and the picture isn’t as rosy as the ‘fresh-water’ crowd would lead you to believe. They have made huge investments that in some ways dwarf what the US is spending, and they are more dependent on exporting than Australia.
Given the current problems in the world, and the strengthening of the dollar, which the yuan is tied to, their export markets are drying up as the cost of their exports rise. That is the real problem with Australian exports, the Chinese can’t buy as much as they once did.
The world is a mess, and the bankers did it. If we hung a few of them in the public square, maybe they would stop trying to game the system. [Just kidding, of course. because I am such a peaceful individual. I’m sure there is paperwork in my ‘official record’ that supports that. 😉 ]
Oh, don’t worry. We (ie, our Gov, the mining sector, and people like me who have a clue) know what’s happening in China. We’ve been helping them with their infrastructure expansions, including building dozens of new power plants. We can see a direct impact because they have slowing demand for iron, coal and uranium, to mention just three examples. Even the Chinese can’t spend money if demand for the crap they make is dwindling. *shrug*
Well, you live *there*, so you have to be a nice peaceful guy! It’s the Amerikan way after all! 😈
Me, I can be a right bastard. I could give some creative suggestions to deal with the elites that I learned from the Khmer Rouge. trust me, they work a treat to keep people in line when they see what happens to a generous group of them. When it comes to torture, the USA are amateurs. They learned very little from the SS, GS (Gestapo), KGB, GRU, MfS (Stasi), KR, or the VC *Apache women* (to name but a few!) I and others in my unit learned. We had training from people who truly knew.
Don’t get me started! 😛 😉 I already have sweet dreams about it!
Bahhh! All the cheap bastards deserve is the old Roman treatment for such criminals. Chop their heads off and stick them on pikes lining the roads where they live and work! Say what you like about the Roman Empire… but they knew how to deal with these bastards! 😈
It’s coming, whether the corporate media wants to report on it or not. Very Serious People talk about the ‘quest for democracy’, but the demonstrations around the Med are ‘peasant revolts’. people who can’t feed themselves or their families and have been pushed over the edge. Wonderful, democratic Israel has been added to the mix of countries where the people who work for a living are tired of ‘treading water’ while the ruling class is rolling in cash.
Don’t forget the current rioting in England. Folks talk about how it’s about some dude who got shot dead by the coppers, but it’s more than that. The area of the riot is apparently a depressed area with 20%+ unemployment and the austerity measures of the Conservative government has pushed a lot of people over the edge to the point where they’re beyond fear. When that happens, Bad Things Happen.
The first reported food riot of the Great Depression happened on January 3, 1931. There are areas of the USA that aren’t far from that point *today*. After the first few food riots were reported, the remaining food riots that happened regularly until FDR was inaugurated were quietly hushed up and ignored by the media, under directives from their corporate owners to talk happy talk and not incite the peasants. But if FDR had not been elected, the U.S. would have gone as Communist as Stalin’s Soviet Union, guaranteed. Today’s oligarchs think that with the fall of the Soviet Union and the fading of Communism in China (to be replaced with a feral capitalism much to their liking) that they don’t have to worry about this anymore. But in the end it isn’t ideology, it’s desperation that leads to such events. Unfortunately given the stupidity of the average American, the people they choose to lead such a revolt against the “elites” will likely be teabaggers, and the *real* elites, the billionaire grifters who have sacked America as thoroughly as the Vandals sacked Rome, will likely escape unscathed as the teabagger hoards happily kill every liberal politician and other prominent liberals as they can find. Siiiiiigh. WASF.
– Badtux the Waddling Penguin
Tottenham has always been an area that people were warned about when visiting London, so you know it is an area reserved for poor people, like South Central in LA, Liberty City in Miami, etc.
Oh, yes, the poor are the first fired and last hired, so they are feeling the effects earlier and harder than other areas. You don’t riot if you have something of value to protect; you riot when you have nothing left to lose.
If only the civics teachers being sent to dc was true…sigh…
Schoolhouse Rock!, Jill, anything more advanced would be over their heads.
Oh, and kindergarten teachers to introduce them to the concept of sharing. Most of them seem to have mastered nap time.