CotB, V.4.1

A new Carnival of the Badger is up.

Friday Random Ten

The "Ooooooooooooooooooooklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plains" Edition

1. "Surrey with the Fringe on Top" Miles Davis from Steamin' with Miles
2. "Times Two" Vance Gilbert from Fugitives
3. "Mr. Jones" Counting Crows from August and Everything After
4. "The Pointless, Yet Poignant, Crisis of a Co-ed" Dar Williams from Mortal City
5. "This Happens Again and Again" The Nields from Live at the Iron Horse
6. "Good Thing" Patty Larkin from À Gogo
7. "Elvis Presley" Dave Carter and Tracy Grammar from When I Go
8. "Fall on Me" REM from Eponymous
9. "Hold On" Tom Waits from Mule Variations
10. "Lukey" Great Big Sea from Rant and Roar

For the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot files:

F. Jim Sensenbrenner was one of only eleven House members to F. hurricane Katrina survivors.

The story of the bill and the vote can be found at CNN and other places; F. Jim has no word of explanation on his congressional or campaign websites. I can't wait to hear his next town hall meeting, when his constituents try to get a straight answer out of him.

Bryan Kennedy--Sensenbrenner's 2004 (and likely 2006) opponent--released a statement today that, I think, adequately sums up the outrage we should be feeling:

KENNEDY STUNNED BY SENSENBRENNER’S VOTE AGAINST GULF COAST SURVIVORS

Democratic Congressional candidate Bryan Kennedy questioned the reasoning for Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr.’s vote against the victims and survivors of the Gulf Coast tragedy. (Roll Call Vote #460) Congressman Sensenbrenner was one of only 11 members of Congress to oppose aid to the victims of the disaster. “I don’t know what he [Sensenbrenner] was thinking,” Kennedy said.

I don't know if he even was thinking.

Better Liars, Please

I'm stealing much of this wholesale from Hunter:

One of the more spectacular results of this administration's insistence on lying about everything, all the time is that they never go to much trouble to make sure each lie matches the next. This is because, to use a scientific explanation, they are unrepentant syphilitic dog whores.

Following the lie, however, we see that in order to even argue the point, you have to agree with a whole litany of other points:

• That President Bush himself, as well as presumably his entire team, knew full well that Katrina was a devastating storm requiring mass evacuations in front of it, and one which would wreak catastrophic damage.
  
• And yet President Bush, and the rest of his cabinet, remained on vacation while they knew that.
  
• And yet FEMA was utterly unprepared, apparently, to offer assistance for it.
  
• And yet Homeland Security did, apparently, nothing to ensure FEMA was prepared to offer assistance for it.
  
• And yet in spite of apparently knowing the danger to New Orleans in specific, both the President and the administrator of FEMA were completely unaware that anyone had "foreseen" that the levees would fail -- and apparently was only monitoring the levee condition via newspaper headlines.
  
• And yet, in the days following the storm, the FEMA director insisted that he wasn't even aware 15,000 evacuees had fled to the New Orleans convention center, a designated shelter area, until he was told by reporters.
  
• And yet, FEMA continued to reject assistance and turn rescuers away during the most critical days after the storm.

While I don't endorse the syphillitic dog horse thing, It has been interesting to hear arguments from both sides of certain mouths: Bush knew it would be horrible before Katrina hit, but he also looked right into Barbara Walters's eyes four days later and said that no one anticipated levee failure.

Here is a good, thorough Hurricane Katrina timeline.

Arthur Andersen bites again

I'm waiting for the howls from the right side of the Cheddarsphere over this one, since they get all het up about anything related to good voting hygiene in Wisconsin. Sadly, my tours have turned up only silence. The problem? The contractor(s) hired by the state to organize our master voter list under federal HAVA (Help America Vote Act) guidelines is working on blowing it for us:

Testing for Wisconsin's statewide voter database is behind schedule, prompting critics to warn that the state may miss a Jan. 1. deadline and lose federal aid. [. . .]

The cost for the work is also going up. In July, the board agreed to pay $1.5 million more to Deloitte Consulting to oversee the project, pushing the state's costs to about $27.5 million.

Of that, $13.9 million will go to Accenture to build the database and $4.2 million will go to Deloitte to manage the Accenture contract and overall project. The rest of the money is for state costs, such as salaries. [. . .]

Critics have long predicted the job would go over its budget and would not finish on time. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Madison) said testing delays show the list may not be done by Jan. 1.

The federal government is paying for the bulk of the project, but could pull some or all of its funds if the state misses the deadline. Because the contractors are aware of that, they will have an incentive to hike prices as the year goes on, Pocan said.

Among those critics? Me. I predicted more than three months ago that this would get worse before it got better. "You want to talk about a mess turning into a disaster?" I asked. "This will be it." And it is.

Why does the title of my post refer to Andersen Consulting, though? Because, you know, Andersen is that firm that audited all of Enron's cooked books and gave them passing marks. Andersen is culpable for all of the ills that Enron brought on the world. After the spate of justifiably bad publicity it attracted from that whole Enron mess, Andersen changed its name. To Accenture. That's right, boys and girls, Enron's accountants are doing Wisonsin's voter list and they are over budget and behind schedule. Let us remember--all of this happened because a single, unelected official was allowed direct millions of dollars to an Enron-accounting, off-shore tax-evading, under-FEC-investigation, Apartheid-supporting, Wisconsin-ripping-off company.

So . . . it's quite possible that next fall we'll have no voter fraud because, you know, we'll have no voting at all!

[Updated for correct spelling. D'oh!]

Milwaukeeans: Looking for concrete contractor

We're putting in a parking slab and fixing some broken bits of our front walk. Anyone have good or bad experiences with anyone?

The New Advocate Weekly

Here I am whining about trolls and Joe Thomas is doing the hard work. All the best education writing in blogtopia (y!sctp) collected in one place. Nicely done, Joe.

I got a troll for my birthday

Yeah, I got some nice DVDs and other stuff from real people. But the Cheddarsphere has given me a troll. His name? gbfan001. Let me tell you how it started:

Once upon a time, I wrote a post for this blog. (You can read it here, but not right now, because this is important.) I submitted it to be a part of last week's Carnival of the Badger, which was hosted at Badger Blog Alliance. gbfan001 occasionally posts at BBA, in addition to his own blog (I won't make you read it). At any rate, I complained in that post I wrote about something gbfan001 had said on BBA--that favoring student privacy over military recruiters in MPS high schools was, and I quote, "unpatriotic." I sad something about how those criticizing MPS's discussion of limiting recruiters were part of the "bad half of the Cheddarsphere."

gbfan001's reply at BBA consisted entirely of

Thanks Folkbum, Now I know I was right LOL
I actually followed a Carnival of the Badger, Volume III link to his blog and was honored to be even mentioned in his post lol. Had a little fun with my reply.

How do they know we are the "bad" side of the Chedderosphere? ;P

Had that been all, I wouldn't have been bothered. But gbfan001 came here to cause trouble. He took particular exception to my statement that "My students by and large are not stupid: They tell me (without my saying a word) that they hate Bush and his war in Iraq." I now reproduce, in its entirety, the comments to the recruitment post:

Him: Im sure that you dont say a word about Iraq to your students lol I am honored you included me with Owen as a bad part of the wis blog scene(insert dr evil laugh here) I will be honest knowing that people like you are teachers is a major reason I have chose to homeschool my children. But thats ok the kids you teach can work for my sons(once again insert dr evil laugh here)

Regards,
GBfan

---

Me: Yeah, I'm not even going to dignify that.

---

Him: Gee no sense of humor in any of you lefties Must be a total bummer going through life always pissed off

Well You have a great Holiday Weekend Mr Grumpy Gus :)

Regards,
GBfan

So, let me get this straight: Someone comes to my blog, impugns my professionalism, my integrity, and my ability to teach, and I should laugh it off because of an "lol"? It gets worse, and I mean worse than just gbfan001 polluting comments to my other posts. You may have noticed that above there was a link to gbfan001's "reply." This is not because I want you to read it, but just so you know that I'm not making it up when I quote from it. He criticizes me for much more than the statement I cited above--about how my students are not interested in fighting in Iraq. He actually quotes my entire paragraph (in italics, his response follows):

My students by and large are not stupid: They tell me (without my saying a word) that they hate Bush and his war in Iraq. They know that Republicans haven't done much for African Americans in general and urban African Americans in particular. A handful of seniors every year choose the military, but the vast majority--I'd say upwards of 98%--decide for themselves that fighting Bush's war is not the future for them.

Oh where to start first does he really think we will believe he hasn't been filling their heads with chants of "No Blood for Oil" and "Bush is the real Terrorist" Please! Come on my 3 year old would see through that one.

Then this line "They know that Republicans haven't done much for African Americans in General and Urban African Americans in particular" Good Rock this man is a teacher? Hmmmm were to begin were to begin? Oh I remember it was 18 southern Republicans who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Wait it was Richard Russell Democrat Georgia who lead that effort oops my mistake. I'm pretty sure Vice President Gores daddy also voted against that measure. I seem to remember a President named Lincoln ran as a Republican he did something for African Americans cant see to recall what that was at the moment. Lets keep going this is kind of fun. All former Wizards in the KKK who are Senators please stand up. Damn another Democrat you can sit down Grand wizard Byrd I mean Senator Byrd. But what do I know I mean all the love the democrats have shown the African American community has done so much to help.

Wait poverty in the inner city is worse after the Trillions spent on the "Great Society" The structure of the black family has been destroyed by the "love and caring of the left" The Teachers and their Union are working desperately to destroy educational choice in Milwaukee while achieving a less than 40% graduation rate. Who is fighting for inner city children who live in Milwaukee in reality its the EVIL White Republicans who live in areas like Waukesha,Peshtigo and Wausau.

But its not the M/L/P's fault their efforts to "improve" the lives of African Americans failed they had good intentions. Teachers like Folkbum can go on enabling failure and blaming it on us Evil republican boogie men. Hell the left has only had what 35 years to fix the problem when they were in charge and they made a Hash of it.

As gbfan001 might say, were to begin? We can talk about how the modern GOP has turned the party of Lincoln into the party of Dobson. Does gbfan001 even know about the Southern Strategy? Did he notice that Ken Mehlman came right here to Milwaukee to apologize for the way the GOP has used, abused, and refused African Americans for several generations now? I don't know.

Again, if that had been it--a misguided and semi-literate rant about politics and race--I would have left it alone. But gbfan001 made it personal; he continues to attack both my professionalism and my committment to teaching the children of Milwaukee. His post, believe it or not, is titled, "This is why I homeschool." The "M/L/Ps" like me (I'm guessing moonbat/ liberal/ peacenik, though I'm not entirely familiar with conservative shorthand) with all of our "chants" are the ones ruining Milwaukee's children and their bright future as targets for IEDs. gbfan001 doesn't know me. He doesn't even read my blog very well if he thinks I teach my students "chants." Not even I have ever chanted "no blood for oil"--and I've been places where I could have (and I'm not talking about my classroom). Maybe it's standard operating procedure for conservative bloggers to slip "four more years" or "Hillary is a bitch" into their work memos or powerpoint presentations or whatever it is that gbfan001 may do at his job. Maybe he teaches his home-schooled children how to hunt Democrats and abortion providers. But that's not the way we do things over here.

I have often called for detractors to come visit my school and classroom for a day to actually see what I do, so that they don't have to so obviously talk out of their hats. They never do. They sit there so smug and self-assured that SpongeJohn GardPants is personally saving the brown and black children of Milwaukee that they can go on with their libelous filth and, when called on it, laugh it off because we "moonbats" don't have a sense of humor. I told gbfan001 so, in his comments, told him that since he didn't know what I teach he should "kindly shut [his] piehole." Was that a poor choice of words? Perhaps, but his reply incensed me:

shut my pie hole now there is intelligent response [. . .].

Funny I don't remember being rude in my post smart even a little bit funny but never rude [. . .] As usual you on the left call name while never defending your position.

Well you have a good day with your Wunderkinds you know the ones who "Hate" their president.

Oh and since we are now pals, all that time you were working without a contract were you getting paid? Just a question

you may now resume name calling

Regards
GBfan

I hope that by now, with context behind you, you can see how this would infuriate me. In fact, I've sat on it for several days so that I won't say anything else I regret. But in this response you can also make out, I think, everything that is wrong with some on the conservative side. I won't say all or even many--gbfan001 likes to smear with an inaccurately wide brush, but I don't. I've had many good, reasonable, rational, and thoughtful conversations with people on the other side. I try to avoid this particular species, though, because there is no point arguing with them. You can tell, because to him, slandering my professionalism and lying about what I teach is "a little bit funny but never rude." To him, calling someone a "moonbat" (or "M/L/P") is not name-calling. To him, branding all "lefties"--everyone from Joe Lieberman to obscure nobodies like Ward Churchill--as "Bush haters" is perfectly normal. To him, misrepresenting history or ignoring the parts he doesn't want to see is par for the course. But my asking him to "kindly" stop talking about that which he does not know apparently crosses a line. Hypocrite. That's all there is to say.

So, gentle readers of your humble host's blog, do make gbfan001 welcome. He is our guest, even if he is a troll, and as such, deserves exactly as much respect as he shows in his comments. [UPDATE: That means bug him here, not at his own place, please.]

Rehnquist Dies

He's from here, Shorewood. Condolences to the family. The initial AP story is here.

Milwaukee voucher schools, 2005-2006

What with school starting and my contract settlement, I haven't had time to keep up on the news as well as I'd like (I may write more about the settlement this weekend yet). And then, so much of the news is Katrina, it's depressing. But I want to start catching up on some of the things that I have missed. I will start with a schools-related piece.

Thursday, the paper ran a story on the possibility of stepped-up scrutiny schools in Milwaukee's voucher program:

Although the voucher program is based on the premise of offering parents more school choices, parents rarely shop around for a school, often have very little information available to them on what a school is like and often make choices not based on educational quality.

The public has had little information available about the voucher schools because as private schools, they are often exactly that--very private. They are required to disclose little information and are not required to take part in the state's standardized testing program. [. . .]

Even determining how many schools are going to be part of the voucher program this year is not easy. Two schools have dropped out since the end of last year, one voluntarily and one as a result of internal problems. More than 50 schools or potential schools applied to join the program; 17 were cleared by DPI. But as of Wednesday, the telephone numbers of two of those were disconnected.

The state has very little control over what schools in the voucher program teach. In recent years, DPI officials and advocates for the voucher program have cooperated in setting rules for the business operations of schools, on the theory that schools providing poor educational programs often are also poorly run. The rules were used to close several voucher schools where problems developed. A permanent version of the rules is scheduled to take effect next week.

Sadly, knowing that absolutely no repercussions came against poorly performing voucher schools following this summer's exposé gives me little hope that any real measures of accountability will be taken. The paper did a fine job in that series, even digging up what I consider to be the wooden stake through the heart of the "education marketplace" myth: Howard Fuller, who loves vouchers like his first-born child, said, responding to news that no schools has ever been shut down by the "marketplace," "The reality is that it hasn't worked like we thought it would in theory. I don't think anyone that is truthful can say that has occurred."

So once again we will have storefront after storefront of what I would call suped-up day care centers that simply don't do the trick. For every kid in a long-established and successful school, there are kids in untested, unproven, untrustworthy, and utterly unregulated settings. This should not stand.

The paper has at least compiled all of its reports from their visits to choice schools in one massive, unagainly web page. I don't think it will necessarily help those parents who need the most help navigating the "marketplace." On the other hand, we do learn some scary details: There's the woman who is very proud to have "three doctorates and a PhD"; there's the school where a "woman who accompanied the reporter during the visit said the school had a religious identity, but wouldn't describe what it was or how it was implemented[; she] would not give her name, and she did not answer other questions, including who owns the school." This doesn't even count all the schools started up for this year by officials of schools closed down by DPI last year!

At any rate, I once again renew the call I made some weeks back for a law requiring accreditation before a school can accept taxpayer dollars. Any takers?

$3.49

I saw that driving in to work at one station. The rest were still at $3.29, but I bet they'll all be up there by the time I drive home.

So much to say, so little will. So, many links.

The opening of school is taking a lot out of me; I'm doing a good 12 or 14 hours of work a day, and it's eating up my sleeping and blogging time. So I'm throwing in some linkage here instead of doing real blogging.

First of all, additional commendation to
LeftyBlogs. As you can see, the graph there on your left shows that this month was my highest-traffic month ever, even beating May when I got hundreds of hits from David Horowitz's piece of crap website. Most of the credit for this month's jump belongs to Kari Chisholm, who is doing the hard but needed work of making the left-local blogosphere more visible and more viable. I have added that site to the blogroll; and you should probably bookmark it.

While we're on the topic of hard work, Joe Thomas at Shut up and Teach did it again with a new Advocate Weekly. Speaking of which, I believe that "anon." in the comments to the post directly below this one is the first person ever to tell me to "shut up and teach." Thanks to Paul and Dean in the comments for sticking up for me when I didn't have time to blog today.

The event motivating the post below gets fuller coverage in today's paper; that is, the arbitrator's selection of the Board's contract proposal over the unions. I will add something I wrote in comments elsewhere:

There are two choices for MTEA-represented groups in MPS: The HMO, which offers a narrower choices and more limited coverage; and the PPO, which is like a blank check.

The decision means that the HMO is free, and the PPO is now expensive, with the threat of greater expense down the road (which the district can impose unilaterally).

Now, wait a minute, you might think, how is that different from the state’s plan? The state offers employees a choice between two or more plans, with one free, right?

This differs from the state’s plan in two distinct ways: One, the state’s “free” plan is free only to the extent that nothing comes out of employees’ paychecks, yet they suffer co-pays, high deductibles, etc. So in the end, there is a cost to the employees. In the MPS HMO, there is virtually no cost for in-network services. So there is no cost sharing at all.

Two, the state does not self-fund its plan, so all state employees are pooled with non-state employees to balance costs--the healthy cover the costs of the ill, and so forth. What will happen in MPS is that the healthy will jump to the plan for which they pay nothing, leaving only those who overuse health services paying anything. This will undoubtedly bankrupt the system.

Under the union’s plan, all employees would contribute, leading to a big enough pool to cover those who are ill and those who are not. Sadly, the arbitrator did not select that plan.

I'm hoping that encapsulates a little better why I fear for the future not just of my health insurance, but of the district as a whole.

Speaking of Boots and Sabers, Owen follows up on the story from the WI-8 that I wrote about here. Owen, of course, absolves John Gard of most of the charges Kerry Thomas leveled against him. But only in the "there's no evidence that this thing that looks possibly damning was actually a felony" kind of way.

I submitted a piece for the Carnival of the Badger (though I may have missed the deadline), which BBA is hosting. It will be up tomorrow.

Finally, the devestation on the Gulf Coast seems unfathomable right now. Xoff has the list of where to send help.

792 days late, I have a contract; it's bad

About noon today, the Marquette University professor who was arbitrating the contract dispute between my union--the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association--and the MPS Board came down in favor of the Board.

I was mulling the news over on the drive home and heard the local NPR newsreader point out that the District's proposal, which the arbitrator "found more reasonable," gave teachers a raise but required them to contribute toward their health care. The way it was framed, it sounded as though the union's proposal did not have a raise or a contribution to health care. This is not true--in fact, in the initial implementation, the union's proposal required more teachers to pay in for the health care. This distinction was lost in the run-up to arbitration, and seems lost now. Even Alan Borsuk's story, linked above, neglects to mention that the competing proposals both required teachers to pay for health care. The only dispute between them was who pays and how much.

And it is in those devilsh details--who pays and how much--that the Board's plan is most insidious. It is part of a pattern designed, from my perspective, anyway, to break apart the union. I have written before about how the small high schools movement seems designed to cut out the union and balkanize formerly large, unified staffs. This decision, in favor of the Board, splits the union between younger, healthier teachers and older, less healthy teachers.

See, the union's proposal required all represented employees to pay 1% of their base salaries as co-insurance, thus minimizing the hit for the poorest employees and sharing the cost of the plan among everyone. You know, like a unified workforce. The Board's plan only jacks up payments for employees in the Preferred Provider Option (PPO) plan. Those in the HMO plan actually have their benefits sweetened. Thus, those employees who need the extra and more varied coverage the PPO provides will take the full force of this settlement. So, in fact, for the local NPR station to report that teachers will have to contribute to their health care costs is a lie: Only those who are in need of more serious care will have to pay. The healthy ones don't--and, as MPS self-funds (which in itself is probably a bad idea), the very foundation of insurance is shattered: In a normal plan, the healthy pay to offset the costs of those who are ill. Here we have the opposite.

The effect of the decision will be to drive employees into the HMO and away from the PPO, and as more teachers "pay nothing," they will more likely urge quicker settlements that leave PPO participants holding the bill. All along, I heard impatience from teachers in my building who wondered what took so long. And the division is already apparent: As I broke the news to staff today, several teachers asked me what the point of having a union is, anyway, if we're just going to get screwed. Another, when I told him the arbitrator favored the board, said, "Great! I'm in the HMO, and my life just got better!"

Jay Grenig, the arbitrator who decided the dispute, of course couldn't take any of this into account. He had very specific responsibilities defined by the state, and I'm sorry he found that the Board's proposal was a better deal. I believe that, long-run, there will be serious consequences for the union and the district as a whole.

I do have to wonder, though, if he didn't sit on his decision until today on purpose: He promised he'd be done by the end of July, but he may have known that announcing in favor of the board on July 31 would have led to hundreds of retirements during August. Today was the first day of school, and, as it is, I expect there will be some faces absent tomorrow, following this news, that had been in school today

Hey--at least I can stop saying I've been working without a contract since July 1, 2003. Now I can say that I've been working without a contract since July 1, 2005. Woo. Hoo.

Musical Flashback

Roxanne has a meme. I felt the need to do it.

Go to Music Outfitters (your Ely, MN, online music store!) and type the year you graduated from high school into the search box. The first result will be the 100 top pop songs from that year, and you can relish how awful the music was. Here's 1992:

1. End Of The Road, Boyz II Men
2. Baby Got Back, Sir Mix A-lot
3. Jump, Kris Kross
4. Save The Best For Last, Vanessa Williams
5. Baby-Baby-Baby, TLC
6. Tears In Heaven, Eric Clapton
7. My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It), En Vogue
8. Under The Bridge, Red Hot Chili Peppers
9. All 4 Love, Color Me Badd
10. Just Another Day, Jon Secada
11. I Love Your Smile, Shanice
12. To Be With You, Mr. Big
13. I'm Too Sexy, Right Said Fred
14. Black Or White, Michael Jackson
15. Achy Breaky Heart, Billy Ray Cyrus
16. I'll Be There, Mariah Carey
17. November Rain, Guns N' Roses
18. Life Is A Highway, Tom Cochrane
19. Remember The Time, Michael Jackson
20. Finally, CeCe Peniston
21. This Used To Be My Playground, Madonna
22. Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough, Patty Smyth
23. Can't Let Go, Mariah Carey
24. Jump Around, House Of Pain
25. Diamonds and Pearls, Prince and The N.P.G.
26. Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me, George Michael and Elton John
27. Masterpiece, Atlantic Starr
28. If You Asked Me To, Celine Dion
29. Giving Him Something He Can Feel, En Vogue
30. Live and Learn, Joe Public
31. Come and Talk To Me, Jodeci
32. Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana
33. Humpin' Around, Bobby Brown
34. Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover, Sophie B. Hawkins
35. Tell Me What You Want Me To Do, Teven Campbell
36. Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg, TLC
37. It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Boyz II Men
38. Move This, Technotronic
39. Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen
40. Tennessee, Arrested Development
41. The Best Things In Life Are Free, Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson
42. Make It Happen, Mariah Carey
43. The One, Elton John
44. Set Adrift On Memory Bliss, P.M. Dawn
45. Stay, Shakespear's Sister
46. 2 Legit 2 Quit, Hammer
47. Please Don't Go, K.W.S.
48. Breakin' My Heart (Pretty Brown Eyes), Mint Condition
49. Wishing On A Star, Cover Girls
50. She's Playing Hard To Get, Hi-Five
51. I'd Die Without You, P.M. Dawn
52. Good For Me, Amy Grant
53. All I Want, Toad The Wet Sprocket
54. When A Man Loves A Woman, Michael Bolton
55. I Can't Dance, Genesis
56. Hazard, Richard Marx
57. Mysterious Ways, U2
58. Too Funky, George Michael
59. How Do You Talk To An Angel, Heights
60. One, U2
61. Keep On Walkin', CeCe Peniston
62. Hold On My Heart, Genesis
63. The Way I Feel About You, Karyn White
64. Beauty and The Beast, Calms Dion and Peabo Bryson
65. Warm It Up, Kris Kross
66. In The Closet, Michael Jackson
67. People Everyday, Arrested Development
68. No Son Of Nine, Genesis
69. Wildside, Marky Mark and The Funky Bunch
70. Do I Have To Say The Words?, Bryan Adams
71. Friday I'm In Love, Cure
72. Everything About You, Ugly Kid Joe
73. Blowing Kisses In The Wind, Paula Abdul
74. Thought I'd Died and Gone To Heaven, Bryan Adams
75. Rhythm Is A Dancer, Snap
76. Addams Groove, Hammer
77. Missing You Now, Michael Bolton
78. Back To The Hotel, N2Deep
79. Everything Changes, Kathy Troccoli
80. Have You Ever Needed Somone So Bad, Def Leppard
81. Take This Heart, Richard Marx
82. When I Look Into Your Eyes, Firehouse
83. I Wanna Love You, Jade
84. Uhh Ahh, Boyz II Men
85. Real Love, Mary J. Blige
86. Justified and Ancient, The KLF
87. Slow Motion, Color Me Badd
88. What About Your Friends, TLC
89. Thinkin' Back, Color Me Badd
90. Would I Lie To You?, Charles and Eddie
91. That's What Love Is For, Amy Grant
92. Keep Coming Back, Richard Marx
93. Free Your Mind, En Vogue
94. Keep It Comin', Keith Sweat
95. Just Take My Heart, Mr. Big
96. I Will Remember You, Amy Grant
97. We Got A Love Thang, CeCe Peniston
98. Let's Get Rocked, Def Leppard
99. They Want EFX, Das EFX
100. I Can't Make You Love Me, Bonnie Raitt

Cross out the ones you hate, bold the ones you like, and underline your favorite. Not a lot of bold there, eh? Of course, in 1992, I thought if the band didn't have "Led" or "Floyd" in the name, they weren't worth listening to.

[Update: Jed caught the same meme.]

Drinking Liberally, Milwaukee Style

For the drinkers, the liberals, or the drinking liberals in town: Details here. Thanks to Scott F., Jason H., and Stacie R. for putting this together. (I'm only using last initials since, I figure, in a couple of years, that's how we'll be referring to ourselves at the meetings . . .)

WI-8 CD: GOP eating their own

Owen at Boots and Sabers points us to this commentary from Kerry Thomas:

The impetus of this came from a “Forum in the Park” event held in St. Germain on August 23. Begun as an event to showcase Congressman Mark Green and his gubernatorial bid, the list of invited Republican speakers, candidates all, grew to include Assemblyman Dan Meyer, Attorney General candidate J.B. Van Hollen, Jean Hundertmark, candidate for Lt. Governor, and Assembly Speaker John Gard, who is now a candidate for Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District.

Notably absent from the guest list was Assemblywoman Terri McCormick, who is also a candidate for Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District. Remember, the Republican Party has an official policy of neutrality when it comes to fellow Republicans competing for elected office.

Since this event was officially sponsored by the Vilas County Republicans, of whom I am a member, and the Oneida County Republicans, I thought the omission of Terri McCormick was an oversight. I invited McCormick to come to this forum, where I assumed, since she is a congressional candidate, she would be given an opportunity to speak. I was wrong.

One by one, the speakers took to the microphone. One by one they took turns introducing themselves, and talking about Republican values. It was enlightening to hear two of the more well known speakers refer to their personal relationships with John Gard. No one bothered to say anything about Terri McCormick. She was denied any opportunity to address the assembled crowd. One of the Vilas County Republican officers said he felt “uncomfortable” allowing McCormick to speak. Slowly, the fog began to clear. [. . .]

A look at some campaign finance reports shows that during the week of the big budget debate in Madison, John Gard received two $5,000 donations from the National Beer Distributors in Arlington, Virginia. Coincidentally, the budget included provisions that will allow the distributors to sell directly to bars & restaurants, cutting out the retailers.

On May 5 Gard also received $5,000 from Georgia Pacific Employee Fund PAC in Washington, DC. As Assembly Speaker, Gard considered a bill to allow paper companies like GP to sue in a class action lawsuit against insurance companies for allegedly holding up claims for polluting (the facts proved otherwise). [. . .]

In another instance, on a crucial veto override vote of the Photo ID Bill earlier this year, Speaker Gard scheduled a vote, which had no chance of passage at that time, timed so that Terri McCormick, his probable opponent in the congressional campaign, would miss the opportunity to cast her vote for the override. She was en route to the Capitol, sick with the flu, having a colleague drive her, and missed the vote by less than an hour. If this was such a crucial vote, shouldn’t the Speaker have waited until all his colleagues were available to cast their votes? Why was it necessary to rush that vote, so that McCormick would have no chance to cast her vote? Was there a calculation that this missed vote could be used against McCormick in the campaign?

It looks to me like John Gard has blatantly abused his public office, breached the public trust placed in him. It’s a complete conflict of interest. It is the very sort of allegations that Gard’s former colleagues Scott Jensen, Micki Foti and Sherry Schultz are going to court about this Fall.

I've excerpted a lot more than I really wanted to, but the whole story is so fascinating, that at least one Republican--and maybe, maybe, a couple of elected Republicans, too--are starting to see the danger in allowing Gard (R-Peshtigo Sun Prairie) and his cronies unmitigated power.

For most of the last century, Wisconsin was championed for its clean government, its progressive and populist spirit. Now we have people in charge, from both parties, who are so concerned about entrenching their own power and enriching their campaign coffers, that the will of the people (not to mention the good of the people) gets lost in favor of grandstanding and showmanship.

To all the New Orleanites in the audience

And anyone else in Katrina's path--

Good luck. And get out!

McBride Wrong on Apology

Jessica McBride Friday wondered why calls for Republican apologies over the way the latest fraud allegations finally shook out (see my post here) don't encompass more than Republicans. McBride writes, about the family in question,

shouldn't the Journal Sentinel apologize to the family too? After all, the Republican Party and the politicians DID NOT release the names of the couple or their son, either to the news media OR to the public. The newspaper did. Granted, the Party staged its news conference in front of the family's home, which vicariously identified them to the reporters there or anyone who recognized the home from a glimpse of it on TV. But the paper was under no obligation to print the couple's names, or the name of their son, which the paper learned on its own from city records. Yet the paper did so - both in the original story and again in the editorial, the latter of which accused the Party of besmirching the family's names. But who would have known the names if the paper hadn't outed them?

Damn the newspaper for their reporting! Blast those editors and reporters who saw a trail of news and followed it! Curse those smart people who made a two-minute phone call that Republicans couldn't be bothered with!

When you consider that one of the family members actually told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter "It's a good thing I wasn't home. It's amazing how much nerve these people have," you have to wonder whether, in fact, the family wanted the information out there that the Republicans were lying scum. I sort of wish they hadn't snuck in when the family wasn't home, just for the sight of someone tearing out of the house with a rolling pin to beat Rick Graber with. (Note: I don't know if the family told reporter Greg Borowski that or not.)

In the end, I think it's important to remember that Jessica McBride lives with Paul Bucher, candidate for Attorney General, who insists that it is important to stop voter fraud, "real or imagined."

Randomness is fundamental; fundamentalists, not so much

At Doc's Home, Doc ("an evangelical Christian by faith and a physicist by education") nails the Intelligent Design/ Creationist faction to the wall again with this post from yesterday. If you remember my ID essay from the soon-to-expire Open Source Politics, ID is not actually science; it's much more about phiosophy and statistics. One of its central legs is the idea of specified complexity: This is the idea, formulated by mathematician William A. Dembski, using probability and the general public's misunderstanding of probability, to argue that random chance is not enough to explain how changes in organisms can develop over time. Dembski believes that while "[j]ust about anything that happens is highly improbable, [. . .] when a highly improbable event is also specified (i.e., conforms to an independently given pattern) undirected natural causes lose their explanatory power."

Anyway, Doc tears that notion apart:

[T]he basic issue is randomness. Evolution suggests life evolved through a series of random mutations in simpler organisms. Randomness suggests, well, randomness, whereas creation suggests order and method. Hence, the two are inexorably opposed, right?

I am glad these anti-evolutionists have not apparently studied modern physics. Randomness is the cornerstone of quantum mechanics, which is founded on the assumption that nature works through probabilism, not determinism. Here's the idea. In classical physics, all the way back to the Greeks, nature was assumed deterministic. That means if I repeat an experiment 1000 times under the same conditions, the exact same result will emerge 1000 times. If I know the initial conditions and the forces involved, I know exactly what will happen. Probabilism, on the other hand, says I have no idea what will happen each time I run the experiment. There are any number of possible outcomes, each with a certain probability of happening. The best I can say is how often I would expect to see some given outcome.

This is necessarily abstract and hard to understand if you haven't studied physics. I will try to illustrate. If I pick up a pencil and let it go, it will fall due to gravity. In a deterministic universe, all I need to know is the height of the pencil to determine exactly what will happen. I can calculate exactly how long it will take to hit the ground, and the speed at which it will be moving when it does hit. More importantly, I can calculate the exactly trajectory of that pencil, marking its exact position at every moment during the fall. And if I do the experiment 1000 times, I will get the exact same results.

In the quantum realm, it is much more complex. I have to consider the straight line path, yes. But I have to consider a trajectory with a single loop, one with two loops, one where it makes a 90 turn, etc. (This sounds weird, I know. At the size scale we are talking about, the probability of each of these paths is 0, except the straight line path, which is why we don't worry about quantum effects in our everyday world. But a proper quantum solution would have to consider all these. The example illustrates the process involved in understanding interactions at much smaller size scales where quantum effects do matter.) Each trajectory has a probability, so repeating the experiment 1000 times, I can estimate how often I would expect to see each path. The same thing will not necessarily happen each time. (Quantum also has the uncertainty principle which says I cannot know the position and momentum of the pencil simultaneously, and other fun effects.) [. . .]

It is crucial to understand that this probabilism is a fundamental property of nature, not some mathematical tool. [. . .] In quantum we give up trying to understand the motion of a single electron around a nucleus because it is fundamentally not possible to understand that motion. The uncertainty principle tells us that the better we know the momentum of an electron, the less we know its position, and vice versa. Even attempting to make a measurement changes the state of what we're measuring.

I don't know how many people have made it this far but I'll press on with the point I'm trying to make. It seems to me that at the core of intelligent design is a resistance to the notion of randomness. The ID supporters want to remove the random mutations of evolution with a more orderly process guided by a designer. This is very similar to the debate in the physics community in the early 20th century when quantum physics began taking hold. Many physicists rejected quantum for exactly the same reason. Einstein and Niels Bohr had a celebrated exchange of letters arguing this philosophical point, with Einstein making the famous comment, "God does not play dice with the universe."

Randomness is not simply an element of evolution. It is a fundamental property of nature. To resist evolution because it is makes use of random processes is to also resist all of modern physics.

I am also glad that I have not studied modern physics, as this sounds far more complicated than my sad little right-brained head can handle. But it precisely this kind of problem--the truth is complicated and lies can be so simple--that gives Intelligent Design such great purchase in our society. I'm glad that folks nominally on their side, like Doc, have the patience and good will to explain it to them.

A couple of print stories

One, the follow-up to yesterday's military recruitment post. MPS did pass a modest policy designed to increase parental awareness of opt-out options.

Two, Xoff's Bill Christofferson writes a good summary in this week's Shepherd about how "Pro-Life" Wisconsin has crossed an ugly line:

An extremist “pro-life” group, not content with opposing abortion, birth control and stem cell research, has attacked the family and caregivers of a Wisconsin Marine, critically wounded in Iraq, for following his express directions and allowing him to die.

The Marine, Staff Sgt. Chad Simon of Monona, suffered a severe brain injury in November when a roadside bomb hit his Humvee, injuring Simon and killing three other Marines from his Madison-based Reserve unit. Surgeons removed two-thirds of Simon’s skull. He never regained consciousness.

He died nine months later, on Aug. 4, at a HospiceCare facility in Madison, after his family, following his wishes, disconnected his feeding tube. “He did have a living will, and it was very explicit. There was nothing to question,” said the Rev. Jeff Mannel, pastor at Madison Church of Christ, and a close family friend.

Jack Schuster, the family’s attorney, said Chad’s wife, Regina, made the decision after much soul-searching and with a judge’s approval.

While the family seemed to be at peace with carrying out Chad’s wishes, others who didn’t know the Marine weren’t happy with the family’s decision.

Pro-Life Wisconsin, which calls itself “your 100% pro-life voice,” accused HospiceCare of murder.

Read the rest.