(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)
From the Washington Post:
A teacher in North Carolina has raised nearly $80,000 to feed students from low-income families in Ferguson, Mo., who would ordinarily be getting free lunches at public schools in the St. Louis suburb but can’t because the start of the 2014-15 school year has been delayed twice as a result of civil unrest.
The 11,000-student Ferguson-Florissant School District was supposed to start classes Aug. 14 but now is scheduled to open Aug. 25, assuming that the unrest that resulted from the Aug. 9 fatal shooting of a black teenager by a police officer has stopped. This year, the high-poverty district was planning to start a federal program that allows all students to receive free lunches, not only those whose family incomes qualify them for free and reduced-price lunches, according to this report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch…
Wishing to help the students in Ferguson, Julianna Mendelsohn, a fifth-grade teacher in Bahama, N.C., came up with the idea of starting a fund on the Internet to raise money so that the St. Louis Area Foodbank could feed students and their families, according to takepart.com. She started a fundraising campaign on Fundly.com that has raised nearly $80,000, which had been her goal…
Count on a teacher to think about this angle.
***********
What’s on the agenda, as we wrap up another week?
Baud
I am not a good person, but I respect the hell out of people who are. Good for Mendelssohn.
NotMax
If classes were held at night, could understand closing the schools.
As it is, the decision to extend closure makes little sense.
OzarkHillbilly
Sea plankton have been found on the International Space StationThe mysteries of this universe never cease to amaze me.
Mustang Bobby
Whenever I have to call a teacher or a teacher calls me about their grant program that I handle, I make sure I let them know that I work for them, not the other way around.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
I for one welcome our new plankton overlords.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Next thing you know, they’ll find a jellyfish stuck on the outside of the ISS. A spacewalker will probably get stung by it.
Chris T.
Since this is an open thread: it’s amazing how many negative comments one finds on factual articles about how the ACA (“Obamacare”) hasn’t totally destroyed civilization.
It’s almost as if being proved wrong makes certain people angry. :-)
JPL
@Chris T.: Just mention that it was EMTALA that Reagan era bill that caused hospital prices to sky rocket. He should have left the poor to die on the streets. Another approach that god only wanted the wealthy to have health care. They tend to shut up.
NotMax
This one’s for raven.
Kay
I don’t know if you-all saw this about the Ferguson library:
The first summer after the recession really hit, when we had 16% unemployment, the children’s librarian here started feeding kids lunch at the library because they wouldn’t get free lunch when school was out and so many of their parents were unemployed that year. They would have btwn 20 and 40 come in a day.
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: Yeah, those Goliath groupers are some big mofos (they used to be called “Jew fish” back in the day — no idea why). My dad used to go spearfishing for grouper all the time. Once he got one of those — it was huge! We have a picture of my dad next to the fish, and it’s longer than he is tall. He sold it to one of those “crab with a ‘k'” processing plants for a tidy sum.
JPL
@Kay: Ryan J. Reilly, the Huff Post Reporter who was arrested in Ferguson,
had some great pictures of the volunteers on his twitter page.
Iowa Old Lady
It’s good to read about people being kind. The world seems like such a mean place sometimes.
Baud
@Kay:
I’m sure Barnes & Noble would have done something similar if Big Government Library would just let the market work.
gogol's wife
Why do I subscribe to the New York Times? Their front-page headlines are straight out of NewsMax. “A Terrorist Horror, Then Golf: Incongruity Fuels Obama Critics.” In our church we ring bells every week for every US service person who has been killed in the previous week in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have noticed that the number of bells has gone down dramatically since Obama has been president, and some weeks we have no bells at all (never happened under Bush). But those deaths, while Bush was “clearing brush,” weren’t front-page news, I guess.
Baud
I wonder if conservatives’ renewed recognition of the value of the police state will doom Rand Paul’s presidential hopes.
Baud
@gogol’s wife:
Yes, that’s what fundamentally drives Obama’s critics — “incongruity.”
Kay
@Baud:
My mother in law, who is frequently inadvertently hilarious, went to B and N over the South Bend IN library to read because the furniture was nicer.
“It’s just nicer” I got a kick out of it because she’s well-off but also extremely cheap. I wonder when they figured out she was never buying anything in there. She probably brought a thermos and a sandwich.
Chris T.
@JPL: I must confess, I did some trolling. :-)
geg6
Going to spend the day with John’s poor daughter who was supposed to get married tomorrow but now isn’t because the groom got cold feet last weekend and called it off. Poor thing is just devastated. We’re going to go get pedicures then lunch and drinks at my sister’s with some of my female friends who have seen it all where we’ll lay around the pool talking smack about men.
debbie
@Baud:
Good for Mendelssohn.
Yeah, but when will the death threats begin?
NotMax
A little known but taut and moody suspense movie, with Dick Powell in full noir mode, (very) loosely based on real events (assassination threat against Lincoln on the train to his first inauguration) airing on TCM soon.
The Tall Target, Tuesday Aug. 26, 3 a.m. Eastern
Probably not on anyone’s Top 20 list of such films, but worth the time to watch nonetheless. Clocks in at a brisk 78 minutes.
Baud
@Kay:
You’re MIL is a clearly a taker, not a maker.
I’m sure you have seen this (via WSJ):
Baud
@debbie:
I welcome their hatred.
magurakurin
@gogol’s wife:
golf…and 14 new airstrikes on the road to Mosul. Fuck the NYT and the pundit asswipes. The Peshmerga are proving to be hard as nails with some close air support from the brave men and women of the US Navy. Obama is grinding out a policy that has shown huge positive results in just a little over a week. But let’s just harp on his lack of leadership, whatever the fuck that means. What do they want him to do? Put black out curtains on the White House? Give a fire side chat every night to calm their shattered nerves? Obama kicks ass, but they just can’t stand to give him any credit at all.
as Raven would say….FIDO
raven
@NotMax: I saw that yesterday! Fuzzy on the DieHard has a video of a big snapper being caught when, all of the sudden the line goes slack, and they pull nothing but the head. The great wheel of life!
Those goliath groupers are totally protected.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
“Incongruity” is a more euphonious name for it than, say, “the urge to find fault with everything Obama says and does”, and fits better in the space available for a headline.
raven
@magurakurin: And smoke them motherfuckers while we’re at it.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
It’s also a more appealing term to sophisticated NYT readers than “Blackitty Black Black Black.”
Kay
@Baud:
“Appease”? They were right and he (finally) admitted it. It is out of control, and it’s also extremely lucrative. It’s an industry. I think we have to stop letting people who last entered a public school in 1983 write about schools. It actually isn’t like when we all aced the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. They test them constantly. They’re giving third graders 9 hours of testing this spring in this state. They’re not supposed to be sitting for the bar exam in third grade. It’s grim and joyless and it infects everything.
They fell in love with Data and they went overboard. My eldest son works for a huge tech company and even he thinks people like Gates and Zuckerberg shouldn’t be running public schools. He thinks there should be some kind of human buffer between people like him and children :)
Iowa Old Lady
I have last night’s Chris Hayes show running in the background on my computer. He’s interviewing Gov Nixon and I’m struck by how in the face of real needs, politicians’ facades grow thin. From how they answer question, you see whether they’re concerned about the situation or covering their own butts. Nixon is gabbling about all the good things he’s done.
Amir Khalid
@geg6:
I hope your husband finds that boy and strings him up by the nuts.
Baud
@Kay:
Ha! I guess Arne Duncan is Neville Chamberlain and you’re Hitler.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Betty Cracker: My sister-in-law used to live on the Atlantic Coast of Florida. She was near a restaurant that made Reuben sandwiches with grouper. Yummy.
Baud
@raven:
ISIS or the NYT?
(Or is this one of those “why not both?” situations?)
Betty Cracker
@geg6: Poor kid. She’s better off without the cad if he’s that damn fickle.
MrSnrub
I have a job interview in 40 minutes. Heading out the door in just a couple.
Wish me luck.
Amir Khalid
Today, the 22nd of August, is Malaysia’s official day of mourning for the dead of MH17. No entertainment or sports shows on the TV, only readings from the Quran. (Even though fewer than half of the Malaysian dead were Muslim; the government apparently believes that state religion means, among other things, that only Islamic religious expression belongs on the airwaves.)
FlipYrWhig
@Baud: You can’t have “incongruity” without “negro.” Except for the “e.” Wait, I’ll come in again.
Kay
@Baud:
There’s this whole chorus of 50 year olds in media who have decided kids are “soft”. You know, unlike when they were coming up on the mean streets and all getting an incredibly rigorous education in the same public schools they trash.
I don’t know how they all manage to tie their shoes, let alone get prestigious gigs at the NYTimes and the Gates Foundation. They must be truly extraordinary people to have risen above all that mediocrity administered by union thugs.
I was there. It wasn’t any more “rigorous” than it is now. In fact, it’s harder now. Our public policy regarding children probably shouldn’t be directed by the huge egos and incredible self-regard of people my age. I got news for them. I work with them every day. They’re not smarter or better educated than “kids today”.
Comrade Jake
@Chris T.: LOL / go over to Bloomberg where McMegan is writing daily stories about more bad news for Obamacare. It’s almost like she lives on another planet, like Kochanus.
Iowa Old Lady
@MrSnrub: Best of luck. Relax and enjoy the conversation.
gogol's wife
@geg6:
That sounds like a good way to deal with it. I’m so sorry — but if he’s like that, thank God it happened before the wedding.
geg6
@Amir Khalid:
It’s all I can do to hold him back, believe me. Poor girl doesn’t need to add “visit dad in jail” to her sad, sad list of things she has to do, like pick up wedding cake that won’t be eaten and is just another reminder of what will not be.
@Betty Cracker:
Agreed. But she’s not quite ready to hear that yet. Bastard has been texting her, trying to get her to see him this weekend. Part of my mission today is to gently persuade her that this is a bad idea, which is why I’m having my girlfriends help me out.
gogol's wife
@magurakurin:
I agree completely.
They begrudge him his tiny little vacation, when you can tell by looking at him that he’s never really on vacation.
Betty Cracker
@MrSnrub: Best of luck!
Baud
@Kay:
When I was young, I was taught to respect my elders. It took me too long to realize that that was a mistake, and that in fact most people, regardless of age, don’t know don’t know shit from shinola, or don’t care.
Baud
@MrSnrub:
I hate interviews. I hope that this is your last one.
Betty Cracker
@geg6: Yeah, you’re probably better off remaining as neutral as possible while allowing her to see the light herself. I always have to remind myself not to indignantly trash a friend / relatives’ stupid ex because there’s always a very good chance they’ll get back together, which would be…awkward if I’d said I hope the no-good bastard falls into a septic tank.
Raven
@geg6: We met with the minister the day before we got married and the dude kept asking “are you sure”? I finally got tired of it and asked what the deal was. Six months before he had a wedding where the dude walked off in the middle of the vows. I guess a week before is better.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
Yup, I’ve been bitten in the ass by opening my big mouth too soon and too emphatically. It’s taken me to the ripe old age of 55 to learn to hold my tongue and I still just let it out sometimes. I’m treading carefully on this one though.
Phylllis
@Kay: It is much more rigorous now, and in earlier grades. The gal who does my nails was rather shocked to discover that Kindergartners don’t take a nap at mid-day anymore. I’m sure the kids, parents, and teachers would love if they went back to that.
Raven
@geg6: I can’t imagine!!!!:)
Raven
@geg6: I can’t imagine!!!!:)
geg6
@Raven:
I feel so bad for her, though. She’s a hot mess.
Schlemizel
I am wrapping up a week of vacation in Colorado & preparing fro the drive home. Currently near Colorado Springs staying with wife’s family. These are good & decent people who get their news from the TV. I have not talked politics as such with them but its impossible to not discuss issues as the TV provides a constant, endless shreek of political ads. They said they thought BHO has tried to work with Republicans but that the GOP refuses. The are not sure how they feel about PPACA, seeing it as a mixed bag (I actually see that as a minor positive as there are thousands of anti-ACA ads an hour). They hate Michael Bloomberg largely I think because of the NRA ad & see him as a wealthy meddler. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IdlMdUL53M). They HATE rich people paying for politics no matter which side & mentioned that the Kochs are the power behind several CO candidates with the implication that this will make them vote against those guys. Overall a tiny sample but I am hopeful they represent folks out here & that will translate into a better than anticipated falls.
The local Dem COngressional candidate (sorry I don’t have her name) is running a couple of ads attacking her gooper opponent because he sponsored bills outlawing all birth control and abortions and even making an abortion a felony. The people here (60+ and practicing Christians) do not like him & want abortion to be available.
NonyNony
@Kay:
Is it completely cynical of me to note that this sudden realization that testing is out of control and not working comes not a year after Kaplan Inc and the Washington Post are no longer owned by the same corporation?
Not that I think Bezos is particularly sympathetic towards public education, but I wonder if going from being owned by someone with a vested interest in the “public schools are failing we need more testing” narrative to someone who probably doesn’t give a shit if public schools fail or not changed the conversation in DC a bit or not. The WaPo is far more respected in the Beltway than we might wish it was.
Baud
BTW, we’re all going to die.
Raven
@geg6: oh no question, no logic means a damn thing now.
Comrade Jake
@Baud: currently the lead story on CNN.com right now – Hagel’s warnings about how ISIS is “beyond anything we have seen.” Really? Jesus fucking Christ.
Fuck it if the military-industrial complex isn’t just itching to get us back into another mess over there.
Mike in NC
@Comrade Jake: Our shitty small town rag has begun running articles by McMegan, because they must have already run out of other wingnut hacks to feature.
Latest teabagger bumper sticker spotted on the DC Beltway last night: “The American Dream is not a handout!”.
rikyrah
From Larry O:
St. Louis County prosecutors office confirmed that Ferguson PD didn’t file a report after the shooting death of Michael Brown. Our panel joins Lawrence.
http://on.msnbc.com/YGCb42
Kay
@NonyNony:
Unfortunately, I think it’s driven by Bill Gates. He started admitting a year ago that it was out of control and he went further than that about 2 weeks ago.
His first admission wasn’t really an “admission”. He wrote this piece that I thought was patronizing and dismissive and dodgy. He pinned the blame on local public schools and state lawmakers. He actually used Ohio as an example. I don’t think he can do that. He’s placed himself so prominently that I think he has to take actual responsibility when his brilliant ideas don’t translate in practical terms.Did locals in Ohio screw it up? Yeah, probably. But all that means is it was a disaster as a practical matter. If doesn’t work locally it doesn’t work. Period. Public schools are local.
For people who are constantly yammering about “accountability” for front-line workers, they don’t have a lot of accountability in the Giant Charitable Foundation and Think Tank “sector”.
Belafon
@Baud:
Waiting for a Republican president, no doubt.
Belafon
One of the things I thought someone should set up is to pay for the high school to have some more graduation gowns. They only own two, which are used solely to get graduation pictures. The school should have enough for everyone to be able to wear one to graduation. The school could own them – because, personally, I have never understood why we have to buy them to graduate (other than supporting the industry) – and then the students could wear them once.
Patrick
@Mike in NC:
Maybe these idiots should read their own bumper stickers for a change as they seem to think that our military and stupid wars against Iraq are and were completely free.
Kay
@Phylllis:
I have a lot of teenage single parents in the office and they don’t seem to know or understand that in my (inexpert!) opinion their little kids are behaving terribly because they are exhausted. It isn’t any more complicated than that. They run in circles until they literally drop. If they’re sleeping on the floor in the running position they dropped in it might be an indication they’re not “bad”, they’re just tired :)
Matt McIrvin
@Comrade Jake: They’re all giant laser-eyed atomic robot super-ninjas two hundred feet tall, and they’re coming from inside the house!
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: BTW, we’re all going to die.
True, that. Sooner or later.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@MrSnrub: I hope it went/is going well!
Cheers,
Scott.
Kathleen
@rikyrah: That does not surprise me. In fact, from what I’ve read, incident reports are a relatively recent practice in Ferguson PD. In addition to that, I thought it was interesting that the St Louis County Dispatcher did not receive a call about Wilson shooting Mike Brown. She heard it on the local news and could not get confirmation from Ferguson PD. I believe it was a BJ commenter (and I apologize that I forgot who it was) who made an excellent point that media should be focusing on the standards and practices of the Ferguson Police. What are their processes? Do they even have documented processes? What tasks were completed after the shooting? For example, what did Wilson and his supervisor do at the scene? How long were they there? Who did they contact? How was incident communicated? Who called whom? What action resulted from that contact? Etc etc. The narrative needs to shift from Right Wing spouting lies and Mainslime Media giving them credence and consequently poisoning the criminal justice process to what if any process the Ferguson police followed in the aftermath of the shooting. The tax paying citizens of Ferguson have a right to know the who, what, when, where and why process used by the Police Department. I think reporters also follow that model. Oh, wait, I forgot. We’re into the “new journalism” model now. Never mind.
chopper
@Baud:
i would say ‘sniffing glue-ity’, maybe. or ‘nincompoopery’.
Felinious Wench
@geg6: What is she planning to do with the cake? Because…can you imagine the look of joy on the face of a little girl in a shelter if that cake comes in the door for them?
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: My deepest condolences to your nation & to the families of the poor souls.
J R in WV
This whole thing is really getting me down. I know there is still plenty of racism around in America. It’s reallu obvious from the different treatment you see people getting. But being allowed to kiill black people because they make you afraid? That is crazy talk in anyone’s book that can think and use simple logic.
For many years I really believed America was the shining city on the hill – believed that the things in our 1950s civics and history books were true, even after I learned about the smallpox infected blankets being given to Native American families to spread that plague to them. Wounded Knee murders of women and children in the snows of Dakota winter.
Even in a good country bad things can happen. I know that. But when does the volume and horrific nature of bad things happeneing begin to indicate that the shining city on the hill glows by the light of tortured souls?
Are we there yet, daddy?
Yes, soon child.
Mnemosyne
@geg6:
Felonious Wench had the same idea I did when I saw that she’s going to be stuck with the cake — she should donate it to a homeless shelter or battered women’s shelter so people there can have a special treat. At least that way, it’ll get eaten and won’t be sitting around in the refrigerator as a really fucking depressing reminder. If she calls ahead, the bakery may even be willing to deliver it for her so she never has to see it at all.
Tenar Darell
@Kay: If she was there once or twice a week, yes, all that B and N knew. If she left a pile of books, or fingered the displays, they surely saw her. They may even have been nice enough to make recommendations, even if she spent nothing most of the time. Most booksellers know the regulars, and whether they’re trouble, or messies, or quiet book people who clean up after themselves…. They groan when they see her if she makes extra work for them, or treats them like dirt, or disturbs other customers, but otherwise they probably don’t mind her hanging out there at all. Of course, if managers are enforcing some kind of upsell policy that week, and she only ever buys a small coffee? If she’s a good customer, they still won’t bug her about it. (I never did).
Steeplejack
@Tenar Darell:
Former B&N bookseller here. Agree with your comment; we generally didn’t mind “readers” camping out in the store, using it as a library and not buying anything, although, as with everything, there were abusers, e.g.:
– Hogging an entire (large) reading table for hours with computer, backpack, (optional) bags from other stores and all 14 of our books on [insert any topic]—bonus points for using multiple chairs to sit in and put up your feet.
– Moving furniture around, because you really need to sit in the narrow aisle by the manga and read directly off the shelves. Or, fuck it, just sprawling or lying on the floor in the aisles, because the bookstore is just like your living room at home, right?
– Charging/using your computer/phone/tablet from an electrical outlet and deploying the cord in a way designed to hobble or maim an unwary shopper.
– Unsealing the plastic wrap from a $150 art book because you really want to flip through it for five minutes.
– Sticking that novel you were reading back on the shelf in World History because that’s the section you passed on your way out of the store. Good luck, future shopper in search of that one copy that inventory says we have on hand.
The worst offenders, as far as causing a mess, were magazine readers and especially newspaper readers. It got so bad with people coming in to read the (expensive) Sunday New York Times and leaving it strewn in pieces all over the place that we moved the “big” papers behind the register and you had to buy one to read it.
Some of the few occasions on which we could “encourage” someone to make a purchase included: subject working puzzles in crossword and Sudoku books (in pen or pencil); subject cutting recipes out of magazines; subject allowing child to color in coloring books or doodle in activity books.
Don’t even get me started on the porn mags left in the bathroom. So glad that I spent most of my time in the CD/DVD department.
Jeez, I just auto-triggered a retail PTSD episode. Must go breathe into a paper bag and remind myself that, no matter how bad it was, at least food wasn’t involved.
Tenar Darell
@Steeplejack: OMG the open the porn mags left in the bathrooms, the toilet accidents, the spill a latte and hide it, the sad “how does my body work” books left in the women’s room. Quick, can I borrow that paper bag?