Pretty much says it all:
New York City education officials are developing more than a dozen new standardized tests, but in a sign of the times, their main purpose will be to grade teachers, not the students who take them.
JUDGMENT DAY
THE END OF THE WORLD IS ALMOST HERE!
HOLY GOD WILL BRING JUDGMENT DAY ON
MAY 21, 2011
Thus Holy God is showing us by the words of 2 Peter 3:8 that He wants us to know that exactly 7,000 years after He destroyed the world with water in Noah’s day, He plans to destroy the entire world forever. Because the year 2011 A.D. is exactly 7,000 years after 4990 B.C. when the flood began, the Bible has given us absolute proof that the year 2011 is the end of the world during the Day of Judgment, which will come on the last day of the Day of Judgment.
Amazingly, May 21, 2011 is the 17th day of the 2nd month of the Biblical calendar of our day. Remember, the flood waters also began on the 17th day of the 2nd month, in the year 4990 B.C.
~~~~~~~
Huh. Guess I can stop worrying about my student loan debt.
(h/t: Jaweed Kaleem, HuffPo)
Douglas Sidialo, who lost his sight in Osama bin Laden's 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, prays at the memorial remembering the victims in Nairobi, Kenya, on Monday, May 2, 2011. (AP Photo/Khalil Senosi)
h/t Ta-Nehisi Coates; photo and caption from The Atlantic
Okay, I said I didn’t want to get into domestic politics, but I ain’t pure; couldn’t pass this up:
(Credit: Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish)
Punish women who want/get abortions? Yes and no:
Stealing from Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones (via Matt Yglesias, w/his emphases):
Anti-abortion lawmakers in state legislatures around the country have already drawn national attention—and outrage—for pushing bills that would drastically limit access to abortions. But in Louisiana, one “unapologetically pro-life” lawmaker wants to go even further. State Rep. John LaBruzzo, a Republican from Metairie, has introduced a bill that would ban all abortions in his state—with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother—and charge women who seek abortions and the doctors who perform those abortions with “feticide.”
Louisiana state law calls for jail sentences of up 15 years, with hard labor, for the unlawful killing an unborn child. LaBruzzo told the New Orleans Times-Picayune that the inclusion of the line subjecting women to “feticide” prosecution for seeking abortions was a “mis-draft,” and including it “would make [the bill] too difficult to pass.” He promised the provision will be removed from the bill before it goes to a committee vote. But while LaBruzzo doesn’t expect to punish women who seek abortions, he would still like to see doctors working on the chain gang for providing a constitutionally protected medical procedure.
Yglesias goes on to note:
There’s something very ethically and metaphysically weird about the hesitance to legally sanction women who abortions. LaBruzzo and his fellow travelers seem to believe, quite sincerely, that a fetus is a moral person and that killing it is wrong. They’re also hardly unwilling to punish women who find themselves with unwanted or unplanned pregnancies—they’re eager to punish them via laws mandating that pregnancies be carried to term. And obviously it’s not the case that women typically get abortions by accident or because they’re somehow swindled into it by unscrupulous doctors. It’s almost as if he doesn’t take the moral personhood of pregnant women seriously. [my emphasis]
Yep, that’s about right.
Allie knows me too well:
I’d put in things like “opening mail” and “keeping on top of coursework”, and I do manage to clean the cat box every day, but otherwise, yeah.
Wally Torta Muzik (Muzik Torta?) has the same thing going on:
My father used to ask me when I was going to grow up. Except he often used to insert “the hell” between “when” and “I”. And I would answer him “April 12, 1978.” . . .Now, suddenly, in a warp of time, space, and some a them string-theory dimensions, I find myself way way over on the other side of April 12, 1978 without having made the slightest bit of progress in my quest.
So I’m in good company, I guess, even though I can’t really draw.
Which mean I’m behind good company.
Figures.
h/t: Hyperbole and a Half and CrackskullBob
I’m a sucker for stuff like this:
Me, I like the prairie dog.
h/t The Daily Dish
See, this is what I’m talking about:
A few bits from Insurrection Timeline:
Go to the website for many many many—sigh—more examples.
Tom Scocca makes direct connections between violent rhetoric and violent acts:
[R]egarding this crazy, evidence-free narrative about how right-wing media incited someone to violence? The one dictated to the leftist media by their bosses at the Democratic National Committee? Here’s what happened a little less than six months ago:
A California man accused in a shootout with California Highway Patrol officers in Oakland early Sunday told officials that he traveled to San Francisco and planned to attack two nonprofit groups there “to start a revolution,” according to a probable cause statement released by police.
Bryon Williams, 45, a convicted felon with two prior bank robbery convictions, targeted workers at the American Civil Liberties Union and the Tides Foundation, said Oakland police Sgt. Michael Weisenberg in court documents.
And where did Williams get the idea that he should load up his mother’s pickup truck with guns and go try to assassinate members of liberal organizations?Williams watched the news on television and was upset by “the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items,” his mother said.
Scocca credits a commenter, Andrew Brockover, with mention of this incident:
In July of 2008, unemployed truck driver Jim Adkisson opened fire with a shotgun during a performance of “Annie” at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, killing two people and wounding several others.
Adkisson attacked the church because he identified it as liberal, and he had specifically planned to go out and assassinate liberals. “This was a symbolic killing,” he wrote in a four-page manifesto. “Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate, + House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg’s book. I’d like to kill everyone in the Mainstream Media. But I knew these people were inaccessible to me.”
I don’t blame Bernard Goldberg or the half-guv or various other right-wing bloviators for attacking and killing people. They clearly have not done so.
(And to be fair to Goldberg, I don’t think he’s engaged in eliminationist rhetoric. He’s a conservative critic of what he considers the liberal media, and that’s it.)
They’re not criminals and shouldn’t be treated as such, but they can be held responsible, in words, for their words.
~~~
Violent rhetoric and actions are hardly the sole province of rightists. Leftists have their—our—own sordid history of denunciation and assassination, bloviations and bombings, and we have made our own poor excuses for the likes of the Weather Underground.
This isn’t about “balance” and “both sides do it”; it is about history and evidence.
And the evidence today points right.
AbsurdBeats 
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here
7 05 2011Foster children would be allowed to get clothing only from second hand stores
Under a new budget proposal from State Sen. Bruce Casswell, children in the state’s foster care system would be allowed to purchase clothing only in used clothing stores.
Casswell, a Republican representing Branch, Hillsdale, Lenawee and St. Joseph counties, made the proposal this week, reportsMichigan Public Radio.
His explanation?
Under his plan, foster children would receive gift cards that could only be used at places like the Salvation Army, Goodwill and other second hand clothing stores.
The plan was knocked by the Michigan League for Human Services. Gilda Jacobs, executive director of the group, had this to say:
Casswell says the plan will save the state money, though it isn’t clear how much the state spends on clothing for foster children or how much could be saved this way.
(If you’re wondering if we’re really at the abyss, read the comments.)
Credit: The Michigan Messenger; h/t Fred Clark at slactivist
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Tags: children, dignity, Politics, poverty, punishment, resentment, welfare
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