06/09/2013 archive

Jun 09 2013

NO Suzanne Dale Estey for Michael Debell’s open School Board Seat

NO Suzanne Dale Estey for Michael Debell’s open School Board Seat !!!!!!!!!!

I’ve been a high school math teacher at Franklin High in Seattle for 7 years, and when I look at the different lists of Ms. Estey’s supporters, I cringe.  http://suzanne4schools.com/ind…

I am very liberal socially. I’ve been a lowly grunt in a lot of local, state and national campaigns over the decades. Among her supporters are many who I’ve voted for, campaigned with and spoken with over those decades. Her supporters labeled “Elected Officials” have done little or nothing to really change the game over the decades, despite earning leader paychecks. For decades the game has been misinformation and lies against community investment by the Ronald Reagans, Newt Gingrichs, Tim Eymans and Rodney Toms. The game has been compromise after compromise with the Rodneys and the Reagans, accompanied by excuse after excuse for the compromises, and cumulating with more time at the trough of 6 figure a year salaries for those “leaders” making the compromises and the excuses. In a compromise, aren’t we supposed to get something we wanted, instead of getting less of something worse?

Some of her supporters are Seattle School Board members who supported Maria Goodloe Johnson’s deformer policies with vote after vote. How much good did the slick sound bites of her deformer policies do for those of us actually working with kids?  One of those policies is evaluating teachers by the junk “science” of student test scores, or “Valued Added Measures” (VAM).  For those of you without math or science backgrounds, VAM isn’t junk because I’m a loud mouth and because I don’t like it, it is junk because real scientists say it isn’t valid. (google “John Ewing VAM”). Why are deformer policies loaded with consultants, sound bites and teacher blaming?

25 years ago I was cooking in Boston, and 10 years ago I left Microsoft after being a serf for 5 years. I’ve seen family wage jobs and middle income careers outsourced and sold out with compromise after compromise, excuse after excuse. The deformers talk a great game about helping the kids, and their results are going to be a bunch of junk-mart schools staffed with adults too terrified or cowed to stand up to their junk-mart bosses.  When it comes time to vote, if you consider Suzanne Estey because I’m an unhinged arm waving loudmouth – fine!

I’ll be voting for Sue Peters for School Board.  

http://seattleducation2010.wor…

Jun 09 2013

Rant of the Week: Stephen Colbert, NSA Phone Surveillance

NSA Phone Surveillance

The Nation Security Agency collects millions of phone records from Verizon, and unlike during the Bush administration, this time it’s the Obama administration.  

Jun 09 2013

Formula One 2013: Circuit Gilles Villeneuve

It’s a partly cloudy 72 in Montreal so there’s no reason to think the whole race will not be run on Drys of which almost everyone has a full compliment.  The tire of choice will be the Super Soft on a 2 pit strategy, but they will have to run the Mediums at least once.  The alternative would be to run Mediums for most of the distance, save a stop, and put the Super Softs on at the end.  Given the 1 second per lap advantage and the speed of the stops I don’t imagine any except the most desperate Teams would try it.

I havent been able to find any news of Massa dropping out after yesterday’s crash so presumably he’ll start.  It’s a shame, it was a brand new chassis.

Grosjean qualified 19th but will be penalized 10 grid spots for causing a collision at the previous round (Monaco). Raikkonen and Ricciardo qualified ninth and tenth respectively; penalised two grid spots each for pit-exit infringements in Qualifying.  This is reflected in the pretty tables.

Brad Spurgeon thinks this is a much tougher track than I do, pointing to the heavy braking at the end of the straights.  I say this gives them plenty of time to cool down.  He also says the surface is abrasive and it may very well be, but if you’re getting 22 laps out of Super Softs under heavy fuel how bad can it be?

He does point out that this is the first of the really fast tracks where the Teams start using their lower downforce settings and that could make a difference for cars with good mechanical grip (like Scuderia Marlboro when their wind tunnel was screwed up).

Montreal’s contract expires in 2014 and the Harper government has shown no willingness to pony up its share of the $15 Million kickback to Formula One.  At times like this it’s important to remember what Canada’s 2 largest national industries are-

Repeats on NBC Sports at 8 pm and 12:30 am Tuesday.

Pretty tables below.

Jun 09 2013

On This Day In History June 9

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

June 9 is the 160th day of the year (161st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 205 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1973, Secretariat wins Triple Crown

With a spectacular victory at the Belmont Stakes, Secretariat becomes the first horse since Citation in 1948 to win America’s coveted Triple Crown–the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes. In one of the finest performances in racing history, Secretariat, ridden by Ron Turcotte, completed the 1.5-mile race in 2 minutes and 24 seconds, a dirt-track record for that distance.

With easy victories in his first two starts of 1973, Secretariat seemed on his way to the Triple Crown. Just two weeks before the Kentucky Derby, however, he stumbled at the Wood Memorial Stakes at Aqueduct, coming in third behind Angle Light and Sham. On May 5, he met Sham and Angle Light again at the Churchill Downs track in Louisville for the Kentucky Derby. Secretariat, a 3-to-2 favorite, broke from near the back of the pack to win the 2 1/4-mile race in a record 1 minute and 59 seconds. He was the first to run the Derby in less than two minutes and his record still stands. Two weeks later, at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland, Secretariat won the second event of the Triple Crown: the Preakness Stakes. The official clock malfunctioned, but hand-recorded timers had him running the 1 1/16-mile race in record time.

On June 9, 1973, almost 100,000 people came to Belmont Park near New York City to see if “Big Red” would become the first horse in 25 years to win the Triple Crown. Secretariat gave the finest performance of his career in the Belmont Stakes, completing the 1.5-mile race in a record 2 minutes and 24 seconds, knocking nearly three seconds off the track record set by Gallant Man in 1957. He also won by a record 31 lengths. Ron Turcotte, who jockeyed Secretariat in all but three of his races, claimed that at Belmont he lost control of Secretariat and that the horse sprinted into history on his own accord.

Jun 09 2013

Sunday June 9, 2013: Up with Steve Kornacki Tweets

Hello. A programming note: Today was a decent show, but sadly, Saturday’s shows are kind of a waste of time for me since there is meaningless Congressional baseball talk(without the same caliber talk of reforming it or killing the filibuster) and hour long discussions about New jersey politics and Chris Christie I think are unwarranted. So therefore, I am going to be doing strictly a Sunday series on this now. That is when we talk about real shit like warrantless phone-tracking, warrantless surveillance, and the NSA as we did today.

It’s sadly not just me. In fairness, what I am interested in and what Steve is interested in are two different things. Chris Hayes shares my same interests and Steve does not. I like discussions about policy, and I’m just not getting enough of that. Besides, Sunday is enough to not abandon the #Uppers people who do appreciate what I tweet. I may or may not tweet on Saturday, but the tweets won’t be collected. So here we are on #Uppers.

Thank you for reading.

Jun 09 2013

Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

Up with Steve Kornacki: The guests were not listed but Joan Walsh, editor at large Salon.com, said she would be one of Steve’s guests.

This Week with George Stephanopolis: Guests this Sunday are Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA); Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI); Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO); and Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian.

Guests on the roundtable: George Will, Washington Post; GOP Strategist Matthew Dowd; Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN); Paul Krugman, New York Times; and Greta Van Susteren, Fox News.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr Schieffer’s guests are Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH); Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY); Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA); Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX); Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD); and Rep. John Dingell (D-MI).

On his roundtable: David Sanger, New York Times; Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post); Harvard University Prof. Joseph Nye; and Margaret Brennan, CBS News.

The Chris Matthews Show: Chris is preempted for the Men’s Final of the French Open.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: MTP is preempted for the Men’s Final of the French Open.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are Sen. John McCain (R-AZ); Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO); Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD); Amy Walter, Cook Political Report; Former Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL); and Former Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA).

Jun 09 2013

Six In The Morning

On Sunday

Obama and Xi end ‘constructive’ summit

The BBC

US President Barack Obama and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have ended a two-day summit described by a US official as “unique, positive and constructive”.

US National Security Advisor Tom Donilon said Mr Obama had warned Mr Xi that cyber-crime could be an “inhibitor” in US-China relations.

He also said that both countries had agreed that North Korea had to denuclearise.

The talks in California also touched on economic and environmental issues.

The two leaders spent nearly six hours together on Friday and another three hours on Saturday morning at the sprawling Sunnylands retreat in California.




Sunday’s Headlines:

Syria’s many fronts

Afghanistan’s vigilantes help keep Taliban in check

Sudan ‘orders halt to oil transfers’ from South Sudan

Tear gas returns to Turkey protests

Boundless Informant: the NSA’s secret tool to track global surveillance data

Jun 09 2013

What We Now Know

In this week segment of “What we know Now” wit Up host Steve Kornacki, we learn that the two men who were wrongly identified as the Boston Marathon bombers on the front page of The New York Post, have sued the Post for defamation. Steve is joined by guests Abby Rapoport, staff writer, The American Prospect; Jonathan Alter, columnist for Bloomberg View; Michael Steele, former chairman of the RNC; and Julia Ioffe, senior editor at The New Republic.

Jeremy Epstein Is Still Looking For A Job

by Andrew Kaczynski, BuzzFeed

The college student was thrust into the spotlight when he asked Obama and Romney about finding a job after graduation at the October town hall debate.

At the debate, Epstein made headlines for asking the candidates about finding a job after graduation. “Mr. President, Governor Romney, as a 20-year-old college student, all I hear from professors, neighbors and others is that when I graduate, I will have little chance to get employment,” he asked. “Can – what can you say to reassure me, but more importantly my parents, that I will be able to sufficiently support myself after I graduate?”

Epstein did not find a summer job but is doing some work at his school’s radio station 88.7. He’s even hosting a show.

Heather McGill, Wife of Alabama Sen. Shadrack McGill, Warns on Facebook to Keep Off Her Man

from ABC News

An Alabama politician’s wife who took to Facebook to warn women to stay away from her husband said a “righteous anger” pushed her to write a post that has now gone viral.

Why do we even care? But, hey now we know.

The New York Post‘s “Bag Men” May Get the Last Laugh

by Jennifer Lai, Slate

As you may remember, the photo and attention-grabbing headline led many to believe the FBI had IDed the two males-16-year-old high school student Salaheddin Barhoum and 24-year-old part-time college student Yassine Zaimi-as suspects in the bombing. In reality, the pair turned out to just be avid runners who had been already briefly questioned by authorities. Later that day, authorities released the photos and video of the two actual suspects, who we now know as Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Barhoum and Zaimi are suing the Post for libel, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and invasion of privacy, and are seeking unspecified damages

Gov. Deval Patrick says he got drunk after bomber captured

by Katie Glueck, Politico

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick got “quite drunk” by himself a day after the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects concluded, according to a report Thursday.

The Boston Herald reported that the Bay State Democrat went to the Berkshires for a swim and a solo dinner, the Saturday after Boston endured hours of lockdown as law enforcement engaged in a shootout with the Tsarnaev brothers and spent a day tracking down the surviving brother, Dzhokhar, before capturing him.

Good for him. I might have done the same after all that. Hmmm, I can’t remember but I might have.