Tidbits

Texas Republican Party officially opposes the teaching of "critical thinking skills" in Texas schools. Here it is, as stated in the party platform:

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

No wonder Texas has provided us with such legislative luminaries as Joe Barton and Louie Gohmert.
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Bill Moyers, in an interview with Mike Lofgren, author of  "The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted," says:

"... what gives Mike Lofgren more clout than the rest is decades of insider experience on Capitol Hill. He was a Fulbright scholar with two degrees in history when he went to work in Congress and became a senior staff member of the House and Senate Budget committees. His specialty was the cost of national security. After 28 years of government service, Mike Lofgren retired and sat down to write a powerful manifesto that took off like a rocket when it was posted on the website Truthout.org."

Lofgren says: "I left the party because it was becoming an apocalyptic cult."

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Wow, I didn't know Melissa Harris-Perry had an academic feud going with Cornel West. At one time West's protege, Harris-Perry split with West when he opposed Obama. Good for her!

“In an self-aggrandizing, victimology sermon deceptively wrapped in the discourse of prophetic witness, Professor West offers thin criticism of President Obama and stunning insight into the delicate ego of the self-appointed black leadership class that has been largely supplanted in recent years,” she wrote in a scathing article for the Nation.

Harris-Perry went on to mock West and his “dear brother” Tavis Smiley as hypocrites in bed with “Wells-Fargo, Walmart and McDonalds,” while simultaneously deriding the president for his inattention to pivotal issues in the African-American community.

I loved it when she recently blew up at a guest on her TV show recently, Hooray for strong women!
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I think we'll be hearing the name "Mike Lofgren" more and more as time goes on. Click here for a link to an article in American Conservative entitled Revolt of the Rich. Here's a quote:

Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it. If one can afford private security, public safety is of no concern; if one owns a Gulfstream jet, crumbling bridges cause less apprehension—and viable public transportation doesn’t even show up on the radar screen. With private doctors on call and a chartered plane to get to the Mayo Clinic, why worry about Medicare?

Stephen Schwarzman, billionaire CEO of the Blackstone Group, threw himself a $5-million birthday party, hiring Rod Stewart for the entertainment. His comment on Obama's attitude toward Wall Street fat cats:

“It’s a war. It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”