Spare me the choked up goodbye, the subsequent initial feint at trying to frame the legacy that officially begins on January 20, 2008 or the glossy retelling of the old days.
Somehow the term “genius” being applied to Mr. Rove and his tactics that resulted in 2 terms of a failed administration seems misplaced, even downright insulting, to many of the voters in those elections.
His use of gutter tactics and polarization reached new lows – even by comparison to the ways and means employed by such people as Richard Nixon and his crew. Just ask Ann Richards (phone question used -“Would you vote for Ann Richards if you found out that most of her females staffers are lesbians?”- not that anyone knew if they were or not) when Bush ran for governor of Texas or John McCain, during the 2000 campaign in South Carolina.
He is not going anywhere that doesn’t have a phone, that doesn’t have access to his RNC email account, that can’t be contacted by those in need of his “wisdom”.
He is going to a place that will be even further out of the spotlight on an everyday basis, where his appearances will be in an even more controlled setting than they were in the White House. He’ll be on the dinner speaker circuit, making tens (if not initially, hundreds) of thousands of dollars for 20 to 30 minute speeches, during which he will be laying out the ground plan for the 2008 election to the faithful.
The importance of his words will be enhanced mightily if the Democratic nominee is Hillary – make no mistake about that. If there were one person that can galvanize the Republicans to overlook any differences they might have with one another, it would be the candidacy of Hillary. Enter Fred, Rudy or Mitt and their running mates (a running mate chosen to accommodate and placate those within the party that might not normally support the ticket’s top spot holder).
Rove will – through Bush, his pulpit in the White House and his veto power – orchestrate facts, imagery and legislative agendas to whatever advantage for the Republican nominee – while being out of sight and out of mind.
Dick Cheney will be envious.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Here's Hoping Our Leaders Will Be Dogged In August
So, here we are, in both NJ and the country, in debt up to our eyeballs, with repeated reminders that our infrastructure is, in some regards, falling or ready to, fall apart. Bridges, roadways, power grids, water/sewer systems.
We are reminded daily of the drain of our strength, both human and financial, in Iraq. Add to these reminders our dependence on foreign oil and it’s fluctuating price at the pump and our dependence on foreign money to finance our self imposed debt.
A glut in the housing market and fewer starts, credit/mortgage problems that threaten hundreds of thousands of families with the loss of their newly acquired homes, A Wall St. that is both Jekell and Hyde – new plateaus reached and then quickly abandoned as fears suddenly set-in.
Horrific displays of the underbelly of human behavior – both domestic and foreign – splash across our media everyday.
An immigration policy that is broken, the export of good paying jobs to cheaper markets, the importing of tainted goods from many of those same markets.
Corrupted politicians being caught and, in some instances, only being slapped on the wrists for their crimes or in the case of the former druggy D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, being enshrined in wax.
So what do our leaders do for all of this?
They give tax breaks to those who don’t need them, give out tax rebates checks just in time for the elections (the monies from which were gotten from taxes to begin with), worry about whether we need a front license plate on our car or not, beat the dead horse path of what you cannot do while driving – talk/text on a cell phone, smoke with a child in a car (when does childhood begin anyway?) – to the point that in five years, you better not be seen picking your nose.
With August here, our Congress, our President, our Supreme Court, our State legislature have taken a cue from the Iraqi government and have gone on a formal vacation, one that is traceable on a calendar versus that of a vacation from their senses or, mind you, any type of display of their convictions.
Hmm, here in NJ, it may take a different descriptor that the use of the word “convictions”. What a shame.
We are reminded daily of the drain of our strength, both human and financial, in Iraq. Add to these reminders our dependence on foreign oil and it’s fluctuating price at the pump and our dependence on foreign money to finance our self imposed debt.
A glut in the housing market and fewer starts, credit/mortgage problems that threaten hundreds of thousands of families with the loss of their newly acquired homes, A Wall St. that is both Jekell and Hyde – new plateaus reached and then quickly abandoned as fears suddenly set-in.
Horrific displays of the underbelly of human behavior – both domestic and foreign – splash across our media everyday.
An immigration policy that is broken, the export of good paying jobs to cheaper markets, the importing of tainted goods from many of those same markets.
Corrupted politicians being caught and, in some instances, only being slapped on the wrists for their crimes or in the case of the former druggy D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, being enshrined in wax.
So what do our leaders do for all of this?
They give tax breaks to those who don’t need them, give out tax rebates checks just in time for the elections (the monies from which were gotten from taxes to begin with), worry about whether we need a front license plate on our car or not, beat the dead horse path of what you cannot do while driving – talk/text on a cell phone, smoke with a child in a car (when does childhood begin anyway?) – to the point that in five years, you better not be seen picking your nose.
With August here, our Congress, our President, our Supreme Court, our State legislature have taken a cue from the Iraqi government and have gone on a formal vacation, one that is traceable on a calendar versus that of a vacation from their senses or, mind you, any type of display of their convictions.
Hmm, here in NJ, it may take a different descriptor that the use of the word “convictions”. What a shame.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
WTO: "Stabbing Weapons need not be put out to bid"
Made in China: Swiss army knife suffers an identity crisis
Kate Connolly in Berlin
Friday August 3, 2007
The Guardian
It is as closely associated with Switzerland as the Matterhorn, muesli and the cuckoo clock. But the Swiss army knife, considered by millions around the world to be an indispensable tool, is in danger of losing its Swiss identity.
The Swiss army, which is to order a fresh batch of 65,000 of the pocket knives with new specifications, has caused nationwide consternation by declaring that under World Trade Organisation rules, the tendering process must be opened to companies worldwide because of the high value of the contract.
China, which has been producing pirate copies of the knife for years, is thought to have the best chance of winning the contract, which is estimated at 1.7m Swiss francs (£695,000), followed by Taiwan and Bulgaria.
The issue has become one of the hottest political topics of the summer, with far-right politicians saying that national pride is at stake.
"If the Swiss army knife no longer comes from Switzerland, then we might as well stop producing it altogether," said Thomas Fuchs, MP for the far-right Swiss People's party.
Alois Kessler, a lawyer and a former colonel in the Swiss army, has taken up the campaign and launched a nationwide petition, Keep Soldiers' Pocket Knives Swiss!
He said he had found that under WTO rules "stabbing weapons" - among them the Swiss army knife - are on a list of products that do not need to be put out to tender (bid).
"I simply cannot imagine our soldiers carrying a Made in China knife in their knapsacks," he said.
"It would be like us giving them German-made chocolate."
The army is saying little, except that it is working on the technical specifications for the new product to make it suitable for modern soldiering, including a serrated blade with a locking mechanism, a saw, and a Phillips - crosshead - screwdriver. It should also have a case, allowing it to be attached to a belt.
Victorinox, the company that makes the knives, said it was confident it would win the bid on the combined factors of quality and cost.
The knife, which was first produced in Ibach in the canton of Schwyz in 1897, can be equipped with anything from a nail file and a tin opener to a fish-scaler and a USB stick, and features in the design collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
It is credited by everyone from balloonists and astronauts to surgeons and pilots with saving lives and is the official pocket knife for 16 armies around the world, including the US military.
It has also prompted many jokes, perceived as it is as the weapon of choice for the military of neutral Switzerland. The US comedian Robin Williams once quipped: "How can you trust an army that has a wine opener on its knife?"
(Hmmm, how soon until Chinese Swiss cheese, eh?)
Kate Connolly in Berlin
Friday August 3, 2007
The Guardian
It is as closely associated with Switzerland as the Matterhorn, muesli and the cuckoo clock. But the Swiss army knife, considered by millions around the world to be an indispensable tool, is in danger of losing its Swiss identity.
The Swiss army, which is to order a fresh batch of 65,000 of the pocket knives with new specifications, has caused nationwide consternation by declaring that under World Trade Organisation rules, the tendering process must be opened to companies worldwide because of the high value of the contract.
China, which has been producing pirate copies of the knife for years, is thought to have the best chance of winning the contract, which is estimated at 1.7m Swiss francs (£695,000), followed by Taiwan and Bulgaria.
The issue has become one of the hottest political topics of the summer, with far-right politicians saying that national pride is at stake.
"If the Swiss army knife no longer comes from Switzerland, then we might as well stop producing it altogether," said Thomas Fuchs, MP for the far-right Swiss People's party.
Alois Kessler, a lawyer and a former colonel in the Swiss army, has taken up the campaign and launched a nationwide petition, Keep Soldiers' Pocket Knives Swiss!
He said he had found that under WTO rules "stabbing weapons" - among them the Swiss army knife - are on a list of products that do not need to be put out to tender (bid).
"I simply cannot imagine our soldiers carrying a Made in China knife in their knapsacks," he said.
"It would be like us giving them German-made chocolate."
The army is saying little, except that it is working on the technical specifications for the new product to make it suitable for modern soldiering, including a serrated blade with a locking mechanism, a saw, and a Phillips - crosshead - screwdriver. It should also have a case, allowing it to be attached to a belt.
Victorinox, the company that makes the knives, said it was confident it would win the bid on the combined factors of quality and cost.
The knife, which was first produced in Ibach in the canton of Schwyz in 1897, can be equipped with anything from a nail file and a tin opener to a fish-scaler and a USB stick, and features in the design collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
It is credited by everyone from balloonists and astronauts to surgeons and pilots with saving lives and is the official pocket knife for 16 armies around the world, including the US military.
It has also prompted many jokes, perceived as it is as the weapon of choice for the military of neutral Switzerland. The US comedian Robin Williams once quipped: "How can you trust an army that has a wine opener on its knife?"
(Hmmm, how soon until Chinese Swiss cheese, eh?)
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Who Is Norma Gabler And Why Should We Care
If you ever used a textbook in a school, especially a public school you were influenced by Norma and her husband Mel.
From The NY Times:
Norma Gabler, Leader of Crusade on Textbooks, Dies at 84
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: August 1, 2007
Norma Gabler, a Texas homemaker who recoiled at material in her children’s textbooks and became the public face of a crusade with her husband to rid schoolbooks of content they considered antifamily, anti-American and anti-God, died on July 22 in Phoenix. She was 84.
The cause was Parkinson’s disease, her son James said.
From its origins at the Gablers’ kitchen table in Hawkins, Tex., in 1961 to its incorporation as Educational Research Analysts in 1973, the mom-and-pop textbook-criticism enterprise grew to occupy a prominent niche in the nation’s conservative pantheon. For more than four decades, the couple influenced what children read, not just in Texas but around the country.
The reason was Texas’ power to be a national template; the state board chooses textbooks for the entire state, and of the 20 or so states that choose books statewide, only California is bigger than Texas. It is difficult and costly for publishers to put out multiple editions, so a book rejected by Texas might not be printed at all.
In a 1982 article in The New York Times, Anthony T. Podesta, executive director of People for the American Way, a liberal group, said, “Texas has the buying power to influence the development of teaching materials nationwide, and a textbook edition chosen for Texas often becomes the sole edition available.”
The Gablers were first to seize on the Texas textbook process as a means of pushing their conservative principles, and their success baffled and angered civil liberties advocates and progressive educators. Publishers, with much to lose if Texas rejected their books, were often willing to make changes to please the Gablers.
Richard Morgan, president of Macmillan’s school division, said in a 1983 interview with The Times, “Not making the list in Texas is not a good sign.”
Mrs. Gabler, always with a smile and careful, precise diction, usually testified at textbook hearings rather than her shyer husband, Mel. She argued for more instruction in morality, free-enterprise economics, phonetics and weaknesses in evolutionary theory.
The Gablers had a two-barreled strategy: in addition to pressing issues of ideology, interpretation and philosophy, the Gablers ferreted out errors of fact. In 2001, Time magazine reported that their “scroll of shame” of textbook mistakes since 1961 was 54 feet long. In the early 1990s, Texas fined publishers about $1 million for failing to remove hundreds of factual errors the Gablers had found in 11 history books.
An example: A textbook said that Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina had supported the tariff of 1816. He opposed it.
But the Gablers’ most important battles concerned bigger issues, like making publishers define marriage as a lifelong union between a man and a woman.
The couple’s interest in textbooks began when James, at 14, had to memorize the Gettysburg Address and turned to an encyclopedia, he said in an interview. The words “under God,” part of the address, were shown in a picture of the Lincoln Memorial, but were omitted in the text as published. His parents blanched.
Soon, the couple were poring over textbooks, something they said few parents ever did, and finding lots to offend. They raised objections at the local P.T.A.
Why did a history textbook give more space to the French Revolution than to the American Revolution? Were not Vietnam and Watergate overemphasized? Was Robin Hood a hero, as the text claimed, or a dangerous advocate of income redistribution?
From the kitchen in Hawkins, about 100 miles east of Dallas, their piles and piles of books and notes spread throughout their house. They worked by what they called the three p’s — prayer, preparation and persistence — as they geared up for their once-a-year trips to Austin, the state capital, to ride herd on textbooks.
There, each academic subject — English, say — is reviewed on an eight-year cycle in a system established a century ago to create an organized buying system to negotiate lower prices. It was also intended to improve the quality of books used in rural areas.
Norma Elizabeth Rhodes was born in Garrett, Tex., on June 16, 1923. She did not go to college. Her husband of 62 years, Melvin Nolan Freeman Gabler, went for a year. He worked in the oilfields, served in the Air Force during World War II, was a clerk for 39 years for Esso, now part of Exxon-Mobil, and died in 2004.
In addition to James, who lives in Phoenix, Mrs. Gabler is survived by another son, Paul, of Houston, and six grandchildren.
Neal Frey, who has worked with Educational Research Analysts since 1972 and is now president, said that Mrs. Gabler’s larger public role was deceptive.
“Mr. Gabler wore the pants in that family, and Mrs. Gabler wanted it that way,” he said in an interview.
Together, they were “the most effective textbook censors in the country,” Creation/Evolution, a publication of the National Center for Science Education, said in 1982. It went on to point out that while the Gablers derided textbooks that left out alternatives to evolution, they opposed alternative interpretations of American history they deemed negative. They objected to an Edgar Allan Poe story as gruesome. Texts that raised questions without firm answers were suspect.
Famously, in 1973, they flinched at a fifth-grade American history text that devoted more attention to Marilyn Monroe than to George Washington.
“We’re not quite ready for Marilyn Monroe as the mother of our country,” Mrs. Gabler said.
From The NY Times:
Norma Gabler, Leader of Crusade on Textbooks, Dies at 84
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: August 1, 2007
Norma Gabler, a Texas homemaker who recoiled at material in her children’s textbooks and became the public face of a crusade with her husband to rid schoolbooks of content they considered antifamily, anti-American and anti-God, died on July 22 in Phoenix. She was 84.
The cause was Parkinson’s disease, her son James said.
From its origins at the Gablers’ kitchen table in Hawkins, Tex., in 1961 to its incorporation as Educational Research Analysts in 1973, the mom-and-pop textbook-criticism enterprise grew to occupy a prominent niche in the nation’s conservative pantheon. For more than four decades, the couple influenced what children read, not just in Texas but around the country.
The reason was Texas’ power to be a national template; the state board chooses textbooks for the entire state, and of the 20 or so states that choose books statewide, only California is bigger than Texas. It is difficult and costly for publishers to put out multiple editions, so a book rejected by Texas might not be printed at all.
In a 1982 article in The New York Times, Anthony T. Podesta, executive director of People for the American Way, a liberal group, said, “Texas has the buying power to influence the development of teaching materials nationwide, and a textbook edition chosen for Texas often becomes the sole edition available.”
The Gablers were first to seize on the Texas textbook process as a means of pushing their conservative principles, and their success baffled and angered civil liberties advocates and progressive educators. Publishers, with much to lose if Texas rejected their books, were often willing to make changes to please the Gablers.
Richard Morgan, president of Macmillan’s school division, said in a 1983 interview with The Times, “Not making the list in Texas is not a good sign.”
Mrs. Gabler, always with a smile and careful, precise diction, usually testified at textbook hearings rather than her shyer husband, Mel. She argued for more instruction in morality, free-enterprise economics, phonetics and weaknesses in evolutionary theory.
The Gablers had a two-barreled strategy: in addition to pressing issues of ideology, interpretation and philosophy, the Gablers ferreted out errors of fact. In 2001, Time magazine reported that their “scroll of shame” of textbook mistakes since 1961 was 54 feet long. In the early 1990s, Texas fined publishers about $1 million for failing to remove hundreds of factual errors the Gablers had found in 11 history books.
An example: A textbook said that Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina had supported the tariff of 1816. He opposed it.
But the Gablers’ most important battles concerned bigger issues, like making publishers define marriage as a lifelong union between a man and a woman.
The couple’s interest in textbooks began when James, at 14, had to memorize the Gettysburg Address and turned to an encyclopedia, he said in an interview. The words “under God,” part of the address, were shown in a picture of the Lincoln Memorial, but were omitted in the text as published. His parents blanched.
Soon, the couple were poring over textbooks, something they said few parents ever did, and finding lots to offend. They raised objections at the local P.T.A.
Why did a history textbook give more space to the French Revolution than to the American Revolution? Were not Vietnam and Watergate overemphasized? Was Robin Hood a hero, as the text claimed, or a dangerous advocate of income redistribution?
From the kitchen in Hawkins, about 100 miles east of Dallas, their piles and piles of books and notes spread throughout their house. They worked by what they called the three p’s — prayer, preparation and persistence — as they geared up for their once-a-year trips to Austin, the state capital, to ride herd on textbooks.
There, each academic subject — English, say — is reviewed on an eight-year cycle in a system established a century ago to create an organized buying system to negotiate lower prices. It was also intended to improve the quality of books used in rural areas.
Norma Elizabeth Rhodes was born in Garrett, Tex., on June 16, 1923. She did not go to college. Her husband of 62 years, Melvin Nolan Freeman Gabler, went for a year. He worked in the oilfields, served in the Air Force during World War II, was a clerk for 39 years for Esso, now part of Exxon-Mobil, and died in 2004.
In addition to James, who lives in Phoenix, Mrs. Gabler is survived by another son, Paul, of Houston, and six grandchildren.
Neal Frey, who has worked with Educational Research Analysts since 1972 and is now president, said that Mrs. Gabler’s larger public role was deceptive.
“Mr. Gabler wore the pants in that family, and Mrs. Gabler wanted it that way,” he said in an interview.
Together, they were “the most effective textbook censors in the country,” Creation/Evolution, a publication of the National Center for Science Education, said in 1982. It went on to point out that while the Gablers derided textbooks that left out alternatives to evolution, they opposed alternative interpretations of American history they deemed negative. They objected to an Edgar Allan Poe story as gruesome. Texts that raised questions without firm answers were suspect.
Famously, in 1973, they flinched at a fifth-grade American history text that devoted more attention to Marilyn Monroe than to George Washington.
“We’re not quite ready for Marilyn Monroe as the mother of our country,” Mrs. Gabler said.
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