Chris Wallace’s interview with Michele Bachmann on Fox News Sunday is resonating in part because he asked her, “Are you a flake?” The host has since apologized. “I messed up. I’m sorry,” he says in a post-show video, notes the Hot Air blog . “I didn’t mean any disrespect.” Wallace says…
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At theaters all across America this weekend, a new comedy starring Cameron Diaz and Jason Segal hit the big screens. While a movie debuting on a Friday is nothing new, the content of this film stands out from the rest. The Bad Teacher title gives a subtle hint about the plot, and the movie’s description reads, “Some teachers just don’t give an F.” It also describes Cameron Diaz’s character, a teacher, as someone who “drinks” and who “gets high.” Though comedies shouldn’t necessarily be taken seriously, a television advertisement for the movie is what caught my attention. The advertisement, which can be seen here, says that the United States used to have the number one educational system in the world, and we now rank 17th. The clip then proceeds to show Cameron Diaz’s character throwing a dodge ball at a child before the Bad Teacher title line appears. The implication for the ad spot is clear: America’s schooling has fallen because of bad teachers. The timing of such an ill-advised commercial couldn’t be worse for teachers, as educators across the United States are under attack from politicians and the media. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has led a large portion of the fighting against teachers, claiming they make too much money, that they’re not effective, and that they’re too difficult to fire. He proposed a new way of judging teachers with his merit plan, a system that would judge the value of teachers based on student test data. His plan has received broad attention from media outlets, though the veracity of his boisterous arguments has either been ignored or hasn’t been sought out. Vanderbilt University, in one of the first scientific studies of such a merit educational system, tested the theory by offering math teachers in Nashville, Tennessee, between $5,000-$15,000 if their students scored higher on a state-based examination. The results? It didn’t work, and the students didn’t score higher even with hefty incentives for the teachers. As the report concluded, “The experiment was intended to test the notion that rewarding teachers for improved scores would cause scores to rise. By and large, results did not confirm this hypothesis.” Rather than report scientific evidence that appears to contradict popular notions like a merit system, the media has instead decided to focus on the failures of American schools. ABC’s 20/20, for example, did a special report on Abraham Lincoln High School in New York City. One student told ABC that teachers were dull to the point of students actually sleeping in class. Another school administrator complained that the teachers unions were too strong and that their district was having a hard time firing a teacher who allegedly sent sexually explicit emails to a 16-year-old student. ABC even spoke with proclaimed education experts, such as Jay Greene, author of Education Myths, who claimed that the issue of money for schools is a misnomer. “If money were the solution, the problem would already be solved,” Greene said, referencing the levels of increased government spending on schools the past 30 years. The claims made in the special were serious enough that they should be looked into. If there was one area the 20/20 segment was lacking, it was telling the story of the teachers. What did they think of the accusations being made against their lot? I attempted to answer those questions by contacting a teacher I’ll call “Alicia” who has taught in urban schools in central Florida as well as schools in Michigan. Her version of events painted a much different picture. Alicia dismissed the notion of students sleeping in class due to boring teachers. While she admitted there are “boring” teachers out there, she feels most of that is the product of teachers having their lesson plans down to a science. To help streamline the process of teaching material, many teachers will save their lessons from the previous year and teach them again. If an educator has been on the job many years, they’ve likely done the material so many times that it may even appear dull to themselves. Alicia suggests the best way to beat such a rut is to have “hands-on” lessons and to mix things up from time-to-time. Also, Alicia astutely quipped, if you ask students how they feel about school, odds are they’re going to say it’s boring. You won’t always learn about a subject that interests you, which is all a part of becoming a well-rounded member of society. Alicia refuted the criticism of unions being too strong as a chicken or egg situation. Officials claim the unions are too strong, yet teachers need a strong union to protect them from organizations that wish to cut their funding, salaries and health care. The unions may protect some who aren’t worthy of being educators but to use a potential pedophile and apply it to teachers generally is “not a fair situation for the good teachers,” and is insulting. Alicia seemed to take special offense to the claim money is a myth when it comes to education. She states: I do believe money can be a big deciding factor in which schools get more money. I taught in an urban, inner-city school where we received much less funding per pupil than a school five minutes down the road in a wealthy area. These upper-class students had parents who were involved. Of course they are going to succeed better than my school, where the kids don’t know where their next meal is coming from, except for school lunch. I believe the situation should be reversed. The schools that have a failing reputation due to low test scores need the money more than the schools who are producing high test scores and graduate rates. Reading the criticisms of the American school system and speaking with Alicia has shown there are fundamental faults with the current system. What isn’t fair, however, is to place all the blame on teachers, and a movie trailer implying educators are the reason our schools are falling apart is misinformed and in bad taste. I wish to thank the teachers, such as Mrs. Carey, my first grade teacher, who wouldn’t give up on me even when I had no desire to do my homework. I would like to thank the high school teachers who somehow managed to keep coming into school every day to teach a bunch of students who managed to unhinge the clock from our wall as a joke, or password protected our network computers so nobody could access them. I would like to thank the teachers who, when a quarter or dime hit the ground in the hallway and began to roll, would run in a full-blown sprint towards the change, shouting humorously that it would double their monthly salary. I would like to thank the teachers who pushed me to write even when I thought it was the most boring thing in the world — you helped me earn my Master’s degree and write for The Huffington Post. To all my teachers: you changed my life, and this post is for you. Scott Janssen is a recent graduate of Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with a Master’s degree in Political Science. He can be reached at dnaprovesnothing@gmail.com.
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Like motels and Twinkies, the drive-through window is a distinctly American invention. Sure, other countries have embraced the simple pleasure of ordering a meal without so much as unbuckling your seatbelt, but it was America’s mid-20th-century convenience-obsessed car culture that gave birth to this now global phenomenon. The drive-through’s origins are in dispute. Some say it was California’s beloved In-and-Out Burger in 1948 that first allowed customers to order from the comfort of their front seat. But the Iowa-based restaurant chain Maid-Rite also claims to have opened the very first drive-through window, in Springfield, Ill. And though the mighty McDonald’s wouldn’t dare pretend to have invented it, they say their drive-through window has more nobler origins: “The first McDonald’s drive-thru was created in 1975 near an Arizona military base — to serve soldiers who weren’t permitted to get out of their cars while wearing fatigues.” No matter its origins, the drive-through window really took off in the 1950s, around the same time as that other eat-in-your-car dining phenom: the drive-in restaurant, a.k.a. the carhop. (Think: waitresses on roller skates delivering burgers and shakes to teenagers on awkward dates.) While the drive-in is now kitsch for nostalgic Baby Boomers, the drive-thru is ubiquitous. Not just at restaurants, either. Banks, of course, have offered drive-through service for decades. You’ll also find drive-through liquor stores, drive-through dry cleaners, drive-through wedding chapels, even drive-through funeral homes. But the coolest drive-thrus still serve food. Many use gimmicks to distinguish themselves from the competition. For instance, at Denver’s Hot Chick-a-Latté, for example, the baristas are no simple espresso pullers — they’re young, stylish woman who sling java with a side of sass. In La Puente, Ca., The Donut Hole’s customers are treated to a truly drive-through experience: Two giant donuts stand majestically over the drive-through entrance and exit. What’s more convenient than a convenience store? A drive-thru where you can buy fresh meat, milk, or chips and dip. At a time when food trucks are the latest culinary craze (they are, arguably, the drive-through window’s polar opposite), the classic drive-thru shows no sign of disappearing. After all — to borrow from Weird Al Yankovic’s “Trapped in the Drive-Thru” — how else can you order your favorite fast food while wearing a pair of bunny slippers? – Jeff Koyen, The Daily Meal More from The Daily Meal: Road Trips for the Food-Obsessed Outrageous Restaurant Marketing Stunts Through History 10 Chain Restaurants Worth Visiting 9 Record-Breaking Restaurants Most Popular Fast Food Restaurants on Facebook
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ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan's Taliban, a close ally of al Qaeda, has threatened to carry out a series of attacks against American, British and French targets to avenge the death of Osama bin Laden. “Soon you will see attacks against America and NATO countries, and our first priorities in Europe will be France and Britain,” deputy Pakistani Taliban leader Wali-ur-Rehman said in a videotape aired on Al Arabiya over the weekend. The Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP), or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, is blamed for…
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As America’s nuclear power plants have aged, the once-rural areas around them have become far more crowded and much more difficult to evacuate. (June 27)
Continue reading …Some Straight Talk from Van Jones and Jared Bernstein on Republican Games With the Raising the Debt Ceiling
June 26, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media After Van Jones gave his speeches both at Netroots Nation 2011 and with his Rebuild the Dream movement , I was glad to see him get some air time on MSNBC to talk about the political games the Republicans are playing with their hostage taking on raising the debt ceiling. We’d be well served if we had more of their Democratic counterparts speaking this clearly and succinctly as Jones and former adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, Jared Bernstein did here. I really liked Jones’ hand grenade analogy on Medicare. I actually think the Republicans are cynical enough to try to force the Democrats to make cuts to the program and then try to run against them on it in 2012 and hope that the public is uninformed enough along with a complicit media that would help with that factor for them to get away with it. As Jones noted, they need to get out there and defend the program if they don’t want that hand grenade to blow up in their face. I don’t know about anyone else, but as someone who has been following this issue, I’m sick to death of the Republicans throwing temper tantrums and telling the public that they’d be willing to let the world’s economy crash if they don’t get their way on tax cuts whether it be Cantor or McConnell of any of the rest of them. It’s long past time for the majority of our media to start calling out these hostage takers if they would like to still have a country worth living in, and not one in the middle of another depression, which there’s some argument about whether we’re already there now. For far too many Americans sadly, we may as well be. O’DONNELL: In the House, they walked out of the budget negotiations. Cantor, simply because they were talking about tax expenditures. No one, the Democrats, the Vice President, no one was talking about raising income tax rates of any kind, just going after the expenditures. BERNSTEIN: That is a key point, that is a key, I wrote about that on my blog today. It’s a key point. No one was, the thing that you hear Republicans inveigh against the most and the conservative supply side theory economist, the thing they inveigh against the most is an increase in tax rates, but if you broaden the base and close loopholes, you’re not increasing rates. And so that’s the way, that’s the direction that this panel needs to head now I think. O’DONNELL: Van, Sen. Chuck Schumer said today that they were looking at possibilities in Medicare, the what they call the delivery system in Medicare. There might be some ways to shave things there. Not cuts that would in any way affect beneficiaries. This is the kind of cuts that Democrats have done many times before. President Clinton did $200 billion in that his first six months in office, he did a big Medicare cut, but it was all on the provider side of the equation. If the Democrats go into Medicare in that way, will that undercut any of the argument they’ve been making against Paul Ryan? JONES: You know, we’re going to have to get all the way through this process, because I will say this. Somebody throws you a hand grenade, you can try to fiddle with it, or you can throw it back. And part of the problem is, that we get so earnest trying to figure out, well maybe we can do this, maybe we can do that, and we are holding the hand grenade they want us to hold. Here’s the bottom line, Medicare, the main threat to Medicare, is coming from the Republican Party, that’s the main threat. And Democrats need to stand up and defend the basic principles of this program, which is a sound program. When we begin to accept the terms of debate of the other side and start to fool around and fiddle with the hand grenade, we always wind up with the explosion in our face. O’DONNELL: Jared Bernstein, have the Democrats accepted, as Van says, too many of the terms of the debate set by the other side? BERNSTEIN: Look, the Democrats have held fast on this issue of revenues. Someone who makes an argument that the Democrats have been spineless and self-negotiating and folded too soon, I don’t think they can make that case here. Because I think the Democrats, President Obama, Vice President Biden, everyday I read in the paper that they’re holding fast on the revenue piece of this. And that’s critical. And when they sat down at the table, they didn’t have a fifty fifty spending cut revenue plan. They actually had three dollars in spending cuts to one dollar of revenue. So they’ve been bargaining in good faith from the very beginning. JONES: That’s what we think. O’DONNELL: What do you do when Republicans say, alright, we’ve talked about what we want to talk about, spending cuts. We may have reached a few tentative areas of agreement, just not specific agreements, but now, if you want to talk about revenues, you want to talk about anything involving the tax code, we’re leaving. How do you have the next conversation with them? JONES: Well, I tell you what. I think that the American people, ordinary folks, I’ve been out in the country, we just launched this new campaign called RebuildTheDream.com. The whole point of it is, most Americans get it. They know we’re going to have to have a more balanced approach. The polls show it that we can’t just have this lopsided cut, cut, cut. You know, frankly, the private sector already imposed an austerity program on us, that was Wall Street, the crash, it’s called the great recession. We don’t need a public austerity program imposed upon us on top of the private sector austerity program. What we need to do is to make sure that we have a balanced approach going forward. And I think that the pain that ordinary people are going through already in the country, these veterans who are coming home to no jobs, no hope and nothing, these kids who are graduating this spring into the worst job market in two generations, homeowners who are underwater desperately, and these banks that we rescued won’t even let them renegotiate the principals or the rates, that level of pain, needs to be heard from in Washington D.C. and instead what we hear is, we’re going to destroy Medicare and if you to raise one penny more of revenue from the richest people in America, we’re going to walk out on you. And you and I both know, we can deal with the deficit, just by within ten years, just by going back to Bill Clinton’s good, smart tax policies and military expenditure levels and we’d be done. So my concern is this point. If we have these kind of shenanigans going on in Washington D.C. and the American people are hurting, that at some point we’re going to have to stand up and bring some good wisdom and get this back to Washington D.C. O’DONNELL: Jared a quick last word. BERNSTEIN: I couldn’t agree more. I mean, it’s the wisdom of the American people that ultimately have to solve this deal. You know the Paul Ryan budget takes $3 trillion from low income programs and gives a trillion dollars to the richest people who are already the only ones who are actually doing okay right now. I can’t imagine why that’s okay with people when they know what it’s really about. Those twenty plus million on and underemployed people, I guarantee you there’s a number of tea parties in that group too. It’s time for the politicians to hear from the American people that this behavior is wholly unacceptable. Sit down at the table. Get the deal done. Get past the debt ceiling and get back to work.
Continue reading …Now That Banks Can’t Use Overdraft Charges As License To Steal, They Plan To Screw Debit Card Users Instead
June 26, 2011 No CommentFirst it started with ATMs, which banks used to cut their workforce. Then it was debit cards, which automatically processed transactions that used to be done manually. Every step of the way, banks have figured out how to get us to do the work for them, and now they’re looking to charge us for the privilege . And yet, the administration doesn’t understand why we want Elizabeth Warren running the financial consumer protection bureau? Because we need someone who’s on our side: For years, banks subsidized most debit card holders by levying heavy fees on retailers and overdrawn consumers. Merchants paid a processing fee averaging 44 cents every time a shopper swiped a card. And careless cardholders at major banks typically got dinged $35 every time the bank covered an overdraft. Last year the nation’s banks collected more than $50 billion from merchant fees and overdrafts, including checking and ATM balance-busters as well as debit card transactions. That’s likely to decline, however, thanks to new rules Congress mandated after the financial crisis. Starting next month, merchants will pay just 12 cents for debit processing, unless bank lobbyists persuade the Federal Reserve to tack on a surcharge for fraud prevention. Even then, the fee would probably not exceed 18 or 20 cents. In addition, new rules that took effect last year prohibit banks from automatically charging consumers for debit card and ATM overdraft protection on everyday transactions; instead, cardholders now must opt in. The bottom line is that banks stand to lose more than $10 billion a year in merchant fees and more than $6 billion in overdraft fees. They’ll be looking to make it up somewhere — and it’s likely to be from the mainstream debit card users, not just the sloppy ones. Already, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co. and many other banks are reducing or phasing out rewards programs that gave users cash back for using debit cards. Chase has been testing a monthly $3 fee for debit cards in some states, and Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. have added new fees to some checking accounts. Consumer advocates are steamed. Electronic debits are much less expensive to process than checks or cash; banks have saved billions in operating costs , said Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. But the industry has largely pocketed those savings rather than pass them along to customers, he said, and now they’re looking to charge users for the convenience. “We were trained to use cards, and now they’re telling us it’s not enough, wanting to charge us for the privilege,” Mierzwinski said. “It’s diabolical.”
Continue reading …Outsourcing is a cruel mistress—but for Mark Andol, it also provided a business idea that looks to be taking off. Andol owns the Made in America store in a small New York town on the way to Niagara Falls, and as its name suggests, all 3,000 products are…
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… which helps explain why conservative radio continues to dominate the airwaves while Air America Radio, uh, went kaput. During a recent appearance on Tavis Smiley's PBS show, enviro lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose “Ring of Fire” show ran on Air America, made what reasonable souls among us might construe as a questionable claim. Here's Kennedy responding to a question from Smiley on how liberals can better hone their message (video clip after page break) — SMILEY: How do the people get the facts to deal with the issues that you're raising, that I'm raising, and others are raising consistently? KENNEDY: Well, you know, there's ways to do it nowadays. You can, you know, I mean, I do it in my own way which is, I don't use computers a lot. That's what my kids do. But you get, and you know, if you go to certain sites you'll get, you'll get truthful information, but it's really, I don't think we have the infrastructure yet to really deliver that kind of information in a targeted way that, information that is critical of corporate power. So much of the media's really dependent on corporate money, so you're not going to see, like Air America failed not because it wasn't popular. In every jurisdiction where it was operating it was beating out right-wing radio. There was a huge appetite for it. The problem was, it couldn't get advertising because the corporations, the oil companies, the biggest advertisers, the pharmaceutical companies, which is now 70 percent of the, of the revenue for, for, news shows on TV, is pharmaceutical companies. And so it's very hard to criticize them on the news. Automobile companies, which is the other big player, and many other, these companies won't, wouldn't advertise, they all boycotted Air America. So Air America was like, you know, relying on, like, you know, hair growth products and this kind of stuff and they were scrambling for money and they couldn't find it and it killed them. I don't pretend to be an expert on the machinations of radio markets across the country, but consider me skeptical. Air America was so popular, Kennedy claims, with a “huge appetite” among the public for its content , yet it could not line up advertisers because of that ever-so convenient bogeyman, corporate America. A claim like this begs for specifics — where and when did Air America Radio outdraw Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, etc., for listeners? This wasn't quite the take on Air America's demise as reported by Brian Stelter in the New York Times on Jan. 25 2010 — The nearly six-year-old network, which suffered from merry-go-round management and repeated financial shortfalls, halted production on Thursday evening, only one hour after staff members were told they were losing their jobs. … In an interview (Thom Hartmann) said he found Air America to be “spectacularly incompetent” at running a radio network and gaining an audience, and left Air America last year for a lesser-known syndication company. “We've been far more successful since we left,” he said. In interviews last week a half-dozen former Air America employees cited similar complaints, namely that a series of owners and managers lacked the necessary broadcasting business expertise. … Air America's problem, said Michael Harrison, editor of Talkers Magazine, was not knowing “whether they were a political campaign or a broadcasting company.” “They ended up not being terribly good at either,” Mr. Harrison added. The article curiously lacked any mention of a corporate “boycott” depriving Air America of advertising. The Times also cited the losses of Al Franken and Rachel Maddow as contributing to Air America's downfall, as did Hartmann and Randi Rhodes departing for other companies. (h/t, ihatethemedia.com)
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A rather surprising thing happened on HBO's “Real Time” Friday evening. Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, the daughter of the former Speaker of the House, scolded host Bill Maher for spending the first half of his show “dissing America” (video follows with transcript and commentary): BILL MAHER, HOST: But right now she is a filmmaker whose seventh documentary “Citizen USA: A 50 State Road” and its companion book debuts July 4th on HBO. Take a look. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Raise your right hand and repeat after me. “I hereby declare my oath…” UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: I hereby declare my oath. UNIDENTIFIED MAN: For long, long time I wait for this day. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: This is greatest day of my life. UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: I love America. (END VIDEO CLIP) MAHER: Please welcome Alexandra Pelosi. ALEXANDRA PELOSI, FILMMAKER: Thank you. MAHER: How are you doing? You didn’t think you’d be following the President of the United States, did you? PELOSI: Well, I came to the show because after you spent the first half dissing America, I came to tell you how the American dream has people in every other country all over the world still wanting to come here to live here. Absolutely delicious. Brava! For a little background, here's what Pelosi's new documentary is about: Each year, nearly one million people from more than 150 countries become American citizens.
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