Excuse Me?

Based on the latest data, around 7,200 students drop out of high school each day, or about 1.3 million a year. Nationally, about 68.8 percent of students who start high school graduate four years later, but there are huge local differences. While 83 percent of the students in New Jersey graduate each year, only 41.8 percent of  Nevada's students do. ~ Newsweek

But Sharron Angle has a solution:



Where do these people come from? Evidently not the public education system.

Jefferson Thomas Dies At 67

Little do we remark the passing of giants in our midst. From The Huffington Post:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Jefferson Thomas was fast and athletic and often played pickup basketball with white students while growing up in Little Rock in the 1950s.
But when Thomas became one of nine black students to integrate Arkansas' largest high school, many of his basketball buddies weren't happy to see him in their classes.
"One of them said, 'Well I don't mind playing basketball or football with you or anything. You guys are good at sports. Everybody knows that, but you're just not smart enough to sit next to me in the classroom,'" Thomas recalled years later.
The pioneer in school desegregation died Sunday at an extended-care living facility in Columbus, Ohio, of pancreatic cancer at age 67...

I Feel Better Now

I just don't know what to say about this, except a free laptop is a nice incentive...but who would want a job with such a high barrier of entry? Months of training? C'mon, gimme a break. It's just a laptop.

Feedin' Time

Part of the horde. All of the cats and both dogs are either abandoned or the progeny of abandoned pets. We live in the mountains in a fairly remote location that seems to attract irresponsible scumbags who no longer have any use for their pets. We have an open farm policy and everybody eats. The rabbits and chinchillas are my brides acquisitions. It's my job to feed and doctor everyone. There are actually those rare days when I go 24 hours without being burdened with human conversation.

A Thought On Productivity

From the BLS:

PRODUCTIVITY AND COSTS

Second Quarter 2010, Revised

Nonfarm business sector labor productivity decreased at a 1.8 percent
annual rate during the second quarter of 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics reported today as hours increased 3.5 percent and output
increased 1.6 percent.

From Justin at Shit My Dad Says:

"Put the rake down. I don't wanna sit around
watching you 'give it your best.' Either
stop sucking or get the fuck out of the way."

More or Less on Beck

Sally Kohn at Movement Vision Lab has initiated an ongoing, we hope, dialogue with Glen Beck, heroically challenging his inane prattle. Here is the first installment, sort of a Beck-mania primer:

The Real Lich King

E.D. Kain at Balloon Juice and Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic are in agreement that Glen Beck is the Lich King and a virulent brain eater. The Lich King thing is a WOW character that I had to have my son explain to me. He is sort of a 21st century Sauron. Though I have not hammered the Beckster here, I have no problem with their characterization, per se. I would proffer that in reality he is Saruman, merely a pale imitation. Dick Cheney is the front runner. This from Matt Yglesias.

Tony Blair confirms Dick Cheney's identity as the Lich King in his memoirs:

“He would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it – Hizbollah, Hamas, etc,” Mr Blair wrote in his autobiography, A Journey. “In other words, he thought the whole world had to be made anew, and that after September 11, it had to be done by force and with urgency.”

I would point to this WaPo article by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilme;

"...today, as the United States ends combat in Iraq, it appears that our $3 trillion estimate (which accounted for both government expenses and the war's broader impact on the U.S. economy) was, if anything, too low."

...

"Re-imagining history is a perilous exercise. Nonetheless, it seems clear that without this war, not only would America's standing in the world be higher, our economy would be stronger."

Dick Cheney is a real live Lich King, the driving force of evil in America.