Most of you are probably used to getting a good chuckle out of Iowahawk from his blog or his hilarious tweets. But he got serious earlier this week and used actual facts and figures to obliterate the KnownFacts™ that we are bombarded with by the teacher unions in WI and “experts” like Paul Krugman.

Iowahawk examined published 2009 figures for 4th and 8th graders by race in math, reading, and science. That gave a total of 18 figures to compare in TX vs WI vs USA. The numbers were mostly close, but Texas beat the national average in every case and beat Wisconsin in every case but one (4th grade Hispanic Science). Wisconsin beat the national average only half the time.

I can’t sum it up any better than Iowahawk did.

…White students in Texas perform better than white students in Wisconsin, black students in Texas perform better than black students in Wisconsin, Hispanic students in Texas perform better than Hispanic students in Wisconsin….

Perhaps the most striking thing in these numbers is the within-state gap between white and minority students. Not only did white Texas students outperform white Wisconsin students, the gap between white students and minority students in Texas was much less than the gap between white and minority students in Wisconsin. In other words, students are better off in Texas schools than in Wisconsin schools - especially minority students.

He also looked at HS dropout rates, and found that in Texas, whites and Hispanics had slightly higher dropout rates than in Wisconsin (but still well below the national average), but blacks in WI dropped out at a much higher rate than in TX. The black dropout rate in TX was 3x that for whites; in WI it was 6.5x higher. It seems pretty clear that those “progressive” teacher unions in WI must be a bunch of racists who can’t teach any kids nearly as well as TX teachers can.

14 CWA drivers of disabled people called in sick the other day. Maybe they have a cadillac health care plan or maybe Obamacare is working miracles, but in any case several of them were healthy enough a short time later that same day to show up at a protest in Trenton. The ones who have been identified on camera have been suspended.

This is one of those delicious cases where no matter which side you believe, the outcome is the same – these “workers” are not needed and should be fired. I know you find that hard to believe, but check out yourself the county vs union positions. (emphasis is mine)

The county said the workers were among 14 in the department who called out sick; officials alleged that 174 developmentally disabled adults who depend on the county’s services ended up “waiting for buses that never came.”
…
The CWA statement added “When all the facts come out, it will be clear that whatever errors in judgement were made, no one served by the county missed a medical appointment and no one should be fired.”

See what I mean? If you believe the county, the guys lied about being sick and left scores of disabled people stranded on the street. If you believe the union, the guys weren’t missed at all. So take your pick – fire them for lying and abandoning their jobs or fire them because even their union agrees they are dead wood.

From the diaries by Bill S.

Update from Erick: The U.S. Naval Institute has more here.

Frank Buckles, the last of the 4,734,991 Americans who served in World War I, has passed away. When you think of most kids today, his story is just staggering.

He was born on a Missouri farm when William McKinley was President. When the US entered WWI in April 1917, he had turned 16 barely two months earlier, but was determined to enlist.

After being rejected by Marine and Navy recruiters, Buckles tried the Army. When the recruiter asked to see his birth certificate, Buckles said Missouri didn’t keep birth records when he was born and the only record was what was written in the family Bible.

That was good enough for the Army and he enlisted that August at age 16-1/2. He said a sergeant told him, “If you want to get to France in a hurry, then join the ambulance service.” He did that and was on his way to England by that December. He wanted to get closer to the fighting and was eventually sent to France, then after the war ended he helped bring POWs back to Germany.

Read More →

This is a new one. We’re used to variations on the victim card, but this may be a new low.

Providence RI, which last I knew was not controlled by heartless Republicans, faces a possible $40M school deficit next year. State law requires them to notify teachers by March 1st if they will not be retained. Therefore the superintendent is apparently going to tell every teacher they are fired. Obviously many will be invited back or not actually fired, but this is the only way they can be flexible in addressing this deficit.

The president of the Providence Teacher’s Union had this to say about it.

This is beyond insane. Let’s create the most chaos and the highest level of anxiety in a district where teachers are already under unbelievable stress. Now I know how the United States State Department felt on Dec. 7 , 1941.

I’m guessing this is not the best way to draw the average citizen to your cause, even in a state as deep blue as RI. No word yet on unions shutting down the city, invading homesteads of (most likely Democratic) officials, etc. Maybe they’re too busy making anti-GOP signs and boarding buses for Wisconsin.

Promoted from the diaries…

They’re currently gathering signatures so it can be placed on the November ballot.

You can’t help but read this story about the guy behind it without doing a compare and contrast with abortion a certain safe/legal/rare medical procedure.

Schofield’s ordinance would outlaw the procedure throughout San Francisco, even for religious reasons. The only exception would be “a clear, compelling and immediate medical need.” It would make all other foreskin cutting a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and jail time for up to a year.
…
“The base of our argument is you’re spending incredible amounts of money doing painful and damaging surgery to an unwilling patient,” he said.

Imagine that, a medical procedure doing painful and damaging surgery to an unwilling patient should be forbidden unless there is a compelling and immediate medical need.

Gee, what would happen if some doctor developed a late-term intra-uterine circumcision procedure? Then it really wouldn’t be cutting a baby, just a lump of tissue. No different than lancing a boil, right? Shouldn’t that mom have the right to choose what to do with her body?

That would be difficult and dangerous though. Maybe they can just combine it with the birth and get everything except one foot out, snip the foreskin, and then pull the baby out the rest of the way. I mean heck, if you could legally shove a pair of scissors into the baby’s brain when it’s partially born, then a quick use of the scalpel at that point should be okay, right?

Jan 20th - “lower than expected” at 404,000

A Labor Department official said the larger-than-expected decline was partly explained by jobless claims returning to trend after the big rise the earlier week.

Translation: Last week’s rise was just a blip. This proves the Obama economy is working.

Jan 27th - “higher than expected” at 454,000

A labor spokesman said snowstorms earlier in the month forced unemployment offices in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina to open fewer hours and process fewer claims. A reduction in the backlog contributed to the sharp increase in new claims, the spokesman said.

Translation: This week’s rise is just a blip. This proves the Obama economy is working.

Here we go again! This is just like last year, when temporary census jobs were considered proof of Obamanomics’ greatness, but when the jobs went away that didn’t really count as bad news because we knew they were only temporary. In this case they are once again saying this week’s rise doesn’t count because it’s artificial, but they still want credit for last week’s drop that was artificial.

Heads I win; tails you lose.

The Washington Post had a piece over the weekend entitled Obama faces fight over missile defense as he presses New START ratification. As seems to be the case so often with MSM “news”, it ends up as a combination of left-wing spin and outright fantasy.

It starts out by saying that Obama wants so badly to be the first Democrat to sign an arms treaty with Russia that he’d even delay a vacation to do it. Is that dedication or what?

Then it points out the snag is that the evil Republicans keep wanting to bring up that pesky issue of missile defense. They became infatuated with it under Satan Reagan and derailed Clinton’s attempts at a treaty because of it. And here the fun begins.

Some Republicans say they want to tweak the Senate resolution of ratification with the goal of then supporting it. Others argue the treaty itself needs amendments which could kill it.

Wow, so you mean the Republicans are so obnoxious that they want to be able to have an actual open debate about the treaty before deciding whether to support it or not? Is the GOP the party of no or is this yet another case like ObamaCare where they are supposed to just say aye now and read it later? But it gets worse.

Treaty supporters say the outcry over missile defense is unfounded - and suspect it is a tactic to score political points. They note that there is almost nothing on missile defense in the treaty, which runs more than 300 pages with annexes, and Obama has continued many of George W. Bush’s missile-defense policies.

“One of the great ironies is, he made sure there was no way to attack the treaty as being tough on missile defense,” Greg Thielmann, a senior fellow at the Arms Control Association, said of Obama. “And yet that’s exactly one of the main rationales used by treaty critics.”

Let’s see… Obama and the Democrats know missile defense is a hot-button issue for Republicans, so they intentionally ignore it and then get hysterical because Republicans ask what’s up? C’mon, how annoying can the GOP be? Don’t they remember “we won, so shut up”? If you oppose it, clearly it has to be for political purposes, while if you support it, it’s just as obviously based on its merits.

I wonder what Mary Beth Sheridan meant by saying Obama is continuing many of Bush’s missile defense policies. The first thing that comes to mind for me is how Obama agreed with Putin (the guy who’s arming Venezuela) rather than Bush over putting up missile defense systems in eastern Europe. I guess it all depends on what the meaning of “continue” is.

But then it gets worse yet with the quote from the “expert”. Hmmm, “Arms Control Association”. There is no indication of who this group might be. Let’s check it out. The executive director came on board in 2001 after a stint as executive director of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers. His deputy director “works to promote efforts to reduce the humanitarian impact of certain types of conventional weapons, monitor the global arms trade, and prevent use of weapons in outer space.” In case there’s any doubt this is a group of peaceniks who are in favor of anything that is anti-military in general and anti-US military in particular, check out the foundations they get grants from. It sounds like the names you hear at the end of every PBS show:
—Carnegie Corporation of New York
—Colombe Foundation
—Ford Foundation
—Heinrich Böll Stiftung
—John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
—New-Land Foundation
—Ploughshares Fund
—Prospect Hill Foundation
—Stewart R. Mott Charitable Trust
—William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

That was enough for me to know the rest of the article wasn’t worth reading unless you swallowed poison and didn’t have any ipecac handy, but in case you’re wondering, the term “Star Wars” appears twice.

Reuters is reporting how the administration feels about today’s Government Motors IPO, which involves selling off less than half of the stake it got for $50B of taxpayer money.

Ron Bloom, the administration’s point man on auto restructuring, told Reuters Insider ahead of GM trading on Thursday that the government wants a fair return for taxpayers on its $50 billion investment, but also wants to “get out of this thing as soon as we can.”
…
Bloom said GM has done the right thing and pricing of $33 per share is a “fair deal” even though the partial sale represents a loss of roughly $9 billion on taxpayers’ original investment.

“We’re very comfortable with the way this went,” Bloom said.

Funny, I don’t think we taxpayers are “very comfortable” with how this is going. We saw earlier this year that GM shuffled bailout money to claim it repaid bailout money, now an Obama lackey is telling us what a great deal it is that dumping just part of our “investment” is only costing us $9B. I’d hate to think what he’d consider bad news.

No, that’s not a typo. When Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters were charged by the House Ethics Committee, they both said they wanted to get this aired out ASAP. The Republicans on the House Ethics Committee agreed.

There’s one slight problem. The Committee chair, Zoe Lofgren, has been busy doing the people’s work – like arranging for Stephen Colbert to testify before her immigration subcommittee – and says trivial stuff like this can wait.

The five Republicans on the 10-member committee signed a statement that accused the committee chairman, Democrat Zoe Lofgren of California, of stalling.
…
The statement, issued by ranking committee Republican Jo Bonner of Alabama, said, “Members of the committee have repeatedly expressed their willingness and desire to move forward with public trials of these matters and have repeatedly made themselves available to the chairwoman for October settings.”

Here is the full statement from Bonner and company, which also calls Steny Hoyer a liar “inaccurate” in how he’s trying to provide cover for Lofgren’s stonewalling.

We always heard about the “gap” between rich and poor during the Bush years - how it proved that he loved the rich and hated the poor. What has two years of complete Democratic control of Washington given us? A huge jump in that gap.

The top-earning 20 percent of Americans — those making more than $100,000 each year — received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent earned by those below the poverty line, according to newly released census figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968.

Wait - isn’t this proof that Democrats hate poor people?

“Income inequality is rising, and if we took into account tax data, it would be even more,” said Timothy Smeeding, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who specializes in poverty. “More than other countries, we have a very unequal income distribution where compensation goes to the top in a winner-takes-all economy.”

Can someone tell me what the heck this “expert” is talking about? “The rich” pay almost all the taxes, so the gap between rich and poor gets reduced if you factor in taxes, doesn’t it? He perfectly illustrates the leftist mentality that there are only so many dollars out there to be made, so each dollar a rich person has was taken from a more deserving poor person.

The findings are part of a broad array of U.S. census data being released this month that highlight the far-reaching impact of the recent economic meltdown. The effects have ranged from near-historic declines in U.S. mobility and birth rates to delayed marriage and the first drop in the number of illegal immigrants in two decades.

Here we get to the heart of the story. Gee, could it be that selected census data is being leaked to be used to argue that instead of focusing on how to get jobs for poor people, we need to punish the rich by raising their taxes so that the government can redistribute that wealth? If we could just make everyone equally poor, wouldn’t things be great?

TPM reports that a Senate aide is saying that – barring a “stunning turn of events” – there will be no vote before the election on delaying the Jan 1st tax hikes.

There is only one way to interpret this. The GOP would be in position to force a vote on a bill or an amendment that all rates be extended. Reid’s ideal scenario would be:
- GOP gets up or down vote to extend all tax rates in exchange for no filibuster.
- GOP bill to extend all tax rates fails.
- Dem bill to hike taxes on “the rich” passes.

You can bet your bottom dollar that if Reid had the votes to pull off the above that he’d find time to hold the vote before the election, so that the Dems could say they’ve saved the day for the little guy.

Since he’s not going to hold such a vote, the only possible interpretation is that he’s counted the votes and that a bill to delay the tax increases for everyone would pass.

Well either that or you can believe this load of rubbish from the TPM source.

The aide said it’s already a winning message without a vote since Obama and Democrats have framed the debate as the Republicans being for the rich and Democrats wanting to help the middle class. Others have made similar arguments, but several lawmakers have said they think a vote is the only way to score a political victory. The senior aide doesn’t think so.

“We have a winning message now, why muddy it up with a failed vote, because, of course, Republicans are going to block everything,” the aide said.

I was shocked – but not surprised – to read articles this week about insurance company changes regarding children. There was clearly a coordinated effort on the part of the left to vilify and lie about an outcome that anyone with a double-digit IQ would have foreseen.

The message presented across all fronts was:
EVIL INSURANCE COMPANIES WILL NO LONGER COVER YOUR CHILDREN!!!!
when the true “news” was really no more than:
THANKS TO OBAMACARE, INSURANCE COMPANIES ELIMINATE LOOPHOLE THAT BENEFITED SOME PARENTS

Two specific examples are below, but no doubt you could find the same sort of things in every version of this story. I’m sure the TV coverage was more of the same as well.

Read More →

Dana Loesch captured it on video.

Breitbart approaches a bunch of astroturfing protesters, going down the line and asking each one to cite an example of what their protest sign says. After a classic response you have to see to believe, these paid thugs get called away by their leader so that they can try to figure out Plan B.

After the mob reforms, Breitbart approaches again and some lefty hag spits on Breitbart and then runs away into the crowd.

This captures the typical Democratic example of how to engage in any debate:
1. Hire a bunch of morons. (They count as jobs created after all.)
2. Engage in name-calling.
3. Resort to violence.
4. Go into hiding.

Today she was whining yet again about Joe Miller’s campaign.

“What happened in my particular race, you had the Tea Party Express, this California-based group, come in at the last minute in a campaign, run a mudslinging, smear - just a terrible, terrible - campaign with lies and fabrications and mischaracterizations,” Murkowski told CNN’s Candy Crowley in an exclusive interview. “They came in, dumped $600,000 into a small market here in Alaska, and they absolutely clearly influenced the outcome.”

By her “constituents” she obviously doesn’t mean “the voters in Alaska” but rather “people whose careers depend on my political largesse” because the voters of Alaska have spoken. And she sure didn’t seem to mind the Republican Party when they were backing her.

“I am listening to my constituents. That’s what it’s all about,” she said. “It’s not about trying to make the Republican Party happy … it’s trying to respond to the people of the state of Alaska. I’m going to give them a choice.”

She’s whining about $600K spent on him when she had $2M sitting in a war chest six weeks ago, and this was after spending $1.5M.

She’s whining about that money coming from out of state, yet during this cycle she’s received more than $600K in donations from the Washington DC area alone.

In yet more hypocrisy, she accuses Miller of starting a civil war. Funny, he’s the party’s nominee, so who is launching the civil war? (This is from the same link as at the top.)

“I think he has made people uncomfortable. I think that he has kind of rattled the cages, whether it advances to a full-on civil war, I don’t know. What I’m looking at right now is what’s going on in my state. I’m responding to that. And quite honestly, what’s happening within the conference is - I’m not focused on that. I’m focused on what’s going on here back home,” she said.

She’s whining about mudslinging, but today she comes out with this.

“He is … suggesting some pretty radical things,” Murkowski said, saying his supports elimination of Social Security, Medicare, the Department of Education and earmarks. “He has taken an approach that is more radical than where the people of the state are,” the senator said.

Any Democrat would be hard-pressed to sound like more of a sour grapes hypocrite than she is.

That’s about how it seems to be working out. You may have thought that things were settled in Alaska as of Labor Day, after she conceded the primary to Miller and after the Libertarian Party leaders met and decided they were happy with Haase. Well, not so fast….

Tue Sept 7: She says that she was ready to go, but too many people are telling her to stay.

She said that if this was “all about Lisa, certainly the easy thing for me to do would be to figure out what my next opportunity would be with my family and just settle in to a nice job.”

“But what I’m looking at is my state and the future of my state for my kids. So, I have not made that determination that I’m going to give up. I’m not a quitter, never have been. And I’m still in this game,” Murkowski said.

Not being a quitter and not wanting to disappoint her fans or ruin her kids’ future, what happens Tuesday but a meeting with Haase, though she had nothing to do with setting it up and was caught completely by surprise. Right. But the Libertarian Party leadership is still not interested it seems.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski met with Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate David Haase on Tuesday to talk about taking his place and running on the Libertarian ticket. But Alaska Libertarian Party Chairman Scott Kolhaas said after the meeting that “I don’t think it’s happening.”

Murkowski met with Haase in Anchorage on Tuesday in a meeting arranged by Murkowski supporters. The Murkowski campaign said she didn’t know before showing up that Haase would be there.

Wed Sept 8: Still in “I’m not a quitter/it’s for my fans/it’s not about me” mode, and not seeming to have much luck with those obstinate Libertarians, she seems to think it’s no good having a war chest if you don’t have a campaign to spend it on.

But despite the primary loss and the isolation from fellow Republicans, the two-term senator is not deterred, and is expected to make an announcement in days about whether she will run, sources say.

Murkowski has $1.4 million in the bank to be able to spend on an independent bid, and she would be the only seasoned politician in the race. A write-in candidacy would still be an extreme long shot, but given her comments to the press that she is “not a quitter,” speculation is growing that she’s planning to run.

Her campaign is looking ahead as to how many ways her name could appear as a write-in and still be counted as a vote for Lisa.

“They are looking at how that would work if there are different iterations of her name, whether it’s Senator Murkowski or Lisa or Lisa M.,” said Steve Wackowski, a spokesman for her campaign, listing a few possibilities.

Gail Fenumiai, the state elections director, offered a bit of clarity.

“If I can determine voter intent, then the ballot would be counted accordingly,” Ms. Fenumiai wrote in an e-mail. She declined to say specifically what versions of the senator’s name would be accepted.

Ms. Murkowski’s campaign signs often emphasize “Lisa” rather than “Murkowski,” though it is not clear whether that is for the sake of simplicity or because many voters grew to dislike her father, Frank H. Murkowski, who served as a senator for 22 years before he became governor in 2002. He appointed his daughter to his Senate seat the same year.

Sounds kind of like Rory “don’t call me Reid” Reid in Nevada.

And maybe Charlie “thanks for the cash NRSC” Crist in Florida.

Del Monte is switching its incoming banana shipments from a Camden NJ port to a family-owned port in Gloucester City NJ. The workers at the private facility will receive lower pay than the ILA workers at Camden. So what better to do between a Labor Day parade and picnic than to go destroy Del Monte pineapples at a South Philly port? Sounds like good family fun!

In a Labor Day demonstration, Philadelphia union dock workers dumped cases of Del Monte pineapples into the Delaware River today to protest Del Monte’s decision to switch its banana shipping business to a different port.

The International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1291 will lose 200 to 300 jobs - 400,000 labor hours a year - when Del Monte Fresh Produce Co. shifts 75 ships and a half million tons of banana cargo from Camden to the privately-owned Gloucester Terminals L.L.C., which pays workers less.

The protest, at Penn’s Landing, came as Philadelphia’s labor community was heading to the site for its yearly picnic, following the annual parade along Columbus Boulevard.

There’s more to it than what Del Monte has to pay “workers” who have no qualms about destroying the goods. For example…

[A] Del Monte vessel entering and departing Camden’s Broadway terminal needs two tugs, Holt said. [His family runs the new facility.] the At Gloucester, they’ll need one tug to dock and none to leave.

BTW I wonder if the Delaware River is now more polluted than before. I’m sure the EPA will be all over it and fine the union heavily if so.

It seems like just yesterday that the Democrats had a 50-state strategy. Now they are reduced to creating “firewalls” to try to hang on to power by the skin of their teeth.

In the Senate, the strategy is to protect Boxer, Murray, and Feingold. Obama worked over Barbara Boxer’s supporters a few months ago, and then recently visited again as part of three-day swing between vacations to support her, Patty Murray, and Russ Feingold. All three of these should be safe seats in blue states, but it’s clear the Dems think all three are in jeopardy and will determine who rules the Senate. Obama is making a Labor Day trip to Wisconsin as well. They’ll be at the same event, but interestingly enough they won’t be there at the same time. Feingold has criticized Obama many times - mostly for not being “progressive” enough, but also for things like misuse of “czars”.

On the House side, the Dems have decided that they have about 20-25 members they have to go all out for, and the rest will get thrown under the bus. If they lose 25 or 30 or 35 seats they don’t care, as long as Pelosi remains in charge once the dust settles. This also presumably means that SEIU, AFL-CIO, MoveOn, etc. will be throwing their tens of millions of dollars and their ground forces into a relative handful of races.

There was a diary recently discussing the importance of one poll vs another. It’s becoming clear that internal Democratic polling shows that their only hope at keeping power is to pick a few spots to play defense and to abandon the rest of the team. It will be interesting to see how the GOP adapts.

Resident MSNBC genius came up with this determination.

 87,000 people per CBS, since this is the lowest number anyone made up.
-80,000 people he claims would have been there anyway.
    7,000 people there to attend Beck’s rally.

And people wonder why the MSM has zero credibility. BTW it seems O’Donnell is saying only white people visit the National Mall.

He’s come out with his 60-day crystal ball. Here are a few highlights.

• Senate: +8 or +9 for GOP, up from his previous +7. He wonders what Nelson and/or Lieberman might do if the GOP comes up just short of a majority.
• House: +47 net for GOP. His wording is odd, saying they have a “good chance” to pick up “as many as” 47, but then says that he’s been conservative in these estimates.
• Governors: +8 for GOP, up from +6. With redistricting on the horizon, this is a big deal.

He also notes that on the six occasions since WWII when the House has flipped, the Senate also did so unexpectedly.

This time it’s Dallas’s resident genius Eddie Bernice Johnson. She took money shaken down from corporations and from other donors to give scholarships to her aide’s relatives.

Longtime Dallas congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson has awarded thousands of dollars in college scholarships to four relatives and a top aide’s two children since 2005, using foundation funds set aside for black lawmakers’ causes.

The recipients were ineligible under anti-nepotism rules of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, which provided the money. And all of the awards violated a foundation requirement that scholarship winners live or study in a caucus member’s district.

Oops. It seems that at first she lied about it, and then … well lied about it some more.

Johnson, a Democrat, denied any favoritism when asked about the scholarships last week. Two days later, she acknowledged in a statement released by her office that she had violated the rules but said she had done so “unknowingly” and would work with the foundation to “rectify the financial situation.”

Initially, she said, “I recognized the names when I saw them. And I knew that they had a need just like any other kid that would apply for one.” Had there been more “very worthy applicants in my district,” she added, “then I probably wouldn’t have given it” to the relatives.

It looks like she’s setting this up for the “Rangel defense”:

• I inadvertently went overboard in trying to help people.
• Once I got caught, I paid the money back.
• If you don’t let it go at that, you’re a racist.

In case you’re wondering why you’ve never seen much of her on TV, here’s why. She can barely read the statement her staff presumably wrote for her.