It's been years and years. I'm not sure I'll keep this going. When I get some abundant spare time, maybe I'll do it and meet all the rules, buy a domain name, etc.

Education: Like the Corporate World, We're Just Kept Busy So We Question Nothing

Now this is what I'm talking about about.  Diana Senechal is right: we're being kept too busy and need to slow down.  We need wisdom, not "completion rates."  Puttering, Responsibility, and Beauty

It's been how many years?

God, your uncl's been busy.  For one thing, I've become a real uncle.  Love my nieces.

For another, teaching's become busier.

For yet another, politics has gone crazy!  Four years of a left-of-center Democratic president, and the disloyal opposition still calls him a socialist or whatever else.  Near as I can make out, that's because

• he's black
• he has a funny foreign name
• he is a Democrat

It's like Clinton Derangement Syndrome, but it's weirder.  People hated Bill Clinton for his philandering, but even more for stealing the opposition's thunder: a Southern and Southern Baptist governor who helped (did not make) the economy hum, who ended "welfare as we know it," who suspended Glass-Steagall, who initiated NAFTA.  Hillary faces some of that, only worse: she's a woman.

As for Obama, he's Eisenhower.  I don't much like his war and his kowtowing to Wall Street, but by and large Ike would agree with most of what he's doing.  Unlike Ike, BHO is unwilling to do something big.  Eisenhower gave us the Interstates, for better or for worse.  Obama gave us ACOA.  A Heritage Foundation health care plan.  No wonder the righties hate him: again, someone stole their thunder.  And he's black!

Douchebag of the week

Well, it's been a tough week. More absurdity from last week's winner, Sarah Palin, made her a possible return engagement. The Beckster continues outrageous, but his sponsors are abandoning him in large numbers. The teabaggers have had their tongues out, lying about health care. Threatening signs, guns being carried to town halls. Prostitute toe sucker Dick Morris telling people to "terrorize" Democratic congressmembers. Would I have to buy a whole pack of Trojans for this bunch?

But no. It's U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA). This stolid fixture of the Senate sounded like a back-bench crazy when he told seniors they should be worried about "death panels." Great work, Chuck. Scare those old folks good. By the way, aren't you sort of elderly yourself? Why don't you just extend Senate health care to all elderly Iowans? Or have Aetna et al. just given you too much money? Are you shooting for "Palin/Grassley 2012"?

Chuck Grassley, the Douchebag of the Week! Your condom comes with Viagra!

Last week's douchebag of the week

A little late, but her attempts this week to backpedal have not improved her situation, so here it is.

Sarah Heath Palin, former governor of Alaska and current candidate to replace Paula Abdul on American Idol, earns this week's condom for claiming the administration's health care proposal will have a "death panel" that decides who lives and dies, including her Down syndrome baby. Shameless. Keith Olbermann put it best when he took her to task for using Trig Palin to advance this lie after she publicly complained about David Letterman's use of her daughters to make a joke. I guess it's OK if she uses her own children in public, though.

A close runner-up and candidate for this coming week's douchebag for the same reason is former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich for advancing the same idea. At least Bible Spice is dumb enough to actually believe it's true. Even a history professor who failed to achieve tenure couldn't believe that, or could he?

Sarah Palin, the douchebag of the week just ended. Would you like your condom flavored or ribbed?

John Bolton on the Release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee

I should take this more personally--though I question the wisdom of the reporters entering North Korea, Ms. Ling is a fellow Sacramentan, in fact originally from Carmichael, where I too lived for a couple of years. And John Bolton totally offends me when he contends we gave in to blackmail. Yeah, let's go to nuclear war over this one, Johnny Boy. I can always tell someone who has never faced war or destruction personally by (in this case) HIS willingness to go to war.

Still, Secretary of State Clinton, wife of the former president and chief negotiator, put it best by laughing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/07/hillary-clinton-laughs-of_n_254167.html

Let's remember that Bolton was never confirmed as UN ambassador, was always Bush's recess appointment. I wrote a little song parody about him:
Hadda call Condi‘
bout that angry guy
got a long white mustache
an’ a myopic eye
Wooly Bolton
Wooly Bolton
Wooly Bolton
Wooly Bolton
Wooly Bolton

Hadda call Rummy
He gotta weave an’ bob
‘cause that wooly, wooly Bolton
gonna cost ‘im his job
Wooly Bolton
Etc.

I was working on more verses before Moustache Man left the news cycle. Like him, it's now irrelevant.

Douchebag of the Weak

Sorry for the long absence. Your uncl has been busy.

Olbermann calls them "worst persons." O'Liely calls them "pinheads." I suffer from less censorship, but even I draw the line. I'm tempted to say "f*ckhead," but that would demean one of the great recreational acts of humanity.

This weak's (or week's) douchebag is Representative Eric Cantor, R-VA (or is that Whig-Transylvania?) for trying to get out from under his party's courting of the Obama birthers. He claims the "liberal media" is pushing the story. Oh, yeah, Eric? Is Lou "Adios, mojados" Dobbs a liberal? Is MSNBC owned by the Socialist Workers Party or by GE ("We bring good jet engines to death")? Poor Eric: his party is turning into tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy mongers all around him. What's a nice Jewish boy with a goober constituency to do? If nothing else, he gets rid of the anti-semitic contention that all Jews are smart.

Eric Cantor, the douchebag of the weak! Take your condom, son!

Here's a neat quote from the Washington Post:

"Keeping us up here eats away at families," said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays. "Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families -- that's what this says."

Oh, really, Jack? Well, suck it up, son, and get to work! There's legislatin' to be done! I'd love the luxury of a forty-hour-a-week job. What's more, if you didn't want the inconvenience of two addresses, you needed to have the person who held that gun to your head and forced you to run for office arrested! What did Harry Truman say to those who couldn't take the heat? A five-day-a-week job? Simon Legree lives!

Bush Diversions

So the (p)resident will wait until January to announce his new Iraq policy. The New York Times opines that he is waiting until enthusiasm (is there any?) for the ISG's report to wane before doing whatever it is his handlers want him to do anyway. Meanwhile, we wait to see how many more troops and Iraqi citizens will be the last people to die for a mistake (thanks, John Kerry).

I know Nancy Pelosi said that impeachment was "off the table." That's fine; politicians are better at getting in front of a parade than at starting one. Let the investigations begin. If we can prove criminal charges against Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Wolfowitz, et al., the impeachment cry will become a juggernaut. Expect a ton of sprinting, some of it even by Republicans, to get in front of the floats.

How does the creature say "complete"?

In the November 29 Sacramento Bee, Peter Schrag opines that California's community colleges have failed in the category of "completion": "That's the percentage of beginning students who actually get a degree, transfer to a four-year college, or complete the vocational program they began." What if that is not the goal? What if the goal is to retake English 1A over the summer before returning to Chico or Davis for one's four-year program? What if, after years of work in some other field, a retiree wants to study something unrelated to his or her career? Can't those people be said to have "completed" their goal? Schrag himself acknowledges that "the community colleges are -- and have to be -- all things to all people," so the rather short list of criteria doesn't truly apply. We cannot judge community colleges the way we judge universities or tech colleges because the mission is so varied.

Stay tuned for my dissection of the state policy analyst's report.

Charlie Rangel is right! Now let's go further.

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) has again proposed to reinstate the draft. It is of course a symbolic move with no chance of being sent to the president for a veto. Instead, it's a gut check: are we serious enough about this war to send our best and brightest? Or at least the most privileged?

Because this war has lasted as long as World War II, shouldn't we also have full mobilization? How about building Humvees and tanks in all that factory overcapacity we have? Why don't we give up our best natural and synthetic fabrics to the war materiel effort? Are we willing to give up shopping to really fight this war? How about burning less petrol? Will you give up your Suburban so an Iraqi family whose house was bombed can now live in it? And how about a higher tax rate so those kids who live through the war can have a real GI Bill?

If not--let's bring the boys and girls home. It's not cut and run when the alternative is stay and be slain.

Conflicts? Don't worry!

All those gloating or wringing their hands over the election of Steny Hoyer over Jack Murtha as House majority leader can now shut up and put their hands back in their pockets. This does not show Nancy Pelosi to be a weak Speaker of the House. It's just something we haven't seen in a while.

It's called de-mo-cra-cy. (I'm saying it slow the way Dubya does: the commentator who says he speaks in that condescending manner was dead-on when he suggested that Chimpy is merely repeating it in the fashion it was explained to him.)

Yes. The right wingnuts want lockstep uniformity: that explains their ugly haircuts. The Democrats, as Will Rogers pointed out, are not part of an organized political party. Also, notice how quickly Pelosi and Hoyer were reconciled. This is not your father's Congress, so get used to it.

Welcome to Evl Uncl Bud!

This blog is named for a New Duncan Imperials song. The lyrics are "Evl Uncl Bud/climbing up the stairs/Evl Uncl Bud/in his underwear."

What does that have to do with politics? Absolutely nothing, except . . .

Uncl Bud is evl, all right, but the neoconservatives, religious hypocrites, and totalitarians are evil. Now that they are out of power in the U.S. Congress and many statehouses, I plan to post information to keep them out. Will you join me?